FFB 1: Damien Broderick: a Guest's Friday's Forgotten Book: NEUROPATH by R. Scott Bakker (Orion, 2008; Penguin Canada, 2009; TOR, 2009)

Damien Broderick: 
I just stumbled on Canadian R. Scott Bakker's 2008 philosophical horror novel Neuropath, which I found rather good, a sort of blend of Greg Egan and Thomas Harris. It was published in the US by TOR, and is an sf novel to the extent that half of Moscow has been nuked (or something similar), the world is in deep shit generally, neuroimaging has advanced at the rate one might expect, and the US seems to have fallen into the grip of people who eerily foreshadow Trump and his chosen support team. The only review I've managed to find is this at Strange Horizons, but it doesn't give the remotest sense of how gripping and informed this novel is. But then to unwrap its motor would ruin it; Bakker's winding threads of neuroscience and Dennettesque philosophy is discursive but thoroughly enacted by his characters. 

Bakker seems to have started with complex fantasy narratives.  I sent the above paragraph to Scott, who replied inter alia: "the esteemed pop culture critic and speculative realist Steven Shaviro devotes a whole chapter to NP in his latest book, Discognitions, exploring the ability of narrative to take us where arguments cannot go...There's a few academic treatments out there, but his reading is smack." I've never heard of Steven Shaviro** nor heard "smack" used as a term of excited endorsement (an upgrade to the tedious "dope", I assume), I'll leave it there for the moment. 

**Wiki tells us: "Shaviro has written a book about film theory, The Cinematic Body, which examines the dominance of Lacanian tropes in contemporary academic film theory. According to Shaviro, the use of psychoanalysis has mirrored the actions of a cult, with its own religious texts (essays by Freud and Lacan)," an opinion only the cultists would disagree with, as I argued a couple of decades back in Theory and Its Discontents.

Recommended. I have a suspicion that it was probably too smart for the sf groundlings ("booorrring") and that maybe it sank swiftly into oblivion--although I see paperback and ebook editions, so I hope I'm wrong.

Copyright 2016 by Damien Broderick 

FFB: STRANGE HIGHWAYS: READING SCIENCE FANTASY 1950-1967 by John Boston and Damien Broderick (Borgo Press 2012)

Science Fantasy was the primary British magazine devoted to fantasy, science fiction and the arguably hybrid form of science-fantasy at mid-century, the companion to the slightly longer-lived and more famous (and/or infamous) New Worlds, as well as to the short-lived Science Fiction Adventures magazine (one of a handful of magazines to have that title over the years, this one originally the UK edition of the second US magazine of that title). Strange Highways is John Boston's issue by issue run through the magazine and its fiction, editorials, critical writing, covers, illustration and design, and even its advertising, in a manner not altogether different if more exhaustive than my own adventures in magazine reviewing on this blog, and similar to those of Paul Fraser (among others) on his, as edited and occasionally expanded or footnoted by Damien Broderick. It's one of the smaller ironies of this labor of love, a casual rather than dryly academic look at the magazine's content, that it has been assembled by an American ("John Boston" is about as Yankee as a name can be without having "Knickerbocker" mixed in somehow) and an expatriate Australian living in Texas, but perhaps this isn't as improbable as it might seem (or no more so than the book itself, or its similar companion

volumes on the years of New Worlds, and SF Adventures, before NW became a cause célèbre and a source of political harrumphing over its content while receiving Arts Council grants from the British government); Science Fantasy, despite no lack of mediocre and some worse fiction, was also the first home of the baroque fantasy fiction of Michael Moorcock (mostly published before he became New Worlds's editor), not a few of the key early stories by J. G. Ballard, Josephine Saxton and Brian Aldiss, and some fine adventure and historical fantasy by John Brunner and Thomas Burnett Swann, among a number of others, from all over the Anglophone world. Its editors included a number of the key figures among the editorial ranks of UK fantastic fiction: founding editor Walter Gillings had been a pioneer in professional sf magazine

publishing in Great Britain, even if none of his projects were particularly financially hearty, and even this title was taken away from him for financial reasons by its publisher, so that New Worlds's E. J. "Ted" Carnell could serve as the sole magazine editor at cash-strapped Nova Publications; Carnell, the primary editor throughout most of its run; novelist and art collector Kyril Bonfiglioli, who took on apparently as few editorial duties as he possibly could after the magazines were sold to publishers Roberts and Vintner, who changed the format from digest-sized magazine to an often attractive paperback-book package; Keith Roberts, who was largely responsible, as art director as well, for that attractiveness; and Harry Harrison, briefly in from the US and back out on his way to live on the Continent again, with Roberts essentially stepping back in after his brief run...Harrison also one of the key American contributors to the magazine.

I'm surprised to find myself disagreeing strenuously with the assertion in Broderick's introduction that John Campbell's Unknown Fantasy Fiction magazine (1939-43) was the first great expression of science-fantasy fiction, given Campbell's famous predilection for "rationalized" fantasy, where rigorous rules were applied to the fantastic...when such predecessors as H. G. Wells (with his proviso that there be only "one miracle per story") and Thorne Smith had been adhering to similar notions rather prominently, and were models for much of what Campbell published in his magazine...which was, however, launched in part because Campbell wanted to be able to explore "fringe science" and paranoid philosophical points in fiction that might not so easily fit into his Astounding Science-Fiction magazine at that time...but that wasn't the only kind of fantasy Unknown published. Meanwhile, some of the most popular pulp

fiction of the previous decades, such as the Mars and other stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as fantasies of lost civilizations and continents by writers such as Talbot Mundy and A. Conan Doyle, had already helped set some of the parameters of mixtures of sfnal speculation and fantasy coloration and romance; in the same year, 1939, Unknown was founded, such longer-lived magazines devoted in one degree or another to other flavors of science-fantasy, such as space opera and planetary romance stalwart Planet Stories, and frequent late-Burroughs (and imitators) market Fantastic Adventures, also made their debut. Such periodicals as Weird Tales and the various science fiction magazines had also published their share of science-fantasy, as had most of the adventure pulps, and such stories as F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" were in the same vein, often published by more affluent "slick" magazines and other markets (though the Fitzgerald was first published in the modestly-budgeted, influential The Smart Set, stablemate of the first issues of similarly influential crime-fiction pulp Black Mask). John Boston doesn't quite make any such

filmed loosely as Soylent Green

sweeping claim, preferring to get on with the history and critique of the magazine itself, and, at obvious transition stages, listing some of the best fiction among that referred to so far...assessments that have allowed for three anthologies from Boston and Broderick so far, published by Surinam Turtle Press. This volume, while perhaps best not read straight through in one or three sittings unless one is deeply intrigued by the magazine and its time and place, is conveniently broken down into the several-issue essays in which it was originally published, as contributions to the FictionMags discussion list. While the anthologies might make for more engaging reading for general audiences, those who are vitally interested in the literature or even popular culture of the time, at very least, should find this volume (and its companions) valuable and amusing.

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

“THE WRONG TRACK” - A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

“LET’S BE FRANK” - BRIAN W. ALDISS

“THE DAYMAKERS” - PETER HAWKINS

“CHAOTICS” - EDWARD MACKIN

“ME, MYSELF AND I” - JOHN KIPPAX

“TOO BAD!” - E.C. TUBB

“THE ANALYSTS” - JOHN BRUNNER

“HEINRICH” - WALLACE WEST

“TO RESCUE TANELORN” - MICHAEL MOORCOCK

“SAME TIME, SAME PLACE” - MERVYN PEAKE

“THE MUREX” - THOMAS BURNETT SWANN

Jonathan Burke, “The Adjusters” (Science Fantasy #13, Apr 1955)

Martin Jordan, “Sheamus” (Science Fantasy #14, Jun 1955)

John Brunner, “City of the Tiger” (Science Fantasy #32, Dec 1958)

Kenneth Bulmer, “Castle of Vengeance” (Science Fantasy #37, Nov 1959)

John Kippax (John Charles Hynam 1915-1974), “Destiny Incorporated” (Science Fantasy #30, Aug 1958)

J.G. Ballard, “The Watch-Towers” (Science Fantasy #53, Jun 1962, and The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, 2009)

Thomas Burnett Swann, “The Sudden Wings” (Science Fantasy #55, Oct 1962)

Philip E. High, “Dead End” (Science Fantasy #56, Dec 1962)

John Rackham, Bring Back a Life 

Thomas Burnett Swann, Vashti

Josephine Saxton, The Wall 

Brian Stableford and Craig Mackintosh, Beyond Time’s Aegis 

Brian Aldiss, The Circulation of the Blood 

J.G. Ballard, You and Me and the Continuum 

Christopher Priest, The Run 

Keith Roberts, Corfe Gate 

Robert Wells, Stop Seventeen 

Chris Boyce, Mantis

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: I'M DYING HERE by Damien Broderick and Rory Barnes (Point Blank 2009)

OK, this one gets provisi. Damien Broderick is a friendly netquaitance of mine, which is how I first became aware of this novel; like Bill Crider, whose laudatory blurb is quoted on Amazon, and myself, Damien is a member of the FictionMags list, and a fine and accomplished fellow. I suspect Rory Barnes is, as well, though the novel under discussion here is the only Barnes I'm sure I've read, and I've not corresponded with him...so, favoritism warning out of the way, I'll note that Bill is quoted thus: "This is a comic, crazy, original crime novel. You won't find another one like it this year, or, more likely, ever."

I'll disagree with that only to the extent that what it reminds me of, powerfully, is a Donald Westlake comic novel about Dortmunder. I don't mean a pastiche, nor certainly a copycat, and I mean it feels more like a Dortmunder than even most "caper" novels do, and I mean it as high praise. If Dortmunder was an Australian reasonably proficient but somewhat principled crook rather than a Yank, his misadventures would tend to resemble these. This is a book you should pick up if you find yourself rereading THE HOT ROCK for the seventh time, and finding it rather familiar somehow. It also, in touching on sundered families and attempts at pulling some sort of relation back out of the mess, reminds a bit of the late John D. MacDonalds, but still, the comic tends to trump the tragic throughout (so far...I'm not quite at the end, as my own life has been more tragic than comic of late).

So why is a new book "forgotten"? It's had its difficulties in the US market, at very least. The first edition carried the Oz-friendly title I SUPPOSE A ROOT'S OUT OF THE QUESTION?, which if one prnounces "root" as "rut" will probably come clear to any puzzled folk--even when this question is posed in the novel in its new edition, the query is rendered in more Standard English, for the benefit of Yanks and such. So far, not nearly as much attention as it deserves, and its small publisher doesn't have the budget or the clout of a few of the other major projects in crime-fiction specialists active today (how this book got away from Hard Case, I don't know), and it'd be a pity if we let it slip by unremarked.

If you dig smart, funny caper novels, at very least, I suspect you'll like this one as much as I do.

For more "forgotten" books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

FFB: I'M DYING HERE by Damien Broderick and Rory Barnes, and a query: Who is your favorite short story writer who (has) never published a collection?

In celebration of five years of Friday's Forgotten Books, as hosted and originated by Patti Abbott, I look back, and with searching hope suggest some books that could and should be put together (and, one hopes, not forgotten). One of my least-read reviews, this one from 2010, for a book which deserves at least a few more eyetracks:

OK, this one gets provisi. Damien Broderick is a friendly netquaintance of mine, which is how I first became aware of this novel; like Bill Crider, whose laudatory blurb is quoted on Amazon, and myself, Damien is a member of the FictionMags list, and a fine and accomplished fellow. I suspect Rory Barnes is, as well, though the novel under discussion here is the only Barnes I'm sure I've read, and I've not corresponded with him...so, favoritism warning out of the way, I'll note that Bill is quoted thus: "This is a comic, crazy, original crime novel. You won't find another one like it this year, or, more likely, ever."

I'll disagree with that only to the extent that what it reminds me of, powerfully, is a Donald Westlake comic novel about Dortmunder. I don't mean a pastiche, nor certainly a copycat; I mean it feels more like a Dortmunder than even most "caper" novels do, and I mean that as high praise. If Dortmunder was an Australian reasonably proficient and somewhat principled crook rather than a Yank, his misadventures would tend to resemble these. This is a book you should pick up if you find yourself rereading The Hot Rock for the seventh time, and finding it rather familiar somehow (yes, a variation on that old line). It also, in touching on sundered families and attempts at pulling some sort of relation back out of the mess, reminds a bit of the late John D. MacDonalds, but still, the comic tends to trump the tragic throughout.

So why is a new book "forgotten"? It's had its difficulties in the US market, at very least. The first edition carried the Oz-friendly title I Suppose a Root's Out of the Question?, which if one pronounces "root" as "rut" will probably come clear to any puzzled folk--even when this question is posed in the novel in its new edition, the query is rendered in more Standard English, for the benefit of Yanks and such. So far, the novel's gotten not nearly as much attention as it deserves, and its small publisher doesn't have the budget or the clout of a few of the other major projects in crime-fiction specialists active today (how this book got away from Hard Case, I don't know), and it'd be a pity if we let it slip by unremarked.

If you dig smart, funny caper novels, at very least, I suspect you'll like this one as much as I do.

For more "forgotten" books, please see Patti Abbott's blog. 

****And...
Who *is* your favorite short-fiction writer who hasn't yet published or had published a collection? In comments, below, Jerry House plumps for Vance Aandahl and the more collected but underappreciated Jack Ritchie. Please feel free to add your suggestions.  (Then there are those folks who have committed only one collection of short fiction so far...including Janet Fox, Wilma Shore, Bill Crider [and, latterly, Patti Abbott], David I. Masson, T. L. Sherred; Mark Clifton's had only one in English. Sometimes that's because they've only written that much short fiction, essentially true in Sherred's case, but too often I fear other factors have kicked in, including publishers' preference, in most cases, for novels.)

I'm going to say, for now at least, Ray aka R. Faraday Nelson, who might be most famous for "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", the brilliant short that was adapted for the amiable but less-brilliant film They Live! Among the other brilliant Nelson fiction is "Nightfall on the Dead Sea" and the fine novella "Turn Off the Sky"...he's written several novels over the decades, beginning with an apparently slight novel in collaboration with Philip K. Dick (who's that guy?) I still need to read:

Jack Gaughan and Ed Emshwiller. As with Nelson (or Dick), one can do worse.

The world could stand a collection of David Campton's short fiction, as well. Though he was mostly a playwright. (I wasn't aware that C. B. Gilford expended considerable energy as a playwright in the 1960s, as well--his stories as well as his plays seem to be uncollected; Wilma Shore, mentioned above, was particularly active as a radio playwright but worked in other media as well.) And we are painfully in need of a collection of David Redd's fiction.


(And given recent events, we might also consider the short fiction of the late Carmine Infantino [a story in the first Ariel] and Roger Ebert [a short story each in Fantastic and Amazing]...and perhaps look to the various collections of Basil Copper...)

But another, who sparked this thought, was the acerbic John D. Keefauver, who contributed regularly to the Pan Book of Horror Stories series, and later with stories in the National Review often anthologized by Harold Q. Masur in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: anthologies (and later still I believe had at least one item in National Lampoon)...whose only published book, afaik, is this sexploitation item (apparently, at least) from 1961:

Criminal.  Who's your candidate?

FFB/SSW: THE SEVENTH GALAXY READER edited by Frederik Pohl (Doubleday 1964); THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 14th Series, edited by Avram Davidson (Doubleday 1965); SWORD & SORCERY ANNUAL edited by Sol Cohen (and Cele Goldsmith Lalli) (Ultimate Publications 1975); PERCHANCE TO WAKE: YET MORE SELECTED STORIES FROM SCIENCE FANTASY edited by John Boston and Damien Broderick (Surinam Turtle Press 2016)

the final cover painting by Hannes Bok

Lee Brown Coye

Agosta Morol

The Shock of the New...

Fantasy and sf in the fiction magazines devoted to them trended ever more sophisticated from their introduction in the US and UK in the 1920s and '30s, and in other English-language countries (though most other Anglophone countries usually featured simply local editions of the US or UK magazines), till by the 1950s the good ones averaged on par with the run of more sophisticated 

Virgil Finlay

commercial and little magazines. Hugo Gernsback reprinted the likes of H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe in his early issues of his pioneering (in 1926) Amazing Stories, which was otherwise largely built, at first, on a tradition of notional technology anecdotes in his early electronics magazines.  (But Gernsback was also happy to feature an Edgar Rice Burroughs "John Carter of Mars" story for the only 
issue of his Amazing Stories Annual). F. Orlin Tremaine innovated as successor to Harry Bates and the latter's Astounding Stories of Super Science; John W. Campbell Jr. refined and continued those advances away from standard pulp adventure, and had the title changed from Tremaine's Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction, and then eventually to Analog (which it remains today);  Sam Merwin, Jr. likewise in the latter '40s  into the '50s improved on the efforts of his predecessors (at Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, the latter-day versions of Gernsback's second set of sf magazines), Dorothy McIlwraith's Weird Tales (where she widened that magazine's remit beyond the kind of neo-gothic horror and purple overstatement that her predecessors favored, even as impressive as Farnsworth Wright's best editorial work had been), and even the young Frederik Pohl, at his promising magazines Astonishing Stories and Super-Science Stories, demonstrating their initially 19-year-old editor's  quick learning curve but also his openness to  the larger literary world, and as the most financially sound and widely-read of the magazines edited by the young lions of the Futurian Society of New York, a fan/ aspiring pro group of writers, editors, artists, agents and more who included a large number of the most notable conscious artists in fantastic fiction, albeit all still very young in the 1930s and '40s. Judith Merril, freelancing anthologies and establishing the second, and often controversial, sf and fantasy best-of-the-year annual, Donald Wollheim, at Avon Books, then Ace Books, then DAW Books, Robert Lowndes, at Columbia Publications and other low-budget publishers, and Larry Shaw in magazines and at Lancer Books, were among the other most prominent editors among the Futurians.

And so, as the new magazines of the 1950s entered the scene, including the four magazines represented in this review essay, the bend toward increasing literary excellence and ambition was already established ...the best of the new magazines, and the best work in the field published in the 1950s, was able to match the standards of fiction published in any other forum on a consistent basis, even given there was still a fair amount of relatively trivial and weak fiction also made available, as in every other field of fiction as well. By the early/mid '60s, the groundwork laid by the increasing urbanity and prose facility of fiction published in magazines such as Galaxy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fantastic: Stories of Imagination, and Science Fantasy had been building steadily on the good work of and in the previous issues of the same magazines, and not a few other allied periodical titles and anthologies of new work, and book publishers open to novels of ambition, at least fitfully... was resulting in some of what is collected in the books, and one special retrospective magazine issue, we consider here.

The four editors, or the three editors and a small cluster of editors at Science Fantasy in the early/mid-'60s the fiction collected here springs from, were doing, under some stressful limitations and not always fully successfully, some of the most important editorial work in fantastic fiction of their time. Frederik Pohl, officially the editor of Galaxy and its recently-acquired sibling If from 1962, had been responsible for an increasing amount of the editorial work behind the scenes since the late '50s, as Pohl's literary agency and Galaxy founding editor H. L. Gold were both facing extreme difficulty. Pohl had been a key supporter of Gold, as agent and as a contributor of fiction, from the magazine's founding in 1950, and was unsurprisingly tapped to serve.  Galaxy and If under his initial official editorship faced tough times; one strategy he took to help the magazines weather slowing sales was to buy a certain amount of acceptable-to-good fiction at a new low rate of payment for stories, 1c/word, then immediately afterward begin editing more selectively, seeking better work at Galaxy's initial 1950 rate of three cents per word...and mix the better work in with the readable till reader support could be, he hoped, regained.

At The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, or F&SF, increasingly frequent contributor Avram Davidson was asked in 1962 to become its fourth editor, and third solo editor, the first in that position to not have been either a co-founder or an old hand around the magazine. Davidson as editor was often seen as willing to explore eccentricity even more than had predecessors Robert P. Mills and founding editors "Anthony Boucher" and J. Francis McComas, but he managed to publish a considerable amount of pathbreaking fiction; he remains my favorite of the editors of the magazine, in a very impressive field. 

Similarly, Cele Goldsmith (later married and signing herself Cele Lalli, and later yet Cele Goldsmith Lalli) had joined the magazine staff at Ziff-Davis in the mid '50s with the primary task of editing a short-lived magazine called Pen Pals which was devoted to just that, facilitating new mail correspondents. She was also tasked with assisting the ever-more nonchalant fiction magazine editor on staff, Howard Browne, who had been founding editor of Fantastic, but whom increasingly spent his on-the-clock time at the offices writing his own fiction for publication elsewhere. Goldsmith didn't know very much about fantasy or sf as fields, but was the conscientious presence on the staff, as Browne was succeeded by an old writing colleague of his, and founding editor of  If, Paul W. Fairman, if anything even more oblivious to the quality of the magazine he was barely editing. Goldsmith would comb through the "slush pile" of unsolicited manuscripts, and found as a result, among other work, what would be Kate Wilhelm's first published story, which Fairman disinterestedly published along with the fiction he bought unread from his five "regulars": Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Milton Lesser (before he legally changed his name to Stephen Marlowe), Randall Garrett and Henry Slesar, a very talented quintet who were not usually offering their best work to an editor who wanted manuscripts on-time and unproblematic much more than he wanted them good. Others, including Fairman himself, would also contribute, particularly for some special issues devoted to wish-fulfillment fantasy that led up to a short-lived spinoff magazine called Dream World. Goldsmith learned a lot about what to do and more of what not to.

All of these items have been packaged on the cheap--standard practice at Doubleday in the '60s when not dealing with their "lead titles", and Ultimate and Surinam Turtle Press were and are all but one-person shops, Ultimate a retirement job for publisher Sol Cohen and STP kind of an avocational project of Richard Lupoff's.

The Seventh Galaxy Reader ed. Frederik Pohl (Doubleday, 1964, $3.95, 247pp, hc) Cover: Roger Zimmerman

Introduction · Frederik Pohl · in

For Love · Algis Budrys · nv Galaxy Jun 1962

Come Into My Cellar · Ray Bradbury · ss Galaxy Oct 1962

The Tail-Tied Kings · Avram Davidson · ss Galaxy Apr 1962

Crime Machine · Robert Bloch · ss Galaxy Oct 1961

Return Engagement · Lester del Rey · ss Galaxy Aug 1961

Earthmen Bearing Gifts · Fredric Brown · vi Galaxy Jun 1960

Rainbird · R. A. Lafferty · ss Galaxy Dec 1961

Three Portraits and a Prayer · Frederik Pohl · ss Galaxy Aug 1962

Something Bright · Zenna Henderson · ss Galaxy Feb 1960

On the Gem Planet [Casher O’Neill] · Cordwainer Smith · nv Galaxy Oct 1963

The Deep Down Dragon · Judith Merril · ss Galaxy Aug 1961

The King of the City · Keith Laumer · nv Galaxy Aug 1961

The Beat Cluster · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Oct 1961

An Old-Fashioned Bird Christmas · Margaret St. Clair · nv Galaxy Dec 1961
The Big Pat Boom · Damon Knight · ss Galaxy Dec 1963

The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 14 ed. Avram Davidson (Doubleday, 1965, hc; 251pp, $4.50) Cover: Tom Chibbaro

• Introduction · Avram Davidson · in
• Sacheverell · Avram Davidson · ss F&SF Mar 1964
• Trade-In · Jack Sharkey · ss F&SF Jun 1964
• The Illuminated Man · J. G. Ballard · nv F&SF May 1964
• A Bulletin from the Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Research at Marmouth, Mass. · Wilma Shore · ss F&SF Aug 1964
• Automatic Tiger · Kit Reed · ss F&SF Mar 1964
• The Court of Tartary · T. P. Caravan · ss F&SF Dec 1963
• Touchstone · Terry Carr · ss F&SF May 1964
• Thaw and Serve · Allen Kim Lang · ss F&SF Jan 1964
• Nada · Thomas M. Disch · ss F&SF Aug 1964
• Into the Shop · Ron Goulart · ss F&SF Apr 1964
• A Rose for Ecclesiastes · Roger Zelazny · nv F&SF Nov 1963
• Olsen and the Gull · Eric St. Clair · ss F&SF Sep 1964
• Dark Conception · Louis J. A. Adams · ss F&SF Nov 1964
• The Compleat Consumators · Alan E. Nourse · ss F&SF Apr 1964
• The House by the Crab Apple Tree · S. S. Johnson · nv F&SF Feb 1964
• The Girl with the Hundred Proof Eyes · Ron Webb · ss F&SF Jul 1964
• Fred One · James Ransom · ss F&SF Apr 1964

Sword & Sorcery Annual [1975] ed. Sol Cohen (75¢, 132pp, digest, cover by Steve Fabian)

• 4 · Queen of the Black Coast [Conan] · Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp · nv The Coming of Conan, Gnome 1953; lightly edited by de Camp from the story of the same name (Weird Tales May 1934).
• 24 · L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Satire · Sam Moskowitz · bg Amazing Stories Feb 1964
• 34 · The Pillars of Chambalor [Brak] · John Jakes · ss Fantastic Mar 1965
• 50 · Master of Chaos [Earl Aubec] · Michael Moorcock · ss Fantastic May 1964
• 64 · The Mirror of Cagliostro · Robert Arthur · nv Fantastic Jun 1963; adapted from Arthur’s TV script “The Prisoner in the Mirror” broadcast on Thriller 5/23/61.
• 94 · The Cloud of Hate [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] · Fritz Leiber · ss Fantastic May 1963
• 107 · The Masters · Ursula K. Le Guin · ss Fantastic Feb 1963
• 127 · Horseman! · Roger Zelazny · vi Fantastic Aug 1962 

• Perchance to Wake: Yet More Selected Stories from Science Fantasy
• Editors: Damien Broderick, John Boston 
• Date: 2016-01-19 ISBN: 978-1-60543-874-0 [1-60543-874-X]
• Publisher: Surinam Turtle Press; Price: $20.00; Pages: 259 Cover design by Fender Tucker

• 11 • Introduction (Perchance to Wake) • essay by Damien Broderick
• 17 • Bring Back a Life • (March 1965) • novelette by John T. Phillifent [as by John Rackham]
• 39 • Vashti • (May 1965) • novella by Thomas Burnett Swann
• 75 • The Wall • (November 1965) • short story by Josephine Saxton
• 83 • Beyond Time's Aegis • (November 1965) • novelette by Brian Stableford and Craig A. Mackintosh [as by Brian Stableford and Craig Mackintosh]
• 113 • The Circulation of the Blood • (March 1966) • novelette by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Brian Aldiss] [appeared a few months earlier in an anthology, Window on the Future, edited by Douglas Hill]
• 143 • You and Me and the Continuum • (March 1966) • short story by J. G. Ballard
• 153 • The Run • (May 1966) • short story by Christopher Priest
• 163 • Corfe Gate • [Pavane] • (July 1966) • novelette by Keith Roberts
• 219 • Stop Seventeen • (November 1966) • short fiction by Robert Wells
• 229 • Mantis • (January 1967) • short fiction by Chris Boyce

--More to come...

For more of today's Short Story Wednesday entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog...

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: the links

This week's collection of reviews and citations of the books at the links below is brought to you in part by the fans of "J. J. Connington" (with two books independently reviewed--in late innings, matched by Anthony Gilbert) and a slew of mostly too-unfamiliar titles from a range of our usual contributors and some more occasional, equally-welcome folks. If I've missed your, or someone else's, post, please let me know in comments...and, as always, thanks to all the contributors and all you readers of these. Next week, Evan Lewis will be hosting the links again at his blog Davy Crockett's Alamanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West (please see his review below, among much else, including his continuing galleries of early issues of various literary--including graphic/literary--periodicals), then I will host the following week, then Evan, then me, then founder Patti Abbott (see her review link directly below) will be hosting again.


Patricia Abbott: The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns

Sanford Allen: Restore Point: Scripts for Radio and Film and Gaia to Galaxy: Scripts for Radio by Damien Broderick

Sergio Angelini: Fallen Angel (aka Mirage) by Howard Fast (originally as by Walter Ericson)

Yvette Banek: A Civil Contract, Lady of Quality and The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer 

Joe Barone: Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See by Juliann Garey

Brian Busby: This Gun for Gloria as by Bernard Mara (Brian Moore)

Bill Crider: The Best from Manhunt, as edited by Scott and Sidney Meredith

Scott Cupp: The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi

William F. Deeck: Murder at the O.P.M. by Leslie Ford; Death Thumbs a Ride by Jean Lilly

Martin Edwards: The Ha-Ha Case (aka The Brandon Case) as by J. J. Connington (Alfred Walter Stewart)

Curt Evans: Murder Comes Home by Anthony Gilbert

Jerry House: The Ghost by William D. O'Connor

Randy Johnson: About the Murder of the Circus Queen by "Anthony Abbot" (Charles Fulton Oursler)

Nick Jones: The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis

George Kelley: I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay by Harlan Ellison (from the stories of Isaac Asimov) 

Rob Kitchin: Liar Moon by Ben Pastor

B. V. Lawson: Scared to Death as by Ann Morice (Felicity Shaw)

Evan Lewis: Paperbacks, USA (aka The Book of Paperbacks) by Piet Schreuders

Steve Lewis: The Bastard's Tale by Margaret Frazer

Neer: Holocaust House by Norbert Davis

John F. Norris: The Avenging Saint (aka Knight Templar) as by Leslie Charteris (Leslie C. B. Yin)

Juri Nummelin: Weasels Ripped My Flesh! edited by Robert Deis, Josh Friedman and Wyatt Doyle

Patrick Ohl: The Case with Nine Solutions as by J. J. Connington (Alfred Walter Stewart)

Deb Pfeifer: A Sight for Sore Eyes and The Vault by Ruth Rendell

James Reasoner: And the Rain Came Down by S. A. Bailey

Karyn Reeves: The Department of Dead Ends by Roy Vickers

Gerard Saylor: Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale (read by Phil Gigante)

Ron Scheer: The Wind Before the Dawn by Dell H. Munger; The Drift Fence by Zane Grey; The Boss of Wind River by A. M. Chisholm

Michael Slind: The Door Between as by Ellery Queen

Kevin Tipple: Blood of My Blood by Ralph Pezzullo

"TomCat": Die in the Dark by Anthony Gilbert

Prashant Trikannad: The Hardy Boys novels as by Franklin W. Dixon (and offshoots)

James Winter: He Who Hesitates and Doll as by Ed McBain

"Wuthering Willow": Evelina by Fanny Burney