THE GHOST LIGHT

By Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber was one of those freight trains, not easy to start, possible to derail, but hard as hell to stop. This collection showcases some of his best stories, reaching back to work he did in the 1950s and sweeping forward to "The Ghost Light", written in 1984.

The collection is really a curio cabinet of Leiber’s idiosyncrasies, hobbies, and nightmares. His world was part funhouse, part haunted mansion, with large suites dedicated to cats, chess, acting, sex, and alas, alcoholism.

"Space-Time for Springers" is a science-fiction cats & chess fantasy (it won a Hugo, deservedly) featuring Gummitch the kitten (who merited his own series). "A Deskful of Girls" from the Changewar series provides the sex with a creepy scientist who uses the soul-stealing technology of the Spiders and Snakes (mysterious, time-spanning enemies) to create his own personal collection of girlfriends. "Midnight by the Morphy Watch" tells the secret history of why chess-masters are really nuts (Bobby Fischer notwithstanding. Yes I know, playing chess is not really a crime.) Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser have their home at "Bazaar of the Bizarre", one of their best tales ("Lean Times in Lankhmar" edges "Bizarre", IMHO, but isn’t the most typical F&GM story).

The title story is the hardest hitting of the bunch. I believe it is deliberately the opening in order to balance the autobiographical essay "Not Much Disorder and Not So Early Sex" which closes the book.  While I have seen many writers place themselves into stories, I have seen none who did so with such brutal effect. There are tragedies and there are tragedies, and many writers seem better able to express themselves in fiction than is bare, reductive fact. Leiber’s autobiography, while very revealing in mnay ways leaves much left unsaid. I'm not at all claiming that "The Ghost Light" is autobiographical, but I do beleive it is an act of exorcism, chilling and redemptive in its own way. I am left hoping that Leiber’s brilliant, tormented self found some pain-ease, at a price that could be borne.
 

-Dave Hardy

 

CELEBRATED CASES OF JUDGE DEE (DEE GOONG AN)

Translated by Robert van Gulik

Long before Jessica Fletcher opened up the Cabots Cove branch of the Pinkertons, the Chinese developed the detective novel to a high degree. But like pasta, gunpowder, and sea borne voyages of trade and conquest, they decided it was overrated and left it to the uncivilized monkey people of the European littoral. Back in WWII Robert van Gulik took a break from his war duties and translated a Chinese detective novel. It was the Dee Goong An, a fictionalized account of crime fighting by a historical jurist of 8th century China.

Other than a predilection for tea, Judge Dee doesn’t have too much in common with Miss Marple. For one it’s his JOB to solve crimes. He is a District Magistrate, a post that combined detailed local oversight with high rank in T’ang China. For two he has a squad of cops and ex-cons to do his legwork. Not that Dee needs them, he is a man of most acute faculties. When all else fails he can also torture the bejeezus out of the prime suspect.

It all adds up to a delightfully fresh take on the crime genre. If readers don’t get a Shaolin monk with the secret of the Iron Death Fist, they do get a treasure box of hard-boiled crime-solving.
 

-Dave Hardy

 

ARTHUR PENN 1922-2010

The passing of Tony Curtis this week perhaps overshadows the loss of another of America's treasures of the film world. Arthur Penn, arguably one of the most underrated directors, died on September 28. Penn captured my imagination with two of the boldest and most brilliant movies of the 60s-70s, Bonnie & Clyde and Little Big Man. They were made when I was too young to care about such things, but they played again and again on Saturday afternoon TV, back before anyone in Jacksonville, Florida had cable.



What do you say, muleskinner? I watched it so many times. I also read Thomas Berger's novel, which, if one can believe, is even better than the movie.

Bonnie and Clyde is justly famous for for its supremely bloody final scene. But what hooked me was the anarchic, black humor that fueled the story of murderous outlaws on the run.



Thanks for some wonderful times Mr. Penn. You are missed.

-Dave Hardy

CONCLUSION TO THE HUNGER WITH THE HEART OF ICE ONLINE

The second part of "The Hunger with the Heart of Ice" is online here. The third and final part is online here. Be sure to check out Adventure! for much more about your favorite writers of thrilling stories.

NEW STORY ONLINE

The first part of a three part story is online at Adventure! It's a Northern featuring Sub-Inspector Gatewood of the Mounted Police, a character that debuted in Dark Worlds #3. "The Hunger With the Heart of Ice" is a psychological thriller set in on the Canadian frontier of the 1880s. Check is out here.  The next two parts will appear on successive Mondays. Thanks! -Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE GANGS OF NEW YORK

By Herbert Asbury

Subtitled “An informal history of the underworld” this is Herbert Asbury’s best-known and perhaps most important work. Asbury made his career by writing the secret history of America’s big cities, the scandalous underbelly you never get to see in the official, "chamber of commerce approved" version.

If you’ve seen the movie by Martin Scorsese (with stellar performances by Daniel Day Lewis, Leo DiCaprio, and Cameron Diaz) here is a chance to see what that was based on. Asbury begins with the grim and dangerous slums of the Five-Points (and especially the Old Brewery) in the pre-Civil War era. This is legendary country where Paul Bunyon-like characters mingle with real life ward heelers. The life and death of Bill the Butcher Poole is recounted along with the bloody draft riots.

Asbury follows the nexus of street gangs and politics through the post war decades when Jewish and Italian immigrants began to displace the Irish and Germans. The fearsome confederacy of outlaws called the Whyos dominated New York in the 1870s from their hangout at a saloon called the Morgue. Asbury fills us in on the river pirates and the brothels. He tells of the day in August 1903 when hundreds of gangsters from the Monk Eastman gang shot it out with the Italians from the Five Points. Baboon Riley, Gyp the Blood, Hell-Cat Maggie, Gallus Mag, Humpty Jackson, Yoski Nigger, and Kid Twist are just a few of the strange and colorful characters who drifted through Old New York’s streets. The Daybreak Boys, the Gophers, the Dead Rabbits, the Roach Guards and Plug Uglies were once as powerful and deadly as the Crips, Latin Kings, or the Cosa Nostra.

Asbury’s work ends before the rise of the Syndicate as an interstate combination of organized crime (he originally published this in 1927). For anyone trying to understand the origins of modern organized crime this is essential reading. Even if you aren’t, it is still the fascinating story of the dark side of a great American city.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE FOUR FEATHERS

By A.E.W. Mason

Two excellent movies have been made from AEW Mason’s The Four Feathers, a 1901 novel which is considered a classic of adventure stories. For the life of me I can’t figure out why, because The Four Feathers is as dull as an Al Gore lecture on deforestation in New Jersey.

Harry Feversham is a young subaltern who resigns his commission for fear that he will prove a coward when his regiment ships out for the Sudan. Three of his fellow officers give him white feathers as a mark of disdain. Harry’s fiancée, Ethne, adds a fourth. So Harry sets out for the Sudan to prove ‘em wrong. It’s a capital idea, but Mason leaves us with Ethne having tea parties and reading letters for about 100 or so pages.

Meanwhile, Capt. Durrance, Harry’s friend goes blind, is sent back from the Sudan to Merrie England where he gets hot in the underwear parts for Ethne. No, actually he behaves like an insipid caricature of an effete Englishman, while Mason treats the reader to loads of contrived “if I feel this way she’ll feel that way” treacle that would embarrass Barbara Cartland.

God knows I enjoy some real crap, but at least people in those stories DO THINGS. I was really wishing Harry would tell Ethne “kiss my grits, bee-yotch, I’m shacking up with a native,” or maybe a Dervish warrior would charge the damn tea party and start killing the polite limeys with a big ol’ pig-sticker or something would just please happen, and not happen off-stage and get reported at yet another, freaking, stinking tea-party!

Eventually, Harry redeems himself and returns to London to claim the great-white girlfriend. Me, I’d a told Ethne where she could put her feather.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

REVIEW: FAST ONE

By Paul Cain

Fast One is Paul Cain’s novel of corruption and underworld warfare. Like other hard-boiled novels of the era it is set in the grit and glory of LA, but instead of a PI dedicated to bringing a criminal to justice, this is a tale of an outlaw’s struggle to survive. Gerry Kells is a war-hero, junkie, gambler, and gangster who just wants to leave the rackets behind for a little peace and quiet. But it doesn’t work that way in LA. He is drawn into a spiral of violence as rival underworld factions use him as a pawn. Unfortunately for them Kells is nobody’s fool and mayhem ensues.

Cain had a good grasp of the loose structure of the LA syndicate. As in the real LA-LA land the cops and the crooks are mostly indistinguishable (look up LAPD Lt. Guy “Whistler” McAfee sometime). Gamblers skirt the law by putting their casinos on freighters anchored just off-shore (again a fact the LA scene). Rivals use scandal-sheet newspapers as weapons in the war for City Hall and control of the rackets (much like “Gray-Wolf” Charlie Crawford did until he was shot by a candidate for judgeship).

This is a dark tale, more in the spirit of Cornell Woolrich’s noir than some of the more obvious comparisons to Cain's fellow Black Mask writers Hammett and Chandler. Fast One is a hard-boiled gangster story that deserves to be better known.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

REVIEW: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

By Patrick O’Brian

If you have seen Master and Commander and expect more of the same from Patrick O’Brian’s novel, I must warn you the film really has nothing to do with the book, except so far as they have the same characters. Not that either one is any bit less than excellent, they just do different things and tell different stories.

Peter Weir’s film is about action. But the nature of war at sea in the Age of Sail, meant that inaction was the norm. One spent months at sea going somewhere, looking for someone, and at the end they might shoot a cannon at you, or not as the case may be. While most writers just skip that whole “sail across the world bit”, O’Brian made it his specialty. His novels are about the closed-in life of sailors and their brief glimpses of intensely varied cultures ashore. Some reviewers compare O’Brian to Jane Austen, I tend to think of Jack Kerouac.

If Far Side of the World is Jane Austen, it’s Austen with the occasional flogging and amputation. Captain Jack Aubrey has to work to get the HMS Surprise across the world. And the local cultures aren’t just window dressing, Aubrey and his good friend Dr. Maturin find themselves in the right church, but wrong pew, as uncomprehending observers of somebody else’s nautical adventure when they meet a band of sea-going Polynesian Amazons. The seas are full of adventure.

The talk isn’t bad either. O’Brian fills the book with dry wit and absurd humor. His characters speak a distinctive early 19th century dialect that is fresh, without being a strain. There are vast amounts of nautical jargon, but when something critical needs to be conveyed to the reader, a lubberly landsman is on hand to ask the captain what’s going on.

So if you want the taste of salt horse and weevil biscuit without having to stray too far from Jack in the Box, you could ship out with the HMS Surprise.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

REVIEW: THE EMPIRE OF THE STEPPES

By Rene Grousset

This masterful history by one of France’s most distinguished scholars piqued my youthful interest with its tales of wild tribes in remote places of Asia. I still keep The Empire of the Steppes on my shelf as a reference work and simply as an interesting read.

Rene Grousset was what used to be called an Orientalist, before Edward Said made that a dirty word. His specialty was Asian history. Here he tackles no less than 3,000 years of Central Asian history. He sketches the ongoing clash of Nomad Hordes vs. Civilization (Skythians vs. Assyria, Huns vs. Rome, Persia, India & China, Mongols vs The World) with special attention to the notable conquerors. Attila, Jenghis Khan, and Tamerlane all get close attention. But Grousset also looks at how nomad groups such as the Magyars, Turks, Moguls, and Manchu changed from hostile marauders to members of the civilizations they once attacked and even the defenders of civilization against other waves of barbarian invaders.

Though often dry, and forced to compress vast amounts of history into small packages, Grousset still allows himself flourishes. You can read Empire of the Steppes and see for yourself why Harold Lamb and Robert E. Howard were fascinated the turbulent, destructive, warlike, and creative peoples of the Central Asian Steppes.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

REVIEW: ECHOES OF VALOR III

Edited by Karl Edward Wagner

This is a set of fantasy and adventure tales by various pulp authors. The lead tale is "Shadow of the Vulture" by Robert E Howard. It is one of his best historical adventure tales and feature Sonya of Rogatino, the Cossack sword-woman who was the precursor of Red Sonja of the comics. It’s a ripping story set at the siege of Vienna in 1529.

There is a marvelous Jack Williamson yarn, "Wolves of Darkness", with a brilliant mix of science-fiction a horror that pre-figures the novel Darker than You Think.

While there are some decent tales by Manly Wade Wellman and Henry Kuttner, the real discovery here is Nictzin Dyalhis. Now nearly forgotten, Dyalhis was a regular contributor to Weird Tales. His work has a true sense of wonder with stories that could almost be fairy tales, gentle and dark at the same time.

Echoes of Valor III is definitely worth adding to one’s collection.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE BEST OF EDMOND HAMILTON

By Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton is one of the forgotten pioneers of science fiction. His career began in the pulps back in the 1920s and carried on for over fifty years. This 1977 anthology, edited by Hamilton's wife, the multi-talented Leigh Brackett, brought his best short stories between one set of covers.

It seems Hamilton was at his peak in the 1930s and 1940s since that’s when most of these stories date from. In truth that’s an illusion since by the ‘50s the pulp markets for short stories had greatly diminished and Hamilton was concentrating on novels. For me it’s a bonus that this anthology focuses on the early stuff since I find that naïve and sometimes crude sf can pack more of a punch than much more polished recent work.

Some real standouts here are "The Monster-God of Mamurth", a story about an explorer trapped in an invisible city and stalked by an invisible monster (it's an interesting example of the influence of The Arabian Nights on early sf), and "Exile", a very simple short-short about a writer and the imaginary world he is trapped in. "A Conquest of Two Worlds" tells of an earthman so disgusted with the hypocrisy and cruelty of Earth’s conquest of the backward races of Venus and Mars, that he throws in his lot with the rebellious BEMs of Jupiter. This is very much an upside-down version of the typical “alien conquest” tale. "Thundering Worlds" is Hamilton at his wide-screen planet-smashing best, a trick he was pulling off well before Doc Smith got in on the act. "He That Hath Wings" is a take on bad boys, the girls who love them, and what happens when they try to pull them back to earth.

As I said, in many ways this is NOT the most polished work of Hamilton, but perhaps it is the most representative. As a time capsule of early pulp sf, it hits the spot.

-Dave Hardy

WHAT'S NEW

Issue five of Dark Worlds is out. It features a new wrap-around cover & lots of stories.

"Of Kings and Servants" by C. J. Burch (Sword & Sorcery)
"The Hook" by J. F. Gonzalez (Horror)
"The Black Grave of Deception" by Peter J. Welmerink (Sword & Sorcery)
"Body of Work' (Mythos Horror) -- A Book Collector story!
"The Cryo Game" by Jack Mackenzie (Space Adventure)
"Black Destiny of Ys" by David A. Hardy (Historical Fantasy)
"Against the Gathering Darkness" by Joel Jenkins (Historical Horror/Adventure)
"An Interview with C. J. Burch: A Chuck the Barbarian Cartoon"

You can order a copy of Dark Worlds 5 here!

Also new is Thrill of Adventure, a blog for and about writers of, well, thrilling tales of adventure. There's covers & links for writers like Robert E. Howard, Jack London, James Oliver Curwood, Rex Beach, Robert Service, Agnes Laut, John Buchan. W.A Fraser and a lot more. Check out classic stories like "The Lord of Samarkand" by Robert E. Howard and "Cedartown Court House" by Theodore Roosevelt.

And last, but by no means least, my story "Code of the Pahlavan" is up on Static Movement. Static Movement is an online 'zine for a great of speculative fiction appearing monthly. You can find two of my other stories there such as  Dies Ater Draconis and The Bunyip Sea. 

That's all for now. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend! -Dave 

THE EARLY LONG

By Frank Belknap Long

I’ve always been a sucker for collections like this. Anthologies of tales from the pulps are the lands I go prospecting for fiction gold. Sometimes I strike pay dirt and sometimes I find rocks. There is a bit of both in The Early Long.

Although he is often recalled as HP Lovecraft’s friend, Frank Belknap Long had a very long career in science fiction and fantasy writing. This collection begins with some of his earliest sales to Weird Tales in the 1920s and winds up with stories he sold to Unknown in the mid-1940s.

It’s an interesting set, particularly regards the aspect of watching a writer develop. While never a Lovecraft clone, his early work shows some affinities with HPL’s style and preoccupations. The "Hounds of Tindalos" is one of Long’s best known tales and is generally considered a part of the larger Mythos cycle of stories. It is a good example of cosmic horror deployed effectively, although Long was still polishing his writing style. It’s not everyday one finds a tale in which a character writes his death-scream.

Later tales manage to combine science fiction with fantasy to create a modern type of horror story (much as HPL’s critical theory called for) but on a human scale. Long’s tales from the ‘40s are memorable and polished. "Grab Bags are Dangerous" is a fine exercise in dark-fantasy leavened with humor and "Step into my Garden" mixes fantasy, myth and fear for a memorable tale.

If you come across this one, it’s well worth a read.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

DESTINATION INFINITY

By Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner was a prolific and popular sf writer, his career spanned from the 1930s to the 1950s when he died young from a heart attack. Destination Infinity is one of the many books he wrote under a pen name, most likely in collaboration with his wife CL Moore.

The tale is classic ‘50s science fiction, set on a Venus covered with roiling seas, and jungles full of man-eating plants. The conflict isn’t exactly about the best means to prune gigantic Venus fly-traps though. It concerns Sam Reed, an illegitimate child of a family of wealthy immortals and his rise from lowly outsider to savior of mankind. Sam is a consummate anti-hero, deliberately abandoned by his father and full of angst and ambition in an uncaring world. The tale follows Sam as a gangster, land-speculator, pioneer, and military dictator.

What Kuttner writes here is sociological science fiction, part speculation on society and part soap opera. Earth was long ago destroyed by nuclear war and mankind lives in undersea habitats on Venus. A few families have developed a hereditary trait of immortality, and live for centuries, aging little if at all. The mass of mankind has stagnated, allowing the immortals to do their thinking for them. Sam Reed blows it all apart in his relentless drive to make it to the top.

This is a book I liked despite itself. The opening is overlong and is basically a lot of exposition to set the story for the rest of the novel. Judging from the names (Reed, Harker, Hale, Delaware, Nevada, Plymouth) and dialog (‘50s Middle American) the only survivors of Earth’s nuclear wars are a bunch of WASPs from North America. I’m not sure I buy the sociology either, immortality is an advantage, but it is practical bribes and threats that keep a society in line, not spiritual intimidation. Just take a look at Eastern Europe in the ‘70s or Medieval Christendom’s struggles with heresy to find examples of orderly, stultified societies. But Kuttner pushes his logic to the end and spices it with soap opera of great verve. Overall, I wasn’t disappointed when I got to Sam Reed’s Destination.

 

-Dave Hardy

DEADLINE AT DAWN

By Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich was the Homer of bleak, urban landscapes, of heroes that the gods had forgotten, and of epic battles fought by desperate losers struggling to carve out a brief moment of love before the relentless wheels of heaven grind them underfoot. His stories were the essence of that strange thing called the roman noir.

Deadline at Dawn is one such epic. A taxi dancer meets a laborer. They have no reason to experience the least amount of sympathy or interest in one another, except they discover they were neighbors back in their small hometown back in Iowa. Now they are alone in the soulless and predatory city, dying by inches as their souls are abraded away to end up dead husks, existing but not alive.

So they plan to head back to Iowa, but the laborer stole some money, and he will be caught because no matter how cleverly he did it, he knows THEY will divine his secrets. Only it won’t be theft he is caught for, it will be murder, because other forces are at work. In true Woolrich style, these innocents are caught up in someone else's crime, not by accident, but because coincidence is a mask for cosmic cruelty that makes sport of humanity. They have until dawn to find the real murderer and escape the malignant forces that stalk them.  

Woolrich’s obsessive attention to detail is matched by his characters’ certain knowledge that every single clue is meaningful and can be used to reconstruct actions and psychologies. Woolrich works his stories like a crazed “CSI: Deadend Town”. It’s a vision of the world that ranges from pitch-black to blinding light. 

Originally published in 1944 under Woolrich’s penname William Irish, Deadline at Dawn was one of many Woolrich novels reprinted by Ballantine in the ‘80s.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE DARK FRIGATE

By Charles Boardman Hawes

Charles Boardman Hawes’ tale of piracy upon the high seas in the days of King Charles is just as fresh today as when it won the Newberry Award in 1923. The Dark Frigate is an excellent work, though classed among young adult novels, it should have a lot of appeal to readers who love a good adventure and can still recall their reading tastes from when they were 13.

The hero is Philip Marsham, a lad who goes to sea in the Rose of Devon. But certain “gentlemen of fortune” under Martin Berwick make themselves masters of the Rose and the honest sailors have no choice but to turn pirate.

This is a dark version of Treasure Island, and Martin Berwick is a grim and tragic Long John Silver. The tale concerns itself with the thin line that divides the lawful from the lawless, and when men are adrift in an uncaring world, how easy it is to cross that thin line. Don’t be looking for easy or happy endings here. Crime is punished, but it’s a near run thing that nearly takes down the innocent too.

The Little, Brown and Co. edition has a good, moody cover illustration and nice black and white line drawings as chapter headings.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

DARKER THAN YOU THINK

By Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson is a pioneer in science fiction, he was around before it was science fiction, they called it “scientifiction” back then. But like other pioneers he was not content with tilling the same fields, he had to pick up his musket and wander over where he couldn’t see the smoke from his neighbor’s cabin. His wanderings took him around to sword and sorcery, adventure tales, and horror. His most notable foray into the field of horror fiction was Darker than You Think, now a classic in the genre.

The story’s protagonist is Will Barbee, a hack journalist with a drinking problem and a sense of bitter longing in a New Mexico city (Williamson is nearly as dotty about his home state as Robert E. Howard was about Texas). When he meets a strange red-haired woman at a press conference held by his former professor, Barbee is launched into a nightmare world of murder and madness that rips apart everything he knows about himself and the human race itself!

This is some of Williamson’s best work, more polished than the often crude “scientifiction” he wrote in the ‘30s, but still with a naïve romance that gives the tale great power. Interestingly, Darker than You Think was a favorite of Jack Parsons, the rocket-scientist/occultist who helped found America’s missile program. Parsons’ may have been a grade-A nutjob, but he had very good taste in fiction if we may judge from this.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE CONQUEST OF NEW SPAIN

By Bernal Diaz

This is a grunt’s eye view of Cortes’ conquest of Mexico. Bernal Diaz was a gentleman soldier who came to the New World to seek his fortune. He saw Spain’s greatest conquest at first hand in all its grit, glory, and gory excess. The book is not exactly an apologia, few thought an apology necessary at the time. Rather it was written to set the record straight regarding other Spanish chroniclers who Diaz felt had distorted Cortes' record.

Diaz was not much of a stylist and translator JM Cohen has cut down the narrative to a manageable size. What is left has the immediacy of vivid, first-hand recollections. Diaz probably spared the reader quite a bit, but what he put in can be horrid enough. He describes Spanish soldiers using fat from Indians’ corpses to make grease for their weapons. Along with the greed, inhumanity, and fanaticism there are human touches. He describes Montezuma (who Diaz guarded) as a kindly gentleman, who offered to arrange marriages for his captors with Aztec ladies, an offer Diaz accepted. The friars are present always, and Diaz describes how they often moderated demands for immediate, forcible conversion. Perhaps it was respect, but it was also pragmatism. There were a lot of pagans, and not all were ill-disposed to the Spanish, but would be if pushed.

Diaz is a man who was born in the Middle Ages and helped create the Modern Era. This isn’t just the story of exploration, or conquest, or adventure, or genocide. It is literally a day-by-day account of how the world, for better or worse, changed.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE COMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN

By Robert E. Howard

This anthology is part one of a three-part collection of all Robert E Howard’s Conan stories. The editors have arranged the tales in the order they were written (a major departure from the de Camp series that arranged the stories to relate to phases in Conan’s life).

Let me just say I consider Robert E Howard’s Conan series as one of about three perfect sword and sorcery series (the other two being Fafhrd and the Grey Mouserand Elric of Melnibone) so this stuff is straight up gold to me.

Which is not to say it is all that to all readers. REH was still getting his feet with the character in these early stories. "The God in the Bowl", a curious mix of sword & sorcery with the detective story, is probably the weakest of the lot. What is amazing is how many of them are so powerful. "The Frost Giant’s Daughter" manages to bring modern fantasy into myth (of the dark and ferocious kind). "Queen of the Black Coast" is perhaps the best of them all, it has adventure, wild love, battle, and the epic saga of the rise and fall, not of a civilization, but of an entire undreamed–of pre-human race.

For a fan who knows these stories well, the real bonus is to see them in the order that they came off REH’s typewriter. We see how one tale would inspire the next, from king to thief, to pirate to mercenary, not as a random agglomeration, but as a that-reminds-me-of-the-time cycle.

Extras include fragments, synopses and a very good critical essay by REH scholar Patrice Louinet. The art by Mark Schultz (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) is excellent. The Coming of Conan is part of a growing library of REH classics released by Wandering Star in conjunction with Del Rey. Wandering Star editions are hardbound with full color illustration (publisher Marcello Anciano will occasionally pulp a run if the color balance is less that perfect). The Del Rey trade paperbacks have black and white versions of the color plates along with a plethora of line drawings. Mark Schultz’ masterpiece here is “The Dance of Belit”, barbaric and sexy.

The Coming of Conan is a must have for any fan of sword & sorcery.
 

-Dave Hardy

A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS

By Eric Ambler

This is one of Eric Ambler’s best novels from his early days, back when he was an anti-Fascist idealist in the ‘30s. While that led to some odd effects in other novels, A Coffin for Dimitrios shows ideology in action, rather than telling about it. The story tells of Latimer, an English journalist, who follows the life history of Dimitrios Makropoulos, a Greek exile who is by turns a gangster, spy, and terrorist for hire. While it’s definitely not a blood-spilling shoot-‘em-up, there is plenty of tension. The novel is really a set of short stories, each telling of some phase of Dimitrios’ career while Latimer gets closer to the truth about Dimitrios’ ultimate fate. Made into a film in 1944 (as The Mask of Dimitrios), A Coffin for Dimitrios is a good old-time thriller. Don’t look for super-weapons, acrobatics, villains in underground fortresses, or heroes jumping into bed with lots of spy-chicks, just good characterization, suspense and an acute eye for the European underworld of the 1930s.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD

By H.P. Lovecraft

HP Lovecraft was a Rhode Islander and a Providence native. His settings are invariably the towns and countryside of New England and especially the imaginary area around Arkham, Massachusetts. But in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward he used his beloved Providence to give this tale a very real backdrop.

This story is really a novella issued in a single volume by Del Rey back in 1982 (it’s assuredly still in print, but I’ve still got the Del Rey edition on my shelf). It tells of young Charles Dexter Ward who takes a deep interest in genealogy, much to everyone’s regret. It seems Ward is a descendant of a certain Joseph Curwen, an old RI settler of dubious and disturbing repute. The reader is led through Curwen’s biography and Ward’s descent into madness with a chillingly clinical precision, heightened by the loving references to Providence landmarks (my brother and sister live in Pawtuxet which Lovecraft describes as the site of Curwen’s farm, check your basement kiddies!).

Compared with better known tales such as “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Shadow over Innsmouth” Charles Dexter Ward is low-key. The antiquarian references may sometimes be a bit overwhelming. For me these quirky touches are what make reading Lovecraft’s work enjoyable. He truly poured himself into his stories. I recommend you sit down on a dark night and pour yourself into The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

CHANGEWAR

By Fritz Leiber

This collection of short stories is a sequel of sorts to Fritz Leiber’s landmark novel The Big Time. The stories are set in the Changewar, a secret battle that spans all space and time. The rivals are the Spiders and Snakes, though all we really learn of them is through the mercenaries they recruit from all of history. Their mode of battle is to change the past in order to promote an advantageous outcome at some point in the unimaginably distant future.

These tales break out and explore some (a very tiny fraction!) of the immense ramifications of the Changewar. “Try and Change the Past” explains with a grimly humorous example just why altering the path of time is a job for intergalactic empires. “The Oldest Soldier” lets a regular guy meet a Changewar soldier, with some dramatic results. “A Deskful of Girls” shows just how a renegade could exploit Changewar technology: the factions don’t use a person’s physical form, they use a sort of psychic impression. In an attenuated form, it creates a spiritual zombie. Don’t try it at home folks, the Spiders and Snakes don’t like it. The collection winds up with “No Great Magic” bringing us full circle to the characters from The Big Time and showing a bit of Changewarfare in process. As always, Leiber’s quirky humor and quirkier word-play is in evidence.

While I definitely recommend this book, you should read The Big Time first. The stories here are good, but perhaps are too mystifying without the background from the novel.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS

By Joe Lansdale

This is the latest novel in the Hap Collins and Leonard Pine series, by Texas author Joe Lansdale. Hap and his buddy Leonard are security guards at a chicken processing plant in East Texas. If you aren’t familiar with these guys, Hap is an easy-going redneck who drifts from one loony predicament to another. His pal Leonard is a tough-as-nails black war vet who happens to be one of the very few openly gay guys in the hick town where they live.

When Hap saves a girl’s life he and Leonard are rewarded with a vacation. After a series of confrontations with pushy waiters and Mexican cops Hap and Leonard end up befriending an old fisherman and his beautiful daughter. Hap actually gets very friendly with her, Leonard less so. Of course it doesn’t end there and our heroes end up on the wrong side of a sadistic Mexican gang boss who happens to practice nudism.

It’s a good novel, but not as weird as its predecessor, Rumble Tumble (really bizarre and bloody, funny as all get out too). Still the smart aleck humor of Hap and Leonard is in full force along with Hap’s attempts to make sense of why his life is so aimless and why someone always wants to kill him.

Strangely enough the British edition is what ended up on my bookshelf, which is what happens when you buy all your books at used bookstores.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE CANDLEMASS ROAD

By George MacDonald Fraser

You could say that The Steel Bonnets is the sort of history a novelist would write, conversely you could say that The Candlemass Road is the sort of novel a historian would write.

George MacDonad Fraser is the author of the hugely popular Flashman novels. He also wrote a compelling history of the Scots-English border in the 16th century, titled The Steel Bonnets. Fraser is border-born and bred and he took that history to heart, from it came The Candlemass Road.

The novel is about Lady Margaret Dacre, raised at the court in London and now returned to her father’s lands in the North. She discovers that the Dacre family has been running on reputation for a long time past and now face the prospect of survival in lawless land of feuds, plunder, and murder. Her only help is the outlaw Hobbie Noble. In classic Western style Lady Dacre and Noble defy the counsel of those who insist on not rocking the boat and proceed to capsize the gol-durn thing.

This is very familiar country for those who’ve read The Steel Bonnets, Fraser even includes a historical postscript to round out this novella. It is the kind of writing that one sees all too seldom: historically literate, tightly paced, filled with characters that grab a reader's interest, but not by re-imagining the past to suit the prissy sensibilities of the present. The Candlemass Road is a lean wolf in a field with too many lumbering oxen.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

BOWIE’S MINE

By Elmer Kelton

Elmer Kelton is something of a favorite of mine. I have to qualify it a bit since my tendency is for headlong lunacy while Kelton is always cautiously aware of human frailty. However, in Bowie’s Mine he cuts loose with a band of raffish knuckleheads on the trail of the legendary lost San Saba Silver mine. The central character is a poor but honest farm boy who decides to have a bit of an adventure. It doesn’t quite work out as the clueless wonders he hooks up with can never pull off their capers as well as they claim.

A darn good western, full of dash, vigor, and rollicking good fun.

-Dave Hardy

THE BLOODY CROWN OF CONAN

by Robert E. Howard

This is book two of the three-part collection of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories by Wandering Star (released as a trade paperback by Del Rey). In these tales REH had hit his stride, and the Cimmerian was loose in all his grit and glory. For those readers more familiar with the old de Camp edited editions of Conan, this collection features the Conan stories in the order they were written with no “posthumous collaboration”: pastiches, re-writes of stories to convert them into Conan tales, or fleshing out of uncompleted synopses.

What you’ll find is two novellas and a novel. The opener is People of the Black Circle. Conan is in the lands of the East leading a gang of Afguli bandits. It’s the sort of thing that would get you a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay these days. He ends up kidnapping a princess entirely by mistake while trying to rescue some of his men from jail. A lot of writers would stop there, but Howard involves a sect of ghastly evil wizards, a spy from a rival empire, and a renegade adept and his girlfriend who are sort of a sorcerous Bonnie & Clyde. REH takes all this complex set of rivalries, adds a few here and there and juggles ‘em all until the end when he begins pitching them through plate glass windows.

The bulk of the book is The Hour of the Dragon, a full scale Conan novel. Conan is king of Aquilonia here, but a conspiracy of rebel nobles, rival kings, and an undead wizard deposes him. Conan sets off of a trek that crosses much of the Hyborian world in his quest to regain his throne. In addition to sword-play, treacherous twists and turns, and perils from grisly demonic forces, Conan has to confront what it means to be king. He has to choose to regain his throne rather than return to the life of a footloose adventurer. The action is cranked to maximum from beginning to end.    

The collection winds up with A Witch Shall be Born. Conan is serving as a mercenary captain for a remote kingdom when a conspiracy overthrows the ruling princess. In the process Conan faces his ultimate challenge: he is crucified (the scene is reproduced in the movie Conan). It is the ultimate in tough guy tale-telling, pushing the Cimmerian into the realms of Odin and Christ.

There are lots of tidbits in the appendices. There are drafts, synopses, and an unpublished fragment. There is also a critical essay by Patrice Louinet and copious notes on the typescripts. While this is of interest mostly to REH scholars, everyone will enjoy the many black and white drawings and plates by Gary Gianni (who also illustrated Bran Mak Morn and Savage Tales of Solomon Kane).

This is the ultimate in sword and sorcery. Buy it now!

-Dave Hardy

BLOOD IS NOT ENOUGH

Edited by Ellen Datlow

This collection of vampire tales was issued by Berkley in 1990 and edited by Ellen Datlow. The goal here seems to be to cast as wide a net as possible and sample every possible variation on the vampire tale one can find. There are blood drinking vampires and emotion drinking vampires and time wasting vampires and kids who think they are vampires, etc…

Some of these tales just misfire for me. Tanith Lee’s “The Janitha Tree” is a good example of her subtle and enigmatic style of weird tale that is so subtle and enigmatic I’m not too sure what happened. Other tales here just aren’t my cup of tea, “A Child of Darkness” by Susan Casper is a decent portrait of a young woman who believes she is a vampire, but ultimately the character comes across as more a pathetic loony than someone interesting in her own right.  

On the other hand there are some true standouts. Fritz Leiber’s tale of blood-sucking advertising “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” appears here. It is subtle and enigmatic, but not too subtle. The best in the collection is Scott Baker’s “Varicose Worms”. This is a tale full of surprises! It tells of a Romanian immigrant in Paris who discovers the secret magic world of Shamanism and his epic battle to hold his place in it. Along the way Baker satirizes psychiatrists, politicians, Mircea Eliade, and homeless beggars, not necessarily in that order. I finished that one and was left begging for more, though I daresay Mr. Baker knows how to wrap up a yarn. If you ever run across this book, read “Varicose Worms”!

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE BLACK MASS OF BROTHER SPRINGER

By Charles Willeford

Charles Willeford was the king of Florida noir. He wrote taut novels of odd loners who just couldn’t stay alone and draw others to their ruin.

Sam Springer is a dry-as-dust accountant who decides he’s a writer because he sold a novel. Broke and in search of new material to write about he visits a monastery in the Florida backwoods. The abbot and sole occupant is a career soldier who’s forgotten more about doing nothing while getting paid than most men ever learn. He helps Springer skip out on his wife and life by dispatching him to be pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville. But preaching actually takes some work and Jax is in the throes of a civil rights conflict. Rev. Deuteronomy Springer is a long way from a saint and so is Merita, the very beautiful wife of one of his deacons.

Black Mass is a sardonic send-up of bigots, zealots, preachers, and believers. Even more than that it is a story about how wanting is quite different from having. If you like good, dark comedy, you should want to read this one. Having done so will be satisfying.

-Dave Hardy

THE BIG TIME

By Fritz Leiber

The Big Time is a masterpiece of contradiction. It is set in a dazzling science fiction universe of limitless possibility, yet the tale itself is one of claustrophobic confinement. The fate of all time and space itself hangs in the balance, armies battle on all fronts, yet the characters are the most minor of rear-rank spearholders. And they are all the more fascinating for it. 

If you are unfamiliar with the premise, The Big Time tells of the Changewar between the Spiders and the Snakes, two mysterious factions battling for control of space and time. Their mode of battle is to change history, their foot-soldiers are agents recruited from all of history and every planet in the universe.

But forget all that, Leiber never tells you what any of the missions mean, only that faceless, nameless commanders say it’s important. And if they order a British WWI vet to help the Nazis win WWII, he just has to assume they know what they're doing. The central character is not a soldier, but an entertainer at a trans-tempoal USO station. Tangled webs of love, jealousy, and mutiny swirl through the lives of the entertainers and the time-soldiers they care for.

The Big Time is all Fritz Leiber, starting with his love of the theater. In fact The Big Time is written much like a play, with a very rigorous observance of Aristotle’s unities (I’m not being very original in noting that). Indeed, the one place, one time approach is perhaps the only way to make sense of a concept as big as the Changewar. Leiber’s love of word-play and his interest in Germans and Shakespeare are very much in evidence.

The Big Time is a science fiction novel you can recommend to people who don’t read science fiction.

-Dave Hardy

ALMURIC

By Robert E. Howard

There is a certain sub-genre of science fiction that is sometimes called “sword & planet”. It has its roots in A Princess of Mars and other tales of John Carter on Barsoom by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The hallmarks are an alien world filled with decadent science, barbaric warriors and an outsider from earth who shakes up the scene.

Robert E. Howard of Conan fame made his own foray into the field with Almuric, perhaps his most extended science fiction work. In fact Almuric is one of REH’s few novels (it was serialized in Weird Tales but never issued as a novel until the ‘70s). The hero is Esau Cairn, a man too strong for civilized life. When fate puts him outside the law a kindly scientist helps Cairn out with a dimensional transporter that shoots him to Almuric, a planet remote from earth. The inhabitants are shaggy ape-men and gorgeous barbarian princesses. On Almuric, a fellow is judged by his courage and strength, not his bank account so Esau Ironhand fits right in.

Alas, there is always a hitch. The demonic Yagas, a race of winged fiends, tyrannize over Almuric. When they massacre Cairn’s friends, it means war. 

While not as well developed as the Hyborian Age, Almuric is an entertaining imaginary world. I enjoyed the naïve and romantic story telling of A Princess of Mars. In Almuric we get REH’s take on that style of story telling: bold, direct, and swashbuckling.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

 

BLACK VULMEA’S VENGEANCE

By Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard, though best known for his horror and sword & sorcery, was at heart an adventure writer. He buckled anything that swashed. What better subject for swashbuckling adventure than piracy on the high seas?

Black Terence Vulmea is REH’s pirate hero. He is an Irish sea-rover, a survivor of England’s tyrannous rule over the Emerald Isle. We get two Black Vulmea stories: “Blades of the Red Brotherhood” and “Black Vulmea’s Vengeance”. “Blades” should be familiar to many Conan fans. It was originally a Conan tale and re-written as apirate sotry. L. Sprague de Camp re-re-wrote it as “The Treasure of Tranicos”. It’s a darn fine adventure as Black Vulmea finds himself stranded on a remote shore and involved with an exiled French nobleman, a rival pirate, hostile Indians, and a legendary lost treasure. It’s a festival of sword-play, double-crosses, and thrilling action.

“Vengeance” lets us get much closer to the pirate’s character. Vulmea is captured by Wentworth, a haughty Royal Navy captain. But the pirate is nobody’s fool and soon the tables are turned. This yarn is an interesting one in that REH gives full vent to his feelings on England’s rule of Ireland, and how a strong man deals with a bully. You might be surprised.

“Isle of Pirates Doom” rounds out the book. While it is a pirate tale, Black Vulmea is not present. Instead REH gives us one of his one of his sword-women: Helen Tavrel, the wildest she-pirate afloat. While Helen Tavrel has never gotten the notice that Belit (“Queen of the Black Coast”), Valeria (“Red Nails”), or Dark Agnes (“Sword Woman”) have received, this is an interesting story. Helen Tavrel isn’t just a man in drag or a sex-kitten with a sword. She has her own complex web of relationships and womanly sense of propriety. She’s no man-hater, but don’t take liberties, you’ll regret it.

Sadly out-of-print, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance is as fine a set of pirate yarns as was ever penned by a salty sea dog.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: MORE STORIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME
ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES TO BE READ WITH THE DOOR LOCKED
ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S BEHIND THE DEATH BALL

Back when magazines contained stories and not just 893 pages of ads, they used to collect them and publish them in book format. Stories, not ads, that is.

One of the old reliables was the “Alfred Hitchcock” sets. Not that the great director actually selected the stories for these books (or maybe he did), but it tied in with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and the Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv show.

Don’t look for “locked door” puzzlers or accounts of how Mrs. Gillysquid the elderly librarian showed up Scotland Yard (except maybe as parodies). These collections focus on crime stories, stories told from the point of view of a criminal, a victim, a bystander. The emphasis is less on detecting than the motivation and effects of crime. Mostly the effect on the reader, the more outlandish the better.

Straight up fantasy is not neglected either. Theodore Sturgeon’s classic tale "Shottle Bop" is featured in Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, and there is a fine homage to Lord Dunsany in More Stories My Mother Never Told Me, titled "The Man Who sold Rope to the Gnoles" by Idris Seabright. And of course one must read John Keefauver’s How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies’ Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue because it has such a cool title, if nothing else.

Should you come across an Alfred Hitchcock collection, it’s worthwhile to take some time to peruse. 

-Dave Hardy