Author Archives: Keith West

Van Vogt Plus Gold

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Todayis April 26, the birthday of A. E. Van Vogt (1912-200) and Horace L. Gold (1914-1996).

Alfred Elton Van Vogt was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was one of the major writers of science fiction in the early forties. His best known work was published in Astounding. His two novels about the weapon makers of Isher are classics of libertarian science fiction.

Slan was a novel about mutants that fandom idnetified with. At conventions, tehy are reported to chant “Fans are Slans!” becuase they felt they were superior to ordinary people, whom they called “mundanes”.

Van Vogt also wrote a great deal of short fiction. He got involved in dianetics  for a while. His reputatoin as a writer never recovered when he caem back to writing. Baen published several omnibus collections of his works and Tachyon Press has a collection of his short stories in print.

Horace L. Gold started out as a writer (see my review of “The Trouble with Water”) who went on to be the first editor of Galaxy magazine from 1950 until 1961. It is in that capacity that he is remembered today. Gold’s run on Galaxy saw the publication of a number of stories by the biggest names in science fiction, stories that went on to be soncisered classics.

One habit Gold had that irked Fred Pohl to no end was his tendency to change the titles of stories.

Are there any stories Van Vogt wrote or that Gold published that you are paprticularly fond of? Or maybe not fond of?

Benson and Grafton

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Today is April 24, the birthday of A. C. Benson (1862-1925) and Sue Grafton (1940-2017).

Arthur Christopher Benson is the brother of R. H. Benson and E. F. Benson. All three wrote ghost stories. E. F. is the better known of the three. He was also the most prolific having enough to fill four or five collections. A. C. and R. H. have had their ghost stories published together in a single volume. Twice, as it turns out, although the ISFDB doesn’t list Ghosts in the House, published by Ash-Tree Press. That was the volume that introduced me to them.

It strikes me as odd that Ghosts in the House isn’t listed on the ISFDB under either A. C or R. H. Benson. They are usually more thorough than that.

But I digress.

All the Bensons wrote good ghost stories. They are, of course, in the classic English tradition. And well worth reading.

Sue Grafton created one of the first female private investigators in the character of Kinseu Milhone. The gimmick she used in selecting titles was to use the format Letter is for Someting. Her intention was to write twenty-six books, one for each letter of the alphabet. “Y” was the last volume she completed before her death.

I’ve only read a few of the short stories. I enjoyed them. I’ll be reading the novels. At the church garage sale a couple of weeks ago, my wife picked up most of the set. I’m not sure if she has all of them, but she has the first ones. That’s good enough for me.

RIP and Happy Birthday, Ian Watson

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I was checking to see if there were any folks I wanted to do a birthday post on. There were three, Donald Wandrei (1908-1987), Peter S. Beagle (b. 1939), and Ian Watson (1943-2026).

Wait, Ian Watson? I hadn’t realized Watson had died.

He passed away a week ago, on April 13. I checked Locus Online to see if I had missed their obituary. They posted it today. Today, Appril 20,  is his birthday.

Watson’s name may not be familiar to many of you. He was British, and he never seemed to catch on here in the States.

He wrote a number of novels, the most notable the Books of the Black Current series, as well as several in the Warhammer series. Watson was a prooific short story writer, as well as a poet. I first encountered his work in short form.  It’s been a number of years since I read his work, but it was always entertaining.

If you’ve not read him, Watson’s work is worth checking out. He had over 20 collections of his short fiction published. A number of his novels and collections are in print, many in affordable electronic editions.

Biggle and Williamson

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Today is April 17. It is the birthday of Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1923-2002) and J. N. Williamson (1932-2003), Both men were primarily short story writers, although they did publish some novels.

Biggle wrote science fiction and mystery. His work at  times codused on the arts and how advances in technology would affect them.

Williamson wrote horror. Time may remmeber him more as an editor than a writer, though. He edited the anthology series Masques. It ran to five volumes and published some of the top names in horror fiction. Volumes I and II were combined in the paperback Dark Masques, and volumes III and IV were combined as Darker Masques.

Both men are pretty much forgotten these days outside of hardcore scinece fictiona nd horror fans, which is a shame since short fiction can have soem of the best stories.

Thoughts on Near-Future Science Fiction

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So unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you are probably aware of the Artemis mission that circled the Moon and successfully splashed down.

Personally, I didn’t think I would ever see us try to return to the Moon or space beyond low Earth orbit in my lifetime. (No, I’m not cynical. Cynical would be an improvement.) I’m t hrilled that we’re trying to rejuvenate our space program.

The Artemis mission brought something that has been at the back of my mind for a while to the forefront.

That’s near future space oriented science fiction. Where is it?

Just to be clear, I am sure there is some out there. I’ve probably missed it a lot of it. I havne’t been reading much science fiction for the last few years. In fact I’ve read less science fiction than I’ve read fantasy, and I’ve not been reading fantasy like I used to. I’ve been reading mysteries, crime novels (which aren’t quite the same as mysteris, although there is a lot of overlap), and thrillers. There are reasons for that. I’ll not get into them except to say that some of the writing workshops I’ve been taking have focused on the here and now rather than the fantastic.

I can remember when it seemed that space oriented science fiction was everywhere. Maybe that was because at that age, in the post Star Wars years, there was a surge in space opera and space focused science fiction in general.

Or maybe it was just that that type of science fiction was what I was interested in.

There was Ben Bova’s Grand Tour books that visited most of the planets in the solar system. The only one he didn’t write about, AFAIK, was Pluto. I think it was on his schedule for the trilogy he was working on when he died, but I’m not sure.

I’m not sure what else was being written that took place in the solar system in the near future.

The problem with near future science fiction is that is gets dated quickly, somethimes between writing and publication.

So, I’m going to throw out the question, where can I go to find near future sciencde fiction with solar system space exploratioin that is fairly recent?

What Stories Haven’t Been Reprinted That Should Be?

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So yesterday’s post about Henry Kuttner got me thinking about something that crosses my mind a lot.

What stories have fallen through the cracks and haven’t been reprinted that should have been?

I’ll start. Since Kuttner was the topic of yesterday’s post, one of his best stories is “We Kill People”, first published in the March 1946 issue of Astounding under the Lewis Padgett byline. It was included in the British edition of the magazine iin April 1949. It was in an anthology in the early fifties. Except for this Canadian outfit that seems to be publishing individual short stories in ebook, the story hasn’t seen the light of day since.

The story was published in Astounding at a time when the Kuttners were producing some of their best work under the Lewis Padgett pseudonym.  I tracked down a copy of it about a decade ago (give or take). It’s as good as their other work that was being published under the Padgett name. Better than some, I would argue.

Kuttner had some stories published during this time in the second adn third tier pulps that look like they were written a few years earlier and simply hadn’t found a home yet. “We Kill People” isn’t one of those.

Is the title that much of a turnoff? It is a dark story, darker than Kuttner’s usual dark tone.

But it hasn’t been included in any of Kuttner’s books. Neither have some of his other stories. The novellas in Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories are understandable. Novellas are a hard sell (They are probably my favorite length to read.)

So t he question I’m going to throw out is what stories do you think should be collected in book form t hat haven’t been? And don’t feel you have to cinfine your suggestions to the pulp era. Let’s say anything from before 2010 is fair game. (Yes, that’s an arbitrary cutoff, but I’m making up the rules here.)

Fell free to make suggestions in the comments. Please include anme fo story, author, where it has been published if you know. Any book publication from before, say, 1970, will be considered unreprinted.

Two by Kuttner

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Today, April 7, is the birthday of Henry Kuttner (1915-1958). I encountered his work in the Science Fiction Book Club edition of The Best of Henry Kuttner when I was fourteen. That was the perfect age for imprinting.

Kuttner has been my favorite writer ever since.

Some years ago, someway, somehow, I managed to score a copy of Kuttner’s first short story collection, A Gnome There Was, published under his pen name Lewis Padgett. These are stories he wrote in collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore. I don’t remember now how I obtained it. Legally, of course. Probably I found a copy online through ABE or somesuch site.

(The one I wish I had been able to buy was the copy of Robots Have No Tails that he inscribed to John W. Campbell, Jr. But the prpice was a grand, and that was over a quarter of a century ago. If I had had the money, I would have bought it. Alas, I didn’t have a spare thousand dollars sitting around. No telling what that book would go for today.)

But I digress.

It has been years since I read A Gnome There Was. It contains some of Kuttner’s best known and most reprinted stories, such as “Mimsy Were teh Borogorves”, “A Gnome There Was”,  “The Twonky”, “What You Need”, and two of the Hogben stories.

But it also contains some of the leasat reprinted stories, sotries that are just as good as the previously named. For this post, I’m going to look briefly at two of those stories, “The Cure” and “Rain Check”. Maybe I’ll look at some of the others in the future. Continue reading →

The Cunning of Robert Bloch

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First, Happy Easter to those who celebrate.

Today is April 5, which is the birthday of Robert Bloch (1917-1994). Bloch needs no introduction around these parts. Bloch will forever be known as the man who wrote Psycho. But his work encompassed so much more.

He was a member of the Lovecraft circle while he was still a teenager and much of his early work was pastiche. He would dabble in Mythos fiction off and on for most of his career. But Bloch was too talented a writer to lock himself into one genre.

He wrote science fiction humorous fantasy, and crime stories.

Today’s featured book is one of the latter, although the cover implies the book is supernatural horror.

It’s not, although there are ceertainly some horrific aspects to the book. Continue reading →

Weinbaum and Gallun

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One of hte most popular science fiction writers of the Pre-Campbell era was born today, April 4. I’m talking about Stanley G. Weinbaum (1902-1935).

Weinbaum’s career was short, not even two years before he died of cancer.

But in those two years he left an indelible mark on science fiction. During a time when aliens tended to fall intot he Bug eyed Monster trope more often than not, and when it was common for characters to consist of a scientist (mad  or otherwise) , his beautiful daughter, and the square jawed hero who exists to protect and serve as what passed for a love interest to the beautiful daughter, Weinbaum broke the mold. Continue reading →