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The Spider Men of Gharr by Wilbur Scott Peacock was the featured cover piece for the Summer 1945 issue of Planet Stories. The Spider Men of Gharr is one of those pesky little editor-written stories that sometimes find themselves published in whatever magazine the author is an editor for.  Fortunately, Wilbur Peacock’s solid taste in […]

When traveling, I take a varying number of books with me depending on the length of the trip. One important criterion for traveling is if the book is damaged or lost, I can easily replace it or don’t care. I like the old fashioned mass market paperback due to space considerations over the trade paperback. […]

Short Reviews will return next week while I catch up on my reading! Some of you might already be aware that I’ve spent the last few months putting together and releasing the inaugural issue of Cirsova, my Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.  What you might not be aware of is that submissions are now […]

This is part 2 of 5 dealing with the Robotech novelizations. Part 1 is here. I mentioned last week that Robotech, for all its vilification in anime circles, began life as an attempt to bring anime to the US without hacking it up into oblivion. (I haven’t ever actually watched Science Ninja Team Gatchaman/Battle for […]

You can see a complete game of Space Oddity played out in the original post. The rules are simple: I’m going to tell you a short genre story that makes sense of the inscrutable lyrics of an otherwise popular song. I’ll do it in very brief parts to keep things interesting. There will be weekly clues. […]

“You are right in your denunciations of unrestricted immigration. You are fortunate in having lived in a district apart from the mongrel swarms.”          Robert E. Howard  to H. P. Lovecraft Robert E. Howard’s correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft covered weird fiction, history, and current events. One item that came up was immigration. By the time […]

Short Reviews will return next week with more Planet Stories! Science fiction fans are a cantankerous lot, and it seems perhaps they always have been.  Or maybe Peacock & Payne simply enjoyed publishing some of the grousier letters they received.  But one thing is certain: even the perplexed and frustrated who’d write in to complain […]

Dirk Loechel’s highly entertaining Science Fiction Spaceships comparison chart is worth a look: Loeschel included as many ships that he could think of that are listed at between 100 meters and 24,000 meters, and here’s what I see when look for some of my favorite ships from books: There aren’t many portrayed.

David Hartwell died a few days ago due to an accident that resulted in a cerebral hemorrhage. He was an editor who seemed to be intertwined with my own journey through science fiction and fantasy for the past 35 years. Hartwell edited the Timescape Imprint of Pocket Books from 1981 to 1984. I remember that […]