Showing posts with label anthologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anthologies. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

two "proposed" anthologies: WE ARE IN THE VASTNESS and WE ARE VASTER THAN WE MIGHT WISH, ed. by TM: Short Story Wednesday

I'm in a Facebook group hosted by D. F. Lewis, called Hyper-Imaginative Literature, where Des is seeking at getting at the kind of fiction (as I understand him to mean) that tends to shake up perceptions, at least to some extent...the other week, members had been offering potential 12-entry anthologies of some of the relevant fiction...I was sleepy but not successfully winding into sleep, so I decided to play along, but hadn't noted fully the dozens rule, and Des wondered if I would pare my 18-entry item down (it echoed the Robert Arthur-edited Alfred Hitchcock Presents: volumes even down to including a novel, in that first batch only Kate Wilhelm's Death Qualified, which is my favorite of her most qualifying novels, though most of hers would qualify). So, I did two dozens, instead, with a Calvino novel-of-sorts in multiple Tarot-driven vignettes among the added, instead. (Since I was sleepy still, I was lazy enough to add my two better relevant very short stories, or at least the choice of one of the two.)


I gave the two "volumes" titles, as well. I shall gather links to the stories and books that are online, in the next little while (now provided).

We Are in the Vastness


A. A. Attanasio: "Sherlock Holmes and Basho" (first in Beastmarks, Zeising 1985) (not online)
Jorge Luis Borges: "The Other Death" (preferably the translation by Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni, if available)
David Redd: "Morning" (not the story, but a page offering his collected stories volume)
Margaret St. Clair: "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (originally published as by "Idris Seabright")


As the subtitle suggests (and it's notably been dropped from the two US paperback reprints' covers I've seen so far, the first's cover below), this is not simply a lawyer-procedural novel, but digs a bit more into further realms than that...the subsequent, also good or better, Holloway novels stuck to more specifically legal-procedural concerns.




We Are Vaster Than We Might Wish

Italo Calvino: THE CASTLE OF CROSSED DESTINIES (translation by William White) preview only
Todd Mason: "Bedtime" (alternately, "Bonobos") [at the initial hour of TOC composition, I was nodding more than Homer--these would be rather unlucky 13th entries!] (?amusingly, neither is online, as far as I can see, at the moment.)
Evelyn Waugh: "The Man Who Liked Dickens" (similarly, Joan Aiken: "Marmalade Wine") [there's at least one other Very Similar story of similar vintage at the edge of memory]



For more of today's short stories, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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Thursday, January 23, 2025

2024: THE STARK HOUSE ANTHOLOGY edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard (Stark House); DEATH COMES TOO LATE by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime): CF publishers celebrate their notable 2024 anniversaries (25th/20th)...and index to BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND 1, edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash


Gregory Shepard's Stark House, which has mostly specialized in bringing vintage novels and collections of hardboiled/noir and other crime-fiction classics and "forgotten" (including previously unpublished) work back or first into print, mostly in two (or more) novels-in-one-volume trade paperback editions, for the last 26 years, and Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime line, which has mostly focused on new (and previously unpublished from decades past) work in a similar vein in mass-market and trade paperback editions for 21 years, both serving (clearly and justly) sustained and appreciative audiences, offered in 2024 anniversary compilations: an anthology of selections from Stark House authors (including a newly-published Peter Rabe short story and a Jada Davis short novel), and a collection of twenty of Ardai's short stories (offered in the stead of another novel, such as Fifty-to-One, which he wrote to celebrate the publication of Hard Case's first fifty titles, with chapter titles taken from each of those releases). Both have had notable sidelines: Stark House (as Shepard notes in his preface) having begun with a hardcover edition of a (Ms.) Storm Constantine fantasy collection, The Oracle Lips (a title that might've worked for a Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel, as well), and has offered some further horror and fantasy titles since, as well as a few sf and western items and other fiction, mass-market paperbacks in the Black Gat imprint, and the Staccato Crime and Film Noir Classics lines. Ardai's most visible other offering at first was his series of Gabriel Hunt adventure novels, each written by a different notable adventure/crime fiction writer, beginning with James Reasoner's Hunt for the Well of Eternity, though before he founded Hard Case he worked with the Davis Publications fiction magazine group (later bought by Dell, and currently published by Penny Press) and primarily on their anthology projects--and Hard Case itself has offered a line of graphic novels to go with the purely prose items.

Ninja, our elder, gray tabby cat, will scratch her face against the heavier paper of the Stark House publication's corners more readily. If this is a consideration, be aware of this.

Contents: 
The Stark House Anthology edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard

7 * Stark House Press: The First 25 Years * Gregory Shepard * in
10 * Introduction * Rick Ollerman * in
13 * Hangover * Charles Runyon, (ss) Manhunt December 1960
24 * A Matter of Balance * Peter Rabe (ss) 2024 (first publication)
35 * Invitation to an Accident * "Wade Miller" (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 1955
48 * The Tormented * James McKimmey (nv) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine August 1967
64 * Murderer #2 * Jean Potts (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January 1961
75 * To Kill a Wife * Lionel White (nv) Murder September 1956
89 * So Curse the Day * Jada M. Davis (na) 2024 (first publication)
198 * Art for Money’s Sake * Dan J. Marlowe (ss) The Elks Magazine February 1970
204 * Chester Drum Takes Over * Stephen Marlowe (ss) Ellery Queen’s Anthology #25, Spring/Summer 1973
216 * Sleep Without Dreams * Frank Kane (ss) [Johnny Liddell series] Manhunt February 1956
228 * The Memory Guy * Henry Kane (nv) [Peter Chambers series] Come Seven/Come Death ed. Henry Morrison, Pocket Books, 1965
241 * Nothing in My Way * Orrie Hitt (ss) Smashing Detective Stories July 1955
250 * Preventive Medicine * Harry Whittington (ss) Trapped Detective Story Magazine August 1956
256 * Die, Darling, Die * Gil Brewer (nv) Justice January 1956
275 * The Geek-Girl * "Day Keene" (nv) Adam October 1953
297 * Woman Missing * Helen Nielsen (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1960
318 * Backbite * Lorenz Heller (as "Fredrick Lorenz") (ss)  Justice January 1956
323 * Angie * Ed Gorman (ss) 999 ed. Al Sarrantonio, Avon Books, 1999
336 * Night Games * Bill Pronzini  (ss) Bullets and Other Hurting Things: A Tribute to Bill Crider ed. Rick Ollerman, Down & Out Books, 2021
343 * The Silent One * Fletcher Flora (ss) Hunted Detective Story Magazine #7, December 1955
349 * Beware of the Dog * Fredric Brown (ss) Ten Detective Aces February 1943, as "Hound of Hell"
354 * Hit Me * Rick Ollerman (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #1, 2017
370 * Axe * Gregory Shepard (ss) 2024 (first publication)
378 * Last Night at Skipper’s Lounge * Timothy J. Lockhart (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #2, 2017
390 * Barbarians (Chapters 1-3) * Robert W. Chambers (novel excerpt, 1917) 
402 * Politics Pays Best * E. Phillips Oppenheim (ss) [Major Radford series] The Country Gentleman February 1930
415 * Secretaries Make Such Nice Wives * A. S. Fleischman; also here (ss) Toronto Star Weekly (a 1941 issue; formerly the weekly magazine supplement to the Toronto Star and can be referred to as Star Weekly)
418 * The Dead Man’s Eyes * Robert Silverberg (ss) Playboy August 1988
432 * Disorderly * Barry N. Malzberg (ss) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine January 1968
436 * Instruction for Murder * Bruno Fischer (ss) A Mate for Murder and Other Stories from the Pulps ed. Gary Lovisi, Gryphon Books 1992 (the magazine[s] the stories were sold to folded before scheduled publication in the 1940s, and Lovisi published a slim original-publication collection of them)


Contents:
Death Comes Too Late (20 Stories) by Charles Ardai

15 * Introduction * Charles Ardai * (in)
161 * Jonas and the Frail * Charles Ardai (ss) Blazing! Adventures Magazine #9, 2008
179 * The Deadly Embrace * Charles Ardai (ss) Truth, Justice and..., edited by Thomas Deja, 2004 ebook
203 * Don't Be Cruel * Charles Ardai (ss) Down These Dark Streets, edited by Thomas Deja, 2003 ebook
259 * Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright * Charles Ardai (ss) Black Is the Night ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Titan, 2022
307 * My Husband’s Wife * Charles Ardai  (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2009
327 * A Bar Called Charley’s * Charles Ardai (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine November 1990
345 *  A Free Man * Charles Ardai (ss) BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010)
363 * The Investigation of Things * Charles Ardai (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine February 1991

Fiction reviews, long delayed, to follow. Thanks to Charles Ardai, Gregory Shepard and Patricia Abbott for help with bibliographic information.  TM



And, to add to the indices here, here's the trade paperback version of BEAT to a PULP, Round 1, the 2010 anthology drawn mostly, apparently, from stories first published by the BEAT to a PULP online magazine.

BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010), xiv+396pp, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0615388243, cover illustration by James O'Barr (BtaP 20XX indicates the year the story was featured on the webzine)

vii * Foreword * Bill Crider * fw BtaP 2010
xi * Introduction * David Cranmer * in
xiii * Acknowledgements * Elaine Ash * ak
1 * Maker's and Coke * Jake Hinkson * ss BtaP 20o9
7 * A Free Man * Charles Ardai * ss BtaP 2010
23 * Fangataufa * Sophie Littlefield * ss BtaP 2010
37 * You Don't Get Three Mistakes * Scott D. Parker * ss BtaP 20o9
45 * Insatiable * Hilary Davidson * ss BtaP 20o9
53 * Boots on the Ground * Matthew Quinn Martin * vi BtaP 2010
55 * Studio Dick * Garnett Elliott * ss BtaP 2010
67 * Killing Kate * Ed Gorman * ss BtaP 2010
74 * The Ghost Ship * Evan Lewis * ss BtaP 2010
86 * The Strange Death of Ambrose Bierce * Paul Powers * ss BtaP 2010
96 * Heliotrope * James Reasoner * ss BtaP 2010
110 * The Wind Scorpion * Edwin A. Grainger * ss BtaP 2010
122 * Hard Bite * Anonymous-9 * ss BtaP 20o8
132 * Crap is King * Robert J. Randisi * ss BtaP 2010
151 * The All-Weather Phantom * Mike Sheeter * ss (first published as "Swing High, Sweet Chariot" in the online magazine Hardluck Stories, 2008, edited by Dave Zeltserman and Ed Gorman)
164 * Pripet March * Stephen D, Rogers * ss BtaP 2010
169 * Ghostscapes * Patricia Abbott * ss BtaP 2010
183 * Off Rock * Kieran Shea * ss BtaP 2010 
195 * At Long Last * Nolan Knight * ss BtaP 2010
203 * A Native Problem * Chris F. Holm * ss BtaP 2010
219 * Spend It Now, Pay Later * Nik Morton * ss BtaP 20o9
225 * Spot Marks the X * I. J. Parnham * ss BtaP 2010
236 * Hoosier Daddy * Jedidiah Ayres * ss BtaP 2010
251 * Anarchy Among Friends: A Love Story * Andy Henion * ss BtaP 2010
265 * Cannulation * Glenn Gray * ss BtaP 2010
280 * The Unreal Jesse James * Chap O'Keefe * ss BtaP 20o9
292 * Acting Out * Frank Bill * na BtaP 2010
357 * A History of Pulp * Cullen Gallegher * es BtaP 2010




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Friday, September 8, 2023

FFB: WORLDS TO COME edited by Damon Knight (Harper & Row 1967); FOURTEEN FOR NOW edited by John Simon (Harper & Row 1969)

 Dutch Uncles: Two Anthologies for Younger Readers:





































    Worlds to Come edited by Damon Knight (Harper & Row, LCC# AC 67-10130, 1967, $4.95, xii +337pp, hc)
    • ix · Introduction · Damon Knight · in
    • 1 · The Sentinel · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Ten Story Fantasy Spr 1951, as “Sentinel of Eternity”
    • 17 · Moonwalk · H. B. Fyfe · nv Space Science Fiction Nov 1952
    • 81 · Mars Is Heaven! · Ray Bradbury · ss Planet Stories Fll 1948
    • 109 · The Edge of the Sea · Algis Budrys · ss Venture Mar 1958
    • 141 · The Martian Way · Isaac Asimov · na Galaxy Nov 1952
    • 213 · The Big Contest · John D. MacDonald · ss Worlds Beyond Dec 1950
    • 227 · Ordeal in Space · Robert A. Heinlein · ss Town & Country May 1948
    • 253 · That Share of Glory · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Astounding Jan 1952
    • 303 · Sunken Universe [Lavon] · James Blish · nv Super Science Stories May 1942, as by Arthur Merlyn, see also “Surface Tension”
    • 337 · More Good Reading in Science Fiction · Damon Knight · bi
Fourteen for Now: a collection of contemporary stories edited by John Simon (Harper & Row, OCLC #54245, 1969, $4.95, xvi + 316pp, hc)
ix · Introduction for the Young Reader: Books in an Age of Television / by John Simon  
1 · When the Priest is Not at Home / by B. Traven (ss) The Night Visitor and Other Stories, Hill and Wang 1966
19 · A Good Man is Hard to Find / by Flannery O'Connor (nv) The Avon Book of Modern Writing, ed. William Phillips & Philip Rahv, Avon 1953
44 · Into the Green Night / by Irvin Faust (ss) Roar, Lion, Roar, Random House 1961
60 · The Stone Boy / by Gina Berriault (ss) Mademoiselle Jun 1957
79 · The Games of Night / by Stig Dagerman (translation by Naomi Walford) (ss) Nattens lekar ("Night Games") Norstedts förlag 1947; The Games of  Night, Bodley Head 1959
93 · Nazis / by Ferenc Sánta (translation by John Simon)(ss) Kortárs ("Contemporary"), May 1960; translation in New Hungarian Review
103 · Among the Dangs / by George P. Elliott (nv) Esquire Jun 1958
119 · The Death of Me / by Bernard Malamud (nv) World Review April 1951
151 · Murke's Collected Silences / by Heinrich Böll (translation by Leila Vennewitz) (ss) Esquire Nov 1959
182 · The Hero / by Bruce Jay Friedman (ss) Cavalier 1966
196 · Ceremonies / by Joyce Carol Oates (nv) By the North Gate, Vanguard 1963
227 · As I Was Going Up the Stair / by Alfred Chester (nv) The Sewanee Review 1957
277 · The Day Beaumont Became Acquainted with His Pain / by J.M.G. LeClézio (translation by Daphne Woodward) (nv) Mercure de France 1964; Fever, Hamish Hamilton 1966
313 · Biographical notes / by John Simon


Two anthologies aimed at a teen readership by two famously prickly critics, and writers otherwise (not that Harper & Row, their mutual first publisher, nor certainly the paperback packagers, would mind if adults were willing to partake--one notes the degree to which adult-targeted anthologies could easily feature the same sets of stories). Notable in part for the eclecticism of the choices, in the case of the Knight even to the the degree that all the stories are drawn from different magazines in the sf field (including Worlds Beyond which Knight edited), and that famous speculative fiction title Town and Country (devoted, of course, to fantasies and achieved realities of expensive living). 

Also notable to the degree which the Simon anthology doesn't eschew the fantastic, from the rather thoroughly science-fictional "Among the Dangs" to the various more blatantly metaphorical explorations as the Böll, and those that can be read as certainly akin to the fantastic (or at least as a borderline horror) as the O'Connor; certainly, very few of Simon's writers haven't at least delved notably into the fantastic, even as few of Knight's haven't made at least some notable or interesting contribution to the contemporary/mimetic or other non-fantasticated genres, including Heinlein and Asimov and definitely including Budrys, Kornbluth, Blish, Bradbury and, most obviously, John D. MacDonald, most of whose career was set in other contexts than fantastic fiction. Also, as is common in anthologies aimed at young readers, no fear of gathering chestnuts, mixed in both cases with rather obscure stories...and at the remove of half a century, some once ineluctable stories are now only infrequently seen, if at all...such as "The Stone Boy" or "The Edge of the Sea". 

Knight offers quick headnotes and a brief bibliography of recommended additional reading, Simon musing endnotes to each story, and both manage to provide introductions that are interesting mixes of useful observation and hobbyhorse-riding on their parts...Knight lays out rather well why science fiction is not so much a predictive artform as a speculative one, which can at times predict and at times nudge readers, scientists or technologists or those who are likely to work in those fields eventually, toward development (and notes that Jules Verne enjoyed playing around with exotic but already achieved advances and discoveries, while imbuing them with Gosh-Wow as if they were still basically out of reach)...while providing in his anthology a number of stories with no relation to the stated thesis, as one might take it, of the anthology...since "Mars is Heaven!" and at least a few of the others are more borderline horror and/or of other ambitions altogether (as Algis Budrys noted, in his own hobbyhorse-riding review, one of only two the book received in the sf media, apparently--typically, Budrys does not miss a chance to dismiss his own work as less than fully-realized, while also justly taking on the unearned reputation of Arthur C. Clarke as primarily a hard-science extrapolator so much as frequent mystic). While Simon makes useful argument for what makes good narrative art vs. less good, while mostly pretending that what made so much television drama in the 1960s and previously (he doesn't admit that there are any exceptions) so bland and unenlightening doesn't apply to such arts more dear to his heart as film, stage drama and literature (and where he does admit the latter, it is almost grudgingly and fleetingly).

Good anthologies, some interesting arguments and insights from the editor/annotators, and some work no longer as over-familiar as it once was, and some which never had the chance to become over-familiar...and there are worse fates than reading the Oates or the Kornbluth again. Knight had already published a few younger-skewing anthologies at time of publication, and would publish a few more, though he would produce vastly more aimed at adult audiences; I believe this is Simon's only anthology of fiction, for any audience. And it should be noted that the Blish story in the Knight volume is the predecessor to Blish's most famous single short story, "Surface Tension" (as "Common Time" is becoming more obscure)..."Sunken Universe" was combined with the later story to fashion the novella form of "Surface Tension"...

Worlds to Come can be read here.

Algis Budrys reviews the Knight in Galaxy, October 1967 issue. (P. Schuyler Miller reviewed it for Analog, as well.)
John Leonard reviews the Simon in The New York Times in the 1 March 1970 issue (rather late)(and the scanning in of the article was particularly inept, putting paragraphs out of place; you'll have some puzzle assembly to do while reading Leonard's review of the Simon and The Loners, edited by L. M. Schulman, and George A. Woods's review of a how-to-cartoon book for young readers, admixed.)(Woods mentions in passing how he meant to be reading instead TR and Will by William Manners...one of Manners's popular-history successes after his work as founding editor of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, whom I was asking after just yesterday and the day before.)

For more of today's books (in 2019), please see Patti Abbott's blog.
































































US first edition:

UK paperback:
a redux post with some slight edits and added links.
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