Author Archives: Keith West

Donaldson

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In addition to today (April 13) being Roger Zelazny’s birthday, today is also Stephen Donaldson’s birthday (b. 1947).

I’m not trying to start something, but I’m going to start something.

I’ve read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I think it was the summer after I graduated college, but it might have been the summer between my junior and senior years. It’s been too long.

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant came out while I was in high school. I read them while I was in graduate school.

The first volume of The Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,  The Runes of the Earth, was published right after we got back from Kazakhstan with our adopted son. I read it, but I never read the rest of them. I did pick up the rest of the series at various Friends of the Library sales. At least I think I did. I may not have the last one. I’ll have to check. Most of my library is still in boxes.

There was a recent thread about the first trilogy on Twitter/X/Whatever a few weeks ago. The general consensus is that most people didn’t like the books, or at least loathed the character of Covenant.

I have to admit that if a friend who had read them hadn’t given me a heads-up about what happens at the end of the (I think) second chapter of the first book, I probably wouldn’t have read any further.

I still probably wouldn’t have finished the first set if Covenant hadn’t stopped whining and tried to actually do something heroic by trying to save the little girl who had been bitten by a snake early in The Power That Preserves.

I have to admit that the Darrel K. Sweet covers were what first caught my eye. I had somehow gotten trade paperback copies of the series instead of the mass markets, and those were the editions I read.

I’ve read some of Donaldson’s shorter works and liked them. I’ve not read any of his novels in either his science fiction or fantasy series.

So, here’s where I’m going to start something. I’m curious.

Have you read any of the Thomas Covenant books, and if so, at which point did you stop (if you did) and why?

What do you think of Covenant as opposed to the world Donaldson created? I loved the world and the other characters. Even while despising Covenant.

Not that I’m trying to start something or anything.

Roger Zelazny

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There is one writer of the fantastic  whose work I’ve not read nearly enough of, and that writer is –

Who am I trying to kid? There are a lot of writers whose work I’ve not read enough of.

But today, April 13, I’m going to focus on one, Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) because it’s his birthday.

I’ve read some of his short fiction, but it’s been years. I read the first of the Amber books when I was in graduate school. We won’t dwell on how long ago that was except to say it was in a prior millenium.

I’ve liked all of the stories I’ve read. NESFA Press has published a nice set of colletions with covers whose illustrations on the spines combine to make a picture. If I come into a nice sum of moola, I’m going to get them. (Those of you wondering what to get me for Christmas…)

But it’s been a long time since I read any of Roger Zelasny’s work. The one exception is A Night in the Lonesome October. That’s the one told from the point of view of Jack the Ripper’s dog. I’ve read that one more than once. It’s great.

I never had the chance to meet him. And you don’t see his books in bookstores any more. Maybe an omniubs of the Amber novels, because those are classics.

But that’s it.

At least for print. I’m not sure what’s available in ebook.

Again, we have someone who made significant contributions to the fantasy and science fiction fields who is in danger of fading into obscurity.

I’m going to try to incorporate more Zelazny into my reading  this year. What do you suggest?

Gene Wolfe

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Today, May 7, is Gene Wolfe’s birthday. So I thought I would write a bit about him. It was that or L. Ron Hubbard.

And I’m not up for Hubbard tonight. Today has sucked rocks big time. It will be a while before I’m over this one.

I’ve not read a lot of Wolfe. I’ve liked most everything  I’v’e read by him. And he is an author who I want to read a great deal more of. I recently acquired (by legitimate means) his latest  collection, The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories.

I tried to read a few of the stories soon after the book arrived, but I was too tired to read. I ended up falling asleep. I have never been one of these people who can keep reading and never fall asleep. My body overpowers my brain. When I try to keep reading, I usually will have to reread the previous five pages the next day.

But I digress. Wolfe was one of the most unique voices in science fiction and fantasy. IThe novels I read, mostly back in graduate school, I enjoyed. I won’t say how long ago that was.

He’s another writer whose work shouldn’t be forgotten.

Jack Williamson

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Jack Williamson (1908-2006) was born on April 29, which would be etoday as I’m writing this. I wasn’t able to go to the Williamson Lectureship in Portales this year. Instead of living two hours away, it’s more like five. Plus, I didn’t have the cash or the time off from work.

Maybe next year.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t indulge in reading some Williamson and singing his praises (figuratively, not literally, nobody wants to hear that) here on the blog. Aplogies if I’ve said some of this before in previous posts.

Jack Williamson was born in Bisbee in Arizona Territory. Yes, kiddies, before Arizona was a state. He came to New Mexico, if I recall correctly, in a covered wagon. He sold his first story, “The Metal Man”, to Amazing Stories in 1928. He was still writing into the 2000s. I don’t know if he was workiing on anything at the time of his death. Stephen Haffner, if you read this and know the answer to that question, please let us know in the comments. Thanks. Continue reading →

Frank Belknap Long

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Today (April 27) marks the birthday of one of the Lovecraft Circle, Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994).

Long is probably best remembered today for his Lovecraftian fiction, but he also wrote sceincde fiction as well as fantasy and weird horror. He also wrote gothic romances in the seventies under the name Lydia Belkanp Long. For those who may not be familair with this subgenre of romance, the covers usually featured a beautiful young woman with great hair, often in a night dress, running from a castle or other large structure with a sinle light high in a tower. When I was a kid, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting one. Tastes and times have changed, and  you never see them anymore.

But I digress. Continue reading →

Van Vogt and Gold

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Crud. I failed to hit PUBLISH last night. I know today is the 27th.

Today is April 26, and it is the birthday of two men who were once major figures in the field. One was a writer, and the other, while he did write fiction, was the editor of one of the major magazines.

A. E. Van Vogt and H. L. Gold.

I’ll start with van Vogt. He was one of the major writers for John W. Campbell’s Astounding in the 1940s. The quote on the left is from one of his best known works, the two novel series The Weapon shops of Isher and The Weapon Makers. I’ve not read those yet, but they’ve been in the queue for a while.

Van Vogt is also well known for such classics as The Voyage of the Space Beagle and Slan. The Voyage of the Space Beagle is a fix-up novel about a spaceship exploring the galaxy and the different alien lifeforms its crew encounters.

I read Slan in high school (junior high/middle school ?) It’s about mutants who are persecuted because they are the next step in human evolution. It was extremely popular in its day. Not too long after publication, the slogan “Fans are Slans” entered the fandom lexicon. I’m not sure if it’s still there or not. Van Vogt has been out of print for years. I doubt many of the younger readers have heard of him, much less read his work.

He didn’t write during the fifties due to his involvement with Dianetics. I’m not going to get into that.

In the sixities, seventies, and eighties,  he resumed writing, but he was never as successful as he was in the forties. Much fo his work, new and old, was in print when I was in junior high and high school. Van Vogt’s name was a prominent one then.

The last van Vogt collection, Transgalactic from Baen, was nearly twenty years ago. He has pretty much been out of print since then. When NESFA Press published their large collection, Transfinite: The Essential A. E. van Vogt, in 2003, I bought it. The stories in it were quite good.

I also got  my hands on some of his later paperback collections, which unfortunately not only weren’t very good, many of the stories were unreadable.

The other birthday today is Horace L. Gold.

Gold wrote a decent number of shosrt stories in the thirties and early forties. Most of those have never been collected.  A few were included in Some Die Rich.  His best known piece of short fiction is probably “The Trouble With Water.” Gold resumed writing short fiction in the fifties.

But it was as an editor that Gold had his greatest impact. While editing Galaxy in the fifites, he published many stories that would go on to become classics. One of the most prominent of these was The Space Merchants by Fred Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth.

Gold’s emphasis was on social science fiction, for lack of a better term. This was a departure from the technological emphasis of John W. Campbell, Jr., at Astounding.

Fletcher Pratt

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Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was born on this date, April 25.

Pratt is primarily remembered today for two things. His collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp, and two novels, The Blue Star and The Well of the Unicorn.

Although there were other collaborations between Pratt and de Camp, the Harold Shea stories arae the ones that get the most bandwidth. These were a series of novellas and short novels  begun in the early 1940s and originally published in Unknown. The series continued in the 1950s. The character Harold Shea ends up visiting a number of fantasy lands from works of literature. The mechanism through which he does this is mathematics.

The problem I had with the longer collaborations of Pratt and de Camp was that while I thought they started strong, I got the feeling the authors got bored in the middle. (I have this same reaction to many of de Camp’s solo novels as well). Maybe that’s why I prefer the Gavagan’s Bar stories. They are definitely short stories in the tradition of the British club story. Think tall tales with fantasy elements. They’re clever and fun. I really should reread them. It’s been a while.

As for the novels, I reviewed The Blue Star here at Black Gate. It was one of the first titles in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I’ve picked up several copies of the Ballantine mass market paperback edition of The Well of the Unicorn with the Hildebrandt cover over the years. I’ve not managed to work it into the reading schedule yet. My understanding is that Pratt wrote it as a rebuttal to Tolkien because there was no sex in The Lord of the Rings. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

If anyone has read Well, please share your thoughts.

Novellas

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There’s not much happening in the literazry world today, at least as far as I can tell. So no news to report. The good part of that is I didn’t have to read that another favorite writer has died. Always a good thing. I’m recognizing fewer of the names on the new releases these days.

So I thought I would talk about novellas for a bit. I’m taking an online workhsop on novellas, with an assignment of writing one before it’s over. But that’s down the road.

I’ve not read much science fiction or fantasy for the last couple of years. I’ve been focusing on mystery and thrillers. So one of the assignments in this workshop, which is on science fiction novellas, was to discuss three novellas you couldn’t put down. This week’s assignment is to look for techniques that made the novellas compelling.

I had to reach back a little ways to do this, since any science fiction I’ve read has tended to be either short stories or the occasional novel. So, I’m going to throw two questions out there for discussion.

First, what are some science fiction or fantasy novellas you’ve read over the last few years that really stuck with you in a positive way? If you hated it, the novella stuck with you, but that’s not the kind of sticking with you I’m talking about.

Second, what was it about the novella that made it so memorable?

I’m not going to steal your answers for my assignments. I’ve already got my own selections. I’m curious about what I’ve missed since, say the COVID lockdowns ended.  I’m a little out of touch with the cutting edge of the science fiction and fantasy fields. I want to get back up to speed.

Thanks.

Mundy and Davidson

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This is going to be a short post because I’ve been on the road most of the day, and it’s past my bedtime. But I wanted to acknowledge the birthdays of two writers whose work, although I’ve not read as much by either as I wish, I greatly admire. Those writers are Talbot Mundy (1879-1940) and Avram Davidson (1923-1993). They were both born on April 23.

Mundy wrote adventure. While some of his work had fantastic elements, he is best remembered as an adventure writer. I would classify him as being similar to Harold Lamb, although they were very different writers in some ways. But both wrote of advetures in exotic lands, so I would consider them to be similar in that regard.

Avram Davidson was a unique writer. He  didn’t write lean prose, or deal with cosmic horrors, or heroic fantasy as we tend to think of it in terms of Robert E. Howard or  Karl Edward Wagner. But his imaginataion was fertile. His stories may require a little work to read, but they are usually worth the effort. While he wrote novels, I’m primarily know him through his short  fiction. He was a unique voice, and I can’t think of anyone else like him. Who else could write a story about cigar store Indians and make it work?