Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Sandy Ferber

Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors

Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg & Martin Greenberg

Though hardly a runaway success in its day, and a publication that faced financial hardships for much of its existence, the pulp magazine known as Weird Tales is today remembered by fans and collectors alike as one of the most influential and prestigious. Anthologies without number have used stories from its pages, and the roster of authors who got their start therein reads like a “Who’s Who” of 20th century horror and fantasy literature.

April 8th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, Frederik Pohl, Fritz Leiber, H. Warner Munn, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Kuttner, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Theodore Sturgeon | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Werewolf of Paris: A terrific piece of writing from Mr. Endore

The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore

I owe a debt of gratitude to writer Marvin Kaye, who selected Guy Endore‘s classic novel of lycanthropy, The Werewolf of Paris, for inclusion in Kim Newman and Stephen Jones‘s excellent overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books. If it hadn’t been for Kaye’s article on this masterful tale, who knows if I would have ever run across it. And that would have been a real shame,

Walk to the End of the World: Post-apocalyptic feminist science fiction

Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas

In the mood for a good piece of post-apocalyptic, feminist science fiction? Well, then, I’ve got a doozy for you! Suzy McKee Charnas’ first novel, Walk to the End of the World (1974), is just such a book, combining a tough little tale with a healthy dose of sociopolitical rumination.

Taking place many years after mankind has destroyed its planet with wars and pollution, “leaving it to the wild weeds,” Walk to the End of the World introduces the reader to the society of the Holdfast,

March 29th, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Suzy McKee Charnas | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Dark Country: A collection of horror stories

The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison

The Dark Country was Dennis Etchison‘s first collection of short stories, and originally appeared back in 1982. I picked up an out-of-print copy recently, after seeing that it had been included in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman‘s excellent overview volume, Horror: 100 Best Books. Well, I don’t know if I would place it on my personal top 100 list, but this book certainly is a unique collection of shuddery,

House of Flesh: Wonderfully creepy

House of Flesh by Bruno Fischer

It was horror writer David Bischoff, writing in Jones and Newman’s excellent overview volume Horror: Another 100 Best Books who first turned me on to Bruno Fischer’s House of Flesh (1950). In his essay, Bischoff mentions that House of Flesh is a “Gothic novel for males,” reveals that it is his favorite “shudder pulp horror” story, and tells us that this little novel surprisingly sold over 2 million copies in North America alone. The edition that I read is the hard-to-find original Fawcett “Gold Medal,”

All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By: Some truly shocking thrills

All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris

Having never read anything by John Farris, I stumbled upon his 1977 novel All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By after seeing David J. Schow‘s very laudatory remarks concerning the book in Jones & Newman‘s overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books (1988). In his essay, Schow calls it a “unique horror novel; the strongest single work yet produced by the field’s most powerful individual voice,”

The Mask of Circe: Guaranteed to provide a few evenings of wonder

The Mask of Circe by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore

Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, sci-fi’s preeminent husband-and-wife writing team, eased back a bit from earlier years’ prolific outputs in 1948, coming out with only four short stories and a short novel. The previous year had seen their sci-fi masterpiece Fury serialized in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction, and to follow up on that brilliant piece of work, the team switched gears, as it were, and wrote what was in essence an example of hard fantasy,

Land of Unreason: A very strange book

Land of Unreason by L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt

Land of Unreason first saw the light of day in 1941, in a shorter form, in Unknown magazine; it was later expanded to novel length. Just as there is a genre of science fiction known as “hard” sci-fi, as typified by the works of Hal Clement and Larry Niven, this novel impresses me as a “hard” fantasy novel. Not only do authors L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt usher us into Fairyland and show us the court of Oberon and Titania,

The Green Man: Genuinely creepy

The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis’s sole horror novel, The Green Man, had long been on my list of “must read” books, for the simple reason that it has been highly recommended by three sources that I trust. British critic David Pringle chose it for inclusion in his overview volume Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, as did Michael Moorcock in Fantasy: The 100 Best Books AND Brian Aldiss in Horror: 100 Best Books.

Chessboard Planet and Other Stories: A wonderful collection from Kuttner and Moore

Chessboard Planet and Other Stories by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

Chessboard Planet and Other Stories is a collection by science fiction’s foremost husband-and-wife writing team, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. The collection is comprised of a novella, two longish short stories, and a short piece.

The novella, “Chessboard Planet,” originally appeared under the title “The Fairy Chessmen” in the January and February 1946 issues of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science-Fiction and, in my opinion, is an unjustly forgotten masterpiece. In it, the United States and the European union known as the Falangists have been at war for decades,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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