Blog Archives
sThe 1970s continued the same pattern set in the late 1960s with anthologies that were not Weird Tales centric but did reprint a few stories per book. Peter Haining was possibly the greatest English anthologist of horror and weird fiction. He got his start in the late 1960s with The Hall of Mirrors (Four Square […]
Another source for Weird Tales reprints are the fiction reprint magazines. Thirty years ago, you could find some of them for modest amounts of money. I mentioned The Avon Fantasy Reader paperbacks. The original magazine was digest sized, published by the paperback publisher Avon, and edited by the great Donald A. Wollheim. There were 18 […]
Building a Weird Tales Library: Part 3
Sunday , 24, April 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction, Uncategorized 2 CommentsIn the 1960s, Warren Magazines revolutionized comic books. Using the 8 ½ x 11 inch size with black & white interiors, the company side skirted the comic books code. Horror returned with the success of Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. I can remember issues of the magazines making the rounds on the bus ride home from […]
In the 1960s and into the early 1970s, there were genre specific anthologies that had Weird Tales reprints. The two genres are Cthulhu mythos and sword-and-sorcery. I mentioned in the previous post how the Arkham House anthology, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos was my gateway to Weird Tales in general. The first paperback edition was […]
Building a Weird Tales Library: Part 1
Sunday , 10, April 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction, Uncategorized 4 CommentsSo, you have read your Del Rey trade paperbacks of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. You might even have picked up the Penguin collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories. You keep hearing about a magazine called Weird Tales where Lovecraft and Howard’s stories first appeared. There is some curiosity if there were any […]
The Dragon Awards: Fan Driven, Open Voting
Thursday , 7, April 2016 Comics, Fiction, Games, Uncategorized 6 CommentsDragonCon 2016 has launched a new award and invites all fans everywhere to participate: Welcome to the first annual Dragon Awards! As a part of our 30th Anniversary as the nation’s largest fan run convention, we are introducing a new way to recognize excellence in all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. These awards will be […]
WELCOME TO HELL: Abandoning Hope in SF Settings
Friday , 25, March 2016 Fiction, Uncategorized 4 CommentsHell is a nice place to visit. You just wouldn’t want to live there. At least, it sure seems like that in science fiction. Now, in fantasy, the concept of Hell, as a setting, can be florid or grey, medieval or modern, horrific or dull, but, in general, it tends to be a setting that […]
SPACE ODDITY: An SF Musical Storytelling Guessing Game, Clue 1
Thursday , 11, February 2016 Fiction 12 CommentsGood songs often tell a story. Sometimes, that story is as mysterious as Robinette Broadhead’s backstory in Gateway. Sometimes it is simply confusing. There are songs that have long haunted me, not because of their message or music, but because I can’t make heads nor tails of what the lyrics mean. So I’d like to play […]
Hello again, and Happy Superversive Tuesday! To continue my theme from last post, I’m going to talk about something completely different. Something personal. Namely… J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore site has sorted me into Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff is noteworthy in the Harry Potter series for being supremely un-noteworthy (“A Very Potter Musical” famously lampshades this after the end […]
SUPERVERSIVE: “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”, by Roald Dahl
Tuesday , 26, January 2016 Book Review, Fiction 4 CommentsHappy Superversive Tuesday, everybody! Today, we’re going to do something completely different: We’re going to talk about the little known sequel to that children’s sci-fi classic, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. What? Not sci-fi? Nonsense. Of course it is. Gum that changes flavor so that it tastes exactly like a full meal? A special machine […]
Leigh Brackett had been contracted for and delivered a second in the Best of Planet Stories series. Unfortunately, sales were poor and the series died after the first book. She did edit and deliver one more book, The Best of Edmond Hamilton. Edmond Hamilton was Leigh Brackett’s husband for the past 30 years. He edited […]
Amid Leigh Brackett’s return to science fiction in the early to middle 1970s, she edited an anthology of stories culled from the pulp science fiction magazine Planet Stories. Ballantine Books published The Best of Planet Stories #1 in January 1975. Planet Stories had been a pulp magazine from 1939 to 1955 for 71 issues. It […]