Today, September 12, is the birthday of Charles L. Grant (1942-2006). He passed away on September 15, just three days after sixty-fourth birthday.
I never got the chance to meet him, but he is to my mind one of the central figures of the second half of the Twentieth Century.
Grant left a legacy to the fields of dark fantasy and suspense in two ways. With his writing and with his editing.
Let’s take a look at both, shall we? Continue reading
Today, March 1, marks the birthday of one of the more prolific, probably the most prolific, anthologist who ever compiled a table of contents. I’m talking about Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011).
There was a time when bookstore shelves were covered with anthologies in which Greenberg was the editor. Not all of them were science fiction, fantasy, or horror, either.
There mystery and crime anthologies, western anthologies, and other types as well. Even anthologies about cats. Continue reading
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
I’m involved in a conversation on Twitter in which the DAW Year’s Best Fantasy Stories series came up. The series was originally edited by Lin Carter followed by Arthur W. Saha. I’ve got most of them. I was thinking about reading through them and reviewing. Things should lighten up for a bit in about two weeks, once finals are over and I’ve gotten my grades in. I think I’ll have a little time.
But then I got to thinking. I’ve got several anthology series that might be of interest to readers of this blog. There’s the Swords Against Darkness edited by Andrew Ouffutt, Whispers (Stuart David Schiff), Shadows (Charles L. Grant), and Karl Edward Wagner’s Year’s Best Horror Stories from DAW.
I had been toying with the idea of reading through another DAW series, Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories when John O’Neill invited me to blog about the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. I haven’t ruled that one out, but it’s probably not one I want to tackle right now.
So what do you think? Would you like to see a series of posts on one of these anthology series? If so, which one?
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5
Jonathan Strahan, ed.
Night Shade Books
Trade Paperback, 500 p., $19.99
Publication scheduled for March 2011
A few weeks ago, I looked at the table of contents in Rich Horton’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011. At the time, I commented on the proportion of selections published in electronic venues as opposed to print venues and speculated as to what the percentage would be in the other annual “Bests”. Since Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is due out in March, I particularly wondered about that one. Night Shade Books had posted a page for the anthology but had not (and still hasn’t) listed the contents. Oldcharliebrown posted a comment (thank you) informing me Strahan had listed his ToC on his website. Why I didn’t think to look there, I don’t know. Anyway, Strahan, unlike Horton, didn’t list the publications for his selections. Rather than reproduce the list myself, you can find it here. I spent a little time last night looking them up, and here’s what I found.
Strahan selected 29 stories, with 6 duplicating Rich Horton’s selections. Those stories are the ones by Broderick, Hand, Landis, Parker, Swirsky, and Watts. This isn’t surprising, since each year there are a handful of stories that make all, or nearly all, the annual “Best” lists. The good thing is that there are so few duplicates. I think that shows a healthy variety in the science fiction and fantasy fields. What is a little surprising is that four of those were published electronically, with three coming from Subterranean.
Anyway, of these 29, 13 were published in electronic format, or 44.5 %. That’s slightly lower than Horton’s53.5%, but still a respectable portion from electronic media. Of those 13, Subterranean was the big winner, with five selections. Strange Horizons was next with three, and Apex followed with two. Strahan selected one each from Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and shareable.net. The electronic venues not represented that were most surprising were Fantasy magazine and Tor.com. Horton chose four stories from Fantasy and one from Tor. Clearly the editors have different tastes.
Where Strahan’s selections really get interesting to me is the print sources for his selections. He picked one story each from eight different anthologies, plus two from Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. One story was published as a chap book, and the remaining five came from magazines, with four from Asimov’s and one from F&SF. As in the Horton anthology, no stories were selected from Analog, nor were any from Interzone, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, or Postscripts, although Postscripts is now an anthology rather than a print magazine. I don’t remember if they made the change this past year or the previous one; probably the previous. Time slips away when you start getting older. And given the problems RoF had this past year, it’s not surprising to see that publication’s absence.
It seems to me that the print magazines haven’t done too well this year in terms of getting tapped for Year’s Best anthologies. While Asimov’s appears to be something of an exception, on the whole they seem to be taking a pounding from the electronic and anthology markets. At least Analog certainly is. Being a hard science kind of guy, that disturbs me a little, but that’s a topic too large for this post. I’m not sure that’s an entirely bad thing from the standpoint of good markets and good fiction being published, whatever the format. Of course, the Hartwell/Cramer and Dozois volumes are still to come, and I’m sure there will be one or two others that will pop up. It will be interesting to see where these volumes draw their choices.
This is the first year I’ve looked closely at the publication sources for any of the Year’s Best collections, at least from a pseudo-statistical standpoint. I have both the Horton and Strahan titles going back to their inceptions, so I could take a closer look (if I can find the time). It would be fun to look at just when the electronic venues began to make such inroads on the print media.
And for those you haven’t seen it but might be interested, Lois Tilton summarized the short fiction markets at Locus Online recently. I’ll not comment on what she says because she reads far more widely than I have time to, and I don’t see the point in potentially starting an argument that I’m not well enough informed on. I’ll just say she brings up some good points about the same venues producing the best quality.
Earlier this year I’m looking around on the Black Gate website when I find this posting. Seems some outfit called Rogue Blades Entertainment is running a special promotion in conjunction with Black Gate. If you buy a subscription to Black Gate, new or renewal, you get your choice of one of three anthologies for only ten bucks (plus tax and shipping). The ad (reproduced here) showed a gorgeous young thing reading a copy of one of the anthologies. I’d say this is my kind of woman, but my wife might read this so I’ll refrain.
I was needing to renew my subscription anyway, so I took advantage of the offer. The three anthologies offered were Return of the Sword, Rage of the Behemoth, and Roar of the Crowd. We’ll look at the first two in this post. Roar of the Crowd is forthcoming. Since I had picked up a signed copy of Return of the Sword from one of the contributors at a Conestoga a few years ago, I went with Rage of the Behemoth. I then had a decision to make. RotB comes with five different covers. I chose the one with the Gryphon.
Rage of the Behemoth
Jason M. Waltz, ed.
Rogue Blades Entertainment
343 p., $17 paper, $8 PDF
The cover at the left is a composite of all five. The book is divided into five different geographical regions, each with its own cover illustration. You pick which cover you want when you order the book. The geographies are Frozen Wastes, Scalding Sands, Depthless Seas, Mysterious Jungles, and Ageless Mountains.
So the book arrives, and I peruse the table of contents. There are 21 stories. Most of the authors’ names at the time were unfamiliar to me. Now several of the names are of people whose work I am going to be actively seeking out. More on them in a minute. At the time, though, I only saw a few familiar bylines: Mary Rosenblum, Brian Ruckley, Richard K. Lyon and Andrew J. Offut, Lois Tilton, Bill Ward. So I figure that the stories by the more well known writers will probably be pretty good and so will some of the others, but that there will be a few dogs thrown into what would probably be a mediocre mix.
I’m glad to say I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong. There were no dogs. Every single story in the book is well told, professionally executed, and worth reading. Sure, there were some I didn’t like as much as others, but with 21 tales, what do you expect? And no, I’m not going to say which ones I liked least. Your list will undoubtedly be different from mine. The point is, I liked them all, something that usually doesn’t happen in a volume containing so many selections. With this many stories, there will be something for everyone.
The stories range across a variety of landscapes and tones. Some are serious, some grim, others fun larks. All are entertaining and feature characters we can care about. There are few cardboard people here. The vast majority live and breathe. The diversity of monsters is amazing. There are manticores, giant snakes, gryphons, dragons, sea monsters, and unclassifiables. This was one of the best and most fun anthologies of fantasy adventure I’ve read in a long time. It set a very high standard for the rest of the publisher’s line.
Return of the Sword
Jason M. Watlz, ed.
Rogue Blades Entertainment
329 p., $17 paper, $8 PDF
This was the first anthology Rogue Blades published, before it was even Rogue Blades. My copy says “Flashing Swords Presents” rather than the 2nd printing’s “Rogue Blades Presents”. Again, 21 stories, including a reprint by Harold Lamb. That alone is reason to buy the book. Fortunately, that’s not the only reason. There are 20 more. While I thought RotB was a slightly stronger anthology, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this one at all. Again, professionally executed stories, characters we care about, exciting adventure.
The focus of this volume is heroes, who they are, what sets them apart, how they come to be heroes, how they stay heroes. The editorial introductions help set the tone and provide at times some surprisingly thought provoking commentary on the stories while never spoiling any of the details. If you’re looking for action and adventure, especially with some depth, this is the book for you. Or for someone you know who really likes to sink their teeth (or fangs) into a really good action yarn. Some of the contributors are in RotB as well, but there are some others that only show up here, such as E. E. Knight and Angeline Hawkes. James Enge provides an adventure of Morlock the Maker, his only appearance in an RBE volume so far..
Demons
Jason M. Waltz, ed.
Rogue Blades Entertainment
224 p., $13 paper, $6 PDF
This is the most recent anthology by Rogue Blades. It’s a little different from the others. First of all, some of the stories were originally published in Clash of Steel: Demons by Carnifax Press. Rogue Blades, as editor Jason Waltz explains in his introduction, continued the Clash of Steel series and expanded the volume when Carnifax folded. The layout is a little different than the other books. Except for the first page of each story, the text is double columned, and the font on the story titles reminds me of the titles of 1950s horror movies. Not that I’m complaining; I rather enjoyed that, especially the font used in the titles. It’s just different enough from the other books that it stood out. If I had any gripe about the layout, it would be the print is a little smaller and my eyes aren’t getting any younger. But that’s a minor point.
I found this volume to be a somewhat weaker than the other two we’ve talked about. I’m not sure why that is. Part of the reason my be that I was trying to read the book during finals week, and as a result I didn’t read through it as fast I otherwise would have. I find not making progress on a book to be one of the most frustrating things I can experience. Maybe because this was a project started by another publisher, the tone was different or something. Thematically, this book was less appealing to me than RotB or RotS. Demons aren’t a subject I actively seek to read about, in part because of my religious background, in part because there’s only so much that can be done with them before you realize you’ve read this story before. Same with vampires. Or zombies. Or any other monster/creature/trope that’s well defined.
Anyway, for whatever reason, I didn’t find quite the variety I found in the other books. Several of the stories seemed to be similar in theme or content. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy them. I did. Just not as much as I did the other books. Considering how much I was impressed by RotB or RotS, though, that’s not as damning (pardon the pun) as it sounds. This was still a solid anthology with a lot of good fantasy in it. Or to put it another way, this book is better than most of the theme anthologies that come out each year, including those of a certain major publisher. You know the one.
Anyway, to sum up. Rogue Blades Entertainment is an excellent publisher with a line of consistently high quality product. One thing exceptionally good is that Jason Waltz is open to new writers. At the moment, he’s not reading for any anthology I’m aware of. Assassins just closed its reading period. Discovery and Roar of the Crowd are the next two anthologies to be published and should be coming out soon. They’re the next two volumes in my subscription, so I’ll let you know when my copies arrive.
What’s that? I didn’t mention the subscriptions? Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Let me rectify that error. Rogue Blades has a subscription program. There are a couple of different options, a three book and a five book plan. You can start your subscription with any book, so long as at least one of the books hasn’t been published when you order. Plus there are some good deals that don’t involve subscriptions.
Now, as I was saying before I got sidetracked about the subscriptions. These anthologies are a potential market for new writers. That doesn’t mean that the writing is poor. Occasionally, it might be in spots, but Waltz has high standards, and professionalism is the norm. He cares deeply about the genre, and it shows. The result is anthologies that are as good or better than what New York is publishing. Furthermore, I predict that if some of these folks keep writing, they will be major players in the future. For that to happen, they need markets.
Who are some of these people? I hesitate a little to answer that question for a couple of reasons. One, I don’t want to try to predict the future. To do so is a sure fire way to get egg on your face. Second, I don’t want to overlook anyone. That could happen for three reasons. The first is a story might not have worked for me when I read it for reasons that don’t always have to do with the story, such as fatigue, environment while reading, interruptions, etc. Under other circumstances, I might have loved it. The second is my brain, like my eyes, isn’t getting any younger, and the memory is starting to go. I don’t remember the third reason.
Anyway, a short list of authors I want to read more of. This list is, for the record, open to change, mainly in the form of additions. In no particular order: Bruce Durham, Frederick Tor, Bill Ward, Jeff Stewart, C. L. Werner, Jonathan Moeller, and Michael Ehart. Ehart has written two novels, one of which is available from RBE. I plan to pick it up next year after my cash flow has recovered from the holidays.
There are not enough markets for sword and sorcery. The ones we have need to be supported, especially the ones that publish good work. I’ve mentioned before that sword and sorcery appears to be in the beginning of a renaissance similar to what space opera has gone through. Rogue Blades is at the forefront of that renaissance.