Tor Double #19: Fritz Leiber’s Ill Met in Lankhmar and Charles de Lint’s The Fair in Emain Macha

Tor Double #19: Fritz Leiber’s Ill Met in Lankhmar and Charles de Lint’s The Fair in Emain Macha

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Cover for Ill Met in Lankhmar by Sam Rakeland
Cover for The Fair at Emain Macha by Mel Grant

This volume of the Tor Double series offers something it hasn’t offered before.  Although several of the novellas previously published in the series have played with the tropes of fantasy novels, such as Jack Vance’s The Last Castle or Joanna Russ’s Souls, all of the stories published to this point have been science fiction. With Volume 19, the series offers two novellas which are unabashedly fantasy, Fritz Leiber’s Ill Met in Lankhmar and Charles de Lint’s The Fair in Emain Macha. Not only are both fantasy stories, but both of them are parts of series exploring the characters who feature in them.

Fritz Leiber introduced the world to Lankhmar and his characters of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser in August of 1939 in the story “Two Sought Adventure,” which appeared in Unknown. By 1969, he had published an additional eighteen stories about the adventurers, including one story which told of the Grey Mouser’s life before he met Fafhrd.

Ill Met in Lankhmar was originally published in F&SF  in April, 1970. It won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. Ill Met in Lankhmar is the second of four Leiber stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series. A prequel to all of the previously published Lankhmar stories with the exception of “The Unholy Grail,” this novella tells how his two characters meet for the first time. …

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Goth Chick News: Reporters at Large Head to the Fan Expo ‘25 – Special Correspondent Nick S and Photog at Large Kat

Goth Chick News: Reporters at Large Head to the Fan Expo ‘25 – Special Correspondent Nick S and Photog at Large Kat

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Chevy Chase and Brendan Fraser at Fan Expo Chicago

Unfortunately, real life sometimes gets in the way of our “fun” jobs. Last weekend, Black Gate Photog Chris Z and I were forced to miss out on what was likely the biggest pop culture event in Chicago.

As you may remember, for decades, the Chicago Comic Con was the Midwest’s scrappy answer to San Diego, with folding tables covered in long boxes, artists sketching for a few bucks, and maybe a handful of cult TV guests tucked away in the corner. Things began to shift in the 1990s when Wizard Entertainment bought the show and rebranded it as Wizard World Chicago, pumping up the spectacle with celebrity signings, mainstream movie tie-ins, and that strange mix of pop-culture carnival and dealer’s room we all know today.

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George Barr: A Fantasy Master

George Barr: A Fantasy Master

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Barr illo for the D&D Module IM2: The Wrath of Olympus, by Robert J Blake (TSR, 1987)

When DAW Books launched in early 1972, one of their hallmarks was great cover art. Right from the start, their books featured covers by many of the top SF artists such as Frank Kelly Freas, John Schoenherr, Josh Kirby and Jack Gaughan – and eventually, Michael Whelan, who broke into the field with his cover for DAW’s edition of The Enchantress of World’s End by Lin Carter in 1975.

One of their mainstays was George Barr, whose first DAW cover came in their second month of publication, with The Day Star by Mark S. Geston. For my money, Barr was one of the great fantasy and science fiction artists of the past few decades. Having been introduced to science fiction paperbacks in the mid-1970’s, I have many fond memories of finding his artwork gracing many of the DAW books that I picked up at that time.

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The Sword and Planet of Manly Wade Wellman

The Sword and Planet of Manly Wade Wellman

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Sojarr of Titan (Crestwood Publishing Co, 1949). Cover by Herman Vestal

One of the more unusual items in my Sword & Planet collection is Sojarr of Titan, written by Manly Wade Wellman (1903 – 1986) and published by Crestwood Publishing Company. This is a first edition, I believe, printed in 1949. The story originally appeared in the March 1941 issue of Startling Stories, published by Better Publishing, Inc.

The inside cover of the paperback edition bears a gold tag reading “Ackerman Agency,” with an address. This would be Forest J. Ackerman, of course, though whether Forry actually handled this copy I couldn’t know. There’s also the handwritten list of France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, with a red X across them. Don’t know what that means.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hammett & The Continental Op – Volume 3 (My intro)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hammett & The Continental Op – Volume 3 (My intro)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Pulp Fest took place in Pittsburgh first week of the month. It’s a really cool event, and the Hilton Doubletree is a nice site. I really enjoy it. Steeger Books rolls out its summer line at this event. And for the third year in a row, there was a new Continental Op collection, with a brand new intro by yours truly. Getting to write about Dashiell Hammett remains a definite thrill. This volume wrappd up his pre-Cap Shaw career. Here’s my  new intro. Looking forward to Volume IV. 

Welcome to Volume three of Steeger Books’ series on the Continental Op. Hammett had written fifteen Op stories of varying quality for Black Mask, and one rejection found its way into True Detective Mysteries (though they weren’t actually ‘true’).

He had followed hard on the heels of Caroll John Daly, whose Three-Gun Terry Mack appeared in May of 1923, and just two weeks and one issue later came the first Race Williams story, “Knights of the Open Palm.”

After one more Williams shoot-fest, Black Mask printed “Arson Plus,” and Dash Hammett began reshaping the fresh clay that was the new hardboiled school. The quality of Hammett’s work immediately surpassed that of Daly’s, though it was up-and-down. Hammett’s drinking, health issues, personal life, and problems with (his second) editor Phil Cody, made the Continental Op a bumpy ride.

Here we have the final five stories he wrote for Cody – before he quit Black Mask. Yep. Quit. Had Joseph ‘Cap’ Shaw not been committed to bringing back Hammett, we would not have had Red Harvest, or The Maltese Falcon. Hammett was willing to quit the Pulps, rather than continue to labor under Cody’s financially-unrewarding yoke.

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The Best Short SF: The Asimov’s Science Fiction 2024 Readers Poll

The Best Short SF: The Asimov’s Science Fiction 2024 Readers Poll

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Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February and November/December 2024.
Cover art by Maurizio Manzieri and John Sumrow

Here’s a look at a few of the finalists for the 2024 Asimov’s Readers Award, voted on by readers and given to the most popular stories from Asimov’s Science Fiction the previous year. (Read each of the stories at the Asimov’s website by clicking on the titles below.)

“Wildest Skies,” a Novella by Sean Monaghan

From Asimov’s Science Fiction, November-December 2024

The title suggests a much wilder adventure than the somewhat cozy, but satisfying, one we get. Ed Linklater is the sole survivor of a missile strike that destroys his ship while surveying the planet Dashell IV. He is able to land safely on the Earth-like planet and is eventually befriended by a ten-eyed alien he calls Casper.

After living with Casper’s tribe for some time, he is led to a strange complex of stone structures, where he meets Barnaby, a fellow human who has survived another crash, sixteen years earlier. Barnaby’s only companion is Erica, who is immobilized and partly merged with an AI.

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, Part II

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, Part II

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Septic Man (Foresight Features, 2013)

Septic Man (2013) – Plex

From the country that is about to bring you The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man (Canada), comes another scatological extravaganza — Septic Man! From the writer of the excellent ‘Pontypool’, this is an origin story, although I’m not sure if they plan to make any more.

Jack is a sanitary worker who has been tasked to discover the cause of an entire town’s poisoned water. We know the water is poisoned because the very opening scene involves a poor woman spurting from every orifice in the filthiest bathroom you have ever seen. With the tone set, the film proceeds to trap Jack in a disgusting septic tank, surrounded by bodies, and slowly mutating due to the toxic whatnots in the water.

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Tor Double #18: Robert Silverberg’s In Another Country and C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season

Tor Double #18: Robert Silverberg’s In Another Country and C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season

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Cover for In Another Country and Vintage Season by Wayne Barlowe

With this volume, the Tor Double series began an experiment and also a format change. Beginning with C.L. Moore’s 1946 story Vintage Season, Tor had Robert Silverberg write a sequel, In Another Country. Depiste the book cover proclaiming it “New!,” the Silverberg piece appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine eleven month prior to its publication in the Tor Double series.  In addition, this volume was published in the standard anthology format rather than tête-bêche, perhaps reflecting the two stories’ relationship to each other as original and sequel.

Vintage Season was originally published in Astounding in the September and October 1946 issues and credited to Lawrence O’Donnell. At various times, this story has been credited to C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Lawrence O’Donnell, or to just C.L. Moore. Tor credits Moore alone for the story.

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Battleborn Magazine – Join the Frontlines of Fantasy

Battleborn Magazine – Join the Frontlines of Fantasy

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Battleborn is an upcoming action-packed sword and sorcery magazine curated by Sean CW Korsgaard and published by IronAge Media. Read this to learn the scope of this supercharged magazine, the crowdfunding campaign needed to make it a reality (Indiegogo Aug 1st!), and learn Black Gate Exclusive scoops!

As an editor at Baen, Sean CW Korsgaard championed the Hanuvar series, and was mentored by the author, the late Howard Andrew Jones.  Sean CW Korsgaard states that Battleborn is emulating Howard’s run on Tales from the Magician’s Skull, both in style and in terms of authors and artists tapped. The magazine will feature a new Hanuvar tale from the late author, and from first issue to last issue, this will be on the masthead: “Howard Andrew Jones – Editor Emeritus.”

Expect:

  • Contemporary authors
  • Classic reprints
  • And, perhaps adding to a Heavy Metal flair, each issue will have a short comic crafted by Schyler Hernstrom.
  • If all stretch goals are met, they will have room for 20k words more per issue… which WILL be open to submissions.

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The Sword and Planet of Del DowDell

The Sword and Planet of Del DowDell

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Warlord of Ghandor by Del DowDell (DAW, August 1977). Cover by Don Maitz

The genre of Sword & Planet fiction means a lot to me. I read it; I write it; I review it. And sometimes I find a book in the genre I don’t much care for. I have to say so when that happens, and give my reasons. But I always stress that this is my opinion, and I can be influenced by my mood going into a book. I also know how hard it is to write a book so I have to give credit to anyone who finishes one and gets it published.

That brings me to Del DowDell. Somewhere in the 1980s I stumbled on a DowDell book called Warlord of Ghandor. The cover, by Don Maitz, suggested a Sword & Planet kind of tale, and it was published by DAW, which published the Prescot books I loved.

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