Author Archives: Keith West

Blackwood

March 14 (today as I write this) is the birthday of Algernon Blackwood (q869-1951), one of the greatest practitioners of the weird tale. H. P. Lovecraft considered him to be one of the four great living masters of the weird tale. The other three were Arthur Machen, M. R. James, and Lord Dunsay.

It’s been a while (years) since I read any of his work, and I don’t think I’ve read  more than two stories. Those stories are “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”.

My memroy is vauge on the details, but I really liked both of them. Of the two, I remember “The Willows” the best. It concerns a pair of men on a canoe trip who spend the night on an island in the middle of a river. I remember there was a lot of wind, and the willows on the island seemed to move.

My memory of “The Wendigo” is a little fuzzier. I think I read it a couple of years before I read “The Willows”. It’s about a some men who are either hunting for fishing in the wilds of Canada (I think) and experience some strange things.

I apologize for the vagueness of these descriptions. Like I said, it’s been a few years. If I’ve gotten any of those details wrong, I’m sure somone will  correct me in the comments, and that would be appreciated. I’d like to reread both of those stories if I can work them in. Finding time to write this week, much less read, has been a challenge, and it looks like the next few weeks are going to not be much better.

So what other stories by Blackwood should I read? His works are readily available in a variety of formats, from electronic editions to cheap (relatively speaking) paperbacks to high-end collectible volumes.

 

Issues With Comments?

I got an email this morning from a reader, Deuce Richardson, who tried to comment twice on the Machen post.I’ve added his comment to that post and had no trouble with it.

This is the message he got:

Not Acceptable!
An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security.
I’ve never seen this message before. Has anyone else gotten this when they tried to post?

Harry Harrison

March 12 is the birthday of Harry Harrison (1925-2012). Harrison was a major figure in the field while he was alive. Sadly, he has fallen into obscurity these days.

He wrote a number of science fiction series, some serious, some humorous and satirical. In addition to being a prolific writer, he was an accomplished editor. Among his editorial credits are The Best SF, coedited with Brian Aldiss (1967-1975), the original anthology series Nova (four volumes, 1971-1974), The Astounding-Analog Reader (two volumes, coedited with Brian Aldiss), and Astounding: the John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology.  He also briefly edited Amazing Stories and Fantastic in the late 1960s. Continue reading

The Anthologies of Marvin Kaye

Marvin Kaye (1938=2021) was born on this date, March 10. In observance, I’m going to look at some (but not all) of his anthologies.  I’ll not be discussing his tenure as editor of H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror or Weird Tales. I’m furthermore going to limit most of my remarks to mostly the anthologies that had Science Fiction Book Club editions in the 1980s and 1990s.

Kaye’s first anthology was a paperback book with the title of Fiends and Creatures in 1975. It was quickly followed by a second paperback anthology entitled Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, also in 1975.

Then nothing until 1981, when Ghosts was published. Continue reading

Novalyne

Novalyeb Price Ellis (1908-1999) was born today, March 9. She was a school teacher in Cross Plains when she met Robert E. Howard. They dated off and on for the two years preceding his death in 1936.

She turned her diaries from that time into the memoir One Who Walked Alone in 1986. She supposedly wrote the book in response to L. Sprague de Camp’s biography of Howard, Dark Vally Destiny. My understanding is that she did not appreciate the way de Camp portrayed Howard. She was not alone in that.

But I digress. Continue reading

Remembering Resnick

I’m doing a second birthday post today because I think both writers, Henry S. Whitehead and Mike Resnick (1942-2020) are important enough, both to me personally and to the field in general, that a single post isn’t the way to treat them. This one is going to be brief, though, because I’m traveling today and need to get back on the road.

Resnick didn’t write much fantasy, although he wrote a little as well as a few mysteries near the end of his life.

He traveled extensively in Africa, and what he saw and experienced there informed much of his work, both in novels and in shorter lengths.

His Birthright series, which he added to all of his life, was one of the best and most entertaining future histories I’ve ever read. It included Brithright: The Book of Man, Santiago, the Oracle trilogy, and the Widowmaker series. Among others.

And that’s not mentioning  the other series he wrote.

As much as I love his novels, his short fiction is, in my mind, his best work. He was a multiple award winner at that length. The Kirinyaga stories, which won multiple awards are some of the most thought provoking stories to come out of the nineties.

The thing that is really annoying about Resnick’s short fiction is how easy he made it look. He could write a story with a point and make it so engrossing and entertaining that you didn’t realize there was a serious message in the story. He’s a writer I want to study more to try and learn how he did it.

Resnick was an accomplished editor as well. He edited a number of anthologies in the nineties that dealt with various aspects of alternate histories. A number of those stories won or were nominated for awards. And let’s not forget Galaxy’s Edge, the electronic magazine he was editing at the time of his death. It contained both original and reprint work and was, again, in my opinion, one of the top short fiction venues in the field.

I could go on at length about Mike Resnick’s contributions, but I’ll stop there and save something for a future post.

When a God Passes

Today, March 5, is the birthday of Henry S,. Whitehead (1882-1932}. Whitehead wrote for Weird Tales, and if he hadn’t died so young, I believe  he would have attained a reputation, if not on par with Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith, at least only slightly less well-regarded. Whitehead lived much of his adult life in the Caribbean, and he drew on his first-hand knowledge of the iinhabitants of the region when writing his fiction. He was a popular writer in his day, and was highly regarded by Lovecraft. Unfortunately, he is almost forgotten today.

I reviewed one of his best tales, “Seven Turns in a Hangman’s Rope“, some years back. It remains one of my favorites.

Today I’m going to look at an audio edition of his story, “The Passing of a God”. I’m  on the road today, and I listened to it earlier while I was driving. There are spoilers below the fold. Continue reading

February Writing Update

I’m doing a challenge to write 2024 words per day (on average) in 2024. I ended January a little bit ahead, but I finished February about four and a half days behind, with just over fifty thousand words written. This puts me behind for the year.

But there are still ten months left in the year, so I have plenty of time to catch up. As of yesterday, I was over a day ahead for the month of March.

Most of what I wrote were blog posts or the current work in progress, which is dark fantasy. I started it intending it to be a short story, but I soon realized it would be something longer, probably a novel. It turned out I was right on that point. It will be a novel. I was thinking it would come in somewhere between fifty thousand and sixty thousand words. I passed sixty-two thousand words last night. I have at least three major scenes left to write, so at this point, I’m expecting it to come in at over seventy thousand words.

Other than blog posts,  I’m going to keep plugging away at this one until it’s done.

Machen: What to Read First?

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was born on this day, March 3. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant authors of weird fiction from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. The name Machen is actually a penname. His real name was Arthur Llewellyn Jones.

He was influential on Robert E. Howad, Frank Belknanp Long, Stephen King, and Karl Edward Wagner. H. P. Lovecraft, in his essay “supernatural Horror in Literature”, considered him to be one of four “modern masters” of supernatural horror. (The others were M. R. James, Lord Dunsay, and Algernon Blackwood.)

While I have a limited knowledge of his work because I’ve read about it, I’ve never actually read any of it. (Don’t judge me. There is only so much time in a day.) I’ve been intending to correct that for some time.

So, question for this post, where should I start? I’m leaning towards The Great God Pan, but I’m open to other suggestions. I’ve had some things going on that have made reading on a consistent basis a challenge lately, and I don’t think that will change for a while. (It’s dayjobbery and trying to get a house ready to sell. Nothing bad such as health issues or anything like that.) I’d prefer shorter works to novels.

What are your thoughts?