Author Archives: Keith West

Happy Birthday, Margaret Brundage

Brundage WT Bat GirlMargaret Brundage was born on this date in 1900.  Brundage gain fame, some would say infamy, illustrating covers for Weird Tales in the 1930s.  She was born Margaret Hedda Johnson and was married briefly married to “Slim” Brundage, a painter with radical politics.  The had one son.  I guess that means the rumor I heard that she used her daughters for models isn’t true.

The best way to honor Brundage is to show examples of her work.  Since the illustrations won’t be to everyone’s taste, and some folks get offended waayy too easily these days, the illustrations will be after the “Continue Reading” break.  What follows may not be approriate for youonger readers and the uptight.  There’s a reason she’s been called “Margaret Bondage.” Continue reading

Happy 100th Birthday, Leigh Brackett

Leigh BrackettSo today is the centennial of Leigh Brackett’s birth.  If you’ve paid any attention to this blog in the last few weeks, you know that I’ve been making a big deal of that and will continue to do so.

Some of you good people might be wondering:  So just who was this Leigh Brackett person and why was she so important?

I’m glad you asked. Continue reading

RIP, Jon Arfstrom 1928-2015

Weird-Tales-52-01-204x300Jon Afrstrom passed away December 2.  He was believed to be the last surviving artist to work on the original Weird Tales.  While he wasn’t as well known as Margaret Brundage or J. Allen St. John, Jon Arfstrom created several striking covers in the final years of the magazine, such as the one shown on the right, which from January 1952.  This was his first cover.

In recent years he’d returned to fantasy art and provided cover art for publishers such as Haffner Press and Fedogan & Bremer among others.  He was the artist on the Stoker Award winning collection The Early Fears by Robert Bloch.

Fortunately, Arfstrom was a guest at PulpFest 2015.  You can see an interview with him here.

Brackett and Bradbury: “Lorelei of the Red Mist”

Planet Stories - Lorelei of the Red MistThis is a unique item.  The only collaboration between two great science fiction authors, Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury.  Here’s how it came about:

Both authors were living in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s, and both had been working hard to develop their craft as writers.  Both were regulars in Planet Stories at the time.  They were friends who had both been mentored by Henry Kuttner.  They used to meet once a week to read and critique each other’s work.

no good from a corpseBrackett had sold some detective short stories as well as one novel, No Good From a Corpse.  The novel caught the attention of movie producer Howard Hawks, who decided he wanted Brackett to work on the screenplay for his next project.  She was approximately halfway through a novellette she was writing for Planet Stories that was set on Venus (More about Brackett’s Venus in a bit.) when she got a call from Hawks, or more probably his secretary.  Which is how Brackett launched her screenwriting career by coauthoring with William Faulkner the script for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  How freakin’ cool is that? Continue reading

In the Deep and Dark December

[cue Simon and Garfunkle]

I’m not a huge Simon and Grafunkle fan, but I couldn’t help but steal the title of this post from “I am a Rock”.  Here are my reading/writing/blogging plans for the last month of the year.

Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett

The big thing is that Leigh Brackett’s birthday is next Monday, December 7.  It’s her centennial, and I’ll be focusing a lot on her work this month.  I’m not the only one.  Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward will be discussing “The Moon the Vanished”, one of her novellas set on a swampy Venus next Monday on Howard’s blog.  Click here for details and join the discussion.  I’m not going to be discussing that particular story here, but I will take some detailed looks at some others.  I’m probably going to start with “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, which she began and Ray Bradbury finished when Howard Hawks offered her a job writing the screenplay to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep with William Faulkner.  You can get electronic copies of both stories in Swamps of Venus from Baen ($4), or get the Solar System bundle for $20. Continue reading

Don’t Go “Back There in the Grass”

Alfred Hitchock“Back There in the Grass”
Gouverneur Morris
It and Other Stories
ebook, various editions

No, that’s not a misspelling.  Gouverneur Morris (the first one from the American Revolution) was named after his Dutch mother’s family.  He was the John F. Kennedy of his day, meaning he, um, got around.

This one is his great grandson, who was a magazine writer in the early 20th century.  To my knowledge he didn’t write much in the way of the fantastic.  I read a couple of the other stories in It, including the title story (which was a disappointment), but they were all they type of mainstream things you would find in the upper tier magazines before the Great Depression.

I’d first read “Back There in the Grass” when I was a teenager in one of the Alfred Hitchcock Anthologies (Stories for Late at Night) in the school library or that I’d acquired from a garage sale.  The story has stayed with me all these years.  I came across a reference of Morris in a book I was reading the other day, and decided to see if I could find some electronic copies of his work.

There’s a danger in rereading stories you haven’t read since your youth; too often they don’t live up to your memory of them.  I’m glad to say that wasn’t the case here. Continue reading

A Review of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 26

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q26Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 26 is now online.  This issue contains three pieces of fiction as well as three poems.  I found this particular issue to be one of the more enjoyable issues of HFQ in quite a while.  The stories are certainly among the best HFQ has published. Continue reading

Quick Update

It’s been a bit longer than usual since I posted.  If you keep up with me on Twitter, you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth.  It’s been busy, to say the least.

My son’s robotics team advanced to the state competition, which was the second weekend of the month, and I went with them.  (It’s really a regional competition because teams from other states were also there, but since it’s mostly Texas teams, we just referred to it as state.)  They came in 34th out of 59, which is approximately 20 spots higher than they’ve ranked in the past.  That’s a lot better than it sounds because my son’s team was four middle school kids working after school and competing against mostly high school teams, many of whom met as a class.  (My son’s robotics class is working on other projects.)  We’re all extremely proud of them.

Because of some weird thing with the university calendar, we only have three days left before classes are completely over and finals start.  So many of the time consuming things I normally deal with after Thanksgiving, such as wrapping up labs, have already been done.

Between travel for the robotics meet, ending the semester things, and really nasty allergies, I’ve not had time or mental ability to post or work on fiction.  I’m hoping to post quite a few things over the Thanksgiving weekend, so keep an eye on this space.

Tales from the Otherverse Now Available

Tales From The Otherverse webTales from the Otherverse went live today.  It’s available in paper format from Amazon for $9.99 and in electronic format from Amazon and Smashwords for $3.99.

I’m excited to be included in this anthology.  The other authors are an impressive lineup.  I’ve only read Robert Vardeman’s story,  and ti was a blast.  I’m looking forward to diving into this one over the holidays.