What do writers Raymond Chandler (b. 1888) and C. M. Kornbluth (b. 1923), editors Alden H. Norton (b. 1903) and Gardner Dozois (b. 1947), and artist Virgil Finlay (b. 1914) all have in common?  They were all born on July 23.

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was one of the greatest writers of private eye fiction the 20th Century produced.  He created the detective Phillip Marlowe, who, along with Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, became the template for the private detective in popular culture.  Marlowe was played by a number of actors in the movies, but Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal in The Big Sleep (coscripted by Leigh Brackett) remains the gold standard. Chandler didn’t really write in the field of the fantastic, but he’s worth reading simply because of the impact he’s had on the field.

I know Alden H. Norton isn’t exactly a household name.  He edited some lower tier pulps in the 1940s.  Then in the 1960s and early 1970s he edited a handful of anthologies.  The best were his horror anthologies.  They included a number of hard to find tales from writers that had sadly fallen into obscurity and lesser known stories by bigger names.  These anthologies are worth seeking out.

C. M. Kornbluth was mostly a science fiction short-story writer, although he did write the occasional foray into fantasy.  He was coauthor of a handful of novels, most with Fred Pohl.  The best known of these is The Space Merchants, a satire about advertising.  Kornbluth is worth reading.  There’s a reason stories like “The Marching Morons”, and “The Little Black Bag” are considered classics of science fiction.  Kornbluth’s work is often deeply cynical.  I first read him when I was in junior high, which might explain something of how I developed my outlook on society today.

Gardner Dozois

We lost Gardner Dozois last year.  Although he started out as a writer himself, he edited Asimov’s Science Fiction for decades, and his annual best of the year anthologies were the gold standard against which other such anthologies were compared (and sometimes found lacking).  I’ve always enjoyed his work, both authorial and editorial, and the several times I met him, he was always courteous and kind.

Virgil Finlay I’ve saved for last because I want to end this post with illustrations.  As almost everyone who reads this blog knows, Finlay was an illustrator for the pulps.  He was one of the best.  I’m going to let his work speak for itself.