paizo.com - Paizo / Paizo Blog / Tags / Planet Stories

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Sci-Fried: It's a Dark, Dark, Dark, Dark World

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cave Raptors are sated; It's time to blog!

Time for a little back history on everyone's favorite literate goblin (and by that, I mean Golarion's only literate goblin): I love science fiction, but I am woefully ignorant of the subject. I sat on my mother's knee and watched Star Wars and Star Trek, I read through my father's dog-eared old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a few of my Saturday morning cartoons were set in space. That's about it. I remember reading some John Carter of Mars in junior high, but it didn't leave enough of an impression on me at the time that I even remember it that well. As embarrassing as it is for any goblin to admit, I just don't know much about this subject I enjoy, least of all its mysterious origins.

I supposed that's why Erik Mona, Pierce Watters, Christopher Carey, and James Sutter, the quartet behind Paizo's Planet Stories, line, asked me to start reading and reviewing this classic science fiction. Without any fond childhood memories (literally; my childhood involved being locked in a rabbit hutch with my 27 siblings), I wouldn't be viewing any of our Planet Stories fiction through the lens of nostalgia. Instead, I can dole out honest thoughts and observations on twentieth-century classics from a twenty-first century perspective.

Illustration by Emrah Elmasli

From my perspective, this is both thrilling and terrifying, like riding one of those blood-thirsty horses humans are so fond of. Now I get to read the classic origins of science fiction from almost a century ago for work, but at the same time, these are books that my boss loves. If I don't like them, will he feed me to the dreaded bandersnatch? Plus the library of Planet Stories is huge, and getting bigger every other month! Growing like a well-fed literary octopus (and you thought those metaphors were dead and gone). For my very first Sci-Fried, I decided to look at Henry Kuttner's The Dark World.

Time for another confession that will get me laughed at in the forums: I selected Mr. Kuttner because I really enjoyed the movie The Last Mimzy, which is based on Kuttner's short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves. I imagined that Dark World would be somewhat similar, familiar, and comforting in this strange new land of fiction.
But no. There was nary a stuffed rabbit to be found.

Instead, the story follows Edward Bond, who is not a little girl but rather a World War II veteran who feels strangely out of place in his own skin. It turns out that Edward Bond is not Edward Bond at all, but rather the wizard Ganelon from a parallel world, trussed up with Edward Bond's memories and life as a prison. I don't want to share too much of the story, but obviously the majority of the book takes place in the bizarre titular "Dark World," and many of the descriptions of this setting are both psychedelic and believable.

Kuttner's writing style is distinctively "chunky;" very intricate descriptions and bulgy sentences that can be a little difficult to handle at first if you're used to the "say it all now" style of modern authors. But The Dark World drew me in after the first chapter, and I had trouble putting the book down once that happened. What at first seemed like a fantasy story instead took a sharp turn into sci-fi as Kuttner tried to explain everything from vampires and werewolves to Cthulhian gods with the science of the 1940s. Some of the theories stretched my suspension of disbelief, but never quite broke it. Having finished the book now, I almost wish it were longer, with more time to examine the uncanny science and history of the Dark World itself.

The narrator is probably the best part of the book. We see everything through the protagonist's eyes, but until the very end we're never told for certain whether it's Ganelon with Edward's memories, or Edward with Ganelon's memories. Control switches between the two personalities, and bits of memory bleed through to the other, which makes what could've been an obnoxiously perfect hero into an underdog I could root for. I really want to spoil the ending, because it made me cackle with delight, but instead I will demand that you order your own copy and read it for yourself.

My final impressions of The Dark World are that it can be a difficult book to start, but once you get into the pace and get used to Kuttner's narrative flavor, it's an impossible book to stop. Once all the pieces are in play, the action flows fast and furious, with only occasional chapter breaks to let you catch your breath. The Dark World is relatively short, making it a great first step into the genre of pulp that you can read in one sitting. If you love science and history as much as I do, then some of the genre explanations will make you positively giddy. A fun book, even 63 years after it was originally published, and definitely one I'd recommend.

Dark World may have lacked hyper-advanced stuffed bunnies, but that's only because this book is for grownups.

Crystal Frasier
Production Specialist

Illustration by Kieran Yanner

Set Sail with The Ship of Ishtar

Monday, November 2, 2009

This week we released the newest Planet Stories book, The Ship of Ishtar, by A. Merritt. Not only is this my personal favorite of the 22 books we have released since the launch of Planet Stories about a year and a half ago, but it's also an interesting look at the Planet Stories process, and how in many ways we here in the office are learning just as much about the history of the most important early authors and books in the science fiction and fantasy fields as our readers are.

I often received letters of thanks form Planet Stories readers for introducing them to authors like Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, or Henry Kuttner. Most of these authors began their careers in the 1930s and early 1940s, publishing their stories in the pre-war pulp magazines like the original Planet Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and similar magazines.

In order to locate and restore the oldest, most complete texts of the tales we've published so far, I have accumulated a respectable selection of pulp magazines. One of my absolute favorites was called Famous Fantastic Mysteries. Along with its sister magazine, Fantastic Novels, editor Mary Gnaedinger culled the vast archives of the Munsey Magazines (primarily Argosy and All-Story in their various forms and spin-offs), collecting the best fantastic material for affordable reprints. In some ways FFM was the "original" version of our Planet Stories book line, only in this case they reprinted work from the first three decades of the twentieth century almost exclusively.

Two things strike me as fascinating about these magazines beyond the actual stories they contained (many of which were brilliant) and the fact that a woman was setting the original "canon" of science fiction and fantasy in an era when many other women had to hide behind pseudonyms to get their work published at all. Beyond those two substantive issues, the things I find most fascinating about these magazines are the art, and the reader letter column.

The art stands out particularly because most of it (especially early on) came from the peerless pen of Virgil Finlay, for my money the finest illustrator ever to work in the pulp field and one of the greatest American illustrators of all time, period. Finlay's distinctive scratchboard style, fine figure work, and juxtaposition of light and dark tones is breathtaking more than six decades after it was originally commissioned, and his work brings a continuity to the canon of Famous Fantastic Mysteries that might otherwise have been less clear, different as the stories published in the magazine may have been. Many of Finlay's works have been reprinted over the years (and a Google image search will turn up hundreds more), but like the authors whose work he illustrated, he was amazingly prolific. Many of his illustrations appear only in their original pulp form, so opening a "new" issue of FFM rescued from a used book or magazine shop can often feel like digging for visual treasure.

Beyond the stories and illustrations, tacked onto the ends of the magazines and presented in tiny type, came the letters to the editor, often dozens at a time. In the course of praising or criticizing a given issue's content, these letters often include praise of authors and stories that are nearly forgotten today. How many readers other than the most dedicated literary archeologists know much about authors like E. Charles Vivian or Charles B. Stilson? Beyond King Solomon's Mines and perhaps She, who can name the titles of further adventures of H. Rider Haggard's character Allan Quatermain or the dozens of other high-adventure fantasy novels he wrote in the late nineteenth century? FFM published many of them, and the letter columns are filled to bursting with suggestions on even more minor or forgotten works that were fading into obscurity (rightly or wrongly) more than 60 years ago. Of course, even back then, fantasy fans could agree on very few things.

One thing almost everyone seemed to agree on, however, was the overwhelming quality and beauty of language in the works of A. Merritt, particularly his groundbreaking fantasy The Ship of Ishtar.

Merritt's influential 1919 novel The Moon Pool has been in print more or less consistently since it was first published, and it was one of several stories in the very first issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries that solidified the magazine as a major success that would last more than a decade (not bad for a pulp focused almost exclusively on reprints!). He was a major stylistic influence on authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner.

Prior to coming across praise for his works in the letter pages of FFM, I'd never really heard of him. I came to Lovecraft decades ago, and in subsequent works by the above-named authors I always identified the florid, lush description as particularly Lovecraftian. In fact, Lovecraft was a great admirer of Merritt, and it's clear that Merritt's style was a huge influence upon him.

Listen to what HPL said about Merritt in a letter to a friend, praising the Merritt novel The Metal Monster: "[Merritt] has a peculiar power of working up an atmosphere and investing a region with an aura of unholy dread... the most remarkable presentation of the utterly alien and non-human that I have ever seen. Merritt is certainly great stuff—he has a subtle command of an unique type of strangeness which no one else has been able to parallel."

In the early 20th century, Merritt was considered, if not the most popular fantasist (that honor probably goes to Edgar Rice Burroughs), certainly among the top two or three fantasy authors in America. A journalist by trade, Merritt edited the prestigious American Weekly for Willian Randolph Hearst, and was one of the best-paid journalists in the world, bringing in an annual salary of $100,000 at the time of his death in 1943.

His busy career left him relatively little time for fiction writing, limiting his output to fewer than a dozen novels and about the same number of short stories. All are infused with powerful, vivid imagery, an unparalleled sense of place, and unforgettable characters.

This month's Planet Stories release, The Ship of Ishtar, is considered by most critics the finest of Merritt's masterworks, a precursor of the sword and sorcery genre that would come to inform the birth of fantasy roleplaying, and one of the most important fantasy novels of the early twentieth century. Merritt was the late Gary Gygax's favorite writer, and up until the month of Gary's recent death, he kept pushing me to publish some of his works. I wish Gary could have survived to see us get to The Ship of Ishtar, but I know he would have been happy to have one of his favorite tales presented to the audience of fantasy enthusiasts he helped to create and maintain.

The Planet Stories edition of The Ship of Ishtar features Merritt's complete, preferred text for the first time in more than 60 years. It also includes 10 beautiful prints by Merritt's favorite artist and friend, Virgil Finlay, collected into a single volume for the first time ever. Prominent modern author Tim Powers provides a compelling introduction, and the book comes wrapped in a beautiful, pulpy cover by artist Kieran Yanner.

Illustration by Virgil Finlay

I am enormously proud of this book. Many of you have sent me letters of thanks and encouragement for introducing you to some of the classic authors we've covered so far in Planet Stories. And if not for Planet Stories, I may not have discovered this book, so I offer my own thanks to Gary Gygax, and my own invitation to all of you to order the book and give Planet Stories and A. Merritt a try.

One of the world's finest fantasies awaits!

Erik Mona, Publisher
At the World Fantasy Convention
San Jose, California
October, 2009

Illustration by Tomasz Jedruszek

We're Baaaaaaaack!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Shameful! Absolutely shameful!

I refer, of course, to the fact that the last several months have seen the Planet Stories footprint on this blog dwindle down to almost nothing. It turns out that producing a 576-page RPG core rulebook and a bestiary with more than 350 monsters in addition to our Pathfinder, Pathfinder Companion, Pathfinder Chronicles, Pathfinder Modules, Pathfinder Scenarios, GameMastery, Titanic, and Planet Stories lines is a bit time-consuming. (Just reading over that list makes me want to hide under my desk and take a nap.)

But those days of slothful negligence are past! The classic SF of Planet Stories will once again shine forth from this blog, and given our total artistic redesign of the line, there's never been a better time for it. In the coming weeks, we'll be talking more about Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner, the first book in the new format, as well as its introduction by weird-fiction superstar Tim Powers and Kuttner praise from H. P. Lovecraft himself, plus subscription benefits and the philosophy behind the new look for the line. For now, however, I'm happy to let Mr. Kuttner speak for himself. The following excerpt is from the Robots Have No Tails story "The World is Mine," in which our drunken scientist hero attempts to solve his own murder while wrangling three adorable and incompetent martians bent on planetary conquest...

"The little guys came through the machine or whatever it was. You said you hadn't adjusted it right, so you fixed it."

"I wonder what I had in mind," Gallegher pondered.

The Lybblas had finished their milk. "We're through," said the fat one. "Now we'll conquer the world. Where'll we begin?"

Gallegher shrugged, "I fear I can't advise you, gentlemen. I've never had the inclination myself. Wouldn't have the faintest idea how to go about it."

"First we destroy the big cities," said the smallest Lybbla excitedly, "then we capture pretty girls and hold them for ransom or something. Then everybody's scared and we win."

"How do you figure that out?" Gallegher asked.

"It's in the books. That's how it's always done. We know. We'll be tyrants and beat everybody. I want some more milk, please."

"So do I," said two other piping little voices.

Grinning, Gallegher served. "You don't seem much surprised by finding yourselves here."

"That's in the books, too." Lap-lap.

"You mean—this?" Gallegher's eyebrows went up.

"Oh, no. But all about time-traveling. All the novels in our era are about science and things. We read lots. There isn't much else to do in the Valley," the Lybbla ended, a bit sadly.

"Is that all you read?"

"No, we read everything. Technical books on science as well as novels. How disintegrators are made and so on. We'll tell you how to make weapons for us."

"Thanks. That sort of literature is open to the public?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I should think it would be dangerous."

"So should I," the fat Lybbla said thoughtfully, "but it isn't somehow."

Gallegher pondered. "Could you tell me how to make a heat ray, for example?"

"Yes," was the excited reply, "and then we'd destroy the big cities and capture—"

"I know. Pretty girls and hold them for ransom. Why?"

"We know what's what," a Lybbla said shrewdly. "We read books, we do." He spilled his cup, looked at the puddle of milk, and let his ears droop disconsolately.

The other two Lybblas hastily patted him on the back. "Don't cry," the biggest one urged.

"I gotta," the Lybbla said. "It's in the books."

"You have it backward. You don't cry over spilt milk."

"Do. Will," said the recalcitrant Lybbla, and began to weep.

Gallegher brought him more milk. "About this heat ray," he said. "Just how—"

"Simple," the fat Lybbla said, and explained.

It was simple. Grandpa didn't get it, of course, but he watched interestedly as Gallegher went to work. Within half an hour the job was completed. It was a heat ray, too. It burned a hole through a closet door.

"Whew!" Gallegher breathed, watching smoke rise from the charred wood. "That's something!" He examined the small metal cylinder in his hand.

"It kills people, too," the fat Lybbla murmured. "Like the man in the back yard."

"Yes, it— What? The man in—"

"The back yard. We sat on him for a while, but he got cold after a bit. There's a hole burned through his chest."

"You did it," Gallegher accused, gulping.

"No. He came out of time, too, I expect. There was a heat-ray hole in him."

"Who...who was he?"

"Never saw him before in my life," the fat Lybbla said, losing interest. "I want more milk." He leaped to the bench top and peered through the window at the towers of Manhattan's skyline. "Wheeee! The world is ours!"

The doorbell sang. Gallegher, a little pale said, "Grandpa, see what it is. Send him away in any case. Probably a bill collector. They're used to being turned away. Oh, Lord! I've never committed a murder before—"

"I have," Grandpa murmured, departing. He did not clarify the statement.

Gallegher went into the back yard, accompanied by the scuttling small figures of the Lybblas. The worst had happened. In the middle of the rose garden lay a dead body. It was the corpse of a man, bearded and ancient, quite bald, and wearing garments made, apparently of flexible, tinted cellophane. Through his tunic and chest was the distinctive hole burned by a heat-ray projector.

"He looks familiar, somehow," Gallegher decided. "Dunno why. Was he dead when he came out of time?"

"Dead but warm," one of the Lybblas said. "That was nice."

Gallegher repressed a shudder. Horrid little creatures...

James Sutter
Editor, Planet Stories

2009 ENnie Nominations!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The dash toward the 2009 ENnie Awards has begun with Paizo accepting nominations in six categories, including a fan nomination for Best Publisher! These acknowledgments start off the process of honoring the best products and ideas in the last year of tabletop gaming, but in the end it all relies on you! Be sure to check back in with the ENnies this Friday when voting begins, giving you the chance to cast your ballot for your favorite games and accessories.

Here's this year's rundown of Paizo Products up for honors:

Best Cover Art
Pathfinder Adventure Path #19: Howl of the Carrion King

Best Adventure
Pathfinder Adventure Path #19: Howl of the Carrion King

Best Campaign Setting
Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting

Best Cartography
Pathfinder Chronicles Second Darkness Map Folio

Best Miniatures Product
Game Mastery Flip-Mat: Waterfront Tavern

Best Regalia
Planet Stories: Infernal Sorceress, by Gary Gygax

And a Fan Award for Best Publisher!

Check out all the publishers at the ENnies Awards homepage, and be sure to check back this Friday for your chance to cast your vote! Thanks to ENWorld and all of you for this year's nominations and the endless support!
Wes Schneider
Managing Editor

Infernal Sorceress Nominated for Origins Award

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Here at Paizo we're pretty darn proud of our Planet Stories line of fiction. Reviving classic fantasy and science fiction by the likes of authors such as Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, and Gary Gygax has been a labor of love for Publisher Erik Mona, Senior Editor Pierce Watters, and Editors James L. Sutter and Christopher Paul Carey. It's with great pride, then, that we announce that Gary Gygax's Infernal Sorceress has been nominated for an Origins Award! Take a look at the back cover copy:

"The underworld of the Iberian Peninsula is a dangerous place, filled with cutthroats and swindlers, and no pair is more infamous than the gaunt man known as Ferret and the broad-shouldered mercenary Raker. Yet when the swashbuckling comrades are framed for the one crime they didn't commit, the scoundrels are faced with a choice: bring the true culprits to justice, or dance a gallows jig. In order to do so, they'll need to pull out all their tricks, stretching magic and muscle to their limit as they invade castles, battle subterranean monsters, and bluff their way through courts of nobles and shape-shifters in their search for revenge. Yet can even this canny, ruthless duo prevail against the beautiful witch that plots their downfall?"

Gary's writing style was certainly unique, and for those interested in his influence on the modern English lexicon, this article by Stephen Chrisomalis is worth checking out. Among other things, the article discusses how he popularized the little-used words eldritch and psionic, and effectively created the word dweomer whole cloth. Well worth the read!

David Eitelbach
Editorial Intern

Paizo Twitter

Friday, April 24, 2009

We've been tweeting! As of yesterday afternoon Paizo has its very own Twitter account. Come join the more than 200 Twitter users already getting nearly 24-hour-a-day updates on all sorts of Pathfinder info, Pathfinder RPG details, and other Paizo ephemera! Follow along on the Paizo Twitter page right here.

There's also a new Twitter page for Planet Stories, where you can get endless updates on all your favorite pulp science fiction and fantasy stories and authors as well as other exciting news on all our upcoming adventures!

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Planetary Style

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

I'm going to talk a little bit about writing style today—not only because it's something that all of us should think about when reading in general, but in particular since it's something I think we should mull over when reading classics from the Planet Stories library. Writing styles change over time, some of them seemingly eternal, others appearing one moment only to flitter into oblivion in the next as the winds of fashion shift. A thousand cultural variables account for such changes, and its my view that no single stylistic element is by itself better or worse than another. It all depends on how that element adds to the story being told.

I have a graduate background in writing fiction, but I was lucky enough to be in one of the few programs out there that didn't turn up its nose at genre. And while I was in school, we talked a lot about what it took to make a classic. Why was one book considered a classic, and another not? The best answer I heard was Time. Because Dickens and Twain certainly weren't thinking of writing literary masterpieces, at least no more than any author takes pride in the crafting of words. No, they wrote for a popular audience, their works by-and-large considered entertainment fiction by their contemporaries.
Now the classic science fiction and fantasy adventures we gleefully resurrect at Planet Stories aren't written in today's styles. But there's a life in them, a sheer exuberance of derring-do, that I often find missing in contemporary fiction. Not that there isn't amazing stuff being written today—there will be as many classics written this year as there were in 1939. But I think as we go through these turbulent times of ours, we can benefit from the experience of another time of troubles, a time when rocket ships roared out of spaceports of the imagination, or when a rapier, quick wit, and a smile might win freedom for an entire planet. So try out some Brackett, some Kline, or some Moore and join us on our adventure. After all, adventure is part of the human spirit—it never goes out of style.

Christopher Carey
Planet Stories Editor

Illustration by Daren Bader

Sword of the Dark God

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

With her masterful Skaith trilogy wrapped up in The Reavers of Skaith, it's time for Leigh Brackett to take us away to yet another world—or rather, another era. For while her latest release from Planet Stories, The Sword of Rhiannon, takes place on the same strange and populous Mars as The Secret of Sinharat, the story draws us far back into the past, when Mars was a lush world of oceans, pirates, and strange alien races.

Originally titled "The Sea Kings of Mars" when it first appeared in the pulp magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories and later rebranded for its publication as a novel, The Sword of Rhiannon is the story of Matthew Carse, a Martian archaeologist-turned-looter whose discovery of a mysterious tomb and a sword belonging to the dark god Rhiannon sends him hurtling back in time to a Mars ruled by corrupt imperialists, their tyranny backed by the super-science of sinister snake-men. In this world, only the Viking-like Sea Kings and their winged and aquatic alien allies dare challenge their oppressors, and with the discovery of Carse's sword, the time has come for a last desperate battle. Enslaved by the beautiful but evil princess of the imperial Sarks, and somehow tied to the dark god himself, will Carse help lead the rebellion, or find himself exterminated by his own allies? For more, check out the following excerpt:

Panting, dripping, his mind a whirl of confused speculations, he dug outward through the soft soil till a small hole of brilliant daylight opened in front of him.

Daylight? Then he'd been in the weird bubble of darkness longer than he had imagined.

The wind blew in through a little opening, upon his face. And it was a warm wind. A warm wind and a damp wind, such as never blows on desert Mars.

Carse squeezed through and stood in the bright day looking outward.

There are times when a man has no emotion, no reaction. Times when all the centers are numbed and the eyes see and the ears hear but nothing communicates itself to the brain, which is protected in this way from madness.

He tried finally to laugh at what he saw though he heard his own laughter as a dry choking cry.

"Mirage, of course," he whispered. "A big mirage. Big as all Mars."

The warm breeze lifted Carse's tawny hair, blew his cloak against him. A cloud drifted over the sun and somewhere a bird screamed harshly. He did not move.

He was looking at an ocean.

It stretched out to the horizon ahead, a vast restlessness of water, milky-white and pale with a shimmering phosphorescence even in daylight.

"Mirage," he said again stubbornly, his reeling mind clinging with the desperation of fear to that one shred of explanation. "It has to be. Because this is still Mars."

Still Mars, still the same planet. The same high hills up into which Penkawr had led him by night.

Or were they the same? Before, the foxhole entrance to the Tomb of Rhiannon had been in a steep cliff-face. Now he stood on the grassy slope of a great hill.

And there were rolling green hills and dark forest down there below him, where before had been only desert. Green hills, green wood and a bright river that ran down a gorge to what had been dead sea-bottom but was now—sea.

Carse's numbed gaze swept along the great coast of the distant shoreline. And down on that far sunlit coast he saw the glitter of a white city and knew that it was Jekkara.

Jekkara, bright and strong between the verdant hills and the mighty ocean, that ocean that had not been seen upon Mars for nearly a million years...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

The Road to the Pulps

Tuesday, January 17, 2009

The paths to our most cherished obsessions take on many varied forms. For me, one such passion is reading science fiction and fantasy from an older, often more spirit-soaring, freewheeling era. My Yellow Brick Road to the type of pulps we publish at Planet Stories began at an early age with an uncle bequeathing to me a longstanding love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's works. Probably the foundation for my fascination with the pulps was laid much earlier, reading H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, although at the time I didn't really realize their novels were serialized in magazines like Burroughs's. And even after I'd read a healthy dose of Burroughs, it wasn't until I found Irwin Porges's mammoth biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, that I first saw reproductions of those splendid All-Story Weekly, Blue Book, Argosy, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic Adventures covers and made the connection between ERB and the pulps.

Then, of course, there was Philip José Farmer. Farmer was for me, as for thousands of SF/F readers growing up in the 1970s and '80s, the mega-gateway to the pulps. And like many, I stumbled across his writings through Burroughs, picking up Farmer's post-modern metafictional masterpiece Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke, and later his "biography" of the 1930s scientific genius and crime-fighter Doc Savage. In these books Farmer proposed his intricate Wold Newton faux genealogy, linking together into one giant family an array of pulp era heroes and villains ranging from Allan Quatermain to Solomon Kane, Captain Nemo to Fu Manchu, and everything in between—and in many cases beyond. A virtual reading list of the "hero pulps," for which I will forever be grateful to Farmer for having amalgamated. If I would have been told back then that one day I would meet the man and edit three collections of his fiction, I would have lit up with such joy that my glowing manifestations would probably have been visible on far-off Poloda (for the as-yet ERB-uninitiated, I refer to a planet in the strangely shaped solar system from Burroughs's Beyond the Farthest Star).

I radiate a similar joy working with Erik and Pierce and James bringing back into print fantastic lost classics of the pulp era for Planet Stories. I think I speak for all of us when I say the task is more than a job, more even than a privilege, although it is unquestionably the latter. Planet Stories is about tradition, about carrying on the flame of the spirit of adventure and excitement and wonder of the type of science fiction that first soared free in the pulps.

But enough said about my road to the pulps. I encourage you to stop by the Planet Stories messageboards and let us know of your own unique journeys to the world of science fiction and fantasy literature. Like the out-of-this-world genre they lead to, they are always tales of wonder.

Christopher Carey
Planet Stories Editor

Illustration by Brandon Kitkouski

That's Racist!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

At Planet Stories, we're all about recovering cherished pieces of SF's past; treasures that have fallen between the cracks and been forgotten by modern readers, despite their merit and importance to the genre. But one of the problems with history is that it happened in the past... and the past is rarely clean. In order to unearth the gems, you have to dig up some serious dirt. So let's get messy.

Let's talk about racism.

One of the issues we've run up against time and again with Planet Stories, especially with stories from back in the 1930s, is the use of racist language and ideas. Even beyond the standard prejudicial themes and cliches of the day—the fact that the "advanced" races were always white, and all the dark-skinned characters were described by their bright white teeth (seriously, try finding one where that isn't mentioned)—pulp writers were fascinated by the issue of race. Remember, this is decades before the Civil Rights Movement, a time when the oldest readers might still remember legalized slavery.

Otis Adelbert Kline was no different. Both of his novels published by Planet Stories, The Swordsman of Mars and the newly available Outlaws of Mars, deal extensively with the issue of race, and for Outlaws, the entire plot depends on it: a planetary race riot between the white-skinned rulers, their dark servitors, and the menacing yellow men from another world. The patois of Dr. Morgan's faithful African-American servant, Plato, is also likely to make the unsuspecting modern reader cringe—for in this blatant (if sympathetic) caricature, Kline paints a picture of a past most Americans would like to forget.

Yet, as Joe Lansdale points out in his introduction, you can't hold these stories to modern standards of political correctness—and in fact to do so would be a disservice to the author. In his words:

Kline's work is of its time. Non-white races suffer under his hand, though Plato, the black servant of Dr. Morgan, is treated kindly enough, if in an unintentionally condescending way. Still, Kline, like Burroughs, would have probably been considered liberal in their times. They could at least appreciate the fact that someone of a different color could be brave and loyal and worthy of the mantle of humanity. Even Jack London had problems with that, and no doubt he is a more celebrated author.

"Worthy of the mantle of humanity." A phrase so obvious to most of us today that it seems offensive, yet Joe is absolutely right. At the time, belief in racial equality was a bold position in the States.

Which is why at Planet Stories, we feel that it's important to give you the whole manuscripts, unabridged and unabashed. In the past, publishers uncomfortable with content sometimes cut drastically from older books (especially Kline) in order to sanitize for their new era. We say: let the works stand on their own and speak for themselves. H. P. Lovecraft used the N-word. Robert E. Howard had some (today) scandalously negative portrayals of non-white races. Yet this is history, and to redact history is to lose a vital part of how we got to where we are.

In 2009, with the United States' first black president in office, I can read these books and separate the prejudices of the time from the stories themselves, and I have faith that Planet Stories readers will do the same. If anything, I think these books are all the more significant for their transgressions—a glimpse, not just of science fiction's history, but America's past as a whole.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Illustration by Brandon Kitkouski

Lansdale on Kline

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

One of the greatest strengths of the Planet Stories book line is that, in addition to republishing SF classics by some brilliant and historically significant authors, we have the chance to get other amazing authors to introduce them. People like F. Paul Wilson, George Lucas, C. J. Cherryh, Ben Bova, Samuel R. Delany—it never fails to blow my mind every time I see their names in my email inbox. Through their introductions, these authors get to contextualize the forgotten literary heroes that influenced them most and help usher their teachers back into print, the better to educate the next generation of science fiction and fantasy authors.

Which, really, makes me wonder why I'm saying anything at all about these books, when I could get out of the way and let them do it for me. So without further ado, here's an excerpt from Bubba Ho-Tep creator Joe R. Lansdale on why Otis Adelbert Kline's The Outlaws of Mars deserves to be in your shopping cart as we speak:

The Outlaws of Mars was written in the thirties and appeared in Argosy Weekly. It is very much in the Burroughs interplanetary format. A young American, Jerry Morgan, already skilled in the ways of combat due to his time in the army, goes to the home of his uncle, Dr. Morgan, and is after a little too much explanation about telepathy and machinery, transported, via machine, to Mars. The reason for Jerry's departure is embarrassment of a sort, having to do with a woman. Though the event is never fully explained, it appears Jerry has allowed a lie about himself to exist to keep from compromising the aforementioned young lady. So, our noble, romantic, and very Victorian hero flees our world for one of adventure on Mars. Upon his arrival, there is enough action for three novels: some court intrigue, treachery, weird inhabitants, sword fighting, and one hot mama named Junia.

Frankly, the plot is of little consequence, and is not dissimilar from those of the Burroughs novels, or of any sword and planet adventure written by Kline himself. Movement is the name of the game, and Kline provides that in the proverbial spades. There is hardly a moment to breathe, and the only time the novel bogs down is when Kline tries to justify his plot with too much explanation. When Kline is moving the story forward, bringing on the action, keeping us tightly wrapped up in his warm and bloody dream, we are with him all the way. It is only when he pauses to explain that the cocoon we were so tightly wrapped in breaks open and we fall out.

These moments are few, and Kline is more than willing to rewrap us, and we are more than willing to let him. There is plenty of color and beauty and a sweeping approach to story that reminds me of the cinema. In fact, with the popularity of such films as Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I would have thought by now, considering special effects have improved to the point of being almost as incredible as our most astounding dreams, that Burroughs and possibly Kline's characters would have been updated and filmed. Certainly, it's this color and sweep and majesty of background that make these stories so damned appealing; they are like movies in the head.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

O.A.K. for the win!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

It's teaser time! Otis Adelbert Kline, the man who brought you so much sword-swinging, dalf-fighting, empire-overthrowing Martian action in The Swordsman of Mars, is back again with all that and more in The Outlaws of Mars! Scroll down to take a peek at the action that's in store:

She screamed and shrank back from him, evidently rooted to the spot with terror.

Scarcely had he regained his balance, when Jerry's attention was attracted by a new sound—a terrific roar which came from a huge beast that was bounding toward them along the path. With a yawning, tooth-filled mouth as large as that of an alligator, a furry black body fully as big as that of a lion, short legs, and a hairless, leathery tail, paddle-shaped and edged with sharp spines, the oncoming monster certainly looked formidable.

Jerry thought and acted swiftly. He realized that to attempt to stop such a creature with one shot would be futile. If his first bullet should not be instantly fatal, it would be upon them, a wounded and enraged instrument of death and destruction, before he could bring it down with a second. His first duty was to get the girl out of the path of the charging monster.

Gripping his rifle in his left hand, he bent and encircled her slender waist with his right arm. Then he leaped to one side, just in time to avoid those gaping jaws. But the spring he made surprised him fully as much as it did the baffled beast, for it carried him clear over the hedge, and into a carefully tended bed of tiny flowering plants upon the other side.

For the first time since he had landed on Mars, he realized the tremendous advantage of his Earth-trained muscles. Nor was he slow to make use of it. The short-legged beast, unable to leap over the hedge, was crashing through it. So he turned, and still carrying the girl beneath his arm, bounded away with the tremendous leaps which it would have been difficult for a terrestrial kangaroo to equal in its native habitat.

The slender form of the girl was feather-light, and impeded him scarcely at all. On Earth she would have weighed about ninety pounds; on Mars she weighed but thirty-four.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that although he had a good start on the beast, it was following him with a speed that was amazing in a creature with such short legs. Instinctively, he had started toward the wall. Soon the stairway loomed before him, and he bounded up it, five steps at a time. As soon as he reached the top of the wall he put the girl down and turned to face their pursuer, which had meantime reached the steps.

Snapping his gun to his shoulder, he took careful aim between the blazing green eyes, and fired...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Planet Stories on StarWars.com

Friday, January 23, 2009

If you’ve been keeping up with our blog, you already know how excited we were to have a legend like George Lucas pen an introduction to Leigh Brackett’s The Reavers of Skaith, the latest Eric John Stark adventure out from Planet Stories. So you might imagine how thrilled we were to see StarWars.com feature Reavers on both the front page and the Book Vault section of their Web site.
Check out the feature here.

The Reavers of Skaith is now in stock and shipping from our warehouse. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read George Lucas’s introduction, "From Stark to Star Wars, about how the worlds of Leigh Brackett influenced his own creations, order your copy now and dive into a strangely familiar world, in a galaxy far, far away...

Christopher Carey
Planet Stories Editor

Please Be Our Friend!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

In our latest effort to reach out across the vast distances of the intergalactic community and spread the word about Planet Stories' heart-pounding tales of interplanetary adventure and romance, we've set up both a Planet Stories Facebook fan page and Planet Stories MySpace. While we already have an active Planet Stories Messageboard (where we invite you to come on over and give us your feedback about the stories we're printing and what you'd like to see from us in the future), these are just two more ways to stay on top of what we're doing. It's tough out there, navigating the measureless abyss of space (uh... publishing), and as we continue to look for new ways to get the word out about Planet Stories, one thing has become certain—our most powerful ally is YOU, loyal reader! So if you're on Facebook or MySpace and the sound of "swordfights and exploding robots"—as Erik is fond of describing the Planet Stories line—gets your pulse racing, please add us as a fan or friend, or drop us a comment to let us know what you think or just to say, "Greetings, fellow adventurer!"

Let's explore the cosmos together!

Christopher Carey
Editor, Planet Stories

Kline is Back!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

One of Erik's first pulp discoveries when he started researching books for Planet Stories was a man named Otis Adelbert Kline, a former giant of the sword-and-planet genre who is remembered today primarily as the literary agent for Conan-creator Robert E. Howard. From the very beginning, Kline symbolized everything Erik wanted in a Planet Stories book—sword-swinging adventure on other worlds with strange creatures, bizarre cultures, scantily-clad princesses, and two-fisted plot advancement on every page.

It took us over a year, but in the end we did it, and resurrected Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars from the literary graveyard, bringing it back for modern audiences to enjoy. And they did—which is why we're now privileged to bring you its standalone sequel, The Outlaws of Mars.
It's all here—the swords, the action, the double-crosses and intrigue—but this time we've changed it up and tried a different cover style with veteran fantasy artist Brandon Kitkouski. While I'm a huge fan of Daryl Madryk's Swordsman cover, I have to tip my hat to Brandon for his take on the rampaging dalf.
But I'm just one person. What do you think? What about a cover makes you pick it up, and which artists would you like to see more of from Planet Stories? Head on over to the Planet Stories messageboards and make your opinions heard!

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

George Lucas On Leigh Brackett

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

When we started publishing Planet Stories, one of our goals (in fact, the primary goal) was to publish books that were not just great stories, but also historically significant. Books that altered the course of science fiction history, that helped invent genres and whose authors managed to indelibly alter the way we think about SF.

Yet sometimes the impact of a given novel isn't felt immediately—as with music or any other art, it's sometimes the imitator or the student who makes a bigger splash than the original. (After all, Michael Jackson didn't invent the moonwalk, he just popularized it.) Leigh Brackett is the perfect example of this phenomenon—while she was huge in her day, modern readers know her mainly through those authors she mentored and works she influence. Folks like Ray Bradbury.

Or, you know, Star Wars.

Within the first ten pages of a Leigh Brackett book, you can immediately see the resemblance between her gritty, realistic worlds (and characters!) and the universe George Lucas brought us in what has come to be probably the most popular science fiction work of all time. (Heck, her Martian city of Jakara or Skeg on Skaith might as well be Mos Eisely, to my imagination.) But though we all knew that George Lucas must have taken inspiration from Brackett—why else would he commission her to write the first draft for The Empire Strikes Back?—we've never really heard him speak about it.

Until now. For The Reavers of Skaith, the last book in Leigh Brackett's marvelous Skaith trilogy, we were fortunate enough to have The Man Himself write an introduction talking about his relationship with Brackett's worlds, the character of Eric John Stark, and their influence on his beloved classics. And it confirmed everything we had suspected:

Beyond the mechanics of the adventure itself, beyond the clash of heroes and villains, beyond the heroic narrative, Leigh created a world of gritty complexity and layered reality. It was a universe with a working political system (wonderfully, painfully and realistically dysfunctional) and an unjust social hierarchy. I never had the sense that it was designed in service of a simple science fiction plot. Rather, it was as if she had selected this fully realized backdrop, and chosen to place Stark into a world already in motion. It was dense and rich and completely lived-in, a supposed reality that commanded respect. It was a complexity worthy of her genre-contemporaries, guys like Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov and J. R. R. Tolkien, but told by way of a swashbuckling, space-faring barbarian. If this was escapism, it was for a new generation of sophisticated genre fans.

It was into that climate—Leigh's climate—that Star Wars and I showed up on the scene. I had tried to capture my own nostalgia for the movies I grew up with, including the movies that Leigh had written. I loved that organic flow of film-speak that balanced between heightened reality and easy, comfortable, conversational dialogue. And her groundwork had helped to inspire me to move away from the squeaky-clean image of cinematic science fiction. I liked the idea of a lived-in universe, with a seamy, worn underbelly as fully cooked as the futuristic aspects. I loved exploring fringes and outskirts. It was there that Leigh had set Stark's adventures, and it was far from the center of the universe that I set Star Wars.

To hear the rest of what Mr. Lucas has to say, pick up The Reavers of Skaith and dive into a new world—one that may be more familiar than you imagine.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

...and we're back!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Howdy, all! In the wake of Snowpocalypse 2008, in which we got inches—inches!—of snow and therefore couldn't possibly make it into the office, but rather holed up in our houses waiting for the imminent apocalypse, we're all rushing a bit to catch up and get our latest books off to press. Books like The Reavers of Skaith, Leigh Brackett's epic conclusion to the Eric John Stark novels which began with The Secret of Sinharat. For a taste of what's in store for all you Planet Stories aficionados, check out this scene, which made it onto the cover, illustrated by James Ryman:

Victims customarily went smiling to their deaths. Only at the very end, when they had been cast into the sea and the Children had begun to share them, were there cries amid the blood and the floating garlands; and both cries and blood were pleasing to the Mother. The monks sang in their growling voices and did not notice that Stark had ceased to smile.

He was still beyond any rational thought. He only knew the death was coming swiftly through the silken water to claim him. The life within him stirred—a simple, uncomplicated force that rose of itself to fight against extinction.

Ashton was at his right hand. At his left was a monk, and then a second monk, and then the unguarded edge of the steps.

Stark swung his left arm viciously. The blow took the nearer monk across the throat and swept him back into those who climbed behind him. In falling, he clutched at the second monk and cost him his balance. Blue-robes tumbled and fell, splashing into the shallow water. Stark rushed up out of the space he had opened, clearing more space ahead of him by knocking other monks into the water. Hands caught at him, tearing away the garlands but slipping on his naked, oiled body. Some of the fingers had talons that drew blood, but they could not stop him. He gained the platform with a wild bull's rush.

The blue-robe with the horn turned about, startled. He had an especially brutish face. Stark took the horn from him. With it, he broke the face and sent the blue-robe flying out into the water on the far side of the platform. Then Stark swung the long horn like a ten-foot club to clear the upper steps.

He shouted, "Simon!"

Then he heard a faint voice calling his name, N'Chaka, Man-Without-a-Tribe, and he wondered who on this death-bitten godhaunted planet knew that name to call him. And suddenly he realized that the voice was in his mind...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Ryman For The Win

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Covers are important. Not only do they help popularize books and win over new readers—and believe me when I say that the first thing the book industry drills into you is that a book with a bad cover Will Not Sell, no matter how amazing the content—they also go a long way toward establishing the feel of a series. There are a number of authors and series that I can recognize from the cover art alone, and I'm always distraught when some publisher changes a cherished series' look for no good reason. (Granted, sometimes there is a good reason, and kudos to those publishers who raise great books out of the ghetto.) Dan Simmons's Hyperion cantos, Gordon Dickson's Dragon Knight series, Richard A. Knaak's Dragonrealms books which were my first introduction to Larry Elmore—these covers are part of the story to me, forever linked emotionally to the books they promote.

All of which puts a lot of pressure on those of us charged with ordering covers. Fortunately, though our aesthetic is always growing and changing, Planet Stories has gotten extremely lucky during its short history, and a perfect example of that is cover artist James Ryman.

James came on board for the second book in Leigh Brackett's Skaith trilogy, The Hounds of Skaith, and we were ecstatic over his vision of Eric John Stark and that dying planet in its galactic backwater. Naturally, we immediately signed him on to do the cover for the final book, The Reavers of Skaith, as well. Seeing the two side by side, there can be no question of the link between the books, more so than any cover line we could have run over the top of the art. The subtle juxtaposition of the positions of good and evil on the covers is masterfully done as well, and my only regret is that we weren't able to bring him on in time for The Ginger Star and make this a triptych.

You can expect to see more covers from James Ryman in Planet Stories' future, as well as some other fabulous new artists—for instance, the cover currently being finished up for Otis Adelbert Kline's The Outlaws of Mars may be my favorite to date—but if you want to weigh in and make your opinion known, hop over to the Planet Stories messageboards and let us know what you think. We're always listening.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

illustration by Iker Serdar Yildiz

Planet Stories and Pathfinder: Together at Last

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Science fiction and fantasy. To much of the literate world, they're the same thing—they even get shelved in the same section at all but the most enlightened bookstores. Yet among those who enjoy these genres the most, the lines between the two are sharp and expansive (even if no two people agree on where that line is drawn). Many of the friends whose book recommendations I take to heart scoff at the idea of getting science fiction chocolate in their fantasy peanut butter—they'll read one but not the other. It's a sort of literary apartheid.

For me, though, there's never been that divide. Science fiction and fantasy are two great tastes that taste great together, and I don't mind rocking some boats to keep the ampersand in SF&F.

Sometimes, of course, the purists are right. Every time Wes and Jacobs comb through one of my manuscripts to make sure I'm not slipping hidden particle accelerators or robots into Pathfinder, I'm forced to admit that they're correct to do so—it's important to keep a world internally consistent, and getting too hung up on science in a magical setting can break the feel (or the author). Never mind how cool it might have been to make Varisia's towering Spindlehorn a space elevator for ancient thaumateurgic astronauts... it just doesn't fit.

Which is why I was so happy to get a chance to write the "Into the Black" support article for Pathfinder #14, a gazetteer of Golarion's solar system and the diverse cultures which inhabit it. These days, I spend a lot of my time buried in Planet Stories manuscripts, visiting worlds like Leigh Brackett's exotic and dying Skaith in the Eric John Stark books, or Robert E. Howard's Almuric, not to mention swashbuckling Burroughsian pulp like the Mars novels from Michael Moorcock and Otis Adelbert Kline. With this article, I (with significant influence from publisher Erik Mona) got the chance to finally bring hardcore Planet Stories SF into the Pathfinder Chronicles setting.

While I included many more modern SF tropes, from the terminator-line society of Verces to the irradiated liches of Eox the dead or the Jovian floaters of Liavara and Bretheda, Golarion's closest neighbors are straight out of the sword and planet genre epitomized by the Planet Stories books. The green planet of Castrovel, with its steamy jungles and beautiful telepathic matriarchs, meshes completely with the 1930s image of Venus, and any fan of Burroughs or Brackett will quickly recognize their Mars in Akiton's four-armed warriors and desert strongholds.

If you're like me and already enjoy mixing and matching your genres, I hope Pathfinder #14 hits the spot. And if you're a Pathfinder or Planet Stories purist, well, this might be a good point to give the other camp a shot and see what you've been missing. After all, despite what Dr. Egon Spengler might say, sometimes it's good to cross the streams...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

The Dueling Writers of Mars!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The first manuscript I had an opportunity to read after being welcomed aboard the Planet Stories staff was Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars. As a lifelong Edgar Rice Burroughs enthusiast I had, of course, heard about Kline and the long-standing notion among Burroughs's readers that the two men, Kline and Burroughs, considered themselves bitter rivals. Kline's Venus series is generally recognized as having been penned in the style of Burroughs's Mars (or Barsoom) books, and so the story goes that Burroughs launched his own Venus series to impart some kind of retribution against his popular imitator. The notion of a Burroughs-Kline feud, however, bears little evidence to support it, but even so, I must admit it was with some skepticism that I picked up The Swordsman of Mars and began to read it. After all, there's little doubt in my mind that fate would never have led me to a job at Planet Stories if as a kid I had never read ERB, the author who ignited my interest in reading and writing, and by a long and tangled path, editing. Above all, Burroughs is an incomparable Storyteller, capital S, and his works have never gone out of print in the 97 years since he published the serialization of his first novel, Under the Moons of Mars (later retitled A Princess of Mars), in All-Story Magazine—the same novel that introduced me to ERB and got me permanently hooked. When I was in my teens, I devoured ERB's works—systematically, ruthlessly, obsessively—racing first across the dead sea bottoms of Barsoom with John Carter, then on to the lands that time forgot of Caspak and Pellucidar, touring savage jungles and lost cities with Lord Greystoke, flying through the shrouded skies of Amtor (Venus) with Carson Napier, and reveling in the adventure and romance of every one of Burroughs's many standalone novels. How could Kline possibly measure up to that? It was such a game of expectations that kept me from reading Kline for all these years in the first place.

I was in for a heck of a surprise. What I found when I finally pored over The Swordsman of Mars was that Otis Adelbert Kline knew his ERB. In particular, he knew ERB's Mars books. He had an almost uncanny knack for creating Barsoomian-sounding names and terminology—Sheb Takkor, Sel Han, Lal Vak, Kov Lutas, Rad, Jen, Dixtar—and his descriptions of exotic settings, such as "the glittering, frost-covered jungles" of the Takkor Marsh or the dark pits of the Martian baridium mines, are on par with ERB's own. Kline was apparently so well studied in his Burroughs that some fans have gone so far as to conjecture that The Swordsman of Mars and its sequel The Outlaws of Mars (a forthcoming Planet Stories release) take place on some remote corner of ERB's own Barsoom!

But much more important than the literary artifices he employs, Kline understood the mechanics of story on the same instinctive level as Burroughs. For with both authors, it's all about the romance and adventure, pulling the reader in to the point where the distinction between reader and hero begins to blur—and that's where Kline (and Burroughs) grabs you. For at that point of identification, as the hero at last gets within fingertip-reach of the ultimate goal, the conditions shift unexpectedly. The hero suddenly finds that what had seemed a simple outcome of success or failure is instead a head-swirling, heart-wracking turn of events that leaves you racing to the next page to find out how the author can possibly maneuver out of what is seemingly the ultimate inextricable dilemma.

And that's why Otis Adelbert Kline deserves his place in history—like Burroughs he is a Storyteller who, on a primal level, has the ability to mesmerize his audience with a captivating tale of honor and betrayal. A pulp writer, yes, but one with a rare gift of the bards of ancient days, whose simple words enchant and bring to life the archetypes that lie in wait in the imagination. Readers of Burroughs should love The Swordsman of Mars. I know this one did.

Christopher Carey
Planet Stories Editor

The Swordsman of Mars: The Media Takes Notice

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Otis Adelbert Kline was one of the first "forgotten pulpsters" we targeted a few years ago when Pierce Watters and I started talking about the classic SF line that would become Paizo's Planet Stories imprint. We originally wanted to do his first sword and planet serial, Planet of Peril, a yarn featuring an Earthman's adventures on Venus published a few years after Edgar Rice Burroughs invented the sub–genre with his "Under the Moons of Mars" (later A Princess of Mars). We backed off on those plans when our buddies over at Wildside released a new print–on–demand version of Planet of Peril, and instead opted to publish Kline's two Mars books first.

In a way this is fitting, as the Mars books seem to happen chronologically before the Venus books, even though they were published after. There are, at least, four more Kline serials I'd like to reprint as part of Planet Stories, and beyond that there are a handful of interesting stories that were never republished in the paperback era of the 1960s that readers might enjoy.

This month's publication of an Otis Adelbert Kline novel in the Planet Stories line may be our fourteenth release, but in many ways it feels like the very first.

Because of that, it's gratifying to see bloggers and members of the science–fiction media taking notice of the book and spreading the word about the new edition and about the Planet Stories book line. The latest comes from io9.com, an exciting new general interest sci–fi site that first mentioned Planet Stories a few months ago.

Kudos to io9 editor Ed Grabianowski for his excellent taste and his continued attention to our Planet Stories line.

Other recent Swordsman of Mars coverage:

Fantasy Book Critic October Spotlight

Marooned: Science Fiction Books on Mars

ComicMix.com

Grognardia

Author Win Scott Eckert

Erik Mona
Publisher

It's a Dark, Dark World

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

"You're going to love this one," Erik told me when we decided to publish Henry Kuttner's The Dark World. "It's amazing."
"Cool," I said, and left it at that. After all, while being publisher of Planet Stories has given Erik the chance to accelerate his ascension to pulp scholarship, we see a lot of good books around here. So I got a little excited, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then I saw what some other folks had to say about it.

"I consider the work of Henry Kuttner to be the finest science fantasy ever written. The Dark World was the best fantasy I have ever read...my copy is already half thumbed to death as I imagine I have read it at least twelve times."
Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon

Oh. Well...

"Henry Kutter was a neglected master... a man who shaped science fiction and fantasy in its most important years."
Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

Huh.

"The Kuttner story which most impressed me in those most impressionable days was his short novel The Dark World. I returned to it time and time, reading it over and over again, drawn by its colorful, semi-mythic characters and strong action.... Looking back, Kuttner and Moore—and, specifically, The Dark World—were doubtless a general influence on my development as a writer."
Roger Zelazny, author of the Amber series

Okay, guys, I get it! Geez!
The honest truth, though, is that The Dark World is amazing. In Kuttner's fast-reading fantasy classic, WWII airman Edward Bond returns home from strange events during the war to discover that his mind is no longer his own. Instead, he now shares his body with his identical twin from an alternate dimension, the evil wizard Ganelon. Sucked through a portal to the mysterious fey realm known as the Dark World, Bond finds himself trapped between two warring factions. On one side is the Coven: a werewolf, a hooded immortal, and a beautiful and seductive witch, all eager to acknowledge Ganelon as their sinister ruler. On the other is the white sorceress Freydis and her band of forest rebels that want nothing more than to see the warlock's head on a spike. Within the first few pages, the book's central conflict comes out swinging: will Edward/Ganelon join with the rebels to release the oppressed world from the grip of a tyrannical, sacrifice—hungry god—or embrace the Coven to become the world's greatest villain?
It's a classic premise—the man drawn into another world of magic and swordplay—honed to the sharpest possible edge by Kuttner's clever brand of mythology backed by science. Yet the vibrant, instantly familiar setting isn't what makes this book stand out. No, what made it startlingly different in its day was its moral ambiguity. In an era—remember, we're in 1946—when you could reasonably expect any given protagonist to be a hard—jawed paragon of virtue, instinctively punching and slashing his way to justice without fail, Kuttner's hero is literally torn between good and evil. And for the first time in my pulp—reading career, I began to actually fear that our hero might not win. That the temptations of tyranny, unlimited power, and a life of luxury might be too much, and Edward Bond might—to quote another science fiction classic—give in to the dark side.
So take heed of what Marion, Ray, Roger—and, yes, Erik—have been saying and give The Dark World a shot. There are witches. There are vampires. There are werewolves. There are zombies. There are wizards and warlocks, dark gods with bloody sacrifices, and things that go bump in the night.
And they're winning....
James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Map the Stars

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

It's not often that I get to show off Planet Stories art besides the covers, but I wanted to take a minute and point out that in addition to a killer story, Leigh Brackett's Skaith books (which include The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith, and the forthcoming The Reavers of Skaith) all feature hand-drawn maps by the incredibly talented Rob Lazzaretti. I've always loved being able to follow along with a character's adventures on a map, getting a better sense of what the author's world actually looks like, and Rob does a fantastic job of maintaining an old-timey cartographic flavor that really makes these maps pop. The two images here are from The Ginger Star and The Hounds of Skaith. Click for larger versions, and enjoy!

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Judge the Books By Their Covers

Friday, September 26, 2008

Over the last year or so, we've been listening carefully to what people have to say about Planet Stories, and especially about the books' covers. While we all know that it's what's inside that counts—and with authors like Brackett and Howard, Moore and Moorcock, I think we're pretty set on that level—the cover remains the single most important factor in selling a book to somebody who may never have heard of it. I know that, especially as a child, covers often made my buying decisions for me. Did it have bright colors? A dragon on it? What about a weird alien landscape? My favorite science fiction novel of all time, Dan Simmons's Hyperion, I purchased based solely on the amazing cover, and it's my sincere hope that someone can someday say the same thing about one of our books.

But finding the right mix with covers isn't always easy. Should it be pulpy or sophisticated? Detailed and realistic or painterly and stylized? All of us at Planet Stories have our own personal tastes, but we're a relatively small sample, and as such we've been spending a lot of time on the Planet Stories messageboards getting reader feedback. Lately, it seems that we've really hit our stride, with the Swordsman of Mars cover and this fabulous Hounds of Skaith art from our old friend James Ryman being the hands-down favorites to date.

So what do you think? What do you look for in a science fiction or fantasy cover? Click on over to the messageboards and let us know.

Believe me, we're listening.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Riding the Wave

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

It's that time again—time for me to point out that nothing new I can say about The Hounds of Skaith can recommend it any better than it recommends itself and jump straight to an excerpt from the novel. In The Ginger Star, everyone's favorite mercenary and wild man Eric John Stark ventured to the dying world of Skaith in search of his foster father, only to find himself the subject of a revolutionary prophecy. Now, reunited with his mentor and with the support of the rebels' beautiful prophetess, Stark must master a pack of vicious telepathic hounds and tear down the planet's corrupt government before they close the starport and leave him stranded forever in a galactic backwater. The following scene is his first encounter with the race of desert-running cannibals that locals call the Runners...

The hound had stopped in his trotting. He stood braced on forelegs like tree trunks, high shoulders hunched against the wind, coarse fur ruffling. His head, which seemed too heavy for even that powerful neck to support without weariness, swung slowly back and forth. The dark muzzle snarled.

The pack gathered behind him. They were excited, making noises in their throats. Their eyes glowed, too bright, too knowing—the harbingers of death.

There, said Gerd.

Stark saw them, strung along a rib of sand in the grainy light. A second before nothing had stood there. Now, in the flicker of an eyelid, there were eleven...no, fourteen bent, elongated shapes, barely recognizable as human. Skin like old leather, thick and tough, covered their staring bones, impervious to wind and cold. Long hair and scanty scraps of hide flapped wildly. A family group, Stark thought—males, females, young. One of the females clutched something between pendulous breasts. Other adults carried stones or thighbones.

"Runners," Ashton said and pulled out his sword. "They're like piranha fish. Once they get their teeth in—"

The old male screamed, one high wild cry. The ragged figures stooped forward, lifted on their long legs and rushed out across the shadowed sand.

They moved with incredible speed. Their bodies were drawn and thinned for running, thrusting heads carried level with the ground and never losing sight of the prey. The upper torso was all ribcage, deep and narrow, with negligible shoulders, the arms carried like flightless wings outstretched for balance. The incredible legs lifted, stretched, spurned, lifted, with a grotesque perfection of motion that caught the throat with its loveliness even as it terrified with its ferocity.

Gerd said, N'Chaka. Kill?

Kill!

The hounds sent fear.

That was how they killed. Not with fang or claw. With fear. Cold cruel deadly mind-bolts of it that struck like arrows to the brain, drained the gut, chilled the blood-warm heart until it ceased beating...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Two Swordsmen of Mars!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

While pulp science-fiction magazines had entered a sort of digest-sized hibernation by the early 1960s, the paperback book phenomenon was hitting with full force, exposing readers to a new generation of writers while bringing many of the old pulp classics of the past into book form for the very first time. The celebrated Ace Doubles of the era presented many of the books we've already published in our Planet Stories classic fantasy line, including Leigh Brackett's The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman, both of which first appeared in the original Planet Stories magazine of the 1940s. Ace also republished many full book-length tales, including this month's Planet Stories release, Otis Adelbert Kline's The Swordsman of Mars.

Kline's classic tale of swashbuckling and savage monsters in the deserts, swamps, and jungles of Mars first appeared in 1933 as a 6-chapter weekly serial in Argosy Magazine, the very pulp that had birthed the so-called "sword and planet" genre with the publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Under the Moons of Mars 21 years prior. Contemporary fans of Burrough's John Carter of Mars and Carson of Venus tales often ranked Kline's planetary adventures as equal or near-to-equal those penned by the master himself, but in the 75 years since the original publication of The Swordsman of Mars, Kline's reputation as an author has not fared quite as well as that of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The tale's paperback publication came in 1960 from Ace, appearing alongside such science-fiction classics as Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, The Isle of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells, and The Weapon Shops of Isher by A. E. Van Vogt. The boldly colored cover depicts a long-haired John Carter clone and his damsel battling some Martians under the banner "He wore another man's body on the Red Planet". Tucked away at the bottom of the frame, near the left-hand corner, is the tiny legend "Complete & Unabridged."

As with many early paperbacks, this latter claim is more complicated than it appears. The 1960 Ace edition is an "unabridged" reprint of the 1960 hardcover edition of The Swordsman of Mars from a publisher called Avalon, who reprinted all of Kline's sword and planet fiction starting in that year. Rather than a celebration of Kline's important serial work, the '60s Avalon editions are badly truncated rewrites. Entire chapters are missing, key character and location descriptions are completely absent, and the final product cuts a slash across the chest of Kline's literary reputation that would be totally invisible to readers unable to assemble the original Argosy serial and compare the two texts.

Happily, we at Planet Stories did just that when preparing our manuscript for print, and the differences between the original and the "Complete & Unabridged" versions are staggering. Yes, the serial is much longer, which is to be expected. But the changes made to The Swordsman of Mars rob the story of a great deal of description, characterization, pacing, and background that does no service to the original tale or the literary legacy of Otis Adelbert Kline.

Take a look at the first chapter of The Swordsman of Mars, first in its Ace paperback/Avalon edition, and then in the complete serial publication used as the basis for our Planet Stories edition.

Here's the Ace version:

PROLOGUE

Harry Thorne opened his eyes and gazed about him with a startled expression. This was not the tawdry hotel bedroom in which he had gone to sleep; it was a small room with bare, concrete walls, a door of hardwood planking studded with bolts, and a barred window. The only articles of furniture were the cot on which he was lying, a chair, and a small table.

So the sleeping pills didn't finish me off, he thought. Now I'm in jail for attempted suicide!

Thorne sat up, then rose unsteadily to his feet and staggered to the window. Supporting himself by gripping the thick iron bars, he peered out. It was broad daylight and the sun was high in the heavens. Below him stretched a deep valley, through which a narrow stream meandered. And as far as he could see in all directions there were mountains, though the highest peaks were all below the level of his own eyes.

He turned from the window at the sound of a key grating in a lock. Then the heavy door swung inward, and a large man entered the cell, bearing a tray of food and a steaming pot of coffee. Behind the man was a still larger figure, whose very presence radiated authority. His forehead was high and bulged outward over shaggy eyebrows that met above his aquiline nose. He wore a pointed, closely cropped Vandyke, black with a slight sprinkling of gray, and was dressed in faultlessly tailored evening clothes.

Thorne got to his feet as his singular visitor closed the door behind him. Then, in a booming bass, the man said, "At last, Mr. Thorne, I have caught up with you. I am Dr. Morgan." He smiled. "And I might add, not a moment too soon. You gave us quite a time—Boyd and I managed to get you out of that hotel room and down to the street, passing you off as a drunk. Don't you remember a knocking at the door? You weren't quite out when we came in."

Thorne thought for a moment, then nodded. It seemed that there had been a pounding somewhere. "How did you get in? I thought I locked the door."

"You did—but I had skeleton keys with me, just in case. We took you to my apartment, treated you, and brought you out here." Morgan nodded to Boyd, who left the room, then waved his hand invitingly toward the tray. "I ordered breakfast served in your room. I especially urge you to try the coffee. It will counteract the effect of the sedatives I was compelled to use in order to save your life to bring you here."

"You've gone to a lot of trouble to save something I don't want," Thorne said. "May I ask why you are interfering in my affairs?"

"I need you," Morgan replied simply. "And I can offer you adventure such as only one other man of Earth has known—possibly glory, possibly death. But if death, not the mean sort you were seeking."

Harry Thorne frowned. "You referred to a man of Earth as if there were men not of Earth. Are you suggesting a trip to Mars?"

Dr. Morgan laughed. "Splendid, Mr. Thorne. But suppose you tackle breakfast. It will put you in a better frame of mind for what I am going to tell you. I shall not lock the door as I leave. When you have finished, join me in the drawing room—at the end of the corridor to your right." He paused in the doorway. "You mentioned a trip to Mars, Mr. Thorne. Forgive me if I keep you in suspense for a time, but—although it is not exactly what you think those words mean—that is what I am going to propose."

So that's it. Quick, to the point. Our hero is Harry Thorne. We don't know what he looks like, how he came to be in this room, why he wanted to commit suicide, or really anything about him other than his name. We've met the esteemed Doctor Morgan (the scientist who ties together all of Kline's Mars and Venus serials), but we don't understand why he would be interested in poor, old suicidal Harry Thorne. This introduction is a serviceable stepping stone to the adventures to come, but it does little to ground the reader's interest in the protagonist or foreshadow future events.

Here's the first section of the original serial, as it will appear in this month's Planet Stories release:

CHAPTER 1

A VERY STRANGE VISITOR

"Is Mr. McGinnis in?"

The girl who presided at the information desk and switchboard of the McGinnis Physical Culture Institute suspended her gum chewing long enough to reply: "I'll see. What's the name?"

"Thorne. Harry Thorne."

As she connected the office phone of her employer, the girl surveyed the young man before her with a look of approval. He was tall and slender, with wavy hair of a chestnut brown shade, and there was a pantherish suppleness about his movements which hinted of powerful muscles, perfectly controlled. His faultless attire and aristocratic air told her that he was likely to prove a wealthy prospect for the services which Mr. McGinnis had to offer, so she rang three times, a signal which her employer would understand.

"Mr. Harry Thorne to see you, sir."

She nodded and smiled at the young man. "You may go in, Mr. Thorne. The first office at your right."

"Thank you." Thorne followed her directions, and was welcomed at the door of the office by the beaming proprietor of the institution, a middle-aged gentleman with bulging chest and biceps, a broken nose, and cauliflower ears.

"Come right in, Mr. Thorne. Take a chair. A wonderful frame you have to put muscle on. Now with our system of training we guarantee to add an inch to the circumference of your biceps in less than-⎯"

"One moment, Mr. McGinnis. I came here to be built up, not physically, but financially. In short, I am after that job you advertised in this morning's paper."

McGinnis settled back, a look of disappointment on his face.

"Oh, so you want a job as my assistant fencing master. Can you handle a foil?"

"Fencing has been a hobby of mine."

"A hobby, eh? You'll have to make it a profession if you work here. But come. I'll try you out."

McGinnis led him down the hallway, and through a large room where a group of perspiring financiers dressed in shorts and jerseys were going through various contortions under the direction of a husky looking young man wearing a striped sweater. A conspicuous majority of these striving athletes looked as if their chests had slipped down beneath their belts, and the calves and biceps were undeveloped.

They passed through another room, where a number of corpulent gentlemen were being mauled, poked, pinched, prodded and steam-cooked, and thence into a small empty gymnasium.

McGinnis removed his coat and invited Thorne to do likewise. Then he handled him plastron, mask, glove and foil, and both men armed themselves.

"Now, my lad," said McGinnis, when Thorne was ready, "we'll see what we'll see. On guard!"

They saluted and engaged. Before he had got fairly warmed up, McGinnis, much to his surprise, was hit. "Accidents will happen," he said. "We'll try again."

They did, and this time McGinnis was disarmed. The sudden realization of this made him quite red in the face—he, a fencing master, disarmed by this amateur.

"That was a coincidence," he said, as Thorne politely handed him his foil. "We'll try it once more."

Much to his astonishment and chagrin, the master was hit in the fifth disengage. He threw down his foil and tore off his mask. "Enough's enough." He growled.

"Do I get the job?" asked Thorne.

"Not in a thousand years, my boy. Do you think I'd be fool enough to hire an assistant who can beat me? Don't slam the door as you go out."

Out on the street once more, Thorne fished his last fifty cent piece from his pocket and bought an early edition of an afternoon paper. Pocketing his change, he retired to a doorway to scan the "Help Wanted" column.

Evening found him still tramping, after having followed five more fruitless leads. He fingered the change in his pocket reflectively. Not enough for a decent meal, but if husbanded carefully it would keep body and soul together for the next two or three days. He expended five cents on coffee and doughnuts, his first meal of the day. Then he returned to the cheap hotel where he had taken lodging and where his room rent, which had been paid in advance, would expire on the morrow.

As the clerk handed him his key, he said: "A gentleman called to see you, Mr. Thorne. Said he'd be back later."

"A gentleman to see me! That's strange. Did he leave any message?"

"Only that he'd be back later."

"Thanks."

Thorne climbed the creaky stairs with their covering of dusty, moth-eaten carpet, and entered his room. Shortly thereafter, in dressing gown and slippers and with his pipe going, he sat down in his creaky rocker, vintage of 1880, to think out the situation in which he found himself. He had already pawned his watch and ring, and the money was all but gone. The dressing gown would be next, he decided. Then his reverie was interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Come in," he said, wearily.

He looked up curiously as the door opened, then suppressed a gasp of amazement at sight of the striking individual who entered. His visitor, almost a giant in stature, was obviously a tremendously powerful man. But the impression of great physical strength which the stranger's physique induced was overshadowed by the promise of inconceivably greater mental force which shone from his face. His forehead was high and bulged outward over shaggy eyebrows that met above his aquiline nose. His piercing black eyes seemed to look through Thorne's own, and into his very brain. He wore a pointed, closely-cropped Vandyke, black with a slight sprinkling of gray hairs, and was dressed in faultlessly tailored evening clothes.

Thorne got to his feet as his singular visitor closed the door behind him. Then, in a booming bass voice, the big man said: "At last, Mr. Thorne, I have caught up with you. I am Dr. Morgan."

Surprised, Thorne took the proffered hand and muttered an acknowledgement. "Take the chair, doctor," he invited. "I'll sit here on the bed." As his visitor complied, he continued: "You say you have caught up with me. Am I to understand from this that you have been following me?"

"Halfway across the world and back again," was the reply. "I first saw your photograph in a local paper, accompanying an article which told of your hunting expedition in British East Africa. I followed you there, only to learn that you had sailed there days before my arrival."

"You saw my picture and followed me there? Why?"

"I'll come to that presently. When I reached New York, I called your father's home in Long Island. I was advised that you had left, and that no one knew of your whereabouts. After that, it was not easy to trace you. I learned that you had sailed for home sooner than you planned, because of a wire from your father. I also discovered that on your return, you and your father had quarreled, and that as a result you were disowned and disinherited."

"You seem to have taken a remarkably keen interest in my affairs," said Thorne, amazed at the intimate details of his private business with which this strange individual was familiar.

"Exactly. And I presume you have seen the evening paper."

"Only the 'Help Wanted' columns."

"In that case," said the doctor, "you missed some news which will be of interest to you." He took a clipping from his pocket and passed it to Thorne.

With a shock that turned him suddenly pale beneath his coat of tan, he read:

FIANCÉE OF HARRY THORNE ELOPES WITH OTHER MAN

Sylvia Thompson, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Horatio Thompson, of Newport, whose engagement to Harry Thorne, scion of the wealthy Long Island family, was recently announced, has eloped with Herbert Lloyd Vandevetter.

There were details, but Thorne did not read these. Instead, he looked at the pictures of his lovely fiancée, his best friend, and himself, conspicuously displayed beside the article. Then the page blurred and he turned away. A great sorrow gripped his heart. Sylvia Thompson was the one person in whom he had not lost faith. Before leaving for Chicago he had confided in her, had told her that he was penniless, and must seek out a new means of livelihood before they could be married. She had promised to wait. And now—this!

"She was false—a cheat, a fraud!" he said, bitterly. "I'll never believe any woman again. I'll never believe anybody."

"Steady boy," admonished the doctor. "You're taking a lot of territory."

"I mean it," said Thorne. "I—I don't care to live any longer."

"Suppose you were offered a new interest in life. Excitement and adventures beyond your wildest dreams. A chance to view new scenes that no earthly being save one has ever glimpsed. To meet new and strange peoples."

"All that is old stuff to me," replied Thorne. "I've traveled until I'm sick of it. I've hunted big game in Asia, Africa and the Americas. I've been in every important country on the globe. The only adventure I have not tried is death, and just now it is the one adventure that intrigues me."

He got up suddenly, and stepping to where his suitcase lay open on the grip-rack, drew therefrom a .38 caliber pistol. "I don't know why you've come here, doctor," he said, "and I don't much care. But I'll appreciate the favor if you will notify my fond relatives of my demise. I don't like being messy, and I haven't the slightest desire to be dramatic, so I'll go into the bathroom for the last act."

"One moment, before you go," said the doctor. "Do you realize that if you do this deed while I am present you will implicate me as a murderer?"

"Right. I hadn't thought of that. Sorry. I'll say good-by then, and give you time to get away."

The doctor rose. "That's considerate of you my boy, and I'll be glad to notify your relatives for you. Good-by." He held out his hand.

Thorne listlessly grasped the extended hand. As he did so, he felt a sharp pricking sensation in his palm, followed by a numbness which shot up his arm and traveled rapidly through the rest of his body. The gun, which he had been holding in his left hand, clattered to the floor. A moment later things went black before his eyes. His knees buckled under him, and the doctor, catching him beneath the arms, eased him back upon the bed. Then consciousness left him.

The original Kline text reveals his hero to be a weary world traveler, an adventurer of impeccable swordsmanship and an aristocratic background (all of which will serve him well on the Red Planet). We have a fitting physical description for the ideal sword and planet hero, and we have a tragic love story that explains Harry Thorne's self-destructive impulse and the motivation that will eventually send him to Mars.

Otis Adelbert Kline died 14 years prior to the publication of Avalon's The Swordsman of Mars hit the shelves. Whoever wrote the short version, it wasn't the original author, and the merciless cuts did little to help Kline's literary reputation. No less an authority than The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Kline's work "pulp fiction at its worst." But these analyses, indeed most modern perception of Kline's fantasy output, is based not on the original pulp printing, but on posthumous editorial hack-jobs perpetrated long after the author himself had died.

Now, for the first time in 75 years, Planet Stories presents Otis Adelbert Kline in his own words. Order The Swordsman of Mars today and take the fantastic journey to the Red Planet the way the author originally intended it.

You'll find it makes all the difference in the world.

Erik Mona
Publisher

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

I've got a problem.

See, back in April I did one of these blog posts about The Ginger Star, the first of Leigh Brackett's three Skaith books. In it, I talked all about how she's my favorite Planet Stories author so far, and how The Ginger Star is hands-down the most fun-to-read book in our line to date. I was fair, but I was effusive, as the world she painted was a beautiful blend of fantasy and sci-fi (as is the case with so much far-future apocalyptic fiction), a work of a sword-and-planet genius that seems more akin to Tolkien or Star Wars than Edgar Rice Burroughs. It lit me up, and I shouted it from the rooftops. And now I'm in a bind.

Because The Hounds of Skaith is better. Way better.

In this sequel to The Ginger Star, Brackett has more of everything I loved from the first book. More strange aliens. More bizarre and yet immediately familiar cultures. More battle scenes, more fights with telepathic hound-beasts, more starships and political theory and morally ambiguous bad guys getting what's coming to them. New nations and landscapes (and an additional map of the world as well, courtesy of Rob Lazzaretti). Without the need to explain who Eric John Stark is and why he's there, Brackett is free to keep pushing the envelope and packing every scene with more wonder. One of the things I love most about Brackett is actually one of the things that originally attracted me to China Miéville (who was born just six years before her death... Ms. Brackett was light years ahead of her time). Both of them have so many ideas that they can afford to just toss them away with a line or two. The beautiful, perfect Yur men, for instance, whose women are like shrieking, pale grubs—Leigh may only have given them a paragraph, but the image has stuck with me ever since.

So what can I say? I spoke too soon. My only hope at this point is that, when it comes time to release The Reavers of Skaith, I'll be referring back to this post in much the same fashion. Call me crazy, but something tells me Brackett isn't quite finished yet.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Swamp Fight!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Last time I discussed how Otis Adelbert Kline, author of The Swordsman of Mars, ties into the overall idea of Planet Stories—a forgotten master in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition, who set precedents both through his own work and as a member of the Weird Tales editorial staff (not to mention as the literary agent for Conan creator Robert E. Howard). This week, however, I'd like to focus the spotlight on the one reason for republishing The Swordsman of Mars that we haven't talked about yet:

Because it's fun.

In order to illustrate that, I've picked one of my favorite sections and included a snippet from it here. Though there are a number of memorable scenes, one of my favorite things about Kline is the new monsters he invents, and this scene features not just one, but three of his motley creations... and that's just on one page. Let's hear it for authors who aren't stingy with their beasties!

For some time the Earth-man was too busy getting his breath to take note of his surroundings. Then he looked around for his mount, and saw it swimming directly away from him at a distance of about three hundred yards. Although the gawr was moving at a speed which he could not possibly hope to equal, he was about to set out in futile pursuit when a huge and terrible reptilian head suddenly reared itself between them, a scaly, silver neck. The monster looked first at the retreating gawr, then at the man, and evidently deciding that the latter would be the easier prey, began gliding swiftly toward him.

Thorne glanced around him. Although it seemed utterly futile for him even to attempt to make the shore, about a quarter of a mile distant, where a dense fringe of trees nodded over the water, no other avenue of escape was open to him, and he struck out desperately.

It was manifest from the start that he could not hope to outstrip his fearful aquatic enemy. As he forged ahead with long, powerful overhand strokes, he glanced back from time to time, and saw that the monster was swiftly gaining on him. Soon the terrific pace began to tell on him. His arms grew numb, and it seemed that they moved automatically, while breathing momentarily became more difficult. But the thought of those dreadful jaws, now gaping close behind him, spurred him on.

With the shore but two hundred feet distant, he felt this last ounce of strength ebbing. A backward glance showed his monstrous pursuer so near that it was arching its neck for the kill. Then just ahead of him he noticed a tiny ripple of water, and there emerged a pair of jaws like those of a crocodile, but larger than those of any crocodile he had ever seen or heard of. There followed a broad, flat head, and thick neck, both covered with glossy fur, the head black, the neck ringed with a bright yellow band.

Hemmed thus between the two aquatic monsters, he did the only thing left for him to do. Filling his lungs, he plunged beneath the surface and dived under the oncoming beast. For a moment he heard the rush and swirl of the swimming thing above him, and felt the eddying currents which it kicked downward and backward. These passed, he forged onward, remaining under water until compelled to return to the surface for air.

When he had shaken the water out of his eyes, Thorne saw a fearsome sight. The two monsters had met, and were engaged in a terrific struggle. The silver-gray scales of the one which had been following him flashed in the sun as it endeavored to shake off its small adversary which had seized it by the lower lip.

Suddenly it reared its head until the black-furred creature was drawn completely out of the water, and he saw that the latter was a web-footed animal about as large as a full-grown terrestrial lion, with short legs and a leathery, paddle-shaped tail which was edged with sharp spines. With the exception of the tail and claws, the body was covered with fur. The scaly monster shook its head, dislodging its smaller enemy and losing most of its lower lip in the process. Then, as the furry creature splashed into the water, it arched its neck and struck.

Thorne expected to see the smaller creature instantly slain. Instead he saw a startling demonstration of its superior cunning and quickness. With a speed his eye could scarcely follow, it avoided the lunge of that terrible head, and turning, seized the slender, stalklike neck of its adversary in its own relatively large jaws. One powerful crunch, and the battle was over. The severed head sank from sight, and the huge body, floundering about with reptilian tenacity to life, churned the water to a foam and sent huge waves scurrying in all directions.

So absorbed had he been in this strange battle that Thorne had momentarily forgotten his own exhaustion and the peril that menaced him. Now, as the victor turned from the carcass of its vanquished enemy and swam straight toward him, the realization of his danger redoubled. He struck out for the shore, essaying the fast overhand stroke he had previously used on the surface, but his weary muscles had reached the limit of their endurance. A few feeble efforts, and a backward glance at the swiftly moving beast, convinced him that he was doomed. Better death by drowning than in those horrible jaws. He filled his lungs and dived. At a depth of about fifteen feet he found a large water plant to which he clung with his last remaining strength.
But it seemed he was not even to be given his choice of deaths. Suddenly he became aware of the dark object in the green water above him. Then a huge jaw closed around his waist...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

One of a Kline

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Otis Adelbert Kline, author of The Swordsman of Mars, is probably the author with the least name recognition on our current schedule.

And that's on purpose. You see, once upon a time, before we realized that we could actually get folks like Michael Moorcock, Piers Anthony, and Robert E. Howard, we set our sights on trying to bring back, not just the best authors of the genre, but the best forgotten authors. Yet once we opened our doors, we discovered a veritable horde of high-quality, big-name authors who'd been languishing out of print. As the roster started filling up with giants—both the folks I've already mentioned and people like C. L. Moore, the first female sword-and-sorcery author, or Leigh Brackett, who wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back—I began to wonder if there was indeed still a place in readers' hearts for Otis Adelbert Kline. Then I sent the manuscript out to our typist, who's retyped all the old books in our line, from Moorcock to Howard. Shortly thereafter I received the typed manuscript along with a simple note saying:

"This one was my favorite by far!"
And why shouldn't it be? Though these days he's best known as the literary agent for Robert E. Howard and supposed rival of Edgar Rice Burroughs, at the height of the pulp era Kline was nearly as big a name as Howard and Burroughs himself. Though Kline's famous feud with Burroughs—in which Burroughs would publish a Mars book so Kline would publish a Venus one, prompting Burroughs to publish a Venus one, which in turn forced Kline to respond with a Mars saga, etc.—turns out to have been entirely the creation of imaginative fans, there can be no doubt that the two authors shared both style and subject matter. Indeed, Kline has frequently been called Burroughs's only true competitor. While he produced only a handful of novels before his death at the age of 55, Kline's presence on the original editorial staff of Weird Tales and his sword-swinging romances on the red and green planets did much to influence the genre, and his legacy lives on in the tradition of sword and planet novels to this day.

So will our grand experiment work? Can we fulfill the promise we made to our readers, not just to give them fun, historically significant works of fantasy and science fiction, but to give them great stories that they've never heard of before? Are today's audiences open to the Burroughsian derring-do of characters like Harry Thorne, the swashbuckling, Depression-era dynamo sent to the Red Planet in The Swordsman of Mars?

Buckle your seatbelts, folks. We're about to find out.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Worlds Without End...

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

In my last blog post, I talked at length about how excited I am to see the authors in Worlds of Their Own—all of whom have made a considerable splash in the fantasy genre through their shared-world fiction—turned loose to write in settings entirely of their own devising, in which their word is the only law and all the toys are theirs to break as they see fit. I also gave you a sneak peak at snippets from the stories by R. A. Salvatore and Michael A. Stackpole.

This week, rather than gushing further about the book, I thought I'd just jump right into the snippets—after all, anybody who wants to hear my opinion (or express their own) can always jump over to the Planet Stories messageboards and chat with me, Erik, and the rest of the crew at their leisure.

So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Jeff Grubb, whose fingerprints are undoubtedly all over your favorite game settings, regardless of what they might be. In addition to rulebooks like the original Manual of the Planes and D20 Modern, he's been heavily involved in novels, comics, and design work for everything from Magic: The Gathering to Spelljammer, the Forgotten Realms to Unearthed Arcana, Dragonlance to Warcraft. Most recently, he's been hired to write the latest installment for the popular Guild Wars video game series. Little surprise, then, that his fabulous story for Worlds of Their Own, "Catch of the Day," is one of my favorites in the volume. It's a fun, energetic tale of a world where humanity has been forced to the mountaintops, sailing above the thick and dangerous atmosphere of the lowlands in buoyant airships, and in which a certain naive scholar ventures off the maps in an effort to discover the truth behind the phrase "here there be dragons..."

"Fable," said Meridan. "Saga. Epic poetry."

"Lost fact," countered August. "I take it you do not believe in the Lost Times?"

"If you challenge me to deny that man once lived beneath these clouds, I will defer to your greater knowledge. But if you ask me if I am a nostalgic, longing for the past, the answer, I'm afraid, is no."

"I confess surprise," said August. "I always thought of captains as romantics at heart."

"We captains are pragmatics," said Meridan. " You have to be, to survive away from the safe shores of the peaks. You cannot long for the past, I'm afraid, so I leave it to the poets."

"And historians," said August evenly. "So tell me, Captain, what do you think happened to the world? How did it get like this?"

"It doesn't matter much, does it?" said the captain. "The world is as it is, and we just have to live in it."

"I always heard," said Baker, "that there was a crystal heart at the center of the world, and someone broke it and released a cloud that wrapped around the globe."

"Nay, you're daft," said Crossgreves. "They had too much hoojoo. Too much magic. That caused the world to cloud over."

"You're both wrong," added Sandotter. "It just started raining one day and forgot to stop. It's just simple natural processes."

The captain, pouring herself another mug of wine, asked, "So, Mister Gold, how did the world come to be wrapped in clouds?"

"No one knows," said August Gold. "But I think someone killed a god."

There was a silence for a moment around the table, then everyone broke out at once. All except Meridan.

"Really," said Sandotter, with a giggle.

"Now that's daft," said Crossgreves. "Begging your pardon, Scholar."

"It would explain why the Churchmen act like they have a wasp up their kirtles," said Baker, "if somebody killed God."

"Not God," corrected August. "A god. There were many such powerful beings once, the old tales say. Only some being of that magnitude could cause it to start raining and keep raining for a hundred years, wrapping the world in a blanket of clouds such that the only survivors had to hike up the mountaintops and start again. And only killing such a being could release such power."

Crossgreves snorted, but Baker and Sandotter nodded.

"Have you proof of your gods?" asked Meridan.

"No. I don't even have proof of my dragons yet," said August.

"I've been meaning to ask, Mister Gold," said Meridan. "Tell me, how do you intend to prove the existence of your fabled dragons?"

"Why, Captain, I thought you had figured it out, looking at my equipment," said August Gold calmly. "I intend to go fishing for them."

If Jeff Grubb is the face of old-school D&D, Monte Cook is the cutting edge. The award-winning author of the Dungeon Master's Guide and Ptolus, Arcana Unearthed and his own take on World of Darkness, Monte is one of the most respected names in gaming, a legend in his own time. Now, in Worlds of Their Own, he dives into the Lands of the Diamond Throne, the world in which his Arcana books are set, in which giants battle dragons for control of an entire continent...

You said," the dragon noted, raising its head higher, "that you know who I am."

"Oh, yes. Perhaps you thought that such lore had been lost, but the akashics have made sure your crimes would always be remembered. I know who you are, Nithogar the Wicked. Nithogar the Hated. Nithogar the Despoiler."

"These are epithets I must have earned after I left."

"Then how about this one, dragon: Nithogar, creator of the dramojh." Out of habit, Re-Magul spat as he said both "dragon" and "dramojh."

Nithogar flexed his wings. "You know nothing of it, Hu-Charad."

"Nothing?" Re-Magul's eyes flared. "You are ancient, it is true, but I am no mere youth. I was there when the stone ships arrived on these shores, one of the first off the boats. I remember the battles with the dramojh—the so-called 'dragon scions.' I battled their dark sorcery and demonic powers. I saw friends and relatives die in their claws and teeth. They scuttled out of the shadows and they raped this land like nothing before them or—thank all the singers in the Houses of the Eternal—since."

"So your kind dealt with the dramojh. I am aware of that. And you were some kind of leader in your campaign against them. What do you want from me—gratitude? So be it. Thanks to you, giant, and to all your kind."

And with a sneer, he added quickly: "Now be on your way."

Re-Magul recoiled. No one had ever spoken to him like that regarding the hated dramojh.

The dragon pointed to the east with a long, sharp claw. " Your ancestral home lies in that direction." He lowered his talon and added, "I trust your vaunted sailing craft still work."

"I know where my homeland lies, beast! I left everything and everyone there to come here to deal with the chaos you created."

"Really, giant. Is that so? And what made the dramojh your problem? I recognize that they were an abomination, but why do you, hailing from across the boundless sea, care about such matters?"

"We are the wardens of the land!"

"We are the land!"

The shouted words of both giant and dragon echoed dully across the landscape. Each could feel the fevered breath of the other. Re-Magul trembled with anger, while the only change in the dragon's demeanor was an intensity of color growing behind his narrowed eyelids...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Drizzt in an X-Wing

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Do I have your attention yet? I thought so. That's one nice thing about nerd culture (a term I use in the most affectionate way)—we've got some easily recognizable triggers. For better or for worse, there are certain touchstones that all of us in a given nerd subgroup are familiar with (and no, I don't mean lolcats). I'm talking about the big stuff—the media that shaped our favorite genres so irreversibly that there's really no extricating the two. Sure, you can theorize about how modern fantasy might have evolved if Tolkien had left those manuscripts in his bottom drawer, but really, it's something of a moot point.

Which is why I'm so excited about Worlds of Their Own.

Still following? I mean, let's just look at the author list here for a second. In the same book, we've got Monte Cook, Elaine Cunningham, Richard E. Dansky, Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, Gary Gygax, Paul S. Kemp, J. Robert King, William King, James Lowder, Will McDermott, R. A. Salvatore, Steven Savile, Lisa Smedman, Michael A. Stackpole, Greg Stafford, Greg Stolze, and Nancy Virginia Varian. That's huge. These are folks who have, through their shared-world fiction and gaming accomplishments, left an indelible mark on our subculture. And in Worlds of Their Own, editor Jim Lowder (who's done some pretty seminal work himself, with his bestselling Ravenloft novels, among others) turns these authors loose to write in worlds of completely their own design, where their word is final and not subject to an intellectual property's owner. Needless to say, the work is stunning—I mean, we've got half a dozen New York Times bestsellers, Nebula award winners, and more here—and often surprising to those only familiar with an authors' shared-world stories.

As it would be a huge task to try and explain each of these authors' impact, I decided to just pick two today and show off chunks from their stories. But who to choose? William King? Richard Dansky? Some of the authors I was able to set aside for future blog posts—after all, this is not the first time Planet Stories or Pathfinder has worked with folks like Gary Gygax, Elaine Cunningham, or Ed Greenwood, nor will it be the last. In the end, though, I had to go with the two who inspired the title of this post: R. A. Salvatore and Michael A. Stackpole.

R. A. Salvatore is probably the biggest success story in shared-world fiction. With his creation of the dark elf hero Drizzt Do'Urden for the Forgotten Realms, he blew the doors off the shared-world industry and went on to write numerous popular creator-owned series, from his Spearwielder's Tales to the Crimson Shadow stories. His piece in Worlds of Their Own, "Mather's Blood," is set in the world of Corona, home of his DemonWars saga. Check it out:

On one of those gusts came a cry of anguish that sliced the heart of Mather Wyndon, a scream of pain and fear from a voice that he knew well.
He drew out his sword and used it to lead the way through the tangle of branch and snow, pushing out into the frigid air, trying to orient himself and determine the direction of Bradwarden's howl. The wind was from the northeast still, and it had carried Bradwarden's cry, so Mather set out that way, circumventing Dundalis, the smoke of the many chimneys thick in the air. Soon he found a path cut through the drifts—by goblins, he knew, though he could hardly see on this dark night. He didn't dare light a torch, fearing to make himself a target, but he understood his disadvantage here. Goblins were creatures of caves and deep tunnels. They could see much better in the dark than even an elven-trained ranger.

Mather was not surprised when he came through one large drift and caught a flicker of movement to the side, a missile flying straight for him.
He sent his energy into Tempest, and the sword flared with angry light. He brought the blade whipping about, intercepting the hurled spear and knocking it harmlessly aside, and then slashed back, deflecting a second.

The third got through...

Michael A. Stackpole is probably best known for his wildly popular X-Wing: Rogue Squadron series, which breathed new life into the most famous pilots of the Star Wars universe. He's also done work for Battletech, has numerous creator-owned projects such as the DragonCrown War and the Age of Discovery series, and in 2008 had an asteroid named after him. This story, "Keeping Score," is set in his Purgatory Station universe:

The ambush seared scarlet light through the mauve jungle. Sara had felt it coming a heartbeat before beams flicked out—things had gotten too quiet for a second. The enemy fire manifested as full shafts of light instantly linking shooter and target, then snapping off, since light traveled far too fast for even the most augmented eyes to see it as tiny bolts. Ruby spears stabbed down from high branches, or slanted in from around the boles of trees, here and there, as the Zsytzii warriors shifted impossibly fast through the jungle.

Sara cut left and spun, slamming her back against the trunk of a tree. Her body armor absorbed most of the impact and she continued to spin, then dropped to a knee on the far side of the tree and brought her LNT-87 carbine up. The green crosshairs on her combat glasses tracked along with the weapon's muzzle, showing her where it was pointed. The top barrel stabbed red back at the ambushers, burning little holes through broad leaves and striping trunks with carbonized scars. Fire gouted from the lower barrel as chemical explosives launched clouds of little flechettes at the unseen attackers.

To her right Captain Patrick Kelloch, the fire team's leader, laid down a pattern of raking fire that covered their right flank while she concentrated on the left. Flechettes shredded leaves and vaporized plump, purple lotla fruit. She thought she saw a black shadow splashed with green, and hoped one fewer laser was targeted back at her, but the Zsytzii were harder to hit than she'd ever found in virtsims.

Bragb Bissik, the team's heavy-weapons specialist, stepped into the gap between the two human warriors. Underslung on his massive right forearm were the eight spinning rotary-barrels of the Gatling-style Bouganshi laser cannon. Into each barrel was fed a small lasing cell, consisting of a chemical reagent that released a lot of energy really fast. The cell converted that energy into coherent light of great power and intensity that blazed for almost a second once the reaction had been started. The cannon whined as the barrels spun. The red beams slashed in an arc, nipping branches from trees and burning fire into the jungle's upper reaches.

The weapon spat the smoking lasing cells out into a pile at the hulking Bouganshi's feet. The brilliant red beams bathed him in bloody highlight. Hulking and broad-shouldered, the Bouganshi could have been a demon from any number of human pantheons, and Sara hoped the Zeez would find him purely terrifying.

As Bragb's fire raked the higher branches, two beams stabbed out from the ground to hit the Bouganshi's broad chest...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Ferretfolk!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Yes, you read that correctly. Ferretfolk.

Under the auspices of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax created a number of iconic races, whether out of whole cloth or by combining a various different mythological and literary sources. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when, in his final novel, he did it one last time. At first, I balked—up to this point, Infernal Sorceress had been a fairly hard-edged and gritty fantasy romp. What were a bunch of talking weasel-people doing here? Yet once I got past my initial knee-jerk reaction (which said that such things were better off left in one of Brian Jacques's Redwall novels), I realized that, in fact, they fit the story perfectly. After all, what's the point of fantasy if not to mix things up and make the reader question their standard assumptions? In throwing in something totally out of left field, Gygax was rattling my cage and reminding me that there's more to the genre than just the same old white-bread elves and dwarves we all know and love. And besides, their accents are totally adorable.
So with that said, I thought I'd offer you all the first (and quite possibly last) appearance of the ferretfolk:

Below, Ferret stared a second in horror. What little light there was danced and swayed wildly, but it was sufficient to show him the ugly mandibles and head of the steelback as the monster came up into the cave. The hole's exit was a tight fit for it, but the myriapod was forcing its hard body through it all too quickly. Each segment through gave it two more legs with which to haul the rest of it out to get at its prey. "Oh, crap! Now what?" Ferret cursed as he turned to look for a really fast means of getting up to the passage he wasn't sure would save them from the hunting giant centipede. At that moment a braided leather rope dropped in front of him. Ferret needed no urging, and he swarmed up hand-over-hand. "Where'd you get the rope, Ra—"

His jaw fell slack as he saw the welcoming committee awaiting him. One of that number jerked him all the way inside, pulled him out of the way, as two others rolled a rounded boulder to the brink of the tunnel. "—ker?

His companion was as shocked as Ferret. Raker gave his head a slight shake as if to say, "I haven't the slightest notion," and then stared at the two lithe forms which were just in the process of shoving the big stone over the edge. They heard a thump and a sharp crack followed by scrabbling noises which slowly died away.

"Gottum!" One of the creatures who had sent the boulder down chittered in something which sounded vaguely like human speech as it turned and showed a mouthful of sharp fangs to the two men.

"That's trade talk," Raker murmured, referring to the pidgin Phonecian commonly used throughout much of Ærth to conduct business.

"And that's a... a... man-sized stoat," Ferret breathed.

"Sure, talk pretty fine with hewmuns allatime now and then, but no Stoatie. Nonono. Thurr we are—Ferretfolk you name we, us say Thurr." The creature trilled the r's as it pronounced the name of its folk. "See dead manyfoot?"

The creature talked as fast as it moved. Ferret couldn't believe this. They did look like huge, slender ferrets, down to their buff fur and black "masks." He gaped, then asked rather stupidly, "Real ferretfolk?" He had heard of them but never believed they existed. "I am called Ferret."

The one who had hauled him to safety ignored the question. "Come. See it broken. Good."

Both men went to where the creature proudly pointed with its nose, stared down to see the steelback below, forepart a gory ruin under the boulder. "You sure squashed the shit out of that head!" Raker said with enthusiasm.

"Bad thing, manyfoot. Kill hewmuns, kill you, kill Thurr, too, so we allatime kill 'em first. Pretty good, sure?" And as it rattled that off the creature showed its teeth again in what was surely meant to be an imitation of a human smile.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

The Lost Gygax Novel

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Ever since we started, there's been a question as to whether or not Planet Stories would begin publishing original fiction—and if so, when. After all, one of the structural foundations of the line to date is that we publish not just great sci-fi and fantasy, but important sci-fi and fantasy. How can you possibly know ahead of time that a new work of fiction is going to be culturally significant?

Turns out, sometimes that question is easier to answer than you think. When we set out to create Planet Stories, some of the first books we signed were the three Setne Inhetep books by Gary Gygax, The Anubis Murders, The Samarkand Solution, and Death in Delhi. Publisher Erik Mona had always enjoyed Gygax's Gord the Rogue stories (one of which we've now republished in Worlds of Their Own), and we felt that it was important to kick things off with Gygax, considering that, after Tolkien, he's probably had the most pervasive effect on modern fantasy of any author. If you stop to think about it, that's an enormous claim, but it's true—how many books in the fantasy section of your bookstore (or on your shelf at home) have their roots in Dungeons & Dragons? Certainly it was Gygax's work that had the biggest influence on all of us, and that put us in a position to one day start a fiction line of our own. And as Gary's health declined and interests had of late turned away from writing fiction, we believed that Death in Delhi, the last Gygax book to be published, would be his final literary legacy.

That is, until a year ago, when Erik called Gygax to see if he might perhaps have some unpublished short fiction sitting around that we could slip into an anthology somewhere. Obligingly, Gary dug around in his files, then came back and said that he did indeed have a few short stories—but he'd also discovered a complete unpublished novel he'd forgotten about, set in the same world as the Setne Inhetep books but far from Ægypt and starring completely new characters. Apparently TSR had turned it down for being too similar to Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books (despite the fact that Leiber's son saw no problem with the manuscript), and the whole experience so frustrated Gary that he mothballed the novel completely. Would we, he asked, perhaps be interested in publishing it?

Needless to say, we leapt on the opportunity. Called Infernal Sorceress and introducing the characters of Ferret and Raker, the book is Gygax at his finest, chock-full of swashbuckling action, intricate magic, and strange monsters. And unlike Setne Inhetep, whose razor-sharp mind generally sees him on top of any given situation, this book's protagonists are more like Gord—smart and capable, but never quite to the extent that they think they are, always running from the situations their quick blades and loose morals get them into.

Written just after Death in Delhi, Infernal Sorceress is the true last Gygax novel in every sense, making it both the culmination of a life's worth of writing and the final adventure from the man who taught the world not just how to make believe, but that it was okay to do so. That, in fact, we should never have stopped. And that, more than anything, makes it an honor to be publishing this book.

How do you know an original novel will become important to an entire genre?

Sometimes it just starts out that way.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Master of the Pit

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Over the course of publishing the first two Kane of Old Mars novels, I've talked a lot on this blog about Michael Moorcock. About how he's won more awards than you can shake a stick at, and rightly so. How he was one of the pioneers of modern fantasy, and created or popularized such fantasy tropes as the weakling antihero warrior, the struggle between Law and Chaos, and the concept of the "multiverse." So this week, rather than prattling on, I thought I'd cut right to the chase and give you a preview of the third and final Michael Kane book, Masters of the Pit:

They came in a howling pack, bursting from the trees and running down the beach towards us; grotesque parodies of human beings, waving clubs and crudely hammered swords, covered in hair and completely naked.

I could not at first believe my eyes as I drew my own sword without thinking and prepared to face them.

Though they walked upright, they had the half-human faces of dogs—bloodhounds were the nearest species I could think of.

What was more, the noises they made were indistinguishable from the baying of hounds.

So bizarre was their appearance, so sudden was their assault, that I was almost off my guard when the first club-brandishing dog-man came in to the attack.

I blocked the blow with my blade and sheared off the creature's fingers, finishing him cleanly with a thrust at his heart.

Another took his place, and more besides. I saw that we were completely surrounded by the pack. Apart from Hool Haji, Rokin and myself, there were probably only two other barbarians in our party, and there were probably some fifty of the dog-men.

I swung my sword in an arc, and it bit deep into the necks of two of the dog-men, causing them to fall.

The hounds' faces were slobbering, and the large eyes held a maniacal hatred which I had only previously seen in the eyes of mad dogs. I had the impression that if they bit me I would be infected with rabies.

Three more fell before my blade as all the old teachings of M. Clarchet, my French fencing master since childhood, came back to me.

Once again I became cool.

Once again I became nothing more than a fighting machine, concentrating entirely on defending myself against this mad attack...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Men of the Broken Towers

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

In trying to choose a topic for today's blog post on Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star, I had a rough time. After raving about Brackett's prose in my last post, I knew that I wanted to share an excerpt—but which one? The scene depicted on the cover, where Stark and the mysterious wise woman face execution? Perhaps his fight with the Children of the Sea? Or his escape from the subterranean world of humanity's ferret-faced descendants? Eventually, though, I realized that there's one scene in particular which stands out in my mind whenever I'm thinking about this book: the first appearance of the Corn King, after Stark's been captured by the treacherous trader Amnir. While it's a bit longer than the usual excerpts we post here, I hope you'll find it as captivating as I do.

Amnir rode along the line of wagons. "Close up there. Close up. Smartly now! Let them see your weapons. On your guard, watch my lance point, and keep moving."

The broken towers were grouped around an open circle, which had a huge lump of something in the middle that might once have been a monument to civic pride. Three figures stood beside the monument. They were gaunt. Tuck-bellied, long-armed, slightly stooped. They wore tight-fitting garments of an indeterminate gray color, hoods covering narrow heads. Their faces were masked against the wind. The masks were worked in darker threads with what appeared to be symbols of rank. The three stood immobile, alone, and the ragged doorways of the buildings gaped darkly on either hand.

Stark's nostrils twitched. A smell of living came to him from those doorways—a dry subtle taint of close-packed bodies, of smoke and penned animals, of dung and wool and unnamable foods. He was riding in his usual place beside the third wagon in line. Gerrith was behind him, beside the fourth; the other captives strung out behind her, except for Halk, who was still confined. Stark tugged nervously at his bonds, and the armed man who led his beast thumped him with his lance butt and bade him be still.

The noise of the wagons rolled against the silence. Amnir rode aside, toward the three gray figures. Men came after him bearing sacks and bales and rolls of cloth.

Amnir halted and raised his hand. The hand held a lance, point upward.

"May Old Sun give you light and warmth, Hargoth."

"There is neither here," said the foremost figure. Only his eyes and his mouth showed. The eyes were pale and unreadable. Above them, on the forehead of the mask, was the winged-disc sun-symbol, which Stark had found to be almost universal. On the sides of the mask, covering the cheeks, were stylized grain patterns. Stark supposed the man was both chief and high priest. It was strange to find a Corn King here, where no corn had grown for centuries. The man's mouth had thin lips and very sharp teeth. His voice was high and reedy but it had a carrying quality, a note of authority.

"Here there are only my lord Darkness, and his lady Cold, and their daughter Hunger."

"I have brought you gifts," said Amnir.

And the Corn King said, "This time, you have brought us more."

The wind blew his words away. But Amnir's lance point dipped and a movement began along the line of wagons, a bristling of weapons. The man leading Stark's beast shortened up on the rein.

In a curiously flat tone Amnir said, "I don't take your meaning."

"Why should you?" said the Corn King. "You have not the Sight. But I have seen. I have seen it in the Winter Dreaming. I have seen it in the entrails of the Spring Child that we give each year to Old Sun. I have seen it in the stars. Our guide has come, the Promised One who will lead us into the far heavens, into warmth and light. He is with you now." A long slender arm shot out and pointed straight at Stark. "Give him to us."

"I do not understand you," Amnir said. "I have only captives from the south, to be sold as slaves to the Thyrans."

The lance point dipped lower. The pace of the wagons quickened.

"You lie," said the Corn King. "You will sell them to the Citadel. Word has come from the high north, both truth and lies, and we know the difference. There are strangers on Skaith, and the star-roads are open. We have waited through the long night, and now it is morning."

As though in answer, the first sullen glimmer of dawn stained the eastern sky.

"Give us our guide now. Only death waits for him in the high north."

Stark shouted, "What word have you of strangers?"

The armed man clouted him hard across the head with the lance butt. Amnir voiced a shrill cry, reining his beast around, and the wagons began to move, faster and faster, the teams slipping and scrabbling on the frosty ground...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Playing Favorites

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

For me, trying to pick a favorite author in the Planet Stories line is like trying to pick my favorite child: impolite, but still totally doable. (At least, I presume that's what the expression means—I don't have kids.) And while each of my literary children is a unique and beautiful snowflake, for me, the favorite is Leigh Brackett.

It's not just because she was a master of many genres, writing everything from westerns to sword and planet to hard-boiled detective stories like the screenplay for the noir classic The Big Sleep, which she co-wrote with William Faulkner. Nor is it because she was a woman writing during the pulp era, a time when females in the SF world were darn-near unheard of. (Even though I'm probably wrong, I still imagine her and C. L. Moore with sleeves rolled up, Rosie-the-Riveter-style, banging away at their typewriters as they ushered in a horde of young female authors-to-be.) Nor is it even because she wrote the original script to The Empire Strikes Back, possibly the finest space opera ever filmed, and easily the most satisfying installment of a groundbreaking trilogy. (Being too young to remember it first-hand, I can only imagine the shock those first audiences must have felt when the film ended with Han trapped in carbonite and Luke minus a hand. Coming on the heels of a traditional fairy-tale plot like A New Hope, think of what guts it must have taken to write that kind of dark, brooding cliff-hanger ending!)

No, the reason Leigh Brackett is my favorite Planet Stories author to date is simple: her words. While Catherine Moore may have beat her to the punch by a few years, and has a definite florid charm of her own, Brackett stands out with just how modern her work feels. In reading The Ginger Star, the first of Brackett's Eric John Stark books set on the planet Skaith, I'm constantly struck by the smooth flow of her prose, the way it slips cleanly through your mind and leaves nothing behind but an image. There's a school of thought that says the best sort of writing is invisible, work in which the author herself disappears and you're left with only the story. Brackett obviously understood that. And what ideas she presents! The intentionally mutated Children of the Sea and Children of Skaith-Our-Mother, humans who sought to avoid their planet's apocalypse by returning to the embrace of the sea and the subterranean realms. The Corn King and his masked men of the northern towers, who worship only hunger and cold. Even the psychic wolves that guard the citadel of the Lords Protector, who kill by projecting paralyzing fear into the minds of their prey. Ideas like these flow fast and furious in her books, and it was these flights of fancy that ultimately inspired so many.

And if my own reasons aren't enough to convince you that The Ginger Star is worth checking out, consider this: Many years ago, at the height of her career, Ms. Brackett was sought out by a young author named Ray Bradbury in search of a mentor, and was taken on as her protégé. He's said himself that he learned much about the craft of writing at the feet of her and her husband, Edmond Hamilton. Which leads me to ask: who are we to argue with Ray's taste?

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Don't Mess with the Wizard-Priest

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

He's back! After taking several months to introduce you to some of the other legendary authorsin our Planet Stories line, we've come back around to the source and released The Samarkand Solution, Gary Gygax's successor to The Anubis Murders. Though the book stands alone (and indeed, all of the Gygax novels we're publishing can be read in any order), this adventure once more follows the adventures of Ægyptian Magister Setne Inhetep, wizard-priest to Pharaoh himself.

Temporarily bereft of his bewitching bodyguard, Rachelle, Setne heads down to the city of On for some rest and relaxation, only to run across the path of a notorious assassin. As the nobles around him begin dropping like flies, Setne is quickly drawn into a web of intrigue that finds him working both with and against the local government and the evil church of Set. In a city where seemingly everyone is guilty of something, a treasonous conspiracy is forming that could shake Ægypt all the way to the halls of Pharaoh's palace. But can Setne get to the bottom of things before he himself becomes the next victim?

For those who enjoyed The Anubis Murders, I think it's safe to say that you'll enjoy The Samarkand Solution even more. Gygax truly hits his stride in this book, and the biggest selling point for me is the introduction of Inspector Tuhorus, the hard-bitten city cop assigned to work with Setne. The only thing better than one quick-witted protagonist is two of them, and it's fun to see someone make the ever-confident Setne a straight man against his will. If The Anubis Murders broke some molds by presenting an honest-to-goodness mystery in a fantasy setting, The Samarkand Solution pushes the envelope even farther by adding an element of the classic "buddy cop" film. Toss in Setne's desperate attempts to avoid the attentions of the—*ahem*—affectionate and beautiful Lady Xonaapi, and the novel ends up somewhat racier than its predecessor as well. But really, for me, reading a Gygax novel is all about the magic, and Samarkand certainly doesn't disappoint on that count, as can be seen in the following excerpt:

A gigantic mass of living flames shifted, hot-violet spots fixing themselves upon the magister as if they were eyes. In fact they were eyes, and red-orange fires parted and a mouth spoke. "You come to your death, fool! Run away, little man, or I shall sear your flesh and boil your blood ere I consume you!"

"If you thought you could do that, efreet, you'd act, not boast," Inhetep shouted back. "Return now to your infernal realm, or it is I who will quench you!" Although the magister had expected to encounter some form of creature from the Spheres of Fire, this near-demoniac in its most potent form came as a surprise, but he didn't allow the monster to have an inkling of that. Even as he spoke, the ur-kheri-heb made preparations to carry out his threat.

The towering creature of hellfire form reached out to grab its antagonist, then withdrew its fiery arm with a shrieking howl as it contacted the freezing water. Its cry hurt Inhetep's ears, and the hemisphere trembled, bulging in where the efreet had struck it, then restored itself to smoothness again. It was noticeably smaller. "Son of a newt!" the fire being roared. "I'll soon have you out of that bubble and fry you slowly for your presumptuousness!"

With that, the flame-limbs struck down upon the shielding water, pounding upon it again and again. The monstrous thing howled in pain as it sought to destroy Inhetep's protection, but it was enraged and determined. Inside his watery shell, Inhetep worked desperately. He had to both maintain his defense and mount an offense against the efreet. No mere defense could prevail for long in such conditions as these. He worked with precision even as the water which protected him hissed and wavered and shrank to little more than a few inches of liquid but a foot above his sweating head. There was a sudden eruption of steam, and as vapors of superheated stuff rose round Setne, the priest-wizard called out, "Now, thing of perdition, you are doomed!"

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

A New Adventure on Old Mars!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Those who have not yet read City of the Beast should seriously consider doing so before pressing onward.)

Although it stands on its own as a novel, Michael Moorcock's Lord of the Spiders picks up immediately where the events of City of the Beast left off. In the second of the Kane of Old Mars books, Moorcock brings us a slightly darker series of adventures for the American physicist and duelist Michael Kane. Pulled back to Earth on the eve of his engagement to the beautiful Princess Shizala, Kane begins this story frantically preparing a second version of his matter transport machine, this time with only the narrator (Mr. Edward P. Bradbury/Michael Moorcock himself) to assist and fund his endeavors. Yet when the switch is finally thrown and Kane goes hurtling through the aether to arrive on Mars's surface, he finds things very different from when he left. The Blue Giant savages he remembers are now civilized and in the midst of a bloody civil war, and the free peoples of the south are marching on each other over false accusations. Has Michael Kane arrived on the same planet, only to find himself centuries in the future? And are his cunning and sword arm enough to free downtrodden peoples—both blue-skinned and otherwise—from the rule of tyrants? Only an adventure worthy of Michael Moorcock—complete with airships and spider-people, false gods and throne-room assassinations—will reveal the truth.

And now, an excerpt from Lord of the Spiders:

They gibbered and fell back for a moment, a terrible twittering noise, like that of thousands of bats, filling the air and echoing on and on through the complex of chambers.

Bac Puri's sword swung to left and right, up and down, slicing off limbs, stabbing vitals, piercing the unnaturally soft, clammy bodies.

And then he was, as if by magic, a mass of spears. He howled in his pain and madness as javelins like the one we had seen earlier appeared in every part of his body until it was almost impossible to distinguish the man beneath.

He fell with a crash.

Seeing the creatures were at least mortal, I decided we should take advantage of Bac Puri's mad attack and, waving my sword, I leapt through the entrance, shouting:

"Come—they can be slain!"

They could be slain, but they were elusive creatures and sight and feel of them brought physical revulsion. With the others behind me, I carried the attack to them and soon found myself in a tangle of soft, yielding flesh that seemed boneless.

And the faces! They were vile parodies of human faces and again resembled nothing quite so much as the ugly little vampire bat of Earth. Flat faces with huge nostrils let into the head, gashes of mouths full of sharp little fangs, half-blind eyes, dark and wicked—and insensate.

As I fought their claws, their sharp teeth and their spears, they slithered about, gibbering and twittering.

I had been wrong about them. There was not a trace of intelligence in their faces—just a demoniac blood-hunger, a dark malevolence that hated, hated, hated—but never reasoned.
My companions and I stood shoulder to shoulder, back to back, as the things tore at us…

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Gary Gygax: Remembered

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The galley proofs for Gary Gygax's novel, The Samarkand Solution, are sitting on my desk right now, ready for the final check-off before we send the book to the printer. Sitting above my desk, packed into little cardboard sleeves, are dozens of copies of Dragon, the original RPG magazine for which Gygax served as publisher in its earliest days. Until recently, I served as publisher of that magazine, and it always made me proud to know I was following in Gary Gygax's august footsteps.

Gary died this morning in his sleep, bringing to an end a decades-spanning career that created an industry and brought joy to millions of people. The game he created with Dave Arneson&Dungeons & Dragons&has had a more profound influence upon my life than any other factor save my family, and his passing has affected me deeply.

When I was a kid growing up with D&D, Gygax's name was on the cover of just about every official product. He wrote the best adventure modules, he set the template for all future campaign settings with the World of Greyhawk, and perhaps most importantly he introduced a generation of kids to a game that was more than a game. I've met many of my closest friends in the span of my entire life because of Gary Gygax.

Last year, I launched Planet Stories, a line of fantasy and science-fiction trade paperbacks aimed at reprinting some of the classic works of sword & sorcery that inspired Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy gaming in general. In the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, a fascinating work that surely serves as Gygax's masterpiece, Gary thoughtfully included Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading, a list that included such luminaries as Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lin Carter, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Jack Vance, and more.

So in addition to my friends and my career, I also owe Gary Gygax an unpayable debt of gratitude for introducing me to the greatest fantasists who ever lived and a lifetime of excellent reading. Planet Stories is, in some small sense, my attempt to repay that debt by bringing many of these fine authors back into print to be enjoyed again. Like Paizo Publishing itself, Planet Stories exists because of Gary Gygax. I chose to honor Gary by including several of his own exciting fantasy novels in the Planet Stories line, including the imprint's very first release, The Anubis Murders.

It was the release of The Anubis Murders at last year's Gen Con Indy that brought me and Gary together for the last time. As the show's Guest of Honor, Gygax had more than a full schedule, but he was able to carve out a couple of hours a day to sit at the Paizo booth and sign autographs of his book while sharing thoughts and memories with his fans. And the stories those fans told were just incredible. For a full hour I listened as gamer after gamer approached Gary and told a variation of the exact same story: "Thank you for a game that has brought me so much joy. Thank you for a game that has brought me so many friends. Thank you for making such a positive impact on my life."

Sitting next to Gary at last year's Gen Con made me realize what a huge cultural impact Gary Gygax had made on all of us. Never before have I seen such honest appreciation. Never before had I been so moved and so proud to be working with a man who had made such an impact on my life. On all of our lives.

When a friend passes away, it is easy to be sad, to think about what might have been had he lived another year, another ten years. But my friends, I am here to tell you that Gary Gygax knew what a difference he had made in all of our lives, and he was proud to have made it.

Not bad for a life's work.

I'll miss you, Gary Gygax. We all will. Goodbye, my friend.

And thank you.

Erik Mona
Paizo Publisher

More Moorcock!

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Here at Planet Stories, we've had a number of fortunate turns that have helped us go from the wistful dream of pulp-loving Erik Mona to a publisher that gets to unearth and reintroduce some of the best and most important fantasy and SF of the last century. And of all our lucky breaks, perhaps our greatest is our relationship with Michael Moorcock. In addition to having us publish his Kane of Old Mars series (three books that include City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders, and the forthcoming Masters of the Pit), Moorcock has also written a number of insightful introductions for our other books, and has even pointed us to a few potential Planet Stories authors—after all, he's been reading this stuff longer than most of our staff has been alive.

Why is that such a big deal? Only because Michael Moorcock is, without a doubt, one of the most important and influential fantasy authors alive. He began editing the magazine Tarzan Adventures when he was fifteen years old—fifteen!—and in the decades since has written dozens of novels that have inspired generations. He's won the Nebula Award. The World Fantasy Award. The British Fantasy Award (twice!). The Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. He's even in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. And in the course of winning those accolades, he's given us some of the genre's most memorable characters, particularly Elric of Melniboné, the skinny albino who, with his black sword Stormbringer, is perhaps the most famous of Moorcock's Eternal Champions.

The idea of a reprehensible anti-hero in fantasy; the concept of an eternal battle, not between good and evil, but between law and chaos; even the term "multiverse" to describe overlapping dimensions—all of these are things popularized by Moorcock that have since become pillars of the fantasy world, both in fiction and in gaming. He's been cited as an influence by everyone from Neil Gaiman to China Miéville, and his work remains as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.

All of which is why we're so honored to be working with him. If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and check out City of the Beast or Lord of the Spiders and get a taste of SF history at its finest.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

New Products Announced

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

This week we announced a slew of new products:

Pathfinder

Pathfinder #14 Second Darkness Chapter 2: "Children of the Void"—A star has fallen from the sky, destroying the island known as the Devil's Elbow. Tasked by a group of elven bounty hunters to investigate a dark elf assassin tied to the catastrophe, the heroes travel to the blasted island only to find it crawling with prospectors, merchants, and mercenaries eager to salvage the legendary "skymetal" sure to have fallen from space.

Pathfinder #15 Second Darkness Chapter 3: "The Armageddon Echo"—Evidence recovered from the devastated island known as the Devil's Elbow indicates that vile dark elves have infiltrated the ruined elven city of Celwynvian. The heroes join forces with the valorous elves of Crying Leaf in an attempt to reclaim the city from darkness.

Pathfinder #16 Second Darkness Chapter 4: "Endless Night"—Disguised as evil dark elves, the heroes penetrate a hidden city in the subterranean Darklands in an effort to discover the drow plan for the coming apocalypse. The possibility of a traitor among the goodly elves of the surface world and the discovery of the heroes' ruse leads to a race through treacherous caverns in a desperate effort to warn allies of impending doom.

Pathfinder #17 Second Darkness Chapter 5: "A Memory of Darkness"—Armed with the knowledge that an elven traitor supplied the drow with the magical means to call down the stars and devastate Golarion, the PCs arrive at the elven nation of Kyonin to find their claims falling on deaf ears.

Pathfinder Chronicles

Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods & Magic—This comprehensive 64-page guidebook provides an overview of the 20 "core" Pathfinder Chronicles gods and their religions, with an emphasis on rules and information players can use at the game table, whether they're playing a zealous cleric, brave paladin, or simply a faithful member of any character class.

Pathfinder Chronicles Item Cards: Second Darkness Deck—This 54-card set allows heroes to keep track of their equipment in style and is completely compatible with all of Paizo's other GameMastery Item Card sets.

Pathfinder Chronicles: Into the Darklands—Delve the deep secrets of the Darklands, a subterranean realm frequented by dark elves, shadow dragons, and worse! This comprehensive sourcebook provides an overview of the cavernous realms below the surface of the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.

Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to Absalom—The largest and most important metropolis in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting comes alive in this comprehensive guide to the City at the Center of the World!

GameMastery Maps

GameMastery Flip-Mat: Darklands—features a maze of interconnected underworld tunnels. The Flip side features a huge, cavernous chamber.

GameMastery Flip-Mat: Desert—features a majestic desert filled with blowing sands and massive dunes. The Flip side features a desert oasis centered on a small pond and teeming with life.

GameMastery Map Pack: Elven City—Locations include: Treehouse Dwelling, Mystic Arch, Statuary Garden Temple of the Four Winds, and Council of Chambers.

GameMastery Map Pack: Ancient Forest—Locations include: Druid's Glade, Fairy Ring, Overgrown Ruins, Blighted Glen, and Briar Patch.

Planet Stories

The Hounds of Skaith, by Leigh Brackett—Eric John Stark rides again! Leigh Brackett's unforgettable science-fantasy hero of The Secret of Sinharat and The Ginger Star cuts a red swath across the brutal planet Skaith!

The Dark World, by Henry Kuttner—Henry Kuttner's Sword and Sorcery classic returns to print at last! World War II veteran Edward Bond's recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar.

Death in Delhi, by Gary Gygax—A giant ruby and a plea to rescue the purloined crown jewels of Delhi arrives at the villa of Magister Setne Inhetep, philosopher-wizard of the Pharaoh of Aegypt!

Carolyn Mull
Paizo Sales & Marketing Assistant

Conan in Space!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Okay, I lied. Robert E. Howard's Almuric, the latest release from Planet Stories, isn't actually a Conan novel. But it sure feels like one.
No, as a piece of literary history, Almuric is actually far more fascinating. Best-known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard was one of the most distinctive and well-regarded voices of the pulp era. His brutal, might-make-right take on fantasy inspired generations of books, films, and games, almost single-handedly popularizing the sword and sorcery genre in the 1920s and 30s. His friendship with H. P. Lovecraft led to contributions to the vast and intricate Cthulhu mythos. His work has been called "so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks" by none other than Stephen King himself. Even his personal life has become legend, having been turned into the award-winning movie "The Whole Wide World." And who knows how much more he might have accomplished had he not infamously taken his own life at the age of 30.
Yet for all of his extensive achievements and hundreds of stories, Howard wrote very few actual novels, of which Almuric is by far the largest and best-known. Within its pages, a Conan-esque brute named Esau Cairn, dissatisfied with life on earth and running from the law, finds himself transported to another world, where his natural strength and savagery make him a powerful captain of men. On this planet of beautiful maidens and their Neanderthal-like warrior consorts, strange beasts and black-winged men, Esau carves out a place for himself with bared steel, and in so doing rescues a valiant civilization from the oppression of sadistic masters. In short—classic Howard.
Or is it? Therein lies the mystery that's one of the most fascinating things about Almuric.
You see, Almuric was first published three years after Howard's death in 1936, supposedly from a complete manuscript discovered among his personal documents. Yet while most of the manuscript has been universally accepted to be original Howard material, the last few chapters have long been a source of controversy. Did Howard, indeed, finish the last section? Or was the story instead, as some personal letters from Howard's father hint, finished by another author as part of a shrewd financial move? For those historians who believe the latter theory, the chief suspect responsible for wrapping up Almuric is none other than Otis Adelbert Kline, Howard's literary agent and himself a prominent Weird Tales author (who, incidentally, will be seeing print in Planet Stories this September). In addition to veiled references to shady arrangements, theorists who believe Howard never lived to see a complete Almuric draft point to the novel's ending as uncharacteristic of Howard's style, whereas others accuse such conspiracy theorists of jumping at shadows. The debate rages on to this day.
So pick up a copy, breeze through its action-packed story, and see which camp you fall into. And once you've made up your mind, post on our messageboards and let us know where your suspicions lie!
And now, a sample:
Of all the forms of life I had encountered on that strange planet, none filled me with as much loathing as these dwarfish monstrosities. I backed away from the mangled heap on the earth, as a nauseous flood poured through the rift in the wall.

The effect of those vermin emerging from that broken wall was almost intolerably sickening; the suggestion was that of maggots squirming out of a cracked and bleached skull.

Turning, I caught Altha up in one arm and raced across the open space. They followed fleetingly, running now on all fours, and now upright like a man. And suddenly they broke out into their hellish laughter again, and I saw we were trapped. Ahead of me were more emerging from some other subterranean entrance. We were cut off.

A giant pedestal, from which the column had been broken, stood before us. With a bound I reached it, set the girl on the jagged pinnacle, and wheeled on the lower base to take such toll of our pursuers as I might. Blood streaming from a score of gashes trickled down the pedestal on which I stood, and I shook my head violently to rid my eyes of blinding sweat.

They ringed me in a wide semicircle, deliberate now that their prey seemed certain, and I cannot recall a time when I was more revolted by horror and disgust, than when I stood with my back to that marble pillar and faced those verminous monsters of the lower world.

James Sutter
Editor Planet Stories

Science Fiction's Original Badass

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

I'd edited the thing twice, so I really should have expected it. Still, when Erik dropped our advance copy of Northwest of Earth down in front of me, the resounding "whump" it made was immensely satisfying. You have to understand that this thing is thick—a book measured less in pages than in pounds. And at the same price as all our other Planet Stories installments to date—$12.99—Northwest Smith is a steal for those of us who, like me as a kid especially, strive to make each dollar buy as many words as possible.

Really, though, Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith would be worth the price if it were half its size. Decades before Han Solo shot Greedo, thirty years before Captain James Kirk laid eyes on his first seductive alien, there was only Northwest Smith: a hard-bitten spacefarer with a penchant for smuggling and mercenary work, quick with his heat gun and even quicker with his shot glass, Accompanied by his shrewd Venusian sidekick, Northwest paved the way for countless science fiction heroes who chose to operate just outside the bounds of the law. With one broad stroke, C. L. Moore created one of the most cherished archetypes of the genre.

But then, why should we be surprised? After all, C. L. Moore was something of a trailblazer herself. In a time when female authors were marginalized at best, and almost nonexistent in genre fiction, Catherine Lucille Moore kicked down the doors and made the speculative fiction audiences take notice. First published in Weird Tales in 1934, she quickly rose through the ranks of the pulp authors, publishing alongside contemporaries like Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, continuing to excel even once her gender became widely known. Another of her creations, Jirel of Joiry (whose complete collected stories are available from Planet Stories as Black God's Kiss), was the first female sword-and-sorcery protagonist, a battle-thirsty, take-no-prisoners sort of warrior who showed the fantasy world that some of those clichéd "damsels in distress" could take care of themselves just fine, thank you very much.

Northwest of Earth marks the first-ever complete collection of Northwest Smith stories, including even the rarely-seen "Nymph of Darkness" (a collaboration with Forrest J. Ackerman) and "Quest of the Starstone," a rollicking cross-genre romp in which Moore and husband Henry Kuttner (a groundbreaking SF author in his own right) pair Smith and Jirel together against an evil wizard capable of moving between worlds.

I could talk all day about how important to the genre these stories are, the manner in which they seamlessly blend ray-gun science fiction and cosmic horror, but perhaps you'd rather hear about it from someone more reputable... like, say, H. P. Lovecraft himself? In his personal letters, Lovecraft has this to say about Moore's work:

"These tales have a peculiar quality of cosmic weirdness, hard to define but easy to recognize, which marks them out as really unique... In these tales there is an indefinable atmosphere of vague outsideness and cosmic dread which marks weird work of the best sort. The distinctive thing about Miss Moore is her ability to devise conditions and sights and phenomena of utter strangeness and originality, and to describe them in a language conveying something of their outre, phantasmagoric, and dread-filled quality."—H. P. Lovecraft

So there you have it. Even seventy years ago, the authors of the day understood that this C. L. Moore person was a breed apart—someone of imagination and prose far beyond the standard pulp author. We're putting out a lot of great books this year, but it's with distinct and especial pride that we're releasing Northwest of Earth. I hope you enjoy it.

And now, because everyone loves free samples, a teaser:

For a minute—for two minutes—nothing happened. Then, watching the wall, Smith thought he could discern the shape of the symbol that had been traced. Somehow it was becoming clear among the painted characters. Somehow a grayness was spreading within the outlines he had watched his own hands trace, a fogginess that strengthened and grew clearer and clearer, until he could no longer make out the traceries enclosed within its boundaries, and a great, misty symbol stood out vividly across the wall.

He did not understand for a moment. He watched the grayness take on density and grow stronger with each passing moment, but he did not understand until a long curl of fog drifted lazily out into the room, and the grayness began to spill over its own edges and eddy and billow as if that wall were afire. And from very far away, over measureless voids, he caught the first faint impact of a power so great that he knew in one flash the full horror of what he watched.

The name, traced upon that wall with its own metal counterpart, had opened a doorway for the Thing which bore the name to enter. It was coming back to the world it had left millions of years ago. It was oozing through the opened door, and nothing he could do would stop it...

James Sutter
Editor, Planet Stories

Sci-Fried: Pucker Up

Sci-Fried: It's a Dark, Dark, Dark, Dark World

Set Sail with The Ship of Ishtar

We're Baaaaaaaack!

2009 ENnie Nominations!

Infernal Sorceress Nominated for Origins Award

Paizo Twitter

Planetary Style

Sword of the Dark God

The Road to the Pulps

That's Racist!

Lansdale on Kline

O.A.K. for the win!

Planet Stories on StarWars.com

Please Be Our Friend!

Kline is Back!

George Lucas On Leigh Brackett

...and we're back!

Ryman For The Win

Planet Stories and Pathfinder: Together at Last

The Dueling Writers of Mars!

The Swordsman of Mars: The Media Takes Notice

It's a Dark, Dark World

Map the Stars

Judge the Books By Their Covers

Riding the Wave

Two Swordsmen of Mars!

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Swamp Fight!

One of a Kline

Worlds Without End...

Drizzt in an X-Wing

Ferretfolk!

The Lost Gygax Novel

Master of the Pit

Men of the Broken Towers

Playing Favorites

Don't Mess with the Wizard-Priest

A New Adventure on Old Mars!

Gary Gygax: Remembered

More Moorcock!

New Products Announced

Pathfinder

Pathfinder Chronicles

GameMastery Maps

Planet Stories

Conan in Space!

Science Fiction's Original Badass

Planet Stories Subscriptions

How good? Hou good!

Erik in Black Gate

Return to Atlantis

Gen Con Field Report Day Two

Kicking Down The Door

City of the Beast

From the Guy Who Started It All