Sandy Ferber | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

Voodoo Planet: A weak entry in an otherwise terrific series

Voodoo Planet by Andre Norton

Voodoo Planet (1959), the third installment of the DANE THORSON / SOLAR QUEEN series, is a rather weak entry in this otherwise terrific bunch of books. Here, Dane, Captain Jellico, and Medic Tau are stranded on Khatka, a planet that had been settled many years ago by Africans after the Second Atomic War.

Our boys fight off many alien creatures in the wilds of Khatka — the fight with the rock apes is a highlight of the story — and help conquer the evil witch doctor who is trying to overthrow the legitimate government.

April 9th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 2 | Andre Norton | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Plague Ship: A marvelous entertainment

Plague Ship by Andre Norton

Plague Ship (1956) is the second installment in Andre Norton’s so-called DANE THORSON (SOLAR QUEEN) series, and is a direct continuation of the previous volume, Sargasso of Space. (A reading of that earlier novel is highly recommended before going into this one.) Plague Ship does everything that a good sci-fi sequel should: It expands on the possibilities of the previous book, deepens the characters, increases the action and leaves us wanting still more.

April 1st, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Andre Norton | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps

Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Martin H. Greenberg

The 1992 Weird Vampire Tales anthology is the only collection of stories derived from the famed pulp magazine Weird Tales to limit itself to a single subject. The slim paperbacks Worlds of Weird and Weird Tales had merely offered a hodgepodge of stories, as did the thick hardcover Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies.

Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies

Weird Tales: The Magazine that Never Dies edited by Marvin Kaye

Marvin Kaye’s Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies anthology from 1988 takes a slightly different tack than its earlier sister volume, Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors. Whereas the editors of that earlier collection chose to select one story from each year of the magazine’s celebrated 32-year run (1923-1954), Kaye has decided here to not just limit himself to the periodical’s classic era of 279 issues, but to also include tales from each of the four latter-day incarnations of “The Unique Magazine”

Sargasso of Space: Old-fashioned sci-fi fun

Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton

Sargasso of Space is the opening novel in Andre Norton’s so-called DANE THORSON (SOLAR QUEEN) series, and is a fine introduction to the books that follow. In this first volume we meet Dane Thorson, a young cargo-apprentice who is assigned (by mechanical Psycho selection) to the trader ship Solar Queen. The crew of the Queen pools its earnings and wins an entire planet, sight unseen, at auction. (Perhaps Ebay will be conducting auctions such as this in 50 or so years!) The crew then explores this strange planet,

And the Darkness Falls: A horror anthology

And the Darkness Falls edited by Boris Karloff

In 1943, Boris Karloff was induced by his old friend Edmund Speare, an English professor and book editor, to assist in putting together an anthology of horror stories; as Speare put it, “a collection of bogey stories selected by a professional bogey man.” The resulting volume, Tales of Terror, consisted of a six-page introduction by Karloff and 14 stories, ran to 317 pages, and was a popular release with the public. On the strength of that book’s sales,

Born With the Dead: Three shorter pieces from one of science fiction’s best

Born With the Dead: Three Novellas About the Spirit of Man by Robert Silverberg

Born With the Dead gathers together three of Robert Silverberg’s mid-career science fiction novellas into one remarkably fine collection. With a length greater than a short story or novelette but shorter than a full-length novel, these three tales clock in at around 55 to 70 pages each, and all display the intelligence, word craft and abundance of detail common to all of Silverberg’s work in the late ’60s to mid-’70s. Although subtitled “Three Novellas About the Spirit of Man”

Carnacki the Ghost Finder: A collection by William Hope Hodgson

Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson

British author William Hope Hodgson‘s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder first saw the light of day in 1913. Consisting of six short stories, drawn from the pages of The Idler and The New Magazine, the collection was ultimately expanded to include nine stories, the last three being discovered after Hodgson’s early death at age 40 in April 1918. In this fascinating group of tales, we meet Thomas Carnacki,

The Night Land: Quite gripping

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson‘s epic novel The Night Land was chosen for inclusion in James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock‘s Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, and yet in this overview volume’s sister collection, Horror: 100 Best Books, Stephen Jones and Kim Newman surprisingly declare the novel to be “unreadable.” No less a critic than H.P.

The Blind Owl: An unusual find

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

My ongoing attempt to read all 200 books spotlighted in Stephen Jones’s and Kim Newman‘s two excellent overview volumes, Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books, has led me to some fairly unusual finds. Case in point: Sadegh Hedayat‘s The Blind Owl, which is — or so claims the Grove Press edition currently in print–“the most important work of modern Iranian literature.”

Author: Sandy Ferber

Voodoo Planet: A weak entry in an otherwise terrific series

Plague Ship: A marvelous entertainment

Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps

Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies

Sargasso of Space: Old-fashioned sci-fi fun

And the Darkness Falls: A horror anthology

Born With the Dead: Three shorter pieces from one of science fiction’s best

Carnacki the Ghost Finder: A collection by William Hope Hodgson

The Night Land: Quite gripping

The Blind Owl: An unusual find

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