Search Results for: poul anderson

A High-Tech Sandbox: Transhuman Space by David Pulver

Comments 0 Comment

Transhuman Space (Steve Jackson Games, March 29, 2018). Illustrated by Christopher Shy In the 1990s, I made a big decision about tabletop roleplaying gaming: Rather than coming up with my own rules for running games, I ran campaigns using published systems. Some of these used my own original settings; some borrowed settings from published fictional or dramatic works, either as adapted by game publishers or in my own adaptations; and some used published original game worlds. I hardly ever used…

Read More Read More

Units of Conviction: Being Michael Swanwick

Comments 5 comments

Being Michael Swanwick (Fairwood Press, November 21, 2023) Prolificity is in the DNA of science fiction. H. G. Wells, whose most famous works date back to the 1890s, wrote some fifty novels, seventy non-fiction books, and one hundred short stories. Pick almost any SFWA Grand Master and you’ll encounter a bibliography that will engulf your life for many months, if not years. How many shelves to house the hundreds of books published, for instance, by Andre Norton, or Poul Anderson,…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

Comments 2 comments

The Med Series (Ace, May 1983). Cover by James Warhola For most of its life John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction was the most important SF magazine on the stands. It was the beating heart of the genre in a way that’s tough to comprehend today, in a market that’s grown far beyond print. Campbell made his mark by discovering, nurturing, and publishing the most important writers of his day. But — quite cleverly, I think — he also cultivated…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Neutron Star by Larry Niven

Comments 12 comments

Neutron Star (Ballantine Bools, April 1968). Cover artist unknown As I was preparing last week’s Vintage Treasures article (on Poul Anderson’s Fire Time), I realized that the next book on deck was Neutron Star, by Larry Niven, one of the most important science fiction collections of the 20th Century. And I simultaneously realized we’ve never done a Vintage Treasures feature on Niven before, a pretty serious oversight. (For comparison purposes, as I was assembling reference links at the bottom of…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Combat SF edited by Gordon R. Dickson

Comments 2 comments

Combat SF (Ace Books, June 1981). Cover by Vincent Di Fate Military science fiction has a long and honorable history, from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. It’s not nearly as prevalent on bookstore shelves as it used to be. Some people say that’s because science fiction is no longer a male-dominated genre that panders to young male power fantasies. And those people are mostly right. But there’s still plenty of…

Read More Read More

GW Thomas on Interplanetary Graveyards, Cemetery Worlds, and Junkyard Planets

Comments 1 comment

Art by Chris Foss GW Thomas’s Dark Worlds is one of the better blogs out there, at least for fans of classic SF, comics and pulps. In just the last few weeks he’s discussed Sword & Sorcery at Warren (Part 10: 1980), Bronze Age DC Werewolves (Parts 1, 2, and 3) and Golden Age Plant Monsters. No one else is doing scholarship on plant monsters, and Thomas clearly deserves an award for that alone. But my favorite recent piece was…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Time to Come edited by August Derleth

Comments 4 comments

Time to Come (Berkley Books, December 1958). Cover by Robert E. Schulz Back in December I kicked off a survey of the Science Fiction Anthologies of August Derleth, starting with his 1948 reprint anthology Strange Ports of Call. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Derleth “one of the pioneering anthologists in the genre.” He began his editing career with horror collection Sleep No More in 1944. Strange Ports of Call, which drew heavily from pulps such as Astounding, Wonder Stories, Amazing, The…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

Comments 2 comments

The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection (Bluejay Books, April 1986). Cover by Tom Kidd I saw a copy of the third volume in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series on eBay for $11.45 last week, and decided to take a chance. Turned out to be the Book Club edition, a reprint that’s a smaller size than my other volumes, which was a disappointment. But at least I finally had a copy. On the back of the…

Read More Read More

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part II

Comments 5 comments

David C. Smith and Steven H Silver find priceless treasures in the Dealers Room at Windy City Pulp & Paper A month ago I wrote a short convention report on the 2023 Windy City Pulp & Paper Show, which took place Friday April 21st to Sunday, April 23rd in Lombard, Illinois. In that article I mostly rubber-necked at the gorgeous Weird Tales pulps and other rare magazines sold during the evening auctions, and took covetous pictures of the pre-auction displays….

Read More Read More

Talking Tolkien: The Architects of Modern Fantasy, Tolkien and Norton – by Ruth de Jauregui

Comments 9 comments

Talking Tolkien is back for another installment and Ruth de Jauregui brings in another Fantasy giant, the great Andre Norton. Those DAW paperbacks are classics. Read on! The influences of J.R.R. Tolkien and Andre Norton fill the world of speculative fiction and, while the genre existed before and after both authors, their works have forever shaped new authors and the flow of the modern fantasy novel. Tolkien forged the modern rendition of the epic journey tale that has its roots…

Read More Read More