Thoughts on the Retro Hugos and a Question

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The nominees for the Retro Hugos were announced yesterday. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are given for the best science fiction or fantasy for the previous year, only for a year 75 years prior. In this case, it’s the 1945 Retro Hugos for the works from 1944. Here are the fiction nominees. I’m not going to worry about editors, artists, fanzines, or any of the other categories. I’ll have a few things to say below the list, as well as a question for you. Continue reading →

Wearing The Mask of Circe

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The Mask of Circe
Henry Kuttner
ebook $7.99
Originally published in Startling Stories, May 1948

Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was one of the most prolific authors of the fantastic in the 1940’s. Or rather I should say he was half of one of the most prolific writing duos, the other half being his wife, C. L. Moore. Kuttner was born on this date, April 7.

(As an aside, I asked on Twitter if anyone had any suggestions as to what I should read for today, and the only response I got was “C. L. Moore”. And while pretty much everything they wrote after their marriage was a collaboration, for this birthday post, I’m focusing on things published under Kuttner’s byline. I will be doing a post of Moore’s Judgment Night in the near future.)

Today we’re going to look at an example of Kuttner’s science fantasy. The Mask of Circe was published in what was supposed to be a science fiction magazine, so there is some hand waving to keep it from being pure fantasy. Continue reading →

Robert Bloch’s “The Miracle of Ronald Weems”

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The great Robert Bloch (1917-1994) was born on this date, April 5. He was a master of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery. Fated to always be known as “The Man Who Wrote Psycho“, he wasn’t just a master of thrills and chills. He was a master of comedy.

I’m going to have to apologize up front for this post. I normally try to review something that is either in print or easy to come by in case anyone is interested in reading the story or book I’m reviewing.

I wanted to read something a bit longer than a short story, and I wanted to read something lighter in tone. There’s enough horror on the news right now, and my wife won’t turn it off.

“The Miracle of Ronald Weems” was just the thing I needed. It was funny, with several types of humor including wordplay, puns, and slapstick. Bloch’s sense of humor aligns very well with my own, and I chuckled more than once. There are few writers who can get me to do that.

Unfortunately this story, which was originally published in Imaginative Tales in the May 1955 issue, has only been reprinted once. That was in The Lost Bloch Volume Two: Hell on Earth, a limited edition book that was published in 2000. A quick search of ABE showed only one copy available. So if you don’t want to read the rest of this post, I understand. Continue reading →

Having Fun in Merth

“Beyond the Black River: Is It Really “Beyond the Brazos River”? Part 3

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This is the third of a three part series of guest posts by John Bullard. Before I turn the blog over to John, I would like to take a moment and thank him for all the work he has done not only researching and writing this series, but his editing of the Howard letters for the next edition of the collected letters. It’s this type of behind the scenes efforts that often go unacknowledged. So John, on behalf of Howard fans and scholars everywhere, thank you.

Click the links to read Part 1 and Part 2. Be advised there are spoilers.

Now here’s John.

In Part 2, we saw some of the historical Texans and their stories that Howard used to base incidents in his story “Beyond the Black River” on, hereinafter referred to as BBR. We also saw that Howard’s life-long love of talking to and learning these stories from old people he would meet saturated his thoughts and dreams, leading him to create other incidents and characters in the story. In this final part, we will see the one story that influenced Howard the most in writing BBR, and then his use of historical people that his ancestors interacted with from family histories which he used to flesh out his story. Finally, we’ll see his use of a famous incident in Texas history to bring BBR to an end, clearly showing that BBR was indeed a story about the settlement of Texas, and not a story taken from the American Colonial wars with the Eastern First Nations. Continue reading →

“Beyond the Black River”: Is It Really “Beyond the Brazos River”? Part 2

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What follows is a guest post by John Bullard. Take it away, John. And by the way, there are spoilers. You have been warned.

In Part One, we began to examine the historical incidents and people from Texas history that Howard used in creating his story, “Beyond the Black River”, hereinafter abbreviated as BBR, grounding the tale as a story about the settling of Texas and not about the American Colonists fighting with the Eastern First Nations. We saw that Howard was particularly interested in the history of the settlement of Comanche lands in Central and North Central Texas by Anglo settlers, and started using the long years of conflict as the foundation for his creating his Conan story of “Beyond the Black River”. He used the general geography of the Texas lands bounded by the Trinity and Brazos rivers and transposed it into the woodland setting of the story bounded by the Thunder and Black rivers. Finally, it was shown that Howard used the actual incident of the destruction of Fort Parker by the Comanche and Kiowa in 1836 as the destruction of the fictional Fort Tuscelan in “Beyond the Black River”. Now, we will look at some of the peoples and stories of Texans fighting for survival against the Comanches who were waging their own war to keep their lands. Continue reading →

“Beyond the Black River”: Is it Really “Beyond the Brazos River”? Part 1

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What follows is a guest post by John Bullard. It is the first of three parts and contains spoilers for Robert E. Howard’s “Beyond the Black River”.

Weird Tales, May 1935, first installment of “Beyond the Black River”

Robert E. Howard’s Conan story, “Beyond the Black River” is considered to be one of his best stories by his fans. It tells of an attack by Howard’s favorite historical peoples, the Picts, against the encroaching colonization of the Aquilonians on the Picts’ deeply forested land between the Thunder River to the East, and the Black River to the west in his fictional Hyborian world setting. It is well-known that Robert E. Howard used historical events, people, places, and the stories of people he knew to help inspire his writing, giving his stories a grounding in realism that stories just made up from whole cloth may sometimes lack. In “Beyond the Black River”, Howard used his knowledge of Texas’s history and people, as well as his family’s history, to make the story as realistic as possible in a fantasy setting. Continue reading →

A Journal of the Plague Year

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OK, so here’s how things stand. I’ve put off writing this post for a couple of days because things keep changing. I finally said the heck with it, things are gonna change constantly. If I wait, the post will never get written. Continue reading →

Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”

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British author Algernon Blackwood was born on this date, March 14, in 1869. Blackwood was a major influence on many writers of the weird tale in the early years of the 20th Century, including H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

Along with “The Willows”, “The Wendigo” is one of Blackwood’s best known tales.

It concerns a group on a moose hunting expedition in the Canadian wilderness. A psychiatrist, his nephew, two guides, and a cook are having no luck on their hunt, so they decide to split up. The uncle and his guide go west, the nephew and his guide canoe across the lake they are camped by and hike some distance to another lake, and the cook stays in the base camp await their return. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Novalyne

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Robert E. Howard’s girlfriend, Novalyne Price Ellis, was born on this date, March 9 in 1908. She passed away on March 30, 1999.

Her memoir, One Who Walked Alone, detailing her relationship with Howard, is one of the major sources of information about Bob’s life. Howard fans and scholars owe her a debt of gratitude for writing it.

If’ you’ve never read the book, I suggest you get your hands on a copy. It’s well worth your time.

One Who Walked Alone was the basis of the film The Whole Wide World, which starred Vincent D’Onofrio and an unknown-at-the-time actress named Renee Zellweger. (It was released a few months before Jerry McGuire.) It’s a fairly faithful adaptation and worth watching.

There have been two editions of One Who Walked Alone, the second published to coincide with the film and having a picture of Zellweger on the cover. The first edition is the one shown to the left. Both editions were published by Donald M. Grant.

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