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sThese days the standard approach to analyzing of E.C. Tubb’s classic sci-fi series of adventure novels involves a heavy grounding in the classic sci-fi tabletop RPG, Traveller. Alas, younger me had not read the source material, and so my imagination lacked the fertile compost of this series in which a game of Traveller might have […]
Sensor Sweep: Fright Night, L. Sprague de Camp, Space Viking
Monday , 9, November 2020 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsCinema (Taste of Cinema): The experimentation and comparable restraint of the American New Wave had crested and crashed, flooding 80s cinema with cheap excess. What had been operatic overload with a point in Siegel, Kubrick and Lucas was now stagnant, murky in its message and rubbish strewn. Nothing demonstrated this better than the decade’s dubious […]
Nearly 60 years after Arthur Wake’s rebellion encountered the vanguard of the Ynzu’s extermination fleet, humanity finds itself in the third decade of an alien siege. Mass-produced combat frames and far-flung extra-solar colonies have kept the wave of crystalline Yuzu reapers from sweeping humanity into the dustbin of history. But desperate times call for desperate […]
Original mass-market paperback books in its heyday is interesting. For the past two years, I have been learning some of that history belonging to a Men’s Paperback discussion group. Len Levison, Lou Cameron, Marvin Albert, Ralph Hayes, and Peter McCurtin are some of the writers from that period. Peter McCurtin (1929-1997) was Irish born, transplanted […]
I’ve been a Manly Wade Wellman fan ever since listening to a Baen Podcast where David Drake discussed the life and works of his friend–and dropped the little-known bombshell that John the Balladeer stories were included in the ebook version of Mountain Magic. Ever since then, reading Manly Wade Wellman has seemed like being a […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 07 November, 2020
Saturday , 7, November 2020 Uncategorized Leave a commentHow to defeat a Demon King? Who is the Cahena? How do you rebuild a civilization in a magical world, or in a post-nuclear wasteland? The answers lay in this week’s new releases. Cahena: A Dream of the Past – Manly Wade Wellman The brave and beautiful warrior queen known as the Cahena was believed […]
Sensor Sweep: Werewolves of London, James Bond, John Thunstone, The Dare
Monday , 2, November 2020 Sensor Sweep 3 CommentsPublishing (Kairos): The Strand is far from the only bookstore to fall on hard times this year. Barnes & Noble, the last big book retail chain, faces mounting pandemic-related difficulties compounded by their own bad decisions. I loathe Amazon as much as the next person who relies on it. But on recent visits to […]
Manly Wade Wellman’s last novel, Cahena¸ was published posthumously in late 1986. I got my copy, again from Weinberg Book in early 1987. This was another Doubleday hardback. The spine on the dustjacket has “Doubleday Science Fiction.” I remember getting sucked in and blowing through the novel. Cahena is an historical novel set in North […]