Blog Archives

Garden of Evil by Margaret St. Clair appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. Garden of Evil is a short, sweet, absolutely delicious swipe at anthropologists. When I had finally read some of Vance’s Gaean Reach, I had an “aha” moment—“So, THIS is what LeGuin was […]

The Starbusters by Alfred Coppel, Jr. appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It may be read here at Archive.org. Sometimes a story can have all the right pieces, but they can fail to come together in a satisfying way. Sadly, that is the case for Alfred Coppel’s The Starbusters. Commander “Strike” Strykalski […]

S.O.S. Aphrodite by Stanley Mullen appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It can be found here at Archive.org. Okay, now this was a cool story. It may have been a little bit by the numbers, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a neat little sci-fi romp. This is also […]

Queen of the Martian Catacombs by Leigh Brackett appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It can be found here on Internet Archive. Queen of the Martian Catacombs introduced the world to Eric John Stark, one of the last great pulp heroes, in a messy and chaotic romp across the wilds of a […]

There is a new hardback collection of stories by Joe Abercrombie entitled Sharp Ends. The stories all set in the world of The First Law Trilogy, Red Country, The Heroes, and Best Served Cold. The publisher is Orbit Books, $25.00, 287 pages, hardback. Publishing date is listed as April 26, 2016 though I just found […]

The Raid on the Termites by Paul Ernst (best known for his pulp crime-fighter The Avenger) was the featured cover story of the June 1932 issue of Astounding. You know those stories, you’ve seen them before in countless children’s shows, where the kids go “wouldn’t it be cool to see the inside of the ant-farm?”, […]

Hellhounds of the Cosmos by Clifford D. Simak appeared in the June 1932 issue of Astounding Stories. After the first couple pages into Hellhounds of the Cosmos, I did not expect to be as completely blown away by weird the way I was in its second half. Hellhounds starts out with what seems to be […]

Vulcan’s Workshop by Harl Vincent appeared in the June 1932 issue of Astounding Stories. From Kirk’s escape from the Ice Planet to Riddick’s mad dash out of Crematoria, there’s nothing like a Sci-fi Prison Break story. It’s got all the thrilling suspense of a regular prison break story, but with wild and woolly twists, usually […]

Shattered Shields is an anthology of military fantasy. In fact, it might be the first one. Baen Book published the trade paperback November 2014. The mass-market paperback came out this past February, 355 pages, and $7.99. I have never heard of the editors- Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt. Brozek has edited ten small press […]