Stratofanatic's Emporium

So I'm going through several old 1980s fantasy novels, primarily from Del Rey Books (DRB), and wanted to jot down thoughts on a few. Here, we'll be tackling three different books: one surprisingly good, one surprisingly real  good, and one terrible awful bad  book that could have used a few more rewrites. 1983 Del Rey Edition So which is which? For that, my friends, read on. The Surprisingly Good Katherine Kurtz, High Deryni (1973). Okay, this one's cheating slightly: Kurtz was discovered by Betty Ballantine, not Lester del Rey. But he inherited Kurtz, and her line of non-mythopoeic high fantasy certainly aligned with his editorial tastes. For my part, I wasn't quite sure what to expect with High Deryni . Back as a kid, I read either  Camber of Culdi (1976) or Saint Camber (1978), but it didn't leave much impression. Later, I remember Kurtz being politely criticized for her pedestrian prose by Ursula K. Le Guin in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" .... and ex...

So yeah .... although embarrassing, this is my first fiction reading list since, um, 2021 . And, granted, this is my 2024 books, and we're already eight months into the new year. But I'm posting because, basically, this is the first time I've read enough fiction to qualify for a good "fiction reading list" in over three years. Sure, I read tons of non-fiction during that time. But fiction? Alas, not so much. Mainly it was an issue of research and writing. But it was also due to my duties as Director of Undergraduate Studies, which, during my final year of that ordeal, was truly terrible. Regardless, my fantasy fiction class, ENGL 378, bolstered my 2024 stats significantly. I did oodles of reading in prep for that course, covering holes and gaps in my knowledge and so on. Also, I've included poetry books in my reading list, although, as per usual, non-fiction has been excluded. (I do read constantly, even if these numbers don't quite reflect that!) FINAL ST...

After gaining some good traction on how Del Rey Books brilliantly marketed a so-so fantasy novel, I’ve figured out that blog posts on long forgotten novels are the key to internet fame. So, let's milk this cow dry! Today's entry: Dr. George L. Knapp and  The Scales of Justice  (1910) . For the record, this is not an SFF novel ... but, naturally, it has a heavy biographical connection to fantasy. You see, George Knapp was uncle to Lester del Rey -- and a hugely influential uncle, at that. In 1931, Uncle George offered to finance his nephew's education at George Washington University, even putting the kid up in his own house, despite (probably) never having met Lester in person. Nor was George Knapp especially close to his half-brother, Lester's father Wright, either. (**If you're wondering at the names, Lester was originally "Leonard Knapp.") But Uncle George wasn't just extremely generous. During his time, Dr. Knapp was a highly prominent public fig...

Since I know everyone's been clamoring for a review of an early Del Rey fantasy novel nobody's ever heard of, well, I can hardly refuse. But besides pure orneriness, there's a special reason I'm reviewing Clifford D. Simak's  The Fellowship of the Talisman . Granted, this book isn't terribly good ... but that isn't the point. For me, the real question is always one of literary history, and  Fellowship  serves as a fascinating test case for how Del Rey Books (DRB) managed to achieve success in its earliest days. Cuz here's the thing: if you're going to create a popular genre from scratch (as Lester del Rey most definitely did), then a useful item to have in your arsenal is, well,  fantasy authors. Except there weren't any. Not then. Sure, you had Terry Brooks and Stephen R. Donaldson in 1977, but both people fell magically into Lester's lap. They found  him,  not the other way around. Short of sacrifices to the Editorial Gods, however, how...

A friend just sent me a youtube video "guaranteed to piss me off" (as he says) ... and boy oh boy, was he right. Now, I don't wanna dunk too hard on a random, passionate, sincere fantasy fan with a youtube channel. Since I'm writing a book on this exact topic, though, it's worth spelling out the myriad things problematic with " This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings ", a 30-minute hit job on Del Rey Books by a young youtuber named Hilary Layne, whose handle is "The Second Story". First, though, let me state for the record I think Layne makes a relatively solid attempt at research, at least for a non-academic. For the most part, she gets historical facts right, and she clearly put some legwork into tracking down sources. (She even briefly screenshots my article on Judy-Lynn , albeit without addressing my arguments.) Nonetheless, how Layne interprets her historical facts -- that is, the story she tells -- is what should raise red flag...

The perils of research! So, I just spent the last hour browsing a website called SLEAZE , which specializes on pornographic books from the 1960s. It has listings, covers, and all that good bibliographic information. My foray really is  research, too. One of the Futurians who never much amounted to anything, John Michel, wrote several porn books   in the early 1960s under the name "Louis Richard". They had titles like And Sex is the Payoff (Beacon, 1962) and Artist's Woman (Beacon, 1963). According to  Damon Knight in The Futurians , Michel got this gig through the Scott Meredith Literary Agency (SMLA). That's important because SMLA is the most important agency to ever represent sciene-fiction writers. And according to Barry Malzberg's Breakfast in the Ruins , the FBI even started investigating Meredith for his role in the porn trade (pornography then being illegal). Except they didn't have a picture of Meredith, so he told his employees to lie about him being ...

Exciting news from the world of the Modern Alliterative Revival! So, the poetry of Pat Masson , who died in 1994, was re-discovered by Paul Deane, who subsequently published all her alliterative poetry -- much of it for the first time -- in his online journal Forgotten Ground Regained . He only discovered her because of something he'd seen in  Withywinde, a journal for the Old English Companions. Then after scouring the internet (one of Paul's specialties), he eventually dug up a scan of a booklet her mother had put together for her funeral containing all poetry and short stories on ancestry.com, where one of Masson's relatives posted it. Most had never before been published.  The only other comparable story is Ron Snow , a SCA poet who passed away in 1997. He never had any of his alliterative poems published during his lifetime, but I'd tracked down his widow, who gave me his unpublished collected poetry, including his long drapa "Blardrengir Saga", which end...