Tag Archives: Karl Edward Wagner

Wagner and Woolrich

Today has been…a day. I’ll go into detail later when I have actual information. Because of some personal things, I almost missed two birthdays today.

Karl Edward Wagner was born on December 4, 1945. He’s no stranger around these here parts. Creator of the legendary Kane, a first tier horror author, and an editor who strove to make Robert E. Howard’s Conan available in affordable editions rather than the bowdlerized stories that were available in the late 70s, editor of the Year’s Best Horror anthologies for DAW, and cofounder of Carcosa Press, Karl Edward Wagner casts a long shadow over the field.

I need to read more Wagner. There’s still quite a bit out there that I haven’t read, including some Kane.

The other author, Cornell Woolrich, didn’t write much in the way of the fantastic, but he’s still a writer you’re going to want to read. Born in 1903, Woolrich wrote mysteries and suspense, a number with macabre overtones. The first Woolrich novel I ever read, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, is about a millionaire who is told by a gypsy fortune teller that he will die at the mouth of a lion. And then a lion escapes from a circus…

Both of these men should be in your libraries. Check them out.

James Alderdice Gets Fierce

6 Replies

Fierce
James Alderdice
print $16.99
ebook $4.99

Last summer I highly enjoyed Brutal, the first volume in the Brutal Trilogy. At the end of July, the second volume went on sale.

Fierce is the type of book too often missing in the fantasy offerings from the mainstream publishers. It reads at times like it was written by the love child of Robert E. Howard and Karl Edward Wagner. Although the influences of both can be seen at places, Alderdice very much has his own voice and tells his story on his own terms. Continue reading →

Of Editorial Greatness

12 Replies

Earlier today I was reading a post on a site I don’t normally read these days (I was lured by the temptation of a free ebook). The post made the argument that John Campbell was the greatest editor the science fiction and fantasy fields have seen.

That got me to thinking, which usually gets me in trouble. I began wondering who would be the greatest editor, greater being defined as having the most impact over time. The original post didn’t include fantasy other than a passing reference to Unknown. So I thought I’d throw the question open to anyone who wanted to voice an opinion. Below is a list I compiled off the top of my head. I didn’t include any living editors. If I had, Ellen Datlow would be on it. My rationale is that the impact of living editors on the can’t be accurately assessed because they are still having an influence and their greatest influences may still be to come.

So in alphabetical order are ten editors. I’ll provide a brief explanation as to why they have been included. Some will be quickly eliminated. Others, not so much. Continue reading →

Update on Anthology Reading

5 Replies

First, I want to thank everyone who made suggestions on my post about what anthology series to read. There were a number of good suggestions.

Here’s what I decided: Continue reading →

Going Gothic

2 Replies

No, I said Gothic, not Goth. While I tend to wear a lot of black T-shirts, that really not my scene. I must admit, though, that the young lady in the picture I downloaded at random from the internet is quite fetching. Click to enlarge.

No, not those Goths, either, although they are much more my scene than the previous goth.

Read my lips. I said goth-ic. Goth. ic.

Got it?

You know the novels from the late 1700s and early 1800s, not the romance subgenre popular in the 70s where every book cover had a beautiful young woman with great hair fleeing a creepy edifice in the background, usually one that had a single light in a tower window. I swear, when I was a kid, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting one of those books. Uh,,,not I swung cats or anything.

What I’m talking about is a style of early novel filled with menace, usually something supernatural, and all kinds of trouble for the protagonists. They were the late Eighteenth Century version of pulps. Continue reading →

It’s Frank Frazetta’s Birthday

8 Replies

Frank Frazetta, one of the greatest fantasy artists to ever stride this land, was born on this date (February 9) in 1928. I’m not even going to try to put the impact his art has had on my life into words, much less that of the fantasy field. Here are a couple of my favorite works of Frazetta’s.

The image on the left is the promotional poster for a Frazetta exhibit I saw in Austin last spring. That trip has really been on my mind today, maybe because the weather has been so unseasonably warm. The image was used on the cover of one of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane books. You can read about my trip in this post.

Probably my favorite of the Frazetta Conan covers is the one shown on the right. It’s for Conan the Usurper. I saw this one at the Frazetta exhibit, and let me tell you, none of the reproductions do the images justice. It was awesome to stand in front of some of those paintings and see close up the detail and the brushwork. The painting were larger than what you see on a book cover, of course, and the detail really stood out.

I think the thing that has always captured my imagination about this picture is the snake. I hate snakes. There’s just something evil about them. I’m not sure why, but they’ve always given me the willies.

Frazetta is gone now, but his work lives on. While it might be easy to think that with his popularity, there will always be copies available to enjoy, that’s a dangerous way to think. Today hot property is too often tomorrow’s has-been, or worse completely forgotten. So take a moment over the next few days to admire a Frazetta painting, especially if it’s one you’ve not seen before or not seen in a while.

Update: Here are tributes by David J. West and Woelf Dietrich. They’re both worth checking out.

A Short Collection by Karl Edward Wagner

More Bookstore Closing Acquisitions

2 Replies

I posted recently about one of the local used bookstores (currently there are 4: 2 good, 1 decent, 1 not worth bothering with) closing and some of the titles I picked up.

You know I went back. The store will be open for a little while yet. Here’s what I picked up this time.

I couldn’t resist the cover of the Howard pastiche by Offutt, even though I doubt I’ll read it. The People of the Mist is an upgrade of my existing copy. The Starfollowers of Coramonde is a later edition, but the Darrell K. Sweet cover matches the one on the first novel in the series.

I loved Sean Stewart’s Galveston some years back, but I haven’t read any of his other books. The Tanith Lee speaks for itself. The third row contains the first 3 of 4 in Lawrence Watt-Evans Lords of Dus series.

The last row is a reading copy of one of Evangeline Walton’s books that was part of the BAF series. The Zahn is part of a series that looks like a lot of fun. And the Paul Preuss because I wanted some solid science fiction in the old style.

But the gem of this little collection is the volume in the upper left of the picture. It’s Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff. It’s a collection of stories published in his groundbreaking small press magazine of the same title. I’ve got a copy of this already, but I couldn’t pass this one up. The contents include “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner, “The Barrow Troll” by David Drake, “The Dakwa” by Manly Wade Wellman, plus stories by Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, William F. Nolan, Hugh B. Cave, Dennis Etchison, Joseph Payne Brennan, Ramsey Campbell, Richard Christian Matheson, Brian Lumley, and many others.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go reread “Sticks”.

Recent Acquisitions

7 Replies

There are a few used book stores here in town. Two are pretty good, one is so-so, and I’m not sure the fourth isn’t a front for something else.

Anyway, the one I consider the best is closing. The owner doesn’t have a lease but owns the storefront. As a result, he’s not in any hurry to shut his doors. This is good, because he’s got a pretty thorough inventory. It’s one of the great second hand stores where there are stacks of books in all the aisles, and a few minutes to see if a particular title is to be had turns into the better part of an afternoon.

I passed through the other day and picked up a few things. At the moment everything is half off. That percentage will increase as times goes on and the day the store shuts its doors for good draws nigh. You know I’ll be going back. Continue reading →

Blogging Northwest Smith: Nymph of Darkness

1 Reply

“Nymph of Darkkness”
C. L. Moore

For years, “Nymph of Darkness” was one of the rarest Northwest Smith stories. The reason was because C. L. Moore refused to give permission for the story, first published in 1935, to be reprinted. It wasn’t until the 1981 Worldcon that she relented. The first book reprinting occurred the following year in Gosh! Wow! Sense of Wonder, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman.

Ackerman, it turns out co-wrote the story with Moore, although she retained 75% of the rights, meaning it wouldn’t be reprinted without her permission. A technicality in the copyright for the story actually allowed it to be reprinted once against her wishes.

“Nymph of Darkness” first appeared in Fantasy Magazine in April 1935 and was later reprinted in Weird Tales in the December 1939 issue. It wasn’t included when most of the other stories were published in the 1950s by Gnome Press.

I’m not sure why Moore didn’t allow for its reprinting. The story, in my mind at least, is a good story. It’s not as long as most of the others, but still, it’s solid. Continue reading →

Adventures Fantastic

Reviews, Views, & Occasional News