Collection
Authors
ChristmaSFF: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus Pt. 2
In Part 1, we had a short look at L. Frank Baum’s background and touched upon his role as America’s first big children’s book author. Baum also seems…
ChristmaSFF: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus Pt. 1
A Baumy Christmas In preparation for this year’s ChristmaSFF read, I did a little bit of sifting around for information about L. Frank Baum, the author of The Life…
An Introduction to the Epic Poul Anderson
The illustrious Poul Anderson is another one of those scifi/fantasy grandmasters who you’ve probably never heard of if you were born after 1980. Although he was writing until…
John Bellairs and the Face of Magic
I’ve been thinking about magic lately, and I’ve got a post brewing…but it’s not quite ready yet. It did bring me back around to thinking about John Bellairs,…
Weinbaum’s Old Mars
This morning I started reading Stanley Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey,” and had intended to write a full reaction to it, but, well, I ran out of time and…
The Hawkmen cometh
Hawkman, the comic book superhero, was apparently created in 1940 by Gardner Fox of Appendix N fame. This post wasn’t originally intended to include him beyond a cursory…
Dilvish, the Damned: Zelazny does #NotTolkien Fantasy
You might argue that Roger Zelazny’s brand of fantasy is plenty infected by modernism, as some would put it. You might also argue that he was doing some…
The Fantasy of Edgar Allen Poe
It seems to be a recurring theme with me – that for years I was unaware of such-and-such an author or was mistaken about the nature of his…
Introduction to the Insane Scifi of Cordwainer Smith
Last month I wrote about the largely forgotten grandmaster of weird SFF, Clark Ashton Smith. Recently I’ve revisited the “best of” collection of another undeservedly obscured scifi great…
(Belated) Happy Birthday, Jack Vance!
John “Jack” Holbrook Vance was born on 8/28/1916, just a little over one hundred years ago yesterday. “Who is Jack Holbrook Vance?” you may ask. Come, I will…