Blog Archives
sShort Reviews – Battlefield in Black by George A. Whittington
Friday , 15, January 2016 Book Review 11 CommentsBattlefield in Black by George A. Whittington appeared in the Fall 1945 issue of Planet Stories. Captain Jon McPartland has problems. His girlfriend Almira is the daughter of Marshal Denton, “Supreme Commander of all Solar System forces”. The peoples of Earth and her solar colonies are governed by a “Congress of Specialists”, which is sort […]
This book has pretty much everything: transparent aluminum from Star Trek IV, space boots from Star Trek VI, ATVs from classic Traveller, a Hunter straight out of Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, stellar maps from Starfire, and (most importantly) slide rules. Even better, there’s a solid reason for people having to use them out in […]
Short Reviews – Grifters’ Asteroid by H.L. Gold (as Harold C. Fosse)
Friday , 8, January 2016 Book Review 4 Comments“Short Reviews” are my reviews of short science fiction stories. Sometimes the reviews themselves are short, but not always. I started off covering some 70s Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but have moved to focusing on older pulps (Planet Stories right now). The purpose of this series is let people know what kinds of stories were […]
Many of you have probably read H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft has been called the most important horror writer of the Twentieth Century. He incorporated scientific discoveries of the time creating cosmic horror. One friend of mine considers Lovecraft to be no so much horror but “really down science fiction.” If you have read anything on […]
R. F. Tapsell’s The Year of the Horsetails is the greatest novel you have never read. It ranks probably in my top five favorite novels alongside The Hour of the Dragon, The Broken Sword, and Eagle in the Snow. I first heard of it in a book review by L. Sprague de Camp in an […]
One of my finds at a stop at Mac’s Back Paperbacks on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights last month was an upgrade of Tanith Lee’s Cyrion. I had read some of the Cyrion stories in various sword and sorcery anthologies about 31 years ago. I have a very beat up used copy of the D.A.W. […]
Swords Against Cthulhu is a brand new trade paperback anthology from Rogue Planet Press, an imprint of Horrified Press. Edited by Gavin Chappell, artwork by Stephen Cooney, 154 pages in length. Cost is $13.87 if you order from lulu.com. The idea of a sword and sorcery anthology with the Cthulhu mythos is long overdue. In […]
Pulp-fest took place last weekend in Columbus, Ohio. One dealer there had some boxes with a nice variety of sword and sorcery paperbacks. I had most of them but still managed to find a few obscure items. I also upgraded my copy of Gordon D. Shirreffs’ Calgaich the Swordsman (Playboy Press, 1980). Calgaich the Swordsman […]
Griots A Sword and Soul Anthology/ Edited by Milton J. Davis & Charles R. Saunders (Mvmedia, LLC, Fayetteville, GA. 2011) Back in 1979, Andrew J. Offutt had this to say in the introduction to Charles R. Saunders’ story “Mai-Kulala” in the book Swords Against Darkness IV: “Charles Saunders hopes to sell an anthology of hf […]
Ace Books had its part in the history of sword and sorcery fiction. The company had published Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories as collections starting in the late 1960s. In the late 1970s, Ace jumped on putting out the twelve volume Conan paperback set. Ace was not a big publisher for lone […]
The First Modern Military Science Fiction Novel
Sunday , 14, June 2015 Book Review, Fiction 2 CommentsBaen Books has a brand new trade paperback anthology entitled The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera. David Drake has an introduction wherein he cites C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner’s “Clash by Night” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1943) and Paul Carter’s “The Last Objective” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1946) as early examples of […]
FUTURETROSPECTIVE: Minority Report, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, and PKD’s Missing Sister
Thursday , 28, May 2015 Book Review, Uncategorized 4 CommentsPhilip K. Dick’s twin sister Jane Charlotte died when the six weeks’ premature pair had survived to their originally anticipated birth date. I normally don’t consider much biography of an author when I’m reading his stories; for example, C.S. Lewis’ long bachelorhood means nothing to me in his fictional works, Lovecraft’s failed marriage or even the […]