Author Archives: Keith West

Ruminations on Merritt

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Today, January 20, is the birthday of Abraham Merritt (1884-1943). At one time, Merritt was arguably the priemere writer of fantastic fiction in the United States, if not the world. For a while there was a fantasy magazine named after him. Sadly, outside of a small number of aficianados of fantasy, he pretty much forgtotten today.

Not entirely, though. Centipede Press as reprinted some of his novels in nice hardcover editions. Paperback copies of his works are available on the secondary market. Continue reading →

Back to Brackett

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On Leigh Brackett’s birthday (yikes! over a month ago now)  I said I was reading The Starmen of Llyrdis but wasn’t gong to be able to finiish it by her birthday.  I said I would finish it, and I finally did last week. Classes started last week, I had a writing assignment due over the weekend, and I’m just now getting to the review.

That’s the cover of the ebook, which is how I read it this time. The picture is a little misleading. There is a female character who serves as the love interest, but she is absent from much of the book.

This was one of the last stories Brackett wrote for the pulps. It was published in Startling Stories in 1951. Byu this time, she was working as a screenwriter in Hollywood. I’m not sure if she wrote this between assignments or if there was a writer’s strike or what.  Perhaps the death of the pulps and changing tastes in science fictoin had something to do with it. Continue reading →

An Appreciation of Clark Ashton Smith

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As I mentioned in my previous post, today (January 13) is the birthday of Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961).

I’m not sure what I can say about Smith that hasn’t been said, and said better, by someone else. This isn’t the first post I’ve made about Smith.

I havne’t read anything by him in a while, so I’m not going to try and review any of his stories. But I do want to acknowledge his birthday

So here goes. Continue reading →

Well, Well, Well, What Have We Here? It’s not Dead After All

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I had a surpise in my mailbox on Friday. A very unexpected and pleasant surprise.

That’s it on the left, the latest issue of F&SF. Someone had commented in a previous post that they had gotten an electronic copy of this issue.

I’m glad to see it isn’t dead. I’ve had a subscription since I graduated college. I’m going to try to work this issue into the reading schedule as soon as I can. *looks at TBR pile and sighs*

At least it’s not dead yet. I’m not optimistic about any of the digests at the moment. I’ll explain further down.

Not unexpectedly, there are some changes. Now that F&SF is in the stable of the (formerly) Penny Press digests, it has the same format as they do. Same dimensions, same cheap paper, and the same flimsy cover. The heavier cover stock and the thicker paper is gone.

Not surpprising, like I said. But not a welcome change as far as I’m concerned. F&SF went to a heavier cover stock some years ago. As a print subscriber, I appreciated that. I would still get issues with torn covers, but not as many. Hopefully, I won’t get too many damaged copies. Continue reading →

12 DoCGS Day 7: “The Death Mask” by Henrietta D. Everett

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This is another chiller. It’s not set at Christmas, but it is the kind of story that might be related around a fire. It’s author wrote at a time when genre conventions weren’t as well established (rigid) as they are today. Supernatural elements mixed with mundane settings. the thing that mattered wasn’t so much the genre, but the quality fo the story.

Henrietta D;. Everett

Heniretta D. Everett (1851-1923), sometimes bylined as H. D. Everett, wrote twenty-two novels. According to what little I coudl discover about her, about half of them had fantasy or proto-science fictional elements.

“Wth Death Mask” is her best known ghost story and was the title of her collection of stories published in 1920. This story was praised by H. P. Lovecraft. I didn’t read it. I listened to it on audio in The Literature of Lovecraft Vol. 1 produced by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It is the usual high quality production the HPLHS does. M. R. James also  had a high opinion of this story. Continue reading →

A Brief Requiem for Unthemed Anthology Series

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The last couple of days have been hectic, and I’m too tired to put together another ghost story post (I need to do  some bibliographic research on the author of the next story) or do much work on original fiction. But since I wanted to write something to keep my writing streak going.

I’ll do a followup on this one later. I need to do some research first. You’ll see what I mean below. Continue reading →

Northern Shadows

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Today is January 3. It’s the birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). His shadow over the field of fantasy is arguably the longest of any author. Many writers have written in imitation of him (think early Terry Brooks) or in reguttal to him. (Michael Moorcock and George R. R. Martin).

Tolkien drew on northern European mythology in crafting his worlds. That topic alone is worth multiple dissertations, and I’m not going to try to dwell on it in any great scholoarly depth.

Instead, I want make some general observations. Continue reading →

Crafting the Short Story: Reflections on Charles Beaumont

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This is the second birthday post for today. It’s on Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), if you couldn’t tell from the title. The first birthday post was on Isaac Asimov.

Beaumont couldn’t have been more different than Asimov.  Where Asimov focused on science, often at the expense of the humanity of his characters (it’s been said), Beuamont was a master at crafting believable, individual characters. But then Asimov wrote science fiction, whereas Beaumont primarily wrote fantasy.

Beaumont was a protege of Ray Bradbury, something I’ve commented on before. That’s not to say Beaumont was inferior to Bradbury. He wasn’t, although he was to soem extent a different kind of writer.  For a compasrison of two stories written by Beaumont and Bradbury from the same prompt, see this post.

What I want to focus on today is Beaumont as short fiction writer. Continue reading →

Reflections on Robotics

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Today is January 2, which is the birthday of Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). It’s the first of two birthday posts for this date. The other is Charles Beaumont.

Asimov needs no introduction, I’m sure. Some of his work is still in print, primarily the Foundation books (at least the early ones although I’m not sure about the later ones) and some of the robot stories. His other short fiction, both science fiction and mysteries, as well as his later science fiction novels that are stand-alones haven’t fared so well.

The Foundation series, along with some associated novels (The Stars LIke Dust, Pebble in the Sky, and The Currents of Space) are set in the far future. The robot stories were relatively near future at the time, a future that is now in our past. Not all of the robot stories directly connected to the main series which concerned scientist Susan Calvin. (Note to self: write an essay about Asimov’s choice of a female scientist as protagonist in the early forties.) Then, there were the novels featuring R. Daneel Olivaw, which were set a little further in the future and were a blend of detective and science fiction.

In the last few years of his life, Asimov connected the two series, bridging the near future Susan Calvin and R. Daneel Olivaw with the Foundation series. The wisdom of this decision could be open to question, but it’s been so long since I read some of those works, that I’ll refrain from comment.

He also cowrote some prequels to the Foundation series with some of the major science fiction writers of the early nineties. I’ve not read them and won’t mention them further in this post.

What I’d like to focus on here are the robot stories.

They were first collected in 1950 in I, Robot which was published by Gnome Press. That’s the cover above.  Some of them, especially the earlier stories in the book, are rather dated and don’t hold up well. Susan Calvin isn’t a character in the first few storeis. Once she makes an appearance, though, the quality increases. Remember, these are some of Asimov’s earliest stories. He was still learning his craft. Continue reading →