December 18, as I write this. There are four birthdays I want to mention today. Alfred Bester (1913-1987), Sterling E. Lanier (1927-2007), Michael Moorcok (b. 1939), and Jack C. Haldeman II (1941-2002). Continue reading
Today, December 16, marks three birthdays, Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Randall Garrett (1927-1987), and Phillip K. Dick (1928-1982). Continue reading
It is December 12 as I write this. I’m trying to get final exams graded, but I’m taking a break to observe the birthday of Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994). I think it’s that important ot acknowledge his achievements.
Karl Edward Wagner probably needs no introduction to anyone who reads this blog. He was one of the greatest writers of sword and sorcery and dark fantasy/horror of the Twentieth Century. We’ve not seen his like since, in my opinion.
Four fourteen years, he also edited The Year’s Best Horror Stories for DAW books. He took over the reins with volume VIII in 1980. The series ended with volume XXII with Karl’s death. Wagner didn’t limit his selections to top genre publications. He read all sorts of obscure publication to find the best horror stories each year.
If you can find copies, which is getting harder and harder to do, grab them. Not onlyl are they an excellent survey of horror in the eighteis and early nineties, but reading them is a great informal course in how to write effective horror. You’ll recognize many of the authors Wagner included, many before they became famous. Others will be new to you. Continue reading
Today is December 7, and that means it’s the birthday of Leigh Brackett (1915-1978).
Just a heads-up, this isn’t going to be a typical birhtday post. It’s going to be a little freewheeling, and I’m going to vent my spleen a bit near the end.
Brackett is a major favorite around here. She started out in the pulps, writing what has become known as sword and planet with a hardboiled twist.
She also wrote hardboiled detective stories. One day I’m going to do a series of posts on her detective fiction. But today is not that day. Continue reading
Today, as I write this, is the birthday of Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968). He was primarily a mystery writer. His best known work is probably “Rear Window”, which became an Alfred Hitchock film starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. My favorite novel of his would have to be Phantom Lady. which was written under his pseudonym of William Irish.
In this one, a man has a row with his wife and goes down to the corner bar to cool off. While there, he gets inot a conversation with a woman he has never seen before. He tells her he has divver reservations and tickets for two to a show that he won’t get to use. She is sympathetic.
They end up going out. They have dinner, see the show, than go dancing for a bit. Before they leave the bar, they agree this is a one-time thing. Neither will try to contact the other after the night is over. To guarantee they won’t, they don’t even exchange names. At the end of the night, they part ways.
He goes home to find his wife has been murdered while he was out.
The man is the only suspect.
The woman can clear him.
Except she can’t.
Everywhere he went, people swear he was alone.
She’s the only one who can clear him. And he has no idea how to find her.
The title of the first chapter is “The One-Hundredth Day Before the Execution.” They count down from there.
Woolrich didn’t write much in the way of the fantastic, although much of his work has a sense of creeping horror. An excellent example of this is the first Woolrich book I ever read, and probably my second favorite, Night Has a thousand Eyes.
A rich old man is told by a fortune teller at a carnival that he will die by the jaws of a lion.
Then a lion escapes from the zoo or a circus. I don’t recall which.
The story revolves around the police detective who is assigned to protect him.
And the old man’s beautiful young daughter, of course.
They’re barricaded in the old man’s mansion, just the three of them.
And the tension builds.
And builds.
The ending has a nice twist.
That’s was the thing about Woolrich. Some of his plots are contrived, and he tended to rely on coincidence a bit too much. But when he was hitting on all cylinders like he was in these two books, he could deliver the suspense like nobody else.
I think the top three mystery writers of the middle Twentieth Century were Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich. Each has his strengths and his appeal. Woolrich never wrote a series character, and you never know if the hero will survive to the end of the book. This adds to the suspense.
Woolrich’s work, both novels and short stories, is available in inexpensive electronic editons. Check him out if you haven’t.
I’ve been in the habit for the last few years of doing a post of Black Friday featuring stories with the word “black” in the title. This year, I’m looking at two stories by Fritz leiber in The Black Gondolier and Other Stories.
This collection was first published by Midnight House in 2000. An electroinc version was realeased in 2014.
The title novelette is, in my opinion, a bit long. Leiber spends much of the first half of the story giving a detailed description of Venice, Californiz and the Los Angeles area at the time the story was written. It first appeared in the Arkham House anthology Over the Edge in 1964.
Leiber does a good job of establishing the setting, to the point that the setting is almost a character. The environmental movement was jsut getting going at this time, and that’s reflected in the details. Continue reading
Today, as I’m writing this, is November 7, the birthday of L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000).. As I mentioned in the post on Poul Anderson two days ago, de Camp was one of the writers from the pulp era who was equally adept at both science fiction and fantasy.
One of the favorite things among Howard fans is to discuss, if that isn’t too light a word, his impact on Robert E. Howard’s legacy. That isn’t going to be the point of this post.
Rather, I want to comment on his own fiction. L. Sprague de Camp was a prolific writer at both novel and short story lengths. He started out in the pulps, so much of his early fiction was of shorster lengths. Near the end of his career, most of his fiction was in the form of novels. The market had changed. Continue reading
Yesterday was Poul Anderson’s birthday. Today (November 26) is Frederik Pohl’s. Unlike Anderson, Pohl (1919-2013) wrote science fiction pretty much exclusively.
Pohl was a little older than Anderson, so he began writing for the pulps before World War II. He started out writing for the lower-end pulps and went on to become editor of two pulps, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories in 1940 and 1941, The war put an end to that.
Pohl was a member of the fabled Futurians. He was involved in some of the more famous (or infamous, if you prefer) fan fueds of the time. That topic deserves its own post. Continue reading
Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was born on this day, November 25.
I ahven’t had time to read anything to review for his birthday, and I was wondering what to write about that I haven’t said before in a previous birthday post.
Anderson was a master of both science fiction and fantasy. Sometimes blending the two genres together.
Aanderson first began seeing his work in print in the late nineteen forties. He lived in the same rooming house as Gordon R. Dickson while they were in college. (And he collaborated with Dickson on the Hoka stories later.)
Anderson came in at the end of the pulp era. Witihin a decade, the pulps would be gone, replaced by the digests and paperbacks. And that got me thinking. Continue reading
Today is November 24, and that marks the birth of Edward Rucker Eddison (1882-1945).
E. R. Eddison wrote only six novels. The Worm Ouroborous (1922), Styrbiorn the Strong (1926) Egil’s Saga (1930), and The Zimianvian Trilogy, consisting of Mistress of Mistresses (1935). A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and The Mezentian Gate (1958). The trilogy shares a setting with Worm, if my understanding is correct.
I’ve only read The Worm Ouroborous. That was back in my undergraduate days. I enjoyed it and hope to reread it and the trilogy at some point. It’s not light reading. Eddison came from a more, shall we say, verbose period in literature.
But he also wrote fantasy before the current tropes had been well established, which gives his work a different feel and tone. That’s a good thing.
This type of thing isn’t for everyone. But if you like older styles and things being strangely different yet familiar, then Eddison might be someone whose work you might want to sample.
Be advised, these aren’t short books, which is why I haven’t read them yet.