The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Warlord of Mars (1914) is the third of eleven JOHN CARTER novels from the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is a direct continuation of the first two in the series — A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars — and a reading of those earlier titles is absolutely essential before going into this one.
Here, Carter tries to rescue his princess, Dejah Thoris, from the clutches of some particularly nasty villains.
July 16th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3 | Edgar Rice Burroughs | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Gods of Mars, #2 of 11 in Burroughs’ JOHN CARTER series, is a direct sequel to the classic A Princess of Mars, and a reading of that earlier volume is fairly essential before going into this one. The Gods of Mars was first published in serial form in All-Story Magazine in 1913, and comprises one of Burroughs’ earliest works.
It is amazing how much action the author manages to cram into the book’s 190 pages;
July 12th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Edgar Rice Burroughs | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think is a one-shot horror-novel excursion for this science fiction Grand Master, but has nonetheless been described as not only the author’s finest work, but also one of the best treatments of the werewolf in modern literature. It has been chosen for inclusion in David Pringle’s overview volume Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels (“a relatively disciplined and thoughtful work,” Pringle writes, in comparing it to the author’s earlier space operas) as well as in Jones &
July 8th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Jack Williamson | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
Purportedly written for children but with a strong appeal for adults as well, Alan Garner’s first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, is a swashbuckling heroic fantasy set in the present day, and one that conflates elements of Welsh, Nordic and English mythology into one very effective brew. Though now deemed a classic of sorts, I probably would never have heard of this work, had it not been for Scottish author Muriel Gray’s article about it in the excellent overview volume Horror: Another 100 Best Books.
June 17th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Alan Garner | Children, Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Winds of Change… and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov
The Winds of Change… and Other Stories is a 1983 collection of Isaac Asimov’s latter-day short pieces; just one of the 506 books he came out with during the course of his incredibly prolific career. The 21 stories in this collection were, with two exceptions, written between 1976 and 1982, and all display the clarity of thought, wit and erudition that are the hallmarks of all of Doc Ike’s work. Four of the stories in this collection — “About Nothing,”
June 3rd, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Isaac Asimov | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Fury by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore
1946 had been a very good year indeed for Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, with a full dozen stories published plus three fine novels (The Fairy Chessmen, Valley of the Flame and The Dark World), and in 1947, science fiction’s preeminent husband-and-wife writing team continued its prolific ways. Before the year was out, the two had succeeded in placing another 15 stories into the pulp magazines of the day,
May 22nd, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Elak of Atlantis by Henry Kuttner
When budding author Henry Kuttner wrote a fan letter to the already established Weird Tales favorite C.L. Moore in 1936, little did he know that the object of his admiration was a woman… a woman who, four years later, would become his wife, and with whom a collaboration would begin that was ultimately recognized as one of the sturdiest pillars of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Such a melding of talents was Henry and Catherine Lucille’s, it has been said,
May 9th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Henry Kuttner | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Mahatma and the Hare by H. Rider Haggard
The Mahatma and the Hare was first published in book form in 1911, and is one of H. Rider Haggard‘s rarer titles. The idea for this short novel came to Haggard, he states in the book’s preface, after he had read a newspaper account of a hare that had swum out to sea to avoid being captured by pursuing hounds. In Haggard’s story, the self-called mahatma — a spiritual man who is able, when asleep, to view “The Great White Road”
May 1st, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | H. Rider Haggard | Free!, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Nine Tomorrows: Tales of the Near Future by Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov may very well be the most prolific author in modern history. With over 500 books to his credit (506, to be exact… go to asimovonline.com for the full list, if you don’t believe me!), covering just about every subject in the Dewey Decimal System (except philosophy, I believe), the man was a real marvel. One of these 500 volumes, Nine Tomorrows, is a collection of short stories that Doc Ike first had published in various magazines during the period July 1956 to November 1958.
April 19th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Isaac Asimov | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Mutant by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore
By the early 1950s, the great husband-and-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore had moved to the West Coast to acquire degrees at the University of Southern California, and were concentrating more on their scholastic pursuits than their (formerly prodigious) sci-fi/fantasy output. In 1953, the pair released Mutant, which would turn out to be their final, novel-length work of science fiction as a team. Mutant is what is known as a “fix-up novel,” consisting of four short stories originally published in 1945 and a final story released in 1953,
April 15th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
No doubt about it--I have to read these.
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