Search Results for: tale covers

Future Treasures: The Spin Trilogy by Andrew Bannister

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Last week, in my article about Elizabeth Bear’s upcoming novel Ancestral Night, I included a quote from Publishers Weekly about the current “space opera resurgence.” The most common response to that piece has been, “There’s a space opera resurgence?” You know, I think there might be. Just in the last few weeks we’ve talked about Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War books, Jesse Mihalik’s Polaris Rising, Lisanne Norman’s Sholan Alliance series, Alastair Reynolds’s Shadow Captain, Zenith by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings, Tom…

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Kelly Chiu Gives us 6 Reasons to Devour Ryōko Kui’s Delicious in Dungeon

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Every few years I promise myself I’m going to do a better job keeping up with the latest fantasy manga, but I never really do. But last year I did manage to discover the delightful Delicious in Dungeon, written and illustrated by Ryōko Kui, and I consider that a major win. Delicious in Dungeon is a Japanese fantasy comedy about a 6-member adventurer party very nearly wiped out in a Total Party Kill deep in a dungeon. In the last moments before she’s…

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The Government We Take into Space: Imperial Stars, edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr

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Much early science fiction concerned itself with the rise and fall of galactic empires, and I admit being rather taken with the idea in my youth. There’s something rather romantic in the notion of man’s ultimate destiny being among the stars, testing himself against vast and incalculably ancient powers as he carves a home for himself across the parsecs, proving his worth on the greatest stage of all through gumption, guile, and fearless determination. Today the whole idea seems rather quaint, and more than…

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, and the 1973 Locus Awards for Best Magazine Artist and Best Paperback Cover Artist: Kelly Freas

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Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And…

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Frazetta and Family: Ace Books House Ads, circa 1975

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I bought a small collection of Mack Reynolds paperbacks on eBay last week, and they arrived yesterday. I settled in with them last night, and was surprised to find one of them, the 1975 title The Five Way Secret Agent and Mercenary From Tomorrow, which looked like a collection of two novellas from Analog, was actually an Ace Double. It didn’t have two covers in back-to-back dos-à-dos format, and the second book wasn’t printed upside down, but otherwise it was an Ace…

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The Poison Apple: Mr. Sci-Fi: An Interview with Marc Zicree and the Future with Space Command

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Crowens: I wanted to interview someone whose focus was not only the entertainment industry but also science fiction. Previously, almost everyone I’ve interviewed has been involved in fantasy or horror. After following you on Facebook I really wanted to interview you. Right away, I’ve been able to pick up on your “contagious enthusiasm” and high energy. Zicree: Glad I could do it. What was your very first job in the entertainment industry, and how did you get your foot in…

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A World of Puzzles, a Society Based on Beauty, and a Space Princess: The Latest from Harper Voyager

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Last Saturday, during my bi-weekly trip to our local Barnes & Noble, I picked up a copy of Rachel Dunne’s The Shattered Sun, published by Harper Voyager. In a brief post that afternoon I noted that a single publisher had dominated my attention as I browsed the shelves. One thing I noticed this week is that half the books that caught my eye, including The Shattered Sun, the debut fantasy The Lost Puzzler by Eyal Kless, and the space opera Polaris Rising…

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A Rich Library of Modern Science Fiction: The SF Gateway Omnibus Editions

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Yesterday I posted a brief article on Jack Vance, and as one of the header images I included a pic of the Jack Vance SF Gateway Omnibus, a massive volume from Orion Publishing/Gollancz containing three complete works: Big Planet, The Blue World, and the collection The Dragon Masters and Other Stories. I did it because I thought the book was very cool, and I wanted readers to know about it. And it paid off — in the comments section Glenn…

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Nora Roberts meets Neal Stephenson: The Felicia Sevigny Trilogy by Catherine Cerveny

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I first discovered Catherine Cerveny’s Felicia Sevigny trilogy when Unbound Worlds selected the second novel, The Chaos of Luck, as one of the Best SF Titles of December 2017. The tale of a Brazilian tarot card reader and a Russian crime lord and their desperate race to unmask a conspiracy sounded different enough to be very appealing, and I took a chance and bought the first two books. The series opened with The Rule of Luck (2017), Catherine Cerveny’s debut…

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Hither Came Conan: John C. Hocking on “The Scarlet Citadel”

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I’m here to sing the praises of Robert E. Howard’s Conan story, “The Scarlet Citadel.”  This classic yarn first appeared in the January 1933 issue of Weird Tales and was the second Conan story to see print, following “The Phoenix on the Sword.”   This is a tale of Conan when he was King of Aquilonia, and many, Karl Edward Wagner among them, have noted it shows clear parallels to Howard’s only Conan novel, the peerless The Hour of the Dragon….

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