Monthly Archives: August 2019

Shifting Gears

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Time for a quick update.  I’m going to be making some changes.  Or rather, I’m going to be making more changes.  Some of them I’ve already implemented.

On the personal front, I’ve started a diet and exercise program.  I’ve been on it for three and a half weeks as of this writing.  I’ve not lost a lot of weight, but I think that’s partly because I’ve put on a bit of muscle mass.  I just know my pants seem to be a size or so too big, my blood pressure is lower than it’s been in years, I’m sleeping better, and I have more energy.  I’m going to be keeping this up.

I may have mentioned in a post (or was that just on Twitter) that I won a compound bow in a raffle back in May.  Turns out I’m not half bad at archery.  My son took some classes with me over the summer.  While he won’t have a lot of time to pursue the hobby, at least during marching band season, I’m going to be putting in as much time on the range as I can.  Hopefully more than once a week, which is all I’ve been able to do for the last month or so.

A colleague from down the hall has resurrected an off campus chess group.  My son and I have been playing in it.  We’ve been meeting in a coffee house on Friday nights, and when it closes, we head over to a Mexican restaurant for good food and live mariachi music.  Now that high school football marching band season has started, we’ll be cutting back on that.

There are some trends at work that have made me get serious about planning an exit strategy.  I’m not going to say what form that will take just yet since I’m still considering some things.  I want enough secondary streams of income in place to be able to walk away on my terms and at my time.

Writing will be one of those streams, but not the only one if what I’m working on bears fruit.  And at least initially, probably not the main one.  Speaking of writing, I’ve placed two short stories in anthologies in the last month.  I’m hoping to make some progress on some short novels this fall.

As far as blogging, I’m going to move in a slightly different direction.  I’ll still be blogging here, but I’m going to increase my presence on Futures Past and Present.  I want to read more science fiction, especially adventure sf and space along with rereading authors I grew up reading who have fallen out of favor these days.   I’ll still post here, but there will be fewer reviews of novels and more of short fiction.  I’ll also do more art posts and continue to feature selected authors on their birthdays.  I’ve tried to do a couple of birthday posts on Futures Past and Present but haven’t been able to get the stories I had in mind read before the day was over.  My intention is to get a couple of posts up there over the weekend, so keep an eye out for them.

So what’s up with you folks?

Jack Vance and “Liane the Wayfarer”

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Jack Vance was born on this date, August 28, in 1916.  We lost him on May 26, 2013.  Vance was a master of both science fiction and fantasy.  He often wrote in a highly stylistic manner.  I first read Vance in The Hugo Winners, edited by Isaac Asimov, when I was a freshman in high school.  That volume contained “The Dragon Masters” and “The Last Castle”.  Later I read The Demon Prince Novels, a quintet in which a man seeks revenge on the criminals who destroyed his home world.  He goes after a different one in each book.  I highly recommend them. Continue reading →

The Art of Frank Kelly Freas

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One of my favorite artists, Frank Kelly Freas, was born on this date, August 27, in 1922.  We lost him in 2005.

Freas painted a number of covers for paperback books, in addition to covers and interior illustrations for pulps and later digest science fiction magazines.  He had a easily recognizable style.

Sadly, we never attended a convention together.  I would have loved to have met him.  I picked up a signed print of his painting of Skylab at an American Space Society meeting about 15 years ago that proudly hangs in my bedroom.  You can see it below.

Here are some samples of his work. Continue reading →

The Art of Earle Bergey

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Artist Earle Bergey was born this date, August 26, in 1901.  He passed away on September 30, 1952. Bergey’s covers for pulp magazines established the trope of the scantily clad girl (often in a brass bra) being menaced by a BEM (Bug Eyed Monster) while a square-jawed hero comes to her rescue. In other words, stuff that would be considered 100% politically incorrect by certain of today’s standards.

What I want to know is why the men had to wear full spacesuits while the women wore bikinis and fishbowl helmets.  I guess the women were just made of tougher stuff back then.

Enough philosophizing.  Let’s enjoy some of Earle Bergey’s art. Continue reading →

A New Series of Posts in Honor of Ray Bradbury

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Ray Bradbury was born on this date, August 22, in 1920.  We lost him in 2012.  Bradbury was one of the first science fiction and fantasy writers I read.  A friend of our reading teacher came to class one day and read “The Screaming Woman” to us from the collection S is for Space.  I was hooked.

The public library in Wichita Falls had a number of Bradbury paperbacks in the children’s section, mostly the editions that had a drawing of Bradbury on the cover.  I’d seen them but didn’t really know what they were about.  After the man read the story, I checked out every one of them.  And when I read all of those, I tracked down the rest over the next few years.  I was fortunate because not only were they all in print at the time, but new editions were being published.  Those were the days.

A few weeks ago, something came across my twitter feed about the influence Henry Kuttner and Leigh Brackett had on Bradbury.  They both mentored  him, and Bradbury had written about his friendship with the two writers.

So I decided I could do a series of posts on those.  They’ll start sometime in the next month.  I’ve already got the first one planned.  I just need to reread the stories I’ll discuss in it and then write the post.  That will be after classes start next week.

 

Reflections on H. P. Lovecraft

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As I promised in the previous post, here’s one devoted to someone who has had an important role in my life and who has a birthday today.  My mother-in-law.  Happy birthday, June.

Wait, what?  Oh, sorry about that.  Got confused for a minute.

I want to talk about H. P. Lovecraft on his birthday (August 20).  I’m gong to vent my spleen a bit.

A day or two ago a link came across my Twitter feed to an article ranting about Lovecraft’s racism.  Yeah, that again.

Let me make something clear for everyone who didn’t quit reading at the last paragraph.  I do not condone, subscribe to, or approve of Lovecraft’s views on race. Period.  Full stop.

That does not mean I don’t enjoy his work.  Do certain aspects of it bother me? Sure.  But I’m a big boy. I can handle viewpoints that aren’t the same as mine.  I can even  handle viewpoints I find offensive.

What I get tired of are people who continually judge writers from other periods in history by today’s standards.  For some reason those writers are always found wanting.   If you don’t want to read an author because of their views on race/politics/religion/how they pronounce tomato, that’s fine.  Just don’t tell me I can’t or shouldn’t read those authors.  There’s a tendency to go beyond that and try to shame people who enjoy certain authors whose views aren’t politically correct.  And people who do this have been awfully loud lately.

I’ll read what I damn well want to, and I don’t need anyone’s approval to do so.  Certainly not the approval of some shrill scold, regardless of whether I agree with their point or not.  If the fact I like Lovecraft, or Haggard, or Howard, or Burroughs, or any other writer offends you, then you can go pound sand.

Me, I’m going to read some Lovecraft in honor of his birthday.  Hmm… “The Dunwich Horror” is looking pretty good.  I think I’ll try that one.

The Art of Darrell K. Sweet

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Artist Darrell K. Sweet was born on this date, August 15, in 1934.  He passed away in 2011.  When I was in junior high and high school, if  book had cover he’d done, I always picked it up and gave it a look.  I didn’t always buy the book, but based on positive experiences with some of the first books I read that he’d done the cover art for, I always gave it a look.  I had the privilege of meeting him a couple of times, and I had the opportunity to tell him that at the 2006 WFC.

Rather than continue to blather, I’m going to post some examples of his art.  Enjoy! Continue reading →

Ghosts, Heroic Fantasy, the Shaver Mystery, and Some Really Groovy Illustrations

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If the birthdays and the day job both slow down at the same time, I’ve got a review of a Joseph Payne Brennan collection to run.  Until then, let’s look at four birthdays that fall on this date (August 1).

M. R. James

We’ll start with M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James (1862-1936).  He’s the master of the classic English ghost story.  His only potential rivals to that title might be H. R. Wakefield or E. F. Benson.  (What is it with these English ghost story writers and initials, anyway? Must have been something in the water.)  Many of James’s s stories dealt with antiquarians who stuck their noses in places they shouldn’t and disturbed things best left alone.  Full of atmosphere, the ghost stories of M. R. James are worth reading.  Most anthologies of classic ghost stories will have one of his tales, and there are a number of electronic and print editions available.

David Gemmell

David Gemmell (1948-2006) is no stranger to these parts.  The now defunct David Gemmell Awards were established in his honor.  Gemmell’s first novel, Legend, is now a classic in the field of heroic fantasy.  Gemmell is someone I’ve only read bits and pieces of, coming to his work only in the last couple of decades.  I had the pleasure of meeting him at the 2000 World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi.  I got to listen in on him and Jane Lindskold discuss Louis L’Amour and his influence on their own writing.

Richard Shaver (r.) with Ray Palmer

Our editor for today is somewhat problematic.  As the discerning blog reader will discern from the title of this post, I’m talking about Raymond A. Palmer (1910-1977).  (No, he was named after the DC Comics superhero, The Atom. It was the other way around.) Palmer was the editor of Amazing Stories, founded the short-lived Other Worlds Science Fiction (which published Eric Frank Russell’s classic “Dear Devil”), and later became the editor of Fate a publication which specialized in UFO’s and other pseudo-scientific phenomena.

Palmer receiver a piece of fiction from Richard Shaver in which Shaver claimed to have knowledge of an ancient and malevolent civilization hiding in caverns deep under the surface of the Earth.  Palmer published it, and many other stories soon followed.  Sales skyrocketed. The thing is, Shaver actually believed this tripe, and apparently so did many of the readers.  I’m not sure if Palmer ever completely bought into what came to be called The Shaver Mystery or if he was cynically doing whatever he needed to in order to boost sales.  Doesn’t really matter at this late date.  Palmer and Shaver did a lot of damage to the science fiction and fantasy fields with their insistence that all of this was real.

Finally, we come to one of my favorite artists, Edd Cartier (1914-2008).  Cartier’s work graced the pages of Astounding and Unknown during John Campbell’s tenure as editor.  He had a distinctive and whimsical style that was really unique and fun.  Here’s some of his work.