Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Sandy Ferber


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I Am Your Brother: Half frustrating, half dazzling

I Am Your Brother by G.S. Marlowe

In the 1971 British horror film The Beast in the Cellar, two aged sisters, well played by Beryl Reid and Flora Robson, hide their homicidal maniac brother in the basement of their Lancashire home, and eventually give way to panic when said brother escapes from his confinement and goes on a murderous rampage. But, it would seem, this was not the first time that an English sibling had suffered a rough time with a monstrous brother kept hidden under domestic wraps. Thus,


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He Arrived at Dusk: Roman holiday

He Arrived at Dusk by R.C. Ashby

Not for the first time, a novel resurrected by the fine folks at Valancourt Books has turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the year. Back in 2020, J. B. Priestley’s Benighted (1927), reissued by Valancourt in 2013, was one of my favorites, and just last month, Ernest G. Henham’s Tenebrae (1898), brought back to life by Valancourt in 2012, became one of my top picks for 2023.


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Tenebrae: “It’s so nice and glooooomy”

Tenebrae by Ernest G. Henham

A number of literary works from some of my favorite authors are celebrating their quasquicentennial, or 125th anniversary, this year. Released in 1898 were H. G. WellsThe War of the Worlds, Henry James’ novella “The Turn of the Screw,” Jules Verne’s The Mighty Orinoco, and H. Rider Haggard’s Doctor Therne. Those first two titles,


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What Dreams May Come: Dead on arrival

What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson

It’s the big question; one that has been weighing on mankind for millennia now … namely, what happens to us when we buy the farm? You know … croak, kick the bucket, breathe one’s last, check out, cash in one’s chips, bite the dust, ride into the sunset, pass on, pass away, give up the ghost, meet one’s maker, pass over, perish … in a word, die. It’s a conundrum that many people have wondered about once or twice – or 10,000 times – during their stay here on Earth;


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Skin and Bones: “I’m looking through you….”

Skin and Bones by Thorne Smith

Up until recent years, I could have counted on the fingers of one hand the books that have made this reader laugh out loud … and I still would have had a couple of fingers left over. Those three books – all of which make me chuckle today, just thinking about them – are, chronologically, Harry Harrison’s undeniably funny Bill, The Galactic Hero (1955), Eric Frank Russell’s hilarious sci-fi adventure The Great Explosion (1962),


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The Promise of Air: “Hey, Joe…”

The Promise of Air by Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood’s novels The Human Chord (1910) and The Centaur (1911) constituted two of my finest reading experiences of 2022, so it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to my next experience courtesy of the author popularly known as “The Ghost Man.” But that nickname, it seems to me, has done Blackwood something of a disservice, because scares and shudders were far from being the writer’s only concern.


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The Whistling Ancestors: Caspar, the unfriendly host

The Whistling Ancestors by Richard E. Goddard

And so, I have just come to the end of another lot of books from the remarkable publisher known as Ramble House. And what an octet of books they were! In chronological order: Elliott O’Donnell’s The Sorcery Club (1912), which tells of ancient Atlantean magic being used by a trio of men in modern-day London; G. Firth Scott’s Possessed (1912), in which a deceased business magnate takes over the body of one of his former employees;


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Mad-Doctor Merciful: A very impressive medical thriller/supernatural horror hybrid

Mad-Doctor Merciful by Collin Brooks

On three separate occasions over the past few months, I have been asked the question “Where do you find all those strange books that you read?” The answer from me has been the same for the past few years now: Armchair Fiction, Ramble House and, most recently, Valancourt Books, three publishers that specialize in reviving obscure, unusual and out-of-print sci-fi, horror, fantasy and mystery works for a new generation to appreciate. I have been on something of a tear with Ramble House lately, and would like to tell you now of the seventh book in a row that I have experienced from this remarkable firm.


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Beast Or Man? Jungle Boogie

Beast Or Man? by Sean M’Guire

A little while back, I shared some thoughts here on FanLit regarding American author David V. Reed’s unforgettable 1943 novel Return of the Whispering Gorilla. In this truly sui generis creation, an army of gorillas is brought together by Plumbutter – a 400-pound member of their own species with the surgically implanted brain of a human male – and fights a regiment of Nazis in equatorial Africa. But, as it turns out, 13 years earlier, on the other side of the pond,


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The Devil of Pei-Ling: You can’t keep a good Satanist down!

The Devil of Pei-Ling by Herbert Asbury

In 2002, Martin Scorsese brought to the big screen his 18th film as a director, Gangs of New York. The picture was based on a nonfiction book by one Herbert Asbury, namely The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the New York Underworld, but the screenwriters played so loosely with the facts in Asbury’s book that the film was famously Oscar nominated for a Best Original Screenplay award,


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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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