Monthly Archives: January 2026

12 DoCGS Day 7: “The Death Mask” by Henrietta D. Everett

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This is another chiller. It’s not set at Christmas, but it is the kind of story that might be related around a fire. It’s author wrote at a time when genre conventions weren’t as well established (rigid) as they are today. Supernatural elements mixed with mundane settings. the thing that mattered wasn’t so much the genre, but the quality fo the story.

Henrietta D;. Everett

Heniretta D. Everett (1851-1923), sometimes bylined as H. D. Everett, wrote twenty-two novels. According to what little I coudl discover about her, about half of them had fantasy or proto-science fictional elements.

“Wth Death Mask” is her best known ghost story and was the title of her collection of stories published in 1920. This story was praised by H. P. Lovecraft. I didn’t read it. I listened to it on audio in The Literature of Lovecraft Vol. 1 produced by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It is the usual high quality production the HPLHS does. M. R. James also  had a high opinion of this story. Continue reading →

A Brief Requiem for Unthemed Anthology Series

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The last couple of days have been hectic, and I’m too tired to put together another ghost story post (I need to do  some bibliographic research on the author of the next story) or do much work on original fiction. But since I wanted to write something to keep my writing streak going.

I’ll do a followup on this one later. I need to do some research first. You’ll see what I mean below. Continue reading →

Northern Shadows

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Today is January 3. It’s the birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). His shadow over the field of fantasy is arguably the longest of any author. Many writers have written in imitation of him (think early Terry Brooks) or in reguttal to him. (Michael Moorcock and George R. R. Martin).

Tolkien drew on northern European mythology in crafting his worlds. That topic alone is worth multiple dissertations, and I’m not going to try to dwell on it in any great scholoarly depth.

Instead, I want make some general observations. Continue reading →

Crafting the Short Story: Reflections on Charles Beaumont

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This is the second birthday post for today. It’s on Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), if you couldn’t tell from the title. The first birthday post was on Isaac Asimov.

Beaumont couldn’t have been more different than Asimov.  Where Asimov focused on science, often at the expense of the humanity of his characters (it’s been said), Beuamont was a master at crafting believable, individual characters. But then Asimov wrote science fiction, whereas Beaumont primarily wrote fantasy.

Beaumont was a protege of Ray Bradbury, something I’ve commented on before. That’s not to say Beaumont was inferior to Bradbury. He wasn’t, although he was to soem extent a different kind of writer.  For a compasrison of two stories written by Beaumont and Bradbury from the same prompt, see this post.

What I want to focus on today is Beaumont as short fiction writer. Continue reading →

Reflections on Robotics

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Today is January 2, which is the birthday of Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). It’s the first of two birthday posts for this date. The other is Charles Beaumont.

Asimov needs no introduction, I’m sure. Some of his work is still in print, primarily the Foundation books (at least the early ones although I’m not sure about the later ones) and some of the robot stories. His other short fiction, both science fiction and mysteries, as well as his later science fiction novels that are stand-alones haven’t fared so well.

The Foundation series, along with some associated novels (The Stars LIke Dust, Pebble in the Sky, and The Currents of Space) are set in the far future. The robot stories were relatively near future at the time, a future that is now in our past. Not all of the robot stories directly connected to the main series which concerned scientist Susan Calvin. (Note to self: write an essay about Asimov’s choice of a female scientist as protagonist in the early forties.) Then, there were the novels featuring R. Daneel Olivaw, which were set a little further in the future and were a blend of detective and science fiction.

In the last few years of his life, Asimov connected the two series, bridging the near future Susan Calvin and R. Daneel Olivaw with the Foundation series. The wisdom of this decision could be open to question, but it’s been so long since I read some of those works, that I’ll refrain from comment.

He also cowrote some prequels to the Foundation series with some of the major science fiction writers of the early nineties. I’ve not read them and won’t mention them further in this post.

What I’d like to focus on here are the robot stories.

They were first collected in 1950 in I, Robot which was published by Gnome Press. That’s the cover above.  Some of them, especially the earlier stories in the book, are rather dated and don’t hold up well. Susan Calvin isn’t a character in the first few storeis. Once she makes an appearance, though, the quality increases. Remember, these are some of Asimov’s earliest stories. He was still learning his craft. Continue reading →