No matter whose house you’re at this year, have a Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, 2015
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Blogging Leigh Brackett: “The Vanishing Venusians”
This was the second Leigh Brackett story I ever read. How do I remember that detail? Easy, it’s the second story in The Best of Leigh Brackett, which was the first Brackett book I ever read (in the SFBC edition you see there). And in those days, I read anthologies and collections in order. This was still a few years before I went through my read-anthologies-backwards phase.
I found the story to be powerful, with the image of snow capped mountains in the distance to be a powerful one. I still find the story powerful today.
Note: there will be spoilers after the “Read More” break. Continue reading
Checking In
No, I haven’t forgotten I said I was going to do more posts on Leigh Brackett, starting with “The Vanishing Venusians”. Things have been total chaos. My son has had multiple band concerts, I’ve had the crud, there was a funeral to attend, a student disciplinary hearing on a Title IX case, a night at a hotel due to a plumbing issue (that required more than one visit from the plumber), and various other things to deal with. I’ve been a bit distracted.
I’ll be back to posting in the next day or so. I’ve got several titles to discuss across more than one blog.
Just so you know.
Happy Birthday, Margaret Brundage
Margaret Brundage was born on this date in 1900. Brundage gain fame, some would say infamy, illustrating covers for Weird Tales in the 1930s. She was born Margaret Hedda Johnson and was married briefly married to “Slim” Brundage, a painter with radical politics. The had one son. I guess that means the rumor I heard that she used her daughters for models isn’t true.
The best way to honor Brundage is to show examples of her work. Since the illustrations won’t be to everyone’s taste, and some folks get offended waayy too easily these days, the illustrations will be after the “Continue Reading” break. What follows may not be approriate for youonger readers and the uptight. There’s a reason she’s been called “Margaret Bondage.” Continue reading
Happy 100th Birthday, Leigh Brackett
So today is the centennial of Leigh Brackett’s birth. If you’ve paid any attention to this blog in the last few weeks, you know that I’ve been making a big deal of that and will continue to do so.
Some of you good people might be wondering: So just who was this Leigh Brackett person and why was she so important?
I’m glad you asked. Continue reading
RIP, Jon Arfstrom 1928-2015
Jon Afrstrom passed away December 2. He was believed to be the last surviving artist to work on the original Weird Tales. While he wasn’t as well known as Margaret Brundage or J. Allen St. John, Jon Arfstrom created several striking covers in the final years of the magazine, such as the one shown on the right, which from January 1952. This was his first cover.
In recent years he’d returned to fantasy art and provided cover art for publishers such as Haffner Press and Fedogan & Bremer among others. He was the artist on the Stoker Award winning collection The Early Fears by Robert Bloch.
Fortunately, Arfstrom was a guest at PulpFest 2015. You can see an interview with him here.
Brackett and Bradbury: “Lorelei of the Red Mist”
This is a unique item. The only collaboration between two great science fiction authors, Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury. Here’s how it came about:
Both authors were living in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s, and both had been working hard to develop their craft as writers. Both were regulars in Planet Stories at the time. They were friends who had both been mentored by Henry Kuttner. They used to meet once a week to read and critique each other’s work.
Brackett had sold some detective short stories as well as one novel, No Good From a Corpse. The novel caught the attention of movie producer Howard Hawks, who decided he wanted Brackett to work on the screenplay for his next project. She was approximately halfway through a novellette she was writing for Planet Stories that was set on Venus (More about Brackett’s Venus in a bit.) when she got a call from Hawks, or more probably his secretary. Which is how Brackett launched her screenwriting career by coauthoring with William Faulkner the script for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. How freakin’ cool is that? Continue reading
In the Deep and Dark December
I’m not a huge Simon and Grafunkle fan, but I couldn’t help but steal the title of this post from “I am a Rock”. Here are my reading/writing/blogging plans for the last month of the year.
Leigh Brackett
The big thing is that Leigh Brackett’s birthday is next Monday, December 7. It’s her centennial, and I’ll be focusing a lot on her work this month. I’m not the only one. Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward will be discussing “The Moon the Vanished”, one of her novellas set on a swampy Venus next Monday on Howard’s blog. Click here for details and join the discussion. I’m not going to be discussing that particular story here, but I will take some detailed looks at some others. I’m probably going to start with “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, which she began and Ray Bradbury finished when Howard Hawks offered her a job writing the screenplay to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep with William Faulkner. You can get electronic copies of both stories in Swamps of Venus from Baen ($4), or get the Solar System bundle for $20. Continue reading
Don’t Go “Back There in the Grass”
“Back There in the Grass”
Gouverneur Morris
It and Other Stories
ebook, various editions
No, that’s not a misspelling. Gouverneur Morris (the first one from the American Revolution) was named after his Dutch mother’s family. He was the John F. Kennedy of his day, meaning he, um, got around.
This one is his great grandson, who was a magazine writer in the early 20th century. To my knowledge he didn’t write much in the way of the fantastic. I read a couple of the other stories in It, including the title story (which was a disappointment), but they were all they type of mainstream things you would find in the upper tier magazines before the Great Depression.
I’d first read “Back There in the Grass” when I was a teenager in one of the Alfred Hitchcock Anthologies (Stories for Late at Night) in the school library or that I’d acquired from a garage sale. The story has stayed with me all these years. I came across a reference of Morris in a book I was reading the other day, and decided to see if I could find some electronic copies of his work.
There’s a danger in rereading stories you haven’t read since your youth; too often they don’t live up to your memory of them. I’m glad to say that wasn’t the case here. Continue reading
A Review of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 26
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 26 is now online. This issue contains three pieces of fiction as well as three poems. I found this particular issue to be one of the more enjoyable issues of HFQ in quite a while. The stories are certainly among the best HFQ has published. Continue reading