Vintage Treasures: The Last Planet by Andre Norton

Vintage Treasures: The Last Planet by Andre Norton

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The Last Planet-smallAndre Norton’s The Last Planet may have been the first Ace Double I ever saw.

Memory is a tricky thing, so I can’t really be sure. It may have been Daybreak — 2250, which sat enticingly in the spinner racks of the St. Francis Junior High School library in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But The Last Planet was almost certainly the first Ace Double I laid eyes on which I was aware was an Ace Double, with a sister book on the flip side and everything (in this case, Alan E. Nourse’s futuristic thriller A Man Obsessed.)

By then, I had begun to build my own collection of SF paperbacks and this fascinating relic of early SF adventure helped pull me towards the entire Ace Double line, like a shipwrecked sailor drawn towards a desert island. A big, lush desert island with a gorgeous library.

It’s Harry Barton’s classic cover for the 1955 paperback that really did it for me. I’ve never read The Last Planet — it took me years just to track down a copy — but nonetheless it has loomed large in my imagination for decades. Three stalwart space explorers, walking through the ruins of an alien city as their crashed spacecraft cools in the foothills behind them, about to stumble upon a metal robot, hiding in the rubble and clutching a rudimentary weapon.

How could it not? For me, at least, it’s one of the signature works of 20th Century SF artwork.

In the years that I searched for a copy, I imagined the story of those three explorers. Would they shoot the robot? Was it friendly? Could be friendly, with those big google-eyes and curious gaze. Those red-shirted explorers looked awfully trigger happy though, with their steely gazes and twitchy hands on their futuristic sidearms. Lords knows, you can’t blame a redshirt for being trigger-happy on an away mission.

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Two-Fisted Justice in an Abandoned Cemetery: Will Esiner’s The Spirit

Two-Fisted Justice in an Abandoned Cemetery: Will Esiner’s The Spirit

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The Spirit 23-smallWill Eisner is one of the most revered comic creators of the 20th Century, and for good reason. I’m continually astounded at the skill and command of the medium he exhibited, even at an early age.

He was inducted into the Academy of Comic Book Arts Hall of Fame in 1971 and he virtually created the graphic novel with his 1978 masterwork A Contract with God. Comic’s most prestigious awards, the Eisner Awards, were created in his honor in 1988.

So I’m a little disappointed that his most famous creation, the good humored crime-fighter The Spirit, isn’t more well known today.

The Spirit is flat-out one of my favorite early comics. Beginning his career as detective Denny Colt, shot and left for dead in the first three pages of his premiere appearance, the Spirit awakens in the abandoned and overgrown Wildwood Cemetery. From this new base of operations, and with his past virtually obliterated, The Spirit throws himself into life as a crime fighter, disguising his identity with a small domino mask (which he wears even while sleeping), an amazingly resilient business suit, fedora hat, and gloves.

With his sidekick Ebony White, an uneducated but resourceful black orphan (who sleeps in a sock drawer), the Spirit traveled the world, bringing justice to criminals and con men all over the world.

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Monster Mash-up: Elizabeth Hand’s Pandora’s Bride

Monster Mash-up: Elizabeth Hand’s Pandora’s Bride

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Pandora's BrideFebruary is Women in Horror Month, and with that in mind I’d like to look at an interesting oddity. In 2005, Dark Horse Books, a then-recently launched imprint of Dark Horse Comics, announced they’d be publishing a set of tie-in novels. These novels wouldn’t tie into the big modern-day entertainment franchises that Dark Horse Comics was known for working with, though. Instead, they’d each present the further adventures of one of the famous Universal Studios horror characters. I happened to stumble across one a little while ago: Pandora’s Bride by Elizabeth Hand. Hand is a fine writer and I was happy to find that she’d taken her assignment here and run with it. Ostensibly, the book’s about the adventures of “the Bride of Frankenstein,” but Hand’s cleverly and amusingly told a story about several other remarkable film characters as well, playing with some of the great works of German Expressionist film and of Fritz Lang in particular.

Her main character, though, is the Bride — is there any other film character that’s made such an impact, become such an icon, with so little actual screen time? The Bride doesn’t appear until the final few minutes of the 1935 movie named for her; and then almost all she does is point and scream. Yet nearly everyone knows who she is. Her image is unmistakeable. Obviously, that’s a function of striking visual design. It may help that Elsa Lanchester, who played both the Bride and Mary Shelley (in a prologue to the film’s main action), ended up settling in to a career filled mostly with character roles and few other starring appearances. But for whatever reason, the Bride exists as perhaps the most literally iconic of movie roles: an image, with no character arc attached.

So Hand’s first task in this novel would be to find a story for the Bride. A prolific novelist and short story writer, Hand’s won all sorts of awards: a Nebula for her short story “Echo,” International Horror Guild Awards in 2001 for Best Long Form work and in 2002 for Best Intermediate Form, two World Fantasy Awards for Best Novella and one for Best Collection, and both a Tiptree Award and a Mythopoeic Award for her 1994 novel Waking the Moon. She’s an excellent writer, and specifically a horror writer, as well as a veteran of tie-in fiction — in addition to writing a number of movie novelisations, she’s produced four Boba Fett children’s books for Lucasfilm. (And perhaps Boba Fett before the prequel films and the Extended Universe would have been the only other character remotely close to the purely-iconic nature of the Bride; but then Fett had appeared in a cartoon segment in a TV special even before his first appearance in Empire, as well as newspaper comic strips.) All told, Hand was a good choice for the job.

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New Treasures: Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

New Treasures: Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

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Broken Homes-smallBen Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London novels are one of my favorite new series. io9 calls them “The perfect blend of CSI and Harry Potter.” I’ve never watched CSI, but I imagine that can’t be that far off. I think Diana Gabaldon is very close when she describes them as “What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz.”

Even those quotes don’t do justice to how funny these novels are. They’re tightly plotted, too; just the right mix of humor, suspense, and genuine character development. The latest in the series, Broken Homes, just landed this month. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

My name is Peter Grant, and I am a keeper of the secret flame — whatever that is.

Truth be told, there’s a lot I still don’t know. My superior Nightingale, previously the last of England’s wizardly governmental force, is trying to teach me proper schooling for a magician’s apprentice. But even he doesn’t have all the answers. Mostly I’m just a constable sworn to enforce the Queen’s Peace, with the occasional help from some unusual friends and a well-placed fire blast. With the new year, I have three main objectives, a) pass the detective exam so I can officially become a DC, b) work out what the hell my relationship with Lesley Mai, an old friend from the force and now fellow apprentice, is supposed to be, and most importantly, c) get through the year without destroying a major landmark.

Two out of three isn’t bad, right?

A mutilated body in Crawley means another murderer is on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil, who may either be a common serial killer or an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man — a man whose previous encounters I’ve barely survived.

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Lust, Women, and the Devil: Seven Decades of Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife

Lust, Women, and the Devil: Seven Decades of Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife

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Conjure Wife-small There are a lot of fascinating things you can learn about 20th Century America — and America today — by being a compulsive paperback collector. Seriously. It’s like being a Cultural Anthropologist.

Let’s take a look at Fritz Leiber’s first novel, Conjure Wife. In fact, it’s a near perfect example. The book has been reprinted around a dozen times by roughly as many publishers over the last 70 years, and each time the cover art and marketing copy tell you as much about society as they do about the book. More, even.

First, it helps to know a little about the novel. Conjure Wife was written in 1943; it’s a supernatural horror novel that imagines that witchcraft is an ancient secret shared by most women. Our protagonist Norman Saylor, a professor at a small town college, accidentally discovers that his wife Tansy is a witch. When he convinces her to abandon the mysterious art, the couple rapidly find their luck changing for the worse. Turns out that Tansy’s various charms were the only thing protecting them from an intricate web of curses and counter-spells cast by the women around them.

I always thought that was a fascinating premise. If it seems familiar, it’s because the story has filtered into public consciousness since 1943 — it’s been filmed at least three times: the Lon Chaney, Jr. feature Weird Woman (1944), the Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson collaboration Burn, Witch, Burn! (1962), and Lana Turner’s final film, Witches’ Brew (1980). Of course, the concept of a community of witches and warlocks living secretly among us has gradually become a popular fantasy trope — used in Jimmy Stewart’s 1958 fantasy Bell, Book and Candle, just for example, as well as the 1964 to 1972 TV series Bewitched, and even the Harry Potter novels.

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When Is An Apocalypse Not an Apocalypse?

When Is An Apocalypse Not an Apocalypse?

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Damnation Last week, I was talking about apocalyptic novels – both Fantasy and SF – that I have on my shelves, and once again I got some very interesting and stimulating commentary. There are quite a few recommendations in those comments – along with some great ideas – so I’d advise you to have a look.

I was a bit chagrined when one of the commenters mentioned Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley (1969) as an example of post-apocalyptic SF. Like the other books I cited, this one is on my shelves, and as a big fan of his, I don’t know how I missed it. I’m going to talk about it, and about another of Zelazny’s novels, This Immortal (1965/66), but first, a little clarification.

One of the things we got into in the comments was exactly what we meant by “apocalypse” and “post-apocalyptic.” Now, as someone who not that long ago had a little rant about definitions, I probably should have been clearer about what I meant by those particular terms. Not that there was any name-calling or hair-pulling in last week’s comments. Just that I should have been more careful to follow my own advice.

Here’s my take on it: The existence of a precursor society is insufficient to make a story post-apocalyptic. An apocalyptic event brings about the “end of the world as we know it.” It should happen abruptly, not slowly over the course of time, as with the fall of the Roman Empire, or the disappearance of the civilization of the Caids in my own Dhulyn and Parno Novels. The new, post-apocalyptic society should be starting, effectively, from scratch. Maybe they’ve retained some “stuff” from the previous civilization, even some of the political or social ideas, but their world has changed in a way that can’t be changed back. The apocalyptic event can be natural or man-made – and I’d include magically created events in the latter category.

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The Return of Renner and Quist

The Return of Renner and Quist

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sleeping bearSamhain Publishing has just awakened Sleeping Bear, the second Renner and Quist adventure by Mark Rigney to see publication as an ebook. I discovered the series last year when the same publisher unearthed The Skates, a screwball quest involving tormented Victorian souls, a pair of magic ice skates, a ghostly hound, and dimensional time and space travel.

For the benefit of newcomers, Renner and Quist are an odd couple double act comprising a stuffy Unitarian minister and a rather crude, sometimes boorish, ex-linebacker and former private eye, who team to solve occult mysteries in Michigan. This quirky series is surprisingly literate fiction that calls to mind Douglas Adams’s delightful Dirk Gently detective series.

Rigney’s fiction is built around his characters’ faith (or their lack thereof) in the supernatural and preternatural. The series is thought-provoking as much as it is entertaining. This time out, Sleeping Bear finds Reverend Renner suffering through a crisis of faith as his attempts to minister at a local hospice have fallen on not just deaf ears, but unbelieving ones.

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Goth Chick News: Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll by Marilyn Manson – WTF?

Goth Chick News: Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll by Marilyn Manson – WTF?

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image002When I first heard about this, I thought Marilyn Manson was taking on one of my favorite computer games.

In case you don’t remember, Phantasmagoria is the 1995 interactive movie horror adventure game created by Sierra for the PC.

Made at the height of the “interactive movie” boom in the computer game industry, Phantasmagoria is notable not only for being one of the first games to use a live actor as an on-screen avatar, but also for being banned by some retailers due to its fairly graphic depiction of violence.

What I didn’t know until now is that Phantasmagoria is also a famous collection of Lewis Carroll’s poems, as well as the name for live horror shows involving projection onto smoke screens that were invented in the 18th century France.

Oh, and it’s also the title of Marilyn Manson’s first foray into film.

Yes, you read that right. Marilyn Manson, the horror rocker cum performance artist is the writer, producer, and director of this $4.2M venture that has been trying to get legs since 2005.

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A Year of Writing Franchise Fiction

A Year of Writing Franchise Fiction

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...a chance to follow in the footsteps of my heroes Ronald Welch
…a chance to follow in the footsteps of my heroes Ronald Welch…

“Would you like to be paid to write Historical Adventure set in the Wars of the Roses?”

“Well I really wanted to write a literary novel set in the Wiemar Republic about Great War veterans coming to terms with their fractured lives, but: Yes.”

That’s roughly the Skype conversation I had a year ago, except I just made up the bit about the literary novel.

This was a chance to follow in the footsteps of my heroes Ronald Welch and Harold Lamb. It was difficult to say yes without sounding unprofessional (by swearing and whooping, e.g.).

I’m supposed to say something like: This ushered in a crazy year etc etc.

It wasn’t like that.

You just can’t write fiction day in day out if your life is Hollywood-crazy, perhaps with a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl jogging your arm. Almost all the professional writers I know have tranquil home lives and sane routines balancing work and social life.

Nor can you actually have much output if you lead a cinematic creative life, staggering to your keyboard after a booze-fueled night of carousing, then spending long hours angsting about your imagery.

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Future Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Future Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8-smallWhen we covered The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 7 (back in May, if memory serves), publisher Night Shade was having serious issues and I mentioned, “Likely this will be the last one, at least in this format.” Which I considered a real tragedy, as editor Strahan has proven to have a real talent for picking out gems from the crowded and constantly changing genre short fiction market.

Fortunately, ace publisher Solaris has stepped into the void and rescued the series and Volume 8 will appear this year on schedule. They’ve changed the distinctive cover style and format — a shame, since the first seven volumes look impressive on my shelves — but hopefully they won’t mess with too much else.

Strahan has unveiled the table of contents at his website and it looks like another very impressive volume. As usual, he culls fiction from a wide range of industry markets, including traditional print mags — F&SF, Interzone, McSweeney’s, Asimov’s, Electric Velocipede, and even Twelve Tomorrows, the special SF issues of the MIT Technology Review — and top-tier online markets like Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Eclipse Online, Subterranean, Tor.com, and Strange Horizons.

He also draws stories from the biggest anthologies of the year, like Old Mars, Dangerous Women, Rags and Bones, Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales, and An Aura of Familiarity.

Authors in this volume include Ian McDonald, Robert Reed, Eleanor Arnason, Ian R Macleod, Charlie Jane Anders, James Patrick Kelly, K J Parker, Lavie Tidhar, Richard Parks, Ted Chiang, M. John Harrison, Neil Gaiman, Geoff Ryman, Greg Egan — and, as always, a few new talents whose names you may not yet recognize, but whom you may want to keep an eye on.

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