Author Archives: Keith West

Relive the Vietnam War in Of Bone and Thunder

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21412311Of Bone and Thunder
Chris Evans
Simon and Schuster
mmpb $9.99, ebook $8.99

Of Bone and Thunder is a dark, graphic, gripping military fantasy, with dragons, dwarves, and a great deal of combat. But that’s not what the book is about.

It’s about Vietnam.

That’s not any big surprise to anyone who has read the cover copy. I read somewhere that a science fiction novel deals with three times periods, the one in which it is set, the one in which it was written, and the time period that it’s actually about. I’d like to modify that, with apologies to whomever said it, to a fantasy novel deals with three worlds: the one in which it’s set, the one in which it’s written, and the one in which it’s about. This novel is about what it was like to be a soldier in the Vietnam War. Continue reading →

You Pay a High Price When You “Pay the Ghost”

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Pay the Ghost“Pay the Ghost”
Tim Lebbon
Ebook short story $0.99

I became aware of “Pay the Ghost” when Tim Lebbon posted a link to it on Twitter.  I’ve been so distracted the last few weeks that I wasn’t aware of the Nicholas Cage movie coming out next weekend that’s based on it.

The premise is a man’s daughter disappears shortly after asking him if they pay the ghost while they’re taking a walk on Halloween.  He has no idea what she means by that question, but he’s going to find out.

I’ll not say more about the story because it is after all a short story.  It’s dark and creepy, and it has a bite at the end.  I read it yesterday afternoon while I was waiting on my son to finish an after school activity.  The chill it gave me was a nice relief from the nearly 100 degree heat.

I’ve not read much Lebbon, but what I have read has been good.  I’ve read a couple of shorter pieces set in his world of Noreela and intend to read more.

Here’s a clip of the movie.  Obviously there are some changes, but it looks like they kept the core of the story intact.

 

 

Autumn on My Mind

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Blind VoicesSo it’s that time of year when the dry grass kinda crunches under foot, the Sun sets earlier, and the evenings are cooler less hot.  Classes have started.  Things begin to settle into a routine.  Orange decorations start to appear.

And my reading matter starts to produce more of a chill.

I’m not planning on doing a heavy Halloween related reading project this year, although there will be a few seasonal blog posts scattered among the things I put up here.  One of them will probably be about Tom Reamy’s Blind Voices.  It’s been years since I read it, but it’s one of those rare books that I can remember numerous details about years later. Continue reading →

Kuttner Unkollected: “A God Named Kroo”

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$(KGrHqZ,!i4E8VDJi4qGBPHe1IuBYQ~~60_35“A God Named Kroo”
Henry Kuttner
Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1944, p. 13-43

Henry Kuttner was one of the most prolific science fiction and fantasy authors who wrote for the pulps in the 1940s, although he didn’t limit himself to those genres.  The winter 1944 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories is an example.  He has three stories in this issue.  The one given top billing on cover is what we’ll look at today.  Oddly, the illustration is for a story not listed on the cover, “Venusian Nightmare” by Oscar J. Friend writing as Ford Smith.

The second story of Kuttner’s is “Trophy” as by Scott Morgan.  This wasn’t one of Kuttner’s more common pen names.  I’ll be looking at it on Futures Past and Present in a day or so.  The third story, “Swing Your Lady”, is bylined Kelvin Kent and is part of Kuttner’s Pete Manx series.  Haffner Press is going to reprint this one in a collection of Kuttner’s stories under his Kelvin Kent pseudonym, so I’ll hold off on reviewing that one.

Kroo was once a powerful, if minor, Tibetan deity.  He enjoyed worship, human sacrifices, the whole nine yards.  Now his only follower is a yak that wandered into his temple grounds one night looking for a place to graze.  As you might can guess, this isn’t going to be a serious story.  Kuttner was known for his dry and often sardonic sense of humor, and it’s on display here. Continue reading →

Kuttner Unkollected

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9630457No, that’s not a typo, it’s a deliberate misspelling.  It’s a weisenheimer attempt at alliteration.

About a decade ago, give or take a year, I had a little extra money from summer teaching.  So did I save the money or invest it wisely?  No, I didn’t.  I decided to try and obtain as many copies of Henry Kuttner stories that had never been reprinted at that time that I didn’t have, along with a few other unreprinted stories by people such as Eric Frank Russell.  Except for some copies of Weird Tales which were out of my price range, I managed to get most everything I didn’t have copies of.  Haffner Press has reprinted the Weird Tales material.  When pursuing a project like this, eBay is not your bank account’s friend an invaluable tool.   Continue reading →

Take a Trip into A Lonely and Curious Country

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unnamed-2A Lonely and Curious Country
Matthew Carpenter, ed.
Ulthar Press
Trade Paper, 234 p., $16.95

As Matthew Carpenter points out in his introduction, Lovecraftian fiction has become a mainstay of the fantastic and weird fiction genres, with some of the best-written stories being published on a regular basis.  A Lonely and Curious Country is no exception.  (Mr. Carpenter didn’t say that, I did.)

The seventeen stories here are perfect examples of what’s going on in the admittedly large subfield of Lovecraftian fiction.  They are disturbing, horrifying, Lovecraftian.  In some the Lovecraftian element is quite prominent; in others, you don’t realize you’re in Lovecraft country until you’ve almost finished.  I’m not going to try to give a one or two sentence summary of each one.  Rather I’m going to focus on the ones that stood out to me.  YMMV.  One other thing before I start discussing the stories.  Of the eighteen authors, I had only heard of three of them prior to reading this book (Webb, Price, and McNamee).  There are a lot of good writers out there that I need to keep up with. Continue reading →

Lizzie Borden vs. C’thulhu, Round 2

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ChapelwoodChapelwood: The Borden Dispatches
Cheri Priest
Roc Books, 434 pgs.
Paperback $16.00, ebook $9.99, audio $29.99

It’s been decades since the events in Maplecroft.  Lizzie Borden lives a quiet, reclusive life alone in her mansion.  But she keeps up with events in the outside world through magazines, journals, and newspapers that arrive via the US Postal Service.

So when she starts reading reports of a serial axe murderer terrorizing Birmingham, Alabama, it gets her attention.  (Turns out he’s one of the good guys.  Really.)  Especially when she starts to see other references to Birmingham, references about a dark cult that meets in an old church out in the woods at a place called Chapelwood.

Then she gets a telephone call from her old friend, Inspector Simon Wolf.  He’s in Birmingham investigating the death of a friend, a priest who was gunned down on the steps of his church in broad daylight.  Before he died, the priest had written Wolf, asking for his assistance.

Wolf thinks all of the events in Birmingham are related.  And he wants Lizzie’s help.  It looks like Lizzie is going to get to swing her axe one more time.

Continue reading →

Frm Crcl Jrk t Clstr Fck

See what I did with the title of this post?  No, it’s not a typo.  Nor have I been drinking.  It’s called disemvoweling.  Clever, isn’t it?

No.  No, it’s not clever at all.  In fact, it’s pretty juvenile.  But it’s a favorite tactic of some people when they don’t agree with comments on their blog posts.  I guess it’s supposed to make the person doing the disemvoweling look smart or something.  Mostly it makes them look they’re afraid to engage in a conversation.

Many of the same people who engage in this practice are some of the same ones who’ve been having a hissy fit for the last six months over the Hugo Awards.  Which should tell you all you need to know about the maturity level of disemvoweling.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, just fell off a turnip truck, or have a life, here’s a quick recap.  This is of course my interpretation.  It’s going to be long, so consider yourself warned. Continue reading →

An Open Letter to Toni Weisskopf

Hi, Toni.

You don’t know me.  We’ve only met a few times at conventions, and not in the last few years.  I’ve always enjoyed a convention where you were in attendance.  And not just because of the free books you handed out.  You were never anything less than open, friendly, encouraging, and generous with your time.

I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy since the 1970s and Baen Books since the company was founded. Continue reading →

H. P. Lovecraft Turns 125 Today

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LovecraftOne of the greatest writers of weird fiction, some would the greatest, was born on August 20th, 1890.  I am, of course, talking about H. P. Lovecraft.  It’s also my mother-in-law’s birthday (Hi, June.), but we won’t go there.  It’s just coincidence.

There will be a number of tributes posted today.  I’m going to take a slightly different approach here.  I first encountered Lovecraft in an anthology I read in the seventh grade.  The story was “The Doom That Came to Sarnath.”*  I never really took an interest in the Mythos stories in my teens and twenties.  Only in my thirties and forties did I start delving into the stories Lovecraft is most known for.

I’ve had conversations with more than one person in which they said as they’ve grown older, they find Lovecraft more and more unreadable.  In general, they are talking about his prose.

Curiously, I find the opposite.  Maybe I’m reading different stories.  There are a number of major stories I haven’t read yet, but I don’t have a problem with Lovecraft’s prose most of the time.  It’s an old fashioned style, much more lush that what is standard today.  Maybe I read too much Dickens in school or something, but I don’t have a huge problem with it.  I appreciate his work more with each new story of his I read. Continue reading →