Tag Archives: birthday

Cleve Cartmill

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Today is June 21, the birthday of CleveCartmill (1908-1964).

Cartmill wrote science fiction in the forties and fifties. His first story, “Oscar”, was published in Unknown in 1941. His last was published in the mid-fifties. His most productive years were during teh Second World War. He didin’t have anything published from 1945 to 1949.

Cartmill would probably be completely forgotten these days if it weren’t for one particular story, “Deadline”, which was published in March 1944 issue of Astounding.

The story concerns the building of an atomic bomb.

One year before the first bomb was detonated. The Mahattan Project was going full swing at this time and was a very top secret project.

Legend has it that the FBI paid John Campbell a visit. Supposedly Campbell used a high school physics textbook to show them that everything in the story could be deduced logically from readily available information.

I don’t remember where I read it, but I saw something a number of years ago where a woman working for the ARmy at the time tried to check out that particular issue of Astounding from the base library and wasn’t allowed to because she didn’t have a high enough security clearance.

So, she went across the street from the base and bought a copy at a drug store or newstand or something.

That may not be a true story, but it’s a good story.

Sadly, Cartmill’s work isn’t easily available. There are a couple of ebooks, and that’s all I found. Darkside Press was going to publish all his short fiction about twenety years or so ago, but they only published one volume.

 

Remembering Kage Baker

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Today, as I write this, it is June 10. That makes it the birthday of Kage Baker (1952-2010). She had a short career. Her first story was published in 1997.

It’s been said that some people’s careers are so short because they are so bright. That was certianly the case with Kage Baker. Most of her work is set in a future called the Company future. The main part of the series involved immortal time-traveling cyborgs.

Can it get much better than that? Maybe, but there are many contenders. The series involves cyborgs working in the shadows of history. Things believed lost for years, manuscripts, paintings, artifacts, stuff like that, are suddenly found. Because a cyborg agent hid the item. They can do this because the item has vanished from the historical record. They don’t try to change the past.

The series has amultiple characters that interact throughout novels, movellas, and short stories. There is an overaching storyline. The cyborgs know that something is going to happen several hundred years from our present, but they don’t know what. The finale of the series is sthe big reveal.

She was beginning to write in other series than the Company and in spin-offs in the Company future after she brought the Company series to its conclusion. (I was disappointed with the finale.)

Kage Baker is one of my favorites. I had the pleasure of meeting her at Armadillocon 25 a few years before her death from a brain tumor.

Her work has mostly fallen out of print but should be available in electronic editions and on the secondary market. Kage Baker had a unique voice, and I’ve not read anyone like her before or since. She is one of the writers whose work I tend to buy when I come across even though I have most of her books in the original hardcovers. Reading copies are always welcome.

Remembering Keith Laumer

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Today, June 9, is the birthday of Keith Laumer (1925-1993). Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer back in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Laumer is best known for the Retief series about a two-fisted diplomat and the Bolo series about sentient tanks.

He is pretty much out of print these days. That’s a shame, because I think his nonseries work is some of his best, especially at shorter lengths.

One of Laumer’s favorite subgenres was time travel, and he wrote a number of time travel stories. Preeminent among them was Dinosaur Beach.

Laumer also tended to write military sceince fiction, which is a Duh! since he created the Bolos. He was friends with Gordon R. Dickson, and they collaborated on the novel Planet Run.

About twenty or so years ago, Baen reprinted many of Laumer’s works in omnibus editions edited by Eric Flint. Those are worth picking up if you can find them. That shouldn’t be hard. I jsut checked and found out I missed one. Picked it up for just under ten bucks.

Van Vogt Plus Gold

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Todayis April 26, the birthday of A. E. Van Vogt (1912-200) and Horace L. Gold (1914-1996).

Alfred Elton Van Vogt was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was one of the major writers of science fiction in the early forties. His best known work was published in Astounding. His two novels about the weapon makers of Isher are classics of libertarian science fiction.

Slan was a novel about mutants that fandom idnetified with. At conventions, tehy are reported to chant “Fans are Slans!” becuase they felt they were superior to ordinary people, whom they called “mundanes”.

Van Vogt also wrote a great deal of short fiction. He got involved in dianetics  for a while. His reputatoin as a writer never recovered when he caem back to writing. Baen published several omnibus collections of his works and Tachyon Press has a collection of his short stories in print.

Horace L. Gold started out as a writer (see my review of “The Trouble with Water”) who went on to be the first editor of Galaxy magazine from 1950 until 1961. It is in that capacity that he is remembered today. Gold’s run on Galaxy saw the publication of a number of stories by the biggest names in science fiction, stories that went on to be soncisered classics.

One habit Gold had that irked Fred Pohl to no end was his tendency to change the titles of stories.

Are there any stories Van Vogt wrote or that Gold published that you are paprticularly fond of? Or maybe not fond of?

Benson and Grafton

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Today is April 24, the birthday of A. C. Benson (1862-1925) and Sue Grafton (1940-2017).

Arthur Christopher Benson is the brother of R. H. Benson and E. F. Benson. All three wrote ghost stories. E. F. is the better known of the three. He was also the most prolific having enough to fill four or five collections. A. C. and R. H. have had their ghost stories published together in a single volume. Twice, as it turns out, although the ISFDB doesn’t list Ghosts in the House, published by Ash-Tree Press. That was the volume that introduced me to them.

It strikes me as odd that Ghosts in the House isn’t listed on the ISFDB under either A. C or R. H. Benson. They are usually more thorough than that.

But I digress.

All the Bensons wrote good ghost stories. They are, of course, in the classic English tradition. And well worth reading.

Sue Grafton created one of the first female private investigators in the character of Kinseu Milhone. The gimmick she used in selecting titles was to use the format Letter is for Someting. Her intention was to write twenty-six books, one for each letter of the alphabet. “Y” was the last volume she completed before her death.

I’ve only read a few of the short stories. I enjoyed them. I’ll be reading the novels. At the church garage sale a couple of weeks ago, my wife picked up most of the set. I’m not sure if she has all of them, but she has the first ones. That’s good enough for me.

RIP and Happy Birthday, Ian Watson

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I was checking to see if there were any folks I wanted to do a birthday post on. There were three, Donald Wandrei (1908-1987), Peter S. Beagle (b. 1939), and Ian Watson (1943-2026).

Wait, Ian Watson? I hadn’t realized Watson had died.

He passed away a week ago, on April 13. I checked Locus Online to see if I had missed their obituary. They posted it today. Today, Appril 20,  is his birthday.

Watson’s name may not be familiar to many of you. He was British, and he never seemed to catch on here in the States.

He wrote a number of novels, the most notable the Books of the Black Current series, as well as several in the Warhammer series. Watson was a prooific short story writer, as well as a poet. I first encountered his work in short form.  It’s been a number of years since I read his work, but it was always entertaining.

If you’ve not read him, Watson’s work is worth checking out. He had over 20 collections of his short fiction published. A number of his novels and collections are in print, many in affordable electronic editions.

Two by Kuttner

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Today, April 7, is the birthday of Henry Kuttner (1915-1958). I encountered his work in the Science Fiction Book Club edition of The Best of Henry Kuttner when I was fourteen. That was the perfect age for imprinting.

Kuttner has been my favorite writer ever since.

Some years ago, someway, somehow, I managed to score a copy of Kuttner’s first short story collection, A Gnome There Was, published under his pen name Lewis Padgett. These are stories he wrote in collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore. I don’t remember now how I obtained it. Legally, of course. Probably I found a copy online through ABE or somesuch site.

(The one I wish I had been able to buy was the copy of Robots Have No Tails that he inscribed to John W. Campbell, Jr. But the prpice was a grand, and that was over a quarter of a century ago. If I had had the money, I would have bought it. Alas, I didn’t have a spare thousand dollars sitting around. No telling what that book would go for today.)

But I digress.

It has been years since I read A Gnome There Was. It contains some of Kuttner’s best known and most reprinted stories, such as “Mimsy Were teh Borogorves”, “A Gnome There Was”,  “The Twonky”, “What You Need”, and two of the Hogben stories.

But it also contains some of the leasat reprinted stories, sotries that are just as good as the previously named. For this post, I’m going to look briefly at two of those stories, “The Cure” and “Rain Check”. Maybe I’ll look at some of the others in the future. Continue reading →

The Cunning of Robert Bloch

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First, Happy Easter to those who celebrate.

Today is April 5, which is the birthday of Robert Bloch (1917-1994). Bloch needs no introduction around these parts. Bloch will forever be known as the man who wrote Psycho. But his work encompassed so much more.

He was a member of the Lovecraft circle while he was still a teenager and much of his early work was pastiche. He would dabble in Mythos fiction off and on for most of his career. But Bloch was too talented a writer to lock himself into one genre.

He wrote science fiction humorous fantasy, and crime stories.

Today’s featured book is one of the latter, although the cover implies the book is supernatural horror.

It’s not, although there are ceertainly some horrific aspects to the book. Continue reading →

Weinbaum and Gallun

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One of hte most popular science fiction writers of the Pre-Campbell era was born today, April 4. I’m talking about Stanley G. Weinbaum (1902-1935).

Weinbaum’s career was short, not even two years before he died of cancer.

But in those two years he left an indelible mark on science fiction. During a time when aliens tended to fall intot he Bug eyed Monster trope more often than not, and when it was common for characters to consist of a scientist (mad  or otherwise) , his beautiful daughter, and the square jawed hero who exists to protect and serve as what passed for a love interest to the beautiful daughter, Weinbaum broke the mold. Continue reading →