Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Sandy Ferber

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.”

The Ghost Pirates: Succeeds marvelously

The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson‘s first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907), is a story of survival after a disaster at sea, and of the monstrous plant and animal life-forms that the survivors encountered while trying to reach home. In his second book, the now-classic The House on the Borderland (1908), Hodgson described an old recluse’s battle against swine creatures from the bowels of the Earth, and the old man’s subsequent cosmic journey through both time and space.

Falling Angel: A masterful horror novel

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

At one point in William Hjortsberg‘s masterful horror novel, Falling Angel, Epiphany Proudfoot, a 17-year-old voodoo priestess, tells the detective hero Harry Angel, “you sure know a lot about the city.” The city in question is the New York of 1959, and if Angel knows a lot about this crazy burg, then Hjortsberg, in the course of this tale, demonstrates that he knows even more.

While much has been said of this book’s scary elements — its voodoo ceremonies and Black Mass meeting and horrible murders — what impressed me most about this tale is the incredible attention to realistic detail that the author invests it with.

The House on the Borderland: Awe and shudders

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson‘s first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907), is a tale of survival after a foundering at sea, replete with carnivorous trees, crab monsters, bipedal slugmen and giant octopi. In his now-classic second novel, The House on the Borderland, which was released the following year, Hodgson, remarkably, upped the ante, and the result is one of the first instances of “cosmic horror” in literature,

The Black Spider: A horror novella

The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf

A novella-length piece written by a Swiss pastor in 1842 that initially seems to serve more as a religious parable than anything else — an unlikely choice as a Top 100 Horror selection, one would think. And yet, there it is, Jeremias Gotthelf’s The Black Spider (or, as it was titled in its original German, Die schwarze Spinne), holding pride of place in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman‘s excellent overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books.

The Boats of the Glen Carrig: As memorable as can be

The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

The conventional words of wisdom for any aspiring new author have long been “write what you know,” a bit of advice that English author William Hope Hodgson seemingly took to heart with his first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig. Before embarking on his writing career, Hodgson had spent eight years at sea, first as an apprentice for four years and then, after a two-year break, as a third mate for another long stretch.

Three Hearts and Three Lions: A compact hard fantasy epic

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

Chosen for inclusion in both David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels and Cawthorn & Moorcock’s Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, Three Hearts and Three Lions had long been on my “must read someday” list. This compactly written epic of “hard fantasy” was first serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953 and released in an expanded book format in 1961.

December 17th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Poul Anderson | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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