Tag Archives: birthday

Frank Belknap Long

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Today (April 27) marks the birthday of one of the Lovecraft Circle, Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994).

Long is probably best remembered today for his Lovecraftian fiction, but he also wrote sceincde fiction as well as fantasy and weird horror. He also wrote gothic romances in the seventies under the name Lydia Belkanp Long. For those who may not be familair with this subgenre of romance, the covers usually featured a beautiful young woman with great hair, often in a night dress, running from a castle or other large structure with a sinle light high in a tower. When I was a kid, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting one. Tastes and times have changed, and  you never see them anymore.

But I digress. Continue reading →

Van Vogt and Gold

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Crud. I failed to hit PUBLISH last night. I know today is the 27th.

Today is April 26, and it is the birthday of two men who were once major figures in the field. One was a writer, and the other, while he did write fiction, was the editor of one of the major magazines.

A. E. Van Vogt and H. L. Gold.

I’ll start with van Vogt. He was one of the major writers for John W. Campbell’s Astounding in the 1940s. The quote on the left is from one of his best known works, the two novel series The Weapon shops of Isher and The Weapon Makers. I’ve not read those yet, but they’ve been in the queue for a while.

Van Vogt is also well known for such classics as The Voyage of the Space Beagle and Slan. The Voyage of the Space Beagle is a fix-up novel about a spaceship exploring the galaxy and the different alien lifeforms its crew encounters.

I read Slan in high school (junior high/middle school ?) It’s about mutants who are persecuted because they are the next step in human evolution. It was extremely popular in its day. Not too long after publication, the slogan “Fans are Slans” entered the fandom lexicon. I’m not sure if it’s still there or not. Van Vogt has been out of print for years. I doubt many of the younger readers have heard of him, much less read his work.

He didn’t write during the fifties due to his involvement with Dianetics. I’m not going to get into that.

In the sixities, seventies, and eighties,  he resumed writing, but he was never as successful as he was in the forties. Much fo his work, new and old, was in print when I was in junior high and high school. Van Vogt’s name was a prominent one then.

The last van Vogt collection, Transgalactic from Baen, was nearly twenty years ago. He has pretty much been out of print since then. When NESFA Press published their large collection, Transfinite: The Essential A. E. van Vogt, in 2003, I bought it. The stories in it were quite good.

I also got  my hands on some of his later paperback collections, which unfortunately not only weren’t very good, many of the stories were unreadable.

The other birthday today is Horace L. Gold.

Gold wrote a decent number of shosrt stories in the thirties and early forties. Most of those have never been collected.  A few were included in Some Die Rich.  His best known piece of short fiction is probably “The Trouble With Water.” Gold resumed writing short fiction in the fifties.

But it was as an editor that Gold had his greatest impact. While editing Galaxy in the fifites, he published many stories that would go on to become classics. One of the most prominent of these was The Space Merchants by Fred Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth.

Gold’s emphasis was on social science fiction, for lack of a better term. This was a departure from the technological emphasis of John W. Campbell, Jr., at Astounding.

Fletcher Pratt

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Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was born on this date, April 25.

Pratt is primarily remembered today for two things. His collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp, and two novels, The Blue Star and The Well of the Unicorn.

Although there were other collaborations between Pratt and de Camp, the Harold Shea stories arae the ones that get the most bandwidth. These were a series of novellas and short novels  begun in the early 1940s and originally published in Unknown. The series continued in the 1950s. The character Harold Shea ends up visiting a number of fantasy lands from works of literature. The mechanism through which he does this is mathematics.

The problem I had with the longer collaborations of Pratt and de Camp was that while I thought they started strong, I got the feeling the authors got bored in the middle. (I have this same reaction to many of de Camp’s solo novels as well). Maybe that’s why I prefer the Gavagan’s Bar stories. They are definitely short stories in the tradition of the British club story. Think tall tales with fantasy elements. They’re clever and fun. I really should reread them. It’s been a while.

As for the novels, I reviewed The Blue Star here at Black Gate. It was one of the first titles in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I’ve picked up several copies of the Ballantine mass market paperback edition of The Well of the Unicorn with the Hildebrandt cover over the years. I’ve not managed to work it into the reading schedule yet. My understanding is that Pratt wrote it as a rebuttal to Tolkien because there was no sex in The Lord of the Rings. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

If anyone has read Well, please share your thoughts.

Mundy and Davidson

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This is going to be a short post because I’ve been on the road most of the day, and it’s past my bedtime. But I wanted to acknowledge the birthdays of two writers whose work, although I’ve not read as much by either as I wish, I greatly admire. Those writers are Talbot Mundy (1879-1940) and Avram Davidson (1923-1993). They were both born on April 23.

Mundy wrote adventure. While some of his work had fantastic elements, he is best remembered as an adventure writer. I would classify him as being similar to Harold Lamb, although they were very different writers in some ways. But both wrote of advetures in exotic lands, so I would consider them to be similar in that regard.

Avram Davidson was a unique writer. He  didn’t write lean prose, or deal with cosmic horrors, or heroic fantasy as we tend to think of it in terms of Robert E. Howard or  Karl Edward Wagner. But his imaginataion was fertile. His stories may require a little work to read, but they are usually worth the effort. While he wrote novels, I’m primarily know him through his short  fiction. He was a unique voice, and I can’t think of anyone else like him. Who else could write a story about cigar store Indians and make it work?

Donald Wandrei

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Yes, this one is a bit late, and it’s already tommorrow where some of you are, but I didn’t want to let today (where I am at least) pass without mentioning Donald Wandrei (1908-1987), who was born on April 20.

Wandrei is probably best remembered as the cofounder of Arkham House, along with August Derleth.

He was also a writer in his own right. Fedogan and Bremer published collections of his science fiction and werid fiction in the late eighties and late nineties. He also wrote poetry. More recently, Haffner Press published his Ivy Frost stories.

So there’s a lot there to remember him for. I suspecdt Arkham House iwll be the thing that is most well-regarded in his legacy.

I came to Arkham House late. I was aware of the publisher and eventually ran across some Arkham House books at the Lone Star Science Fiction and Comics that used to be at Park and Preston in Plano back when I was in graduate school. I would have bought some except that I didn’t have any money. I was in gradute school.

Since then, I’ve tried to pick up affordable Arkham editions where I can find them.

It’s been a while since I read any of his fiction, although I do have the Fedogan and Bremer collections as well as the Ivy Frost book. Maybe if I get some time this week…

Biggle and Williamson

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April 17, today, marks the birthday of Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1922-2002), and J. N. Williamson (1932-2005).

Lloyd Biggle, Jr. wrote science fiction beginning in the late 1950s through the early seventies, with a few stories published in later years. He wrote at novel and short fiction lengths. He was well-known and popular in his day. I doubt anyone who has begun reading science fiction in the Twenty-First Century has heard of him. Except for a Megapack and a Best of collection (both from Wildside Press), he is out of print. Those are actually different editions of the same book. The Megapack is the electronic edition, and the Best of is the print edition. Biggle also wrote mysteries, and he was a musician. Some of his fiction deals with music.

I’ve only read a couple of his short stories, and that was years ago. I have a favorable impression in my mind, but I don’t recall any details. I know older writers who have mentioned him have spoken favorably about  him.

J. N. Williamson  wrote horror. He also wrote both short fiction and novels. I’ve not read any of his novels, but I enjoyed his last collection, Frights of Fancy, It was published by Leisure Books. Again, that was years ago, and I don’t recall any specifics. I do remember that I enjoyed quite a bit.

I know a number of writers had issues with Leisure, but as a reader, I really liked them. They published a number of mass market paperback collections. I don’t know how often they published collections, since they mainly focused on novels, but it seemed like there would be a new horror short story collection from them every few months. I always picked them up when I saw them. Collections, in my opinion, are a great way to try out a new writer. A single novel might not be to a particular reader’s taste, but collections usually show at least a portion of an author’s range.

But I digress.

These are two writers whose work was well-received when they were active. It’s too bad they are both out of print now.

Kuttner

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Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was born today, May 5. He’s been my favorite science fcition and fantasy writer ever since I read “Mimsy were the Borogoves” in The Best of Henry Kuttner the summer before I started high high school.

I was going to read and review Lands of the Earthquake (thanks for sending me a copy, Deuce), but I’ve been on the road with one of the dayjobs most of the past week. It took me all week to read “The Brood of Bubastis” for the Robert Bloch post, and I was falling asleep over the keyboard as I wrote it. So, obviously, I didn’t get to it. I’ll try to read it and post something in the next few months. Continue reading →

Brooding with Bubastis

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For Robert Bloch’s birthday, I’m going to spend a few minutes looking at one of his early short stories, “The Brood of Bubastis”. It was published in the March 1937 issue of Weird Tales. It’s one of Bloch’s early Lovecraftian telas. That’s the cover to the right. Another amazing Margaret Brundage cover.

Bloch was born on April 5, 1917 and passed away in 1994. We was a prolific author in the horror, fantasy, mystery, and science fiction fields.

“The Brood of Bubastis” is your typical Lovecraft plot, although it’s better executed than most. Here’s the setup. Continue reading →

Weinbaum

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One of the brightest stars of the pre-Campbell pulp era was Stanley G. Weinbaum (1902-1935). His aliens were truly alien, and his stories often had a sense of whimsey to them that is missing in much of today’s fiction. He helped to break the mold of stories that were gadget stories with cardboard characters.

In other words, reading him was fun.

He could be serious. “Pygmalion’s Spactacles” comes to mind as an example. He was just beginning to stretc h himself as a writer when he died of cancer. Much of what he was writing at the end of his career was romance.

Weinbaum’s style is a little dated now, but his work is still enjoyable.