Today, December 9, is Margaret Brundage’s birthday. She was born in 1900 and passed away in 1976. Since I have a few minutes before I have to start giving final exams (rescheduled due to snow), here are a few of her covers for Weird Tales.
I made reference to a medical situation the other day. Things have developed to the point I can say something with certainty.
My wife went in for her annual mammogram a couple of weeks ago. They can do these things in 3-D now. They can tilt, rotate, and spin the image with just a click of the mouse. Ain’t video game technology grand?
There was a small spot that wasn’t there last year. They did an MRI and a biopsy. My post was from the day before the biopsy when we met with the doctor. The results of the biopsy came back yesterday afternoon. It’s cancer.
We’ll meet with the doctor on Monday and have an appointment on the 18th with the surgeon who’ll perform the lumpectomy. At this point, no one is freaking out. They caught it early, and I expect they’ll be able to get everything. We’ll know for sure on Monday, but the nurse told my wife she should expect to beat this and that she wasn’t going to die.
So that’s what’s going on. I’m not sure who this is going to affect things. I’ll probably miss some work here and there. I’m still waiting on the university to tell me when (or if) they’re going to send me to inspect the labs at the new Costa Rica campus. Depending on the timeline we get on Monday, I may cancel that whether the university likes it or not. Blogging, reading, and writing? That remains to be seen. I may blog everyday or multiple times a day just to have an outlet for stress. I may drop off the radar for an extended period of time.
Right now, we’re doing fine, although a little tense. I’ll post updates as we learn more things or if there’s a big shift is the situation.
Leigh Brackett was born on this date, December 7, in 1915. I’m not sure what I can say about her that I haven’t said before. Today is the first day of final exams and I just sent the last of over 2000 lab grades to the lecture instructors, so I haven’t had a chance to read anything by her or come up with a good angle for a birthday tribute.
Or to put it another way, consider this post a placeholder. I’ll try to read a Brackett story I haven’t read before or reread since I was a teenager and post a review sometime in the next week or so.
Until then, lift a glass in her memory and read one of her stories. You’ll be glad you did.
Today has been…a day. I’ll go into detail later when I have actual information. Because of some personal things, I almost missed two birthdays today.
Karl Edward Wagner was born on December 4, 1945. He’s no stranger around these here parts. Creator of the legendary Kane, a first tier horror author, and an editor who strove to make Robert E. Howard’s Conan available in affordable editions rather than the bowdlerized stories that were available in the late 70s, editor of the Year’s Best Horror anthologies for DAW, and cofounder of Carcosa Press, Karl Edward Wagner casts a long shadow over the field.
I need to read more Wagner. There’s still quite a bit out there that I haven’t read, including some Kane.
The other author, Cornell Woolrich, didn’t write much in the way of the fantastic, but he’s still a writer you’re going to want to read. Born in 1903, Woolrich wrote mysteries and suspense, a number with macabre overtones. The first Woolrich novel I ever read, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, is about a millionaire who is told by a gypsy fortune teller that he will die at the mouth of a lion. And then a lion escapes from a circus…
Both of these men should be in your libraries. Check them out.
Tolkien was the subject of yesterday’s post. He was a member of the famed group of writers known as the Inklings. Another Inkling was Tolkien’s close friend C. S. Lewis, who was born this day, November 29, in the year 1898. In light of yesterday’s post, I thought the above quote was quite appropriate.
Clive Staples Lewis was the author of The Chronicles of Narnia as well as The Space Trilogy and a few shorter works of the fantastic. Most of his writing was nonfiction and dealt with theology.
Like Tolkien, Lewis has been a target of criticism for years, albeit for his nonfiction as much as for his fiction. Damn these dead white heterosexual men for letting their worldviews influence the fiction they wrote. Unless of course it’s this week’s approved worldview.
I’m getting really sick of that type of attitude. I’ve not read all of the Narnia books. After I finish reading Tolkien that I haven’t read yet or rereading Tolkien that I have, I think I’ll read the rest instead of something published recently. Just to show how woke I am. Besides, simiply from a craft perspective, Tolkien and Lewis were better stylists than most writers working today.
In case you’ve missed it, a science fiction and fantasy writer of some small critical acclaim (he won a Nebula a while back and has taught at a high end writer’s workshop) has made statements saying Tolkien was racist. His evidence? Orcs, according to this writer, represent black people.
Personally, I think it’s racist to compare orcs to any race. This is fantasy, and there are a number of races in Tolkien’s works. Hobbits, elves, humans, dwarves. What ethnic group are they supposed to represent?
I think part of this is an attempt to drum up publicity because he as a new collection out. (I’m not going tell you who he is because I don’t want to give him any publicity.) Remember, this is a writer of some critical acclaim. In other words, he hasn’t published any novels and isn’t making a living from his writing.
I know it’s fashionable to attack the giants of the genre. It’s how you get a seat at the cool kids’ table. Personally, considering who some of the cook kids in the field are, I have no desire to sit at their table.
I do feel an urge to reread Tolkien, and the holiday break is coming. Tolkien is one of the masters of the form, and one who will be remembered long after many of the so called cool kids will be long forgotten.
“A Sending of Serpents”
First Published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1979
Collected in The Purple Pterodactyls
L. Sprague de Camp was born today, November 27, in 1907. Today would have been his eleventy-first birthday.
Rather than rehash biographical details, you can see last year’s post for that, I thought I would take a look at one of de Camp’s short stories. Last year I looked at three of de Camp’s short pieces the day after his birthday, but this year I’ve only got time for the one.
In the mid to late 70s de Camp published a series of short stories about W. Wilbury Wilson, a middle aged banker who has a number of fantastic adventures. Many of them were published in Fantasy & Science Fiction. It may be nostalgia, but I think that period in F&SF‘s history was one of its high points. I found about a seven year run covering that time period in a second hand shop when I was in high school, but that’s a post for another day. Continue reading
Haffner Press announced earlier today via email newsletter that The Complete John the Balladeer will be released next year at the 2019 World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles. The cover on the left may not be the final cover. This will be a two volume set containing all the short stories as well as the five novels. The novels have been out of print since the middle of the 1980s and are hard to come by.
The current preorder price is $90 for the two volume set.
The newsletter also said all but one or two of the outstanding projects will be published this year. I hope that turns out to be the case.
Regardless, I thought some of you would be interested. I don’t normally do two posts in one day, but this was announced today. I have something else planned for tomorrow.
Yesterday, November 25, was Poul Anderson’s 92nd birthday. I was traveling and didn’t get a chance to post anything.
This year I want to briefly mention to of his fantasy novels. The first is The Broken Sword. I read this one a few years ago, back when I was doing the posts on the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series over at Black Gate. For the most part, I was reading the series in order of publication, and The Broken Sword was the next on the list. For a number of reasons, not the least of which was time, I never wrote the post.
I’ve thought from time to time about restarting those posts here, but time constraints aside, it would just be too much like work.
I do intend to reread The Broken Sword next year and blog about it here. When exactly that will happen, I don’t know. Things should slow down, as the faculty members who have been out with health problems this semester will be back, meaning I won’t be teaching the load I’ve had this semester. On the other claw, I’ve just been added to two committees by the new department chair, so I hesitate to make any predictions or commitments I might not be able to keep.
I will say that I really enjoyed The Broken Sword, although I found it to be quite dark. Since it’s inspiration was Norse legend, that was quite fitting. It’s got that tragic tone to it that’s found in so much of the Northern folklore. I’m looking forward to reading it again.
The other work is one I don’t know a whole lot about and haven’t read. It’s Three Hearts and Three Lions. This is another fantasy, one in which, a modern man finds himself in medieval times or at least a medieval world in which the creatures of fantasy are real and magic works. What little I’ve heard about it has been positive. It’s another one I’m looking forward to reading.
Anderson also wrote some other novels and short stories set in the viking era. I’ll try to work those in as I can.
On this day, November 24, in 1882, E. R. Eddison was born. I did a post on him, plus T. O’Connor Sloane, Evangeline Walton, and Forrest J. Ackerman last year. This year I’m just going to focus on Eddison.
Eric Rucker Eddison was a major influence on J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Others who have praised his work include James Branch Cabell, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Robert Silverberg, and Clive Barker.
Eddison’s Zimiamvian Trilogy (Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate) plus The Worm Ouroborus is available in an electronic omnibus edition (currently $7.99). These books aren’t light reading. I read The Worm Ouroboros when I was in college or maybe high school. I don’t remember much of it, other than it was complicated and densely written and that I enjoyed it. I’ve not read any of the other books, although I’ve had copies for years.
I bought the full set in electronic format earlier today. I’m going to try to read all of them over the next year, probably one a quarter.
Eddison also wrote two vikings inspired books, Styrbiorn the Strong and Egil’s Saga.