The Rim of the Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane
New York Review Books Classics has just packaged two novels by renowned author, editor and teacher William Sloane into a single offering, The Rim of the Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror. Sloane is not an author I’d previously known, probably due to the fact that these stories are two of only three novels that he ever published. Stephen King contributes a short but impeccable introduction,
October 9th, 2015. Jason Golomb and Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | William Sloane | Horror | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Lady of Blossholme by H. Rider Haggard
The Lady of Blossholme was Henry Rider Haggard‘s 34th piece of fiction, out of an eventual 58 titles. It is a novel that he wrote (or, to be technically accurate, dictated) in the year 1907, although it would not see publication until the tail end of 1909, and is one of the author’s more straightforward historical adventures, with hardly any fantasy elements to speak of.
The story takes place in England during the reign of Henry VIII,
October 8th, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | H. Rider Haggard | Free!, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Dracula’s Daughter directed by Lambert Hillyer
Released a full five years after the classic Universal horror film Dracula, the sequel, Dracula’s Daughter, yet picks up a few scant seconds after the original left off. When we last saw our favorite Transylvanian neck nosher, he was lying dead in his coffin in the crypts beneath Carfax Abbey, a stake impaled in his heart courtesy of the intrepid Prof. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan, the only actor who would go on to appear in the sequel). As the latter film commences,
October 2nd, 2015. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg
Tower of Glass (1972) is another of Robert Silverberg’s ambitious novels from his most prolific period in the late 1960s/early 1970s. In that time he was churning out several books each year that were intelligent, thematically challenging, beautifully written stories that explored identity, sexuality, telepathy, alien contact, religion and consciousness. At his best, he produced some masterpieces like Downward to the Earth and Dying Inside,
October 1st, 2015. Stuart Starosta, Kat Hooper and Sandy Ferber | Robert Silverberg | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 11 comments |
The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick
Although he displayed remarkable prescience in many of his books, cult author Philip K. Dick was a good 72 years off the mark in his 18th sci-fi novel, The Crack in Space. Originally released as a 40-cent Ace paperback in 1966 (F-377, for all you collectors out there), the novel takes place against the backdrop of the 2080 U.S. presidential election, in which a black man, Jim Briskin, of the Republican-Liberal party, is poised to become the country’s first black president.
September 29th, 2015. Sandy Ferber and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3, 3.5 | Philip K. Dick | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Heads of Cerberus by Francis Stevens
Though little read and seldom discussed today, in the late teens and early 1920s, Minneapolis-born Francis Stevens was something of a cause célèbre among discriminating readers. “Francis Stevens” was the pen name of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, who published her first story in 1917 at the age of 33. Her career as a writer only lasted six years, during which time she produced six novels and three short stories, and she only took to writing in the first place after becoming a widow, as a means of supporting her young daughter and invalid mother.
September 22nd, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Francis Stevens | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
THE TADUKI QUARTET by H. Rider Haggard
The great adventure fantasist H. Rider Haggard, over the course of his 40+-year career, wrote 14 novels dealing with the adventures of perhaps his greatest character, English hunter Allan Quatermain. Four of these are loosely connected affairs that have sometimes been referred to as the “taduki quartet,” taduki being an inhaled drug with mystical properties that features in no less than three of those books. Here, for your one-stop taduki shopping, I present four mini-reviews of the books in this remarkable series, in their chronological order of publishing appearance:
Allan and the Holy Flower (1915) — This is one of the 14 books that H.
September 17th, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | H. Rider Haggard | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Invisible Man Returns directed by Joe May
Following the release of Dracula’s Daughter in May 1936, horror fans would have to wait almost three years before getting another fright picture from Universal Studios. With the opening of Son of Frankenstein in January 1939, however, the floodgates were opened for the second great wave of Universal horror. And in January 1940, still another sequel was released by the studio, The Invisible Man Returns. A fairly ingenious follow-up to The Invisible Man feature of 1933, which was itself based on H.G.
September 3rd, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Fourth Mansions by R.A. Lafferty
Despite it having been given pride of place in Scottish critic David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, and despite the fact that it has been sitting on my bookshelf for many years, it was only last week that I finally got around to reading R.A. Lafferty’s 1969 cult item Fourth Mansions. The author’s reputation for eccentricity, both in terms of subject matter as well as writing style, had long intimidated me,
September 2nd, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | R.A. Lafferty | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Released in 1961, the U.S./U.K. co-production of Konga marked the first time that theater goers were shown a giant ape going bonkers in the heart of a major city since King Kong itself, 28 years earlier. Of course, fans had been given the 1933 sequel Son of Kong, but in that one, Kong, Jr. is more of a good-natured, oversized pet, and one who never makes it off Skull Island and into civilization, as had the old man. And in Mighty Joe Young (1949),
August 27th, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3 | Film / TV | SFF Reviews | no comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…