Monthly Archives: June 2024

Cleve Cartmill

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June 21 is the birthday of Cleve Cartmill (1908-1964). Cartmill wrote science fiction in the nineteen forties. He cointinued to write into the middle fifties, although his output slowed significantly.

Robert Heinlein hosted an informal group of writers at his house in California in the early forties before the war. Cartmill attended. Heinlein introduced Cartmill to John Campbell, and most of Cartmill’s work appeared in with Astounding or Unknown.

Cartmill is best remembered today for the story “Deadline”. One could argue that he is only remembered today because of that story. Continue reading →

Writing Update

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I thought I had posted this earlier this month. I must have changed “I need to post this” to “I have posted this” in my mind.

As I’ve stated before, I’ve been doing a challenge to write an average of 2024 words per day in 2024. May started out good, with me being several days ahead by the middle of the month. Then I missed a few days due to travel. I managed to catch up and ended the month of May with an average of 2026 words per day.

That’s a win, and I’m taking it.

June has been a bit of a stumble. I’ve missed several days, although Howard Days had little effect until the last day, when I only hit half the word count.

Right now I’m taking some anthology workshops in which I’ll write a story for consideration in an anthology. There will be one story a week for six weeks. I wrote the first one last week. It was for the theme of ghosts and taverns. This week is a cozy mystery set at a beach. Futute themes will be msytery science fiction, military science fiction, Hallowee, and regency fantasy. Cozies and regencies are well outside my comfort zone, which is why I’m taking them. I may fall on my face, but I’ll learn something and stretch myself as a writer.

Remembering Kage Baker

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Kage Baker

I promise I will write up this year’s Robert E. Howard Days, but it will be later in the week. Tonight, I want to pay tribute to one of my favorite writers, a lady who is no longer with us and whose work should be remembered.

I’m talking about Kage Baker (1952-2010), who was born today, June 10. I had the pleasureof meeting her at Armadillcon 25, but I had been reading her work for several years prior to that.

And no, that’s not a typo, nor is this a post about another Carolynn Catherine O’Shea. Kage was a combination of the names Kate and Genevieve, which were her middle names

Kage broke into the science fiction and fantasy scene in the late nineties and early two thousands with a series of short stories and novellas, most of them published in Asimov’s.

These stories concerned an ensemble group of operatives of an organization referred to as simply The Company. The series ran to seven novels and three collections of short fiction. The operatives of the Company are immortal time traveling cyborgs.

It doesn’t get much better than  that. Continue reading →

Tom Godwin

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Forgot to hit Publish last night.

June 6 is the birthday of Tome Godwin (1915-1980). He published approximately two dozen short stories and three novels, most of them in the nineteeen fifties. If it weren’t for one particular story, he woudl probably be totally forgotten today.

But that one story was a doozy. It created controversy when it was published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It’s still controversial today.

Seventy years later.

That’s an impactful story.

The story I’m talking about is, of course, “The Coldl Equations”.

If you haven’t read it but think you might (and you should; it holds up well), then you need to be aware that pretty much the rest of this post is going to be one giant spoiler.

You’ve been warned. Continue reading →

RIP, John Maddox Roberts

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Fantasy and science fiction author John Maddos Roberts passed away on May 23.

I’ve not read any of his work, although I’ve seen his name on a number of spines as I’ve perused used bookstsores. I think I picked up some of his Stormlands series at the Freinds of the Library sale, but I’m not sure which ones. Most of the FoL books are still in boxes. He’s been one of those writers I’ve always intended to get to.

He wrote some Conan pastiches as well as at least one Dragonlance novel. He wrote the SPQR series of historical mysteries, which ran to thirteen volumes.

He collaborated with Eric Kotani on four sicence fiction novels.

My condolences to Mr. Roberts’s wife Beth and his family and friends.

Lester Del Rey

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Lester Del Rey at Minicon 8 (1974)

Lester Del Rey (1915-1993) was born today, June 2.

Most people today would think of Del Rey books if they recognized the name Del Rey at all.

But Lester Del Rey did more than have his name as an imprint of Ballantine Books. One must ask the question why he would be selected to have his name on a imprint in the first place.

In reality, it wasn’t jsut Lester who founded the imprint. He shared that honor with his wife Judy-Lynn Del Rey.

I don’t remember when I first became aware of him as a writer. I do recall the first book of his I read. It was the science fiction book club edition of The Early Del Rey. This was a single volume. In mass market paperbacks, it was published in two volumes.

Much of what I’m going to write will be based on that. Continue reading →