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I'm currently building a "wish list" for a pulp fantasy and science fiction short story/novelette anthology tentatively titled The Planet Stories Reader. I'd eventually like to release themed anthologies as part of Paizo's Planet Stories book series, with a collection about Mars, Venus, Robots, Satan, you name it. I've got about thirteen lists of story titles--some read, some unread, some owned, some not--for tales along a specific theme, but reading, editing, and tracking down the rights for all those stories could quite literally be a lifetime's work.
So I'm starting smaller, and taking a much more general approach.
The Planet Stories reader will be about 500 pages, and will collect "important" science fiction and fantasy stories from "known" authors of the Pulp Era, which roughly translates to the first half of the Twentieth Century. As with all Planet Stories releases, the emphasis will be on stories that are not in print or locked away in expensive hardcover limited editions. Anything published since about 1990 is off the table.
Because this is a commercial as well as artistic enterprise, I'm focusing on authors first, stories second. I figure that most of the reading public is generally ignorant of the diverse and wildly imaginative work of the pulps, so a barely recognized name might make the difference between a buy or no-buy decision, and I'd like to load the deck in my favor as much as possible. So I don't think I'll have room for "filler" authors with no name recognition, regardless of their brilliance. That's a different project, for a different day.
So far, my author wish-list looks something like this:
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A. Merritt
H.P. Lovecraft
Robert E. Howard
Ralph Milne Farley
Otis Adelbert Kline
Edmond Hamilton
C. L. Moore
Henry Kuttner
Clark Ashton Smith
Manly Wade Wellman
Leigh Brackett
Fritz Leiber
Gardner F. Fox
Jack Vance
Questions for you guys:
Which of the above authors interest you most?
Am I missing anyone who would make you more likely to buy the book?
I have my favorite stories by these authors. What are yours?
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Can I do the cover? I could do a GREAT Finlay homage...!
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That's an interesting thought. I'm absolutely certain you could nail Finlay.
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Keep me in mind on this. It's a lot of fun for me to do side projects like this (like the Shimmer mag JJA edited, and VanderMeer's SURGEON book cover), and the chance to do a Finlay homage on one or more covers would be a real treat.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ratbastrd |
| 2007-12-01 18:48 (UTC) |
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Lovecraft is probably my fave of those, but there are so many collections of his and stories of his floating around in other collections right now that it kind of cliche. I'd say Leiber actually, I don't see nearly enough of his work about.
And what about Sturgeon? Ellison? Zelazney? Farmer?
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While a few of those were writing letters into the pulps, my sense is that the bulk of their "pulp" work showed up in the 50s, though I could be wrong. I like those guys, but I don't want this to be a new wave sort of approach.
This is sort of a pre-John Campbell's bias collection, in my view. I've got to draw the line somewhere, and it may as well be when the medium started taking itself too seriously.
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| ratbastrd |
| 2007-12-01 23:07 (UTC) |
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Well Sturgeon's first dozen or so short stories were in thr late 30's and 40's, I think, but I'll stick with the Fritz Leiber vote in any case.
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| mordicai |
| 2007-12-01 18:51 (UTC) |
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you know, there isn't a good clark ashton smith collection in print anymore...
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| mordicai |
| 2007-12-01 20:49 (UTC) |
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interestingly enough, we've got "sold out" cropping up again. though i suppose there isn't any reason to go in order besides ocd. really, though, i'd rather a collection that was easy to get through a distributor, so i could order some for my store.
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i'd always been under the impression that night shade had decent distribution, and i've seen their titles in most bookstore chains and quite a few smaller stores, as well.
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| mordicai |
| 2007-12-02 17:18 (UTC) |
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i might be under a false impression due to the first volume being sold out. i.e. i looked for it, found it not in stock, & assumed it was evidence of a larger scarcity.
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Night Shade is distributed mainly by Diamond; they're a major distributor, so you shouldn't have any problem ordering copies for your store.
Also, Bison Books has a Smith collection called LOST WORLDS. I don't know what their distribution is like, but seems easy enough to buy from Amazon.
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| mordicai |
| 2007-12-02 17:13 (UTC) |
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i hadn't seen them when i looked, about a month ago, but i'll certainly check again on monday.
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The world is lousy with CAS collections. Nightshade had a half-dozen of them at the HPL film festival in Portland last month.
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| mordicai |
| 2007-12-01 22:13 (UTC) |
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ah, but see, we're back to that old "small bookstore" rub; i'd like to order them in to keep them on hand & the store, but they arn't carried by a publisher or a vendor i deal with. i'll be double checking the nightshade books on monday, though.
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Can you get Planet Stories in the store? Which store are we talking about?
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| mordicai |
| 2007-12-02 17:19 (UTC) |
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yeah, & i'm still waiting for them to shoot the anubis murders at me.
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| paulskemp |
| 2007-12-01 19:21 (UTC) |
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Leiber and Lovecraft would be of the most interest to me.
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since the focus is sf, as opposed to weird fiction, i must suggest 'the colour out of space' by lovecraft.
one of his best and most openly sf-nal stories.
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| jamesenge |
| 2007-12-01 19:57 (UTC) |
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I would say Vance, Leiber and Brackett are in the top tier of interest for me, with Moore and Kuttner just behind.
For Vance, maybe the best standlaone from his early stories is "Liane the Wayfarer." I don't know if this counts as pulp, though; I think it was first published in The Dying Earth.
For Leiber, maybe "Thieves House" or "Claws from the Night" (a.k.a. "Dark Vengeance").
For Brackett--I don't know. The truth is, I'll read anything by Brackett; it doesn't have to be good. But "Sorcerer of Rhiannon" is a good early story from hers Mars mythos. "Jewel of Bas" is another later Mars story that I like a lot. (I'm not sure if there's a chronological limit on what you're thinking of as pulp.)
For Moore maybe one of the less-anthologized Northwest Smith or Jirel stories. For Kuttner I'd like to see something really pulpy and splashy, like "The Dark World."
I wonder if it might make some sense to include pulp stories by writers not usually thought of as part of the pulp era? I'm thinking of Theodore Sturgeon ("Shottle Bop" or "Bianca's Hands") or Poul Anderson ("Duel of Syrtis").
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Good suggestions. For Brackett I want to avoid anything in the Haffner collections (so far), so your suggestions are out for now. I'm currently thinking "The Ark of Mars" from the September 1953 Planet Stories, but as I haven't read it yet its place is not locked in.
We're already publishing all of Moore's Jirel and Northwest Smith stories, so I'm going to try to find something a little more obscure.
I've got a Leiber story in mind, but I'll check out the ones you suggest.
I just bought a pulp with a Sturgeon story in it (a Fantastic from 1950) for $15 to read at lunch. I was surprised to discover Sturgeon's autograph on the opening spread of the story--the second time that's happened to me. I think people tend to keep autographed stuff longer, which is why so many old books and pulps have autographs on them. All of the others in the original owners' collections were probably thrown away.
I have not yet acquired a taste for Poul Anderson. Just about everything I've read of his has been really hacky.
Which is why E. Hoffman Price hasn't made the cut, either.
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The Dark World was the anchor novella in this until I decided it is great enough to stand on its own as an individual release.
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Smith, Kline, Wellman, Fox, Vance, Kuttner, and possibly Merritt are the ones that interest me most, because I already HAVE all the Lovecraft, Howard, Moore, and Lieber bits.
Much as I like pulp, I've never heard of Farley and I've never read anything by Kline.
As to story selection... It depends on your themes.
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You're probably about 10 years too young to have enjoyed the last Kline boom, which came in the early to mid 1960s with badly cut Ace and Avon editions of his interplanetary stuff. I have rather a lot of his output. At his best he is above average. His worst is absolute dreck.
Ralph Milne Farley is most famous for his "Radio-Man" series, early (1920s) interplanetary stories in the Burroughs tradition that first appeared in Argosy. The tales occur on Mars and Venus, and as an added bonus for D&D fans, Farley's books are the original source of the insect-like formians.
Since no one I've ever met can really get a grasp on how to use formians in D&D, I figure it's worth investigating the original source!
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| zonemind |
| 2007-12-02 09:51 (UTC) |
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I always wondered why the plane of Law had more interesting inhabitants than the plane of Chaos. You have inevitables, formians & modrons, while Limbo is stuck with just the slaad… unless you're willing to count the githzerai, who aren't chaotic.
I like formians. They always have a very Confucian taste to them in my mind. They make good sympathetic foils, assuming you're not gaming with a bunch of latter day hippies.
Edited at 2007-12-03 06:30 am (UTC)
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Looks like a great list so far. What about Ray Bradbury? Didn't he get his start in Weird Tales? He'd make a surprising name to throw into an anthology of this sort if there's a story of his you like ...
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I think he may have started in Planet Stories, actually. "Lorelei of the Red Mists" was from PS, back when he was a semi-pro.
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| maliszew |
| 2007-12-01 23:44 (UTC) |
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I'd love to see Merritt and Fox get reprinted. Both are high on Gygax's list of inspirations and neither, so far as I know, has been widely available since the 1960s.
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| varianor |
| 2007-12-02 00:46 (UTC) |
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Oooohh. Kuttner, Moore, Wellman, Leiber, Vance. Um, okay, I guess I need to stop now. Moore had a story named "The Code" that I liked. Leiber? I guess "Swords and Ice Magic". Vance - I always liked the Magnus Ridolph stories and "The Houses of Izm" as much as the Cugel books. Wellman, hm, "The Old Gods Awaken", although truth to be told he's always been hard to find in print. Kuttner - no question about it. "The Twonky".
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For Leiber, "Terror From the Depths" was last reprinted *in* 1990.
For Smith, the Hastane stories don't ever seem to get enough love: "The Hunters from Beyond", "The Devotee of Evil", "The Music of Death", "The Rebirth of the Flame." (Last reprinted in small press in 1989, AFAIK).
Good luck finding a decent Lovecraft story that hasn't been reprinted to death in the last 20 years.
And re: Poul Anderson, have you read his collection The Gods Laughed? It's pretty un-Poul, and some of it is nicely cosmic, so you might like it a good deal.
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| zonemind |
| 2007-12-02 09:40 (UTC) |
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I agree that Poul Anderson is by no means of a uniform texture.
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| zonemind |
| 2007-12-02 09:38 (UTC) |
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
Robert E. Howard (least interest)
Edmond Hamilton
Leigh Brackett
Fritz Leiber (most interest)
Jack Vance
Not a fan of Merritt, found the waters choppy, turned back to shore.
Lovecraft's been done to death. I wouldn't bother hefting the flog.
Roger Sherman Hoar... Ick. I hate time travel stories.
Otis Adelbert Kline I know very little about, beyond his supposed head-butting with Burroughs.
C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner I'm only really interested in as historical artefacts, although I could be convinced otherwise. I've probably read something by at least one of them, but I have zero recollection of it.
Clark Ashton Smith is yuck to me.
Manly Wade Wellman is a cipher to me. I should probably be embarrassed about it, especially as I've got friends who are fans of Silver John. Not a fan of Appalachia, though.
Gardner F. Fox would be difficult to extricate from the napthalene embrace of Detective Comics.
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| das_uber |
| 2007-12-02 13:44 (UTC) |
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H.P. Lovecraft
Clark Ashton Smith
Fritz Leiber
Jack Vance
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What about:
Jack Williamson
Clifford D. Simak
Sprague De Camp
Arthur C. Clarke
Those four are all SFWA Grandmasters.
Also, I don't know if you'd find anything on the right theme, but William Hope Hodgson.
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Williamson would fit, but I haven't read him much and I really don't want to step on Haffner's toes. He's been reprinting the complete works, so people who want Williamson are well served at the moment.
Doc Smith is another notable absence that I might try to add.
I'd previously lumped De Camp in with the next wave of authors from the 50s, but looking at the ISFDB it looks like he was active starting around 1934, so perhaps some of his earlier tales would make for a good inclusion.
Simak also goes back earlier than I'd thought, so I'll take a look at him as well.
I don't think Clarke needs the exposure, really.
Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it.
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| sad_genius |
| 2007-12-02 18:22 (UTC) |
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| Knytt |
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I've not read over the suggestions above, but:
EE Doc Smith?
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2007-12-02 21:26 (UTC) |
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Howard is my favorite, but it would have to be a lesser known work to interest me. -Matthew Sanborn Smith
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Great project! :)
Jim Lowder is very interested in pulp fiction. Might be worth dropping him an email--I'm sure he'd have some good suggestions and quite possibly some interesting contacts. He did a pulp anthology not long ago, and managed to get hold of an original, never-before-published Lester Dent. How this happened, I couldn't begin to tell you. :)
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2007-12-02 23:26 (UTC) |
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If you're doing Kline and Farley, Ray Cummings also might be worth considering.
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2007-12-03 20:41 (UTC) |
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Lovecraft - Music of Eric Zahn
RE Howard - Tower of the Elephant (Cosmic FTL Elephants Rock!)
Fritz Leiber - Theive's House
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2007-12-09 00:47 (UTC) |
| Smith and Howard... |
... are my favorites...
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