Search Results for: tale covers

Future Treasures: Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

Comments 0 Comment

You know what we need in these dark, pandemic filled days? A good superhero tale. Natalie Zina Walschots’s debut novel Hench looks like it could fit the bill. Kirkus says it’s “A fiendishly clever novel that fizzes with moxie and malice,” and in a starred review Publishers Weekly calls it a “hilarious peek behind the scenes of supervillains’ lairs… [with] gripping action and gut-wrenching body horror.” It arrives in hardcover on Tuesday. Here’s the description. The Boys meets My Year…

Read More Read More

Doors Open, Doors Closed: Alan Garner’s Elidor

Comments 1 comment

Elidor (Del Rey, July 1981). Cover by Laurence Schwinger One of the best things about starting a book is that you can never be sure exactly how you’re going to respond to it, and those responses can range all the way from hurl the damned thing across the room hatred to toe-curling bliss, with all of a million subtle shadings in between. Every once in a while, though, a book breaks through even the upper ranges of enjoyment and appreciation and…

Read More Read More

Uncanny X-Men, Part 19: Phoenix, Firelord, and the Imperial Guard!

Comments 4 comments

Welcome to Part 19 of my reread through the Uncanny X-Men. In this post I want to cover Uncanny X-Men #105-110, which finishes the first part of the Phoenix Saga, from their last fight with Eric the Red, the alien Shi’ar spy, to the fate of the M’Krann Crystal, which fully shows the full set of changes that Jean Grey has undergone when she resurrected herself in issue #101. This post begins though, with a side-trip to Iron Fist #11, which was also being written by…

Read More Read More

Recomplicated Realities: Philip K. Dick’s Eye In the Sky and Two Others

Comments 5 comments

Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick; First Edition: Ace, 1957. Cover art likely Ed Valigursky. (Click to enlarge) Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick Ace (255 pages, $.35, paperback, 1957) Cover art (likely) Ed Valigursky Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick Ace (188 pages, $.35, paperback, 1955) Cover art unidentified Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick Lippincott (221 pages, $3.50, paperback, 1959) Cover art Arthur Hawkins I confess I’ve never warmed to Philip K….

Read More Read More

Charles Saunders, Father of Sword & Soul, July 1946 – May 2020

Comments 8 comments

“I started reading more about the history and culture of Africa. And I began to realise that in the SF and fantasy genre, blacks were, with only few exceptions, either left out or depicted in racist and stereotypic ways. I had a choice: I could either stop reading SF and fantasy, or try to do something about my dissatisfaction with it by writing my own stories and trying to get them published. I chose the latter course.” –Charles R. Saunders…

Read More Read More

Bigfoot, Uplifted Creatures, and the Largest Black Hole in the Universe: September/October Print SF Magazines

Comments 5 comments

Covers by Soo Lee, Maurizio Manzieri, and Bob Eggleton When Illinois went into lockdown in March, and retail stores and movie theatres closed, life changed pretty quick. I thought an indefinite nationwide lockdown might be the death knell for the print magazines I’d been reading for decades, not to mention my local bookstores and comic shops. And yeah, I felt I little shallow for being preoccupied with that while tens of thousands of people were dying. Nonetheless, I’m relieved to see that, with the…

Read More Read More

Uncanny X-Men, Part 18: Juggernaut and Magneto – For The Very First Time!

Comments 0 Comment

Welcome to part 18 of my Quixotic reread of the X-Men, starting with issue #1 in 1963. We’re now in 1976 and I ended my last post partway through #101 because Phoenix’s introduction is the real climax of the last arc and it made sense to stop there. After Phoenix’ appearance and the hospital reunions, a new story arc starts, insofar as one can ever say a story starts or ends in Claremont’s braided narrative. In this post, I’m going…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: grotesquerie by Richard Gavin

Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Mike Davis (click to embiggen) Undertow Publications commands my attention these days. Editor Michael Kelly has a truly keen eye for fiction, and he’s published some of the most acclaimed short story collections of Weird Horror in the last decade, including Simon Strantzas’s Nothing is Everything, V. H. Leslie’s Skein and Bone, and Kay Chronister’s Thin Places. On Tuesday he adds another to that impressive list, grotesquerie by Richard Gavin. Gavin is the author of five previous collections, including Omens (Mythos…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: So Bright the Vision by Clifford D. Simak

Comments 6 comments

So Bright the Vision by Clifford D. Simak (Ace, 1976). Cover uncredited, but likely Michael Whelan Over the last few weeks I heartily enjoyed writing a pair of lengthy articles on the way Berkley Books packaged and marketed Poul Anderson in 1976-79, and Ace Books did the same thing with Robert Silverberg in 1977. I think I had so much fun because it allowed me to indulge in my favorite past time (obsessing over old paperbacks) for hours, and dress it up as legit research. Yes,…

Read More Read More

Understanding Gamers through Belly Laughs: Knights of the Dinner Table by Jolly R. Blackburn

Comments 14 comments

Three issues of Jolly Blackburn’s long-running Knights of the Dinner Table, all shipped simultaneously: #273, 274, & 275 The COVID-19 pandemic has played havoc with virtually every aspect of life around the globe. That was driven home to me (again) when three issues of my Knights of the Dinner Table subscription were delivered in a single envelope last week. Given all the upheaval the world has gone through in just the last five months, it was an eerie look into…

Read More Read More