Category Archives: birthday

Jack Vance’s Demon Prince novels

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Today is August 28. There are a number of birthdays of note today [Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), Jack Kirby (1917-1994), and Vonda N. McIntyre (1948-2019)], but it’s late, I’m tired, and I still have things to do tonight.

So, I’m only going to look at one of today’s birthday authors, Jack Vance (1916-2013).

Vance was a master of science fiction and fantasy as well as a mystery author. I’ve not read nay of his mysteries, so I’m not sure what the quality of those are.

Judging by the first of the Demon Prince novels, which is a mystery to some extent, I suspect his mysteries are very good.

I’m going to focus on his quintet of space oepra novels, known as the Demon Prince novels. Continue reading →

Bradbury on Audio

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Todoay is August 22, the birthday of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). Gauntlet press has publsihed a collection of Bradbury stories that are the original versions of some that were revised before publication. I had hoped to showcase that book today, but the tracking on it shows it is still in Colorado.

I’ll do a post on it when it gets here.

Bradbury was one of the first fantasists I read as I transitioned from the kid section of the library to the adult section. I was in fifth or sixth grade (I think sixtsh) when we had a guest come to our English class and read “The Screaming Woman” to us from S is for Space. Over the next half dozen or so years, I read every Bradbury book I could get my hands on. Many of those books, I’ve not read since. The non-fantasy stuff didn’t really appeal to me. I hadn’t had enough life experience yet to get where Bradbury was coming from. Continue reading →

Four Writers and an Artist

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Today is August 21. It is the birthday of Miriam Allen de Ford (1888-1975), Anthony Boucher (1911-1968), Lucius Shephard (1943-2014), Ron Walotsky (1943-2002), and Warren Norwood (1945-2005). Here’s a quick look at each of them. I’ll save Walotsky for last and post some samples of his art work. Continue reading →

Forward and Sweet

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Today is August 15, and it is the birthday of Robert L. Forward (1932-2002) and Darrell K. Sweet (1934-2011). I’m going to do this birthday post a little different than most of them. I’m not going to simply give a few biographical and bliblographical facts with some comments on what the subject(s) of the post mean to me.

This will be more of a rumination on aging and nostalgia.This isn’t going to maudlin, I promise.

Continue reading →

Davis vs. Del Rey

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Today is August 12, the birthday of Chan Davis (1926-1922). Davis only wrote a handful fo science fiction stories from the forties up through the fifties with a few appearing later. I first read his story “Letter to Ellen” in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 9 (1947). I thought that would be a good story to feature. I remeber I read the story. I remember I liked it.

I didn’t remember a thing about it.

In the introduction to the story, Maratin H. Greenberg mentions that he thought Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy”, which thematically has some similarities to “Letter to Ellen” had kept Davis’s story from gettng the recognition it deserved.

So I decided to compare the two. Continue reading →

“Derelict” by Alan E. Nourse

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Today, August 11, is the birthday of Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992). Nourse wrote science fiction to help pay his way through medical school. He received his medical degree in the mid-fifties and continued to write science fiction for roughly a quarter century, from 1951 to the mid-seventies. He also wrote a number of nonfiction books on scienetific and medical topics. Most of these were written in the seventites, eighties, and nineties.

Nourse is pretty much forgotten these days, but he was well-respected when he was writing science fiction. Robert Heinlein dedicated his novel Farnham’s Freehold to Nourse. Heinlein also included Nourse’s wife Ann in his deication to Friday. Continue reading →

Ward Moore and “Lot”

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August 10 is the birthday of Ward Moore (1903-1978). Moore isn’t well remebered today. He only wroote or co-wrote four novels, two of them collaborations. One, Bring the Jubilee, is highly regarded as one of the first, and some say one of the best, alternate history novels in which the South won the Civil War.  I have no opinion on it since I haven’t read it.

He never had a collection, which is a shame, because he was one of those writers who, while not being a top-tier author, could write a solid story. The ISFDB lists twenty-eight piecies of short fiction by him, the most recent in 2024 in Last Dangerous Visions. A collection of all his short fiction sounds like a project for NESFA.

But I digress.

Aside from Bring the Jubilee, Ward Moore is best known as the author of “Lot” and its less well-known sequel, “Lot’s Daughter”.

“Lot” was published in the May 1953 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I’m not sure this story could be published today, as you’ll see below.

It’s a post-apocalypic riff on the Biblical story of Lot. Continue reading →

John Varley

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August 9, today as I write this, is the birhtday of John Varley (1947-2025). We lost him last December.

Varley was never really prolific, but over the course of about half a century, he wrote quite a bit of groundbreaking science fiction. His series about the Eight Worlds and about Anna-Louise Bach are favorites. (BTW, Varley has gone ofn record saying the two series are separate, although they have a lot of similarities.)

I first became aware of Varley when someone left a copy of the January 1979 issue of Analog in my homeroom class. The teacher let me have  it. It contained the first installment of the serialized version of Titan.It was more than a few years before I got my hands on the complete novel.

In the author profile, Varley said his two favorite science fiction writers were Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert. That made an impression on seventh grade me. I looked for books by those two authors.

If I can fit it, I’ll try to read one of the Anna-Louise bach stories later tonight.

Reflecting on Simak

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Today is August 3, the birthday of Clifford D.Simak (1904-1988). Simak primarily wrote science fiction, but he also wrote a few fantasy novels.

Simak was called the patoralist of science fiction. His books and stories were often set in a rural or small town setting, frequently in his native Wisconsin. His favorite themes involved robots and time travel.  While Simak could do dark when he wanted to, the majority of his stories were positive and optimistic. His characters tended to be common sense salt of the Earth people.

It’s been a few years since the last time I read any Simak. That’s partly because I’ve read more mysteries and thrillers in the last few years than science fiction or fantasy. I should try to read more Simak. His optimnism and likeable characters are a nice, refreshing change from some of the antiheroes and dark endings in so much of today’s fiction.