Seven Footprints to Satan by Abraham Merritt
Readers of Abraham Merritt’s first four novels — The Moon Pool, The Metal Monster, The Face in the Abyss and The Ship of Ishtar — may feel a little surprised as they get into his fifth, Seven Footprints to Satan.
November 19th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Abraham Merritt | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
FU MANCHU by Sax Rohmer
The FU MANCHU novels that English author Sax Rohmer wrote over the course of nearly half a century are much beloved today, although their notoriously un-P.C. content has made them the subject of dispute for many years. It has been a while since I have read the 13-book series, and have decided to place all my old thoughts on these books in one place for the FanLit reader who may not be familiar with these works. This overview, by no means in depth, can serve as your one-stop shopping destination for all things Fu.
November 12th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Sax Rohmer | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Haunting of Toby Jugg by Dennis Wheatley
Although English author Dennis Wheatley wrote a total of 55 novels before his death in 1977, his reputation today, I have a feeling, rests largely on the nine novels that he wrote dealing with the supernatural and the “black arts.” And if Wheatley’s name is not a familiar one to you, it is really no great wonder, as not too many of those 55 titles – mainly in the adventure/thriller genre – are in print today, and it would surprise me if you could walk into your local Barnes &
November 3rd, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Dennis Wheatley | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A few years ago, FanLit reviewer Terry Weyna eloquently sung the praises of The Strand, the pride and joy of all literate New Yorkers. I myself have spent countless hours there, browsing among the establishment’s four copious floors; it truly is a bookstore second to none. But for the sci-fi/fantasy/pulp lover, The Strand can be a bit problematic. The single section devoted to those three genres is not a large one, the wares on display seem to be a bit static from week to week, and (or is it just me?) it always seems as if the book I am looking for is at the very top of one of the store’s 10-foot-high shelves.
October 28th, 2014. Sandy Ferber | SFF Reviews | 11 comments |
The Time Axis by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore’s sole novel of 1948, The Mask of Circe, was a very way-out excursion in the fantasy realm, and in early 1949, the pair followed up with an equally way-out piece of hard sci-fi. The Time Axis, which initially appeared in the January ’49 issue of “Startling Stories,” finds science fiction’s foremost husband-and-wife writing team (my apologies to Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm!) at the top of their game,
October 27th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3 | C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Second Trip by Robert Silverberg
In his 1969 novel To Live Again, Robert Silverberg posited a world of the near future in which it is possible for the very rich to have their personae recorded and preserved, and later placed in the mind of a willing recipient after their own demise, as a means of surviving the death of the body and sharing their consciousness with another. It is a fascinating premise and a terrific book, and thus this reader was a tad apprehensive at the beginning of Silverberg’s similarly themed novel The Second Trip.
October 14th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Robert Silverberg | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Carpathian Castle by Jules Verne
When 35-year-old Jules Verne managed to sell what would become his first published novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, to the already long-established literary publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, in 1863, little could the two Frenchmen know that this was just the beginning of a decades-long association. Hetzel was already a well-known Parisian figure, having previously released works by such luminaries as Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and Honore de Balzac. Verne, the future “Father of Science Fiction,” was an unknown commodity in 1863;
October 13th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Jules Verne | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Stonehenge Gate by Jack Williamson
What do you plan to do when you’re 97 years old? Me? If I’m fortunate enough to attain to that ripe old age, I suppose I will be eating pureed Gerber peaches and watching Emma Peel reruns on my TV set in the nursing home … IF I’m lucky. For sci-fi Grand Master Jack Williamson, the age of 97 meant another novel, his 50th or so, in a writing career that stretched back 77 years (!), to his first published story, “The Metal Man,”
September 23rd, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Jack Williamson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
When I first saw the 1968 horror film “The Devil Rides Out” several years back at one of NYC’s numerous revival theatres, I thought it was one of the best Hammer films that I’d ever seen, and made a mental note to check out Dennis Wheatley‘s 1934 source novel one day. That resolve was further strengthened when I read a very laudatory article by Stephen Volk on the book in Kim Newman and Stephen Jones‘
September 15th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Dennis Wheatley | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Released 39 years after his seminal sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, and just two years before Orson Welles scared the bejeebers out of U.S. listeners with his radio play of that same novel, 1937’s Star-Begotten finds its author, H.G. Wells, returning to the Red Planet to tell us more about those mysterious and pesky Martians. Written when Wells was 71, this latter work — rather than being a tale of action and mayhem and a truly groundbreaking instance of the then-still-new science fiction (or,
September 12th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | H.G. Wells | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…