I've read the first one. It's quite enjoyable and I've been picking them up here and there along with E.C. Tubbs's Dumarest of Terra series.
Are the Dumarest books still in print? I haven't seen them in years.
I've read the first one. It's quite enjoyable and I've been picking them up here and there along with E.C. Tubbs's Dumarest of Terra series. The Scorpio books are being published by a small company, so I'm not seriously considering them right now.
--Erik
That's too bad about the Scorpio books. Looking on Wikipedia, it looks just like the kind of stuff Planet Stories was made for. I did some checking, and these are omnibus editions available only through Amazon. Good news though. According to the publisher, they are trying to publish all 52 books (Wikipedia says there are 53). The latter books of his were published in German and not translated, so at least now they will be published for the first time in English. It looks like a great set, with the stories similar to the Mars books by Burroughs.
Would it be possible to get a collection of Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories?
It is a group of stories that he wrote where the setting is the far far far future of humanity. Zothique is the last landmass on Earth and humans have forgotten the past and now live in a semi-savage/city state society.
Great magics, combined with what little science that remains, allow an eviroment similiar to what one would expect in a dark and ruthless D-n-D game.
Another series that, IMO, would be worth getting is the Kane series by Karl Edward Wagner.
A sword and sorcery series set on a planet that with Lovecraftian horrors, strange gods, constant battle, and a rich history.
Through all of this wonders Kane. A human cursed with immortality. As the first human to use violence he must now travel the world until killed by the same violence he brought into the world. To relive the boredom brought about by this eternal life he uses entire nations as chess peices to create massive slaughter and put himself in a position to rule. Until the boredom sets in and he is off to find new ways to amuse himself.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I've got Zothique on my to-read pile, but my impression is that other publishers have rescued most of Smith's work. I don't really want to release editions of books that are available from other publishers. The industry is competitive enough as it is, and there is no shortage of good material out there remaining to be republished.
I just checked, and there are actually a handful of recent editions. This looks to be one of the better ones:
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I was thinking about something...
With the death of Byron Preiss his Ibooks label went belly-up from one day to the next... leaving the last book of the prequel Amber series (Sword of Amber) unwritten/unpublished. I haven't read the other 4 books (yet, they are standing on my book shelf and have a very high priority on my reading list), but it was an idea, that came to my mind. It would be a great honour to the tradition of Zelazny and Amber. (John Gregory Betancourt penned the 4 previous entries in this series about the creation of Amber and the history of Oberon).
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Betancourt has his own publishing company (Wildside) that seems a better candidate for this, and I read in a recent Locus that another company (can't remember which) had picked up all of the iBooks contracts.
That said, a Zelazny book is the next item on my "for consideration" pile, so while I can't promise Amber prequels written by modern authors, I'm fairly confident that we'll get to a Zelazny book in the next year or so.
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The first couple Lensmen books are in print, but the publisher seems to have abandoned the series. That makes it difficult for us to track down the rights and re-launch it, but we're definitely considering those books (or some of Doc Smith's other, lesser-known works).
Keep the suggestions coming!
Erik - the Science Fiction Book Club has put out a the original Lensman Books and the Skylark Series in the past couple of years and I believe it is still availble through them.
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Most of the Tarzans are in print one way or another if you know where to look. I was just looking into these this morning, and I basically decided that other publishers are representing the Ape Man well.Mr. Mona,
I'll take another look; obviously I've been seeking them in the wrong places! And let me add that I'm incredibly impressed that you've taken the time to not only repsond to, but to actually research some extent, all of the requests. That's above and beyond the job description, and someone should let you know that your fans--people like me--appreciate it a great deal. Thanks!
--Erik
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Book-Tarzan-Edgar-Burroughs/dp/1934451061/ref=p d_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195679508&sr=8-3
Amazon Link to just one book - 8 full Tarzan Novels. A lot of Barsoom stuff too if you search on ERB
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The Callisto and Green Star books are available as print-on-demand "Lin Carter Discovery Series" editions from Wildside, who holds the rights to almost all of Lin Carter's work. They are good folks over there, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that we might bring some of his stuff to print one day.
Unfortunately, the Thongor rights are maintained by Ace (I believe), and I don't really have a line to them. I'd like to do these books most of Lin Carter's output, but at the moment it doesn't look promising.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Book-Tarzan-Edgar-Burroughs/dp/1934451061/ref=p d_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195679508&sr=8-3
Amazon Link to just one book - 8 full Tarzan Novels.
Ahhh... they are in print then, but what a bummer after reading the one and only review posted! I'll have to keep waiting, rather than end up with a book that falls apart while being read.
Many thanks to you for the reply, and for the link, though--it shows there's hope yet!
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This thread got me looking around Amazon some more and I found that ERB had a Moon trilogy I had never heard of and that the Barsoom series is now in a six volume hardcover collection (not a science fiction bookclub edition - they are a bit cheap and break down after just a few readings).
Erik's passion for the classics has gotten me looking around. I picked all of those books up in Hardcover (I love hardcover books so much more).
Thanks Erik for your love of reading and the classics and for working hard to bring us Planet Stories.
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You're welcome.
Just finished a delightful Henry Kuttner collection called "Robots Have No Tails" about Galloway Gallegher, a brilliant inventor who works by instinct while piss drunk. Each story starts with him waking up after a bender in front of some device he's constructed for some reason he can't remember. Scorchingly funny. Kuttner was a genius.
I also finished The Skeleton Men of Jupiter (John Carter's final adventure) and a fun Edmond Hamilton novel called "Citadel of the Star-Lords" while on vacation this week.
If it wasn't for plane trips, I'd hardly get any reading done at all these days!
How about the "Death Dealer" books by james Silke? Those have been out of print for at least 10-15 years.
How about the "Death Dealer" books by james Silke?
I own (and have read) Prisoner of the Horned Helmet. I'm still not sure what to make of it. Just ordered (well, the order is queued, at any rate) the Jirel book though; hoping that will be great.
I was going to recommend "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," but it appears to have received a recent reprinting.
Wish I could remember what the series of three books about the space adventure park that tried to kill you was called.
Thanks Erik for your love of reading and the classics and for working hard to bring us Planet Stories.
Ditto here. Thanks to these boards, I'm finally getting around to reading Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. :)
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I was going to read Fatal Revenant (a Thomas Covenant book) and about a 100 pages into it realized that I am just not getting it without going back and reading the previous book. And I am not ready to take that on just yet. - So, I started to ready City of the Beast.
Thanks again Erik for bringing us these classics. I am having a great time. It is actually a very fast read. Perfect for a weekend where I spent 14 hours playing the Skinsaw Murders with me group - fun, light and easy.
Planet Stories Rock.
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Thanks, Shem, and thanks everyone for the reviews.
I think reviews really help sales, and strong sales are most important in this early part of the line. I urge folks who have read the books we've done so far to post reviews on the site--good or bad--to let others know about the books.
We have a lot more incredible books in store for you guys, and we're always on the lookout for other entries in the line. This thread, and especially your interest in Planet Stories, is very much appreciated.
I myself am learning a great deal about the history of the science fiction and fantasy genres as I plan the line, and I am excited to share these books with you.
The paperwork is finally taken care of with Almuric, and the gears are moving on getting it printed. Elak of Atlantis and The Secret of Sinharat are supposed to arrive within a week.
Most of you guys are familiar with Robert E. Howard, but what about Kuttner and Brackett?
Take Henry Kuttner. This month's Elak of Atlantis is straightforward pulp fantasy from the birthing era of the concept. Like Howard, but with a touch of humor and perhaps a bit more over the top magic. I just finished another collection by Kuttner called Robots Have No Tails, about a drunk inventor who wakes up in front of fantastic devices he can't remember why he made. It is completely unlike Elak of Atlantis, and it is a treasure.
Leigh Brackett's Sinharat is right around the corner, introducing Eric John Stark, one of the greatest characters of science fantasy. Some of you already love him, and those who don't soon will. Sinharat has two novels in one, and Stark's adventures continue in another full trilogy (The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith, and The Reavers of Skaith). We've got the rights to all three of those, and they're coming in 2008. But that's not what I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is Brackett's Eric John Stark novella "Enchantress of Venus" (sometimes published as "City of the Lost Ones"), originally appearing in the original Planet Stories pulp. It brings Stark to the Green Planet, with several scenes set in a bizarre undersea kingdom in a gaseous ocean. Brackett's language is beautiful. The action sings.
And we're not publishing it (at least not yet).
Planet Stories, if I'm doing my job, will be great not just because of the novels and collections we publish, but because the authors we introduce will lead to highly enjoyable reading far beyond what one book line can produce.
Thanks again for the support!
I'd love to see: Gardner Fox, Dennis Wheatley, Richard Shaver (not a great writer but a VERY weird writer), Manly Wade Wellman, or Norvell Page. Any of those would probably result in Nerdgasm for this humble reader.
Another series that, IMO, would be worth getting is the Kane series by Karl Edward Wagner.The Kane books keep coming up on this thread and others like it. I've never read them, but I will definitely give them a look soon.Nightshade Books has issued a two volume complete collection. One volume collects all the Kane short stories and the other collects all the Kane novels. KEWagner's Kane is IMO the last of the classic S&S heroes and, after Conan, my hands down favorite.
I discovered the Kane stories last fall and I have to agree they're amazing. They're kinda like a grindhouse Conan. All the magic is Black, and the blood only comes in hundred-gallon servings.
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I'd love to see: Gardner Fox, Dennis Wheatley, Richard Shaver (not a great writer but a VERY weird writer), Manly Wade Wellman, or Norvell Page. Any of those would probably result in Nerdgasm for this humble reader.
I have at least a couple of ideas regarding Wellman, and Fox has been on the short list from day 1. I've spoken with the family and basically I need to go to the University of Oregon where his papers are and confirm which rights to which stories are available. Which I plan to do relatively shortly.
I am completely unfamiliar with Dennis Wheatley. I was excited about Richard Sharp Shaver for about a month as I researched the Shaver Mystery in the complete Amazing Stories archive outside my office, until I actually read I REMEMBER LEMURIA. Saver's writing (filtered through Amazing editor Ray Palmer) is an absolute disaster, with meaningless footnotes, nonsense words aplenty, and a genuine lack of narrative structure.
I'm pretty sure that the Shaver Mystery era was a very, very low point in the life of science fiction, and especially in the life of Amazing Stories.
So I don't think we'll see much of Shaver.
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Wow.
Dennis Wheatley sounds really interesting.
Thanks for the tip. Probably not right for Planet Stories, but I'm going to have to pick up some of those occult library books.
Betancourt has his own publishing company (Wildside) that seems a better candidate for this, and I read in a recent Locus that another company (can't remember which) had picked up all of the iBooks contracts.
That said, a Zelazny book is the next item on my "for consideration" pile, so while I can't promise Amber prequels written by modern authors, I'm fairly confident that we'll get to a Zelazny book in the next year or so.
Erik, you mentioned Amber Prequels.. Has there anything ever been said about Sequels?
RZ had a handful of short stories "The Salesman's Tale", "Coming to A Cord" and "The Shroudling and the Guisel" that alluded to what seemed to be a future story arc, dealing with Delwin and Sand, canonical twins that were rarely more than footnotes in the first two series.
I'll be honest, I've never even looked at the Planet Stories divison of Paizo before. So if I sound uninformed, it's my first time.
I know some out of print books I'd love to have.
Sheri S. Tepper wrote three trilogies about one world.
The True Game series you can still find in a common omnibus edition, but the Mavin Manyshaped Trilogy is hard to find, as is the 'End of the Game' trilogy with Jinian Star-Eye.
The World of the True Game wasn't to everyone's liking, but I loved 'em.
I was excited about Richard Sharp Shaver for about a month as I researched the Shaver Mystery in the complete Amazing Stories archive outside my office, until I actually read I REMEMBER LEMURIA. Saver's writing (filtered through Amazing editor Ray Palmer) is an absolute disaster, with meaningless footnotes, nonsense words aplenty, and a genuine lack of narrative structure.
I'm pretty sure that the Shaver Mystery era was a very, very low point in the life of science fiction, and especially in the life of Amazing Stories.
So I don't think we'll see much of Shaver.
Yeah, I suppose my interest in Shaver has more to do with my interest in the General History of American Weirdness than anything else. Of all the pulp I've read, I think the Hollow Earth genre may have had the highest "literary turd per author ratio".
On a more planetary note, can any one on here give an opinion on deCamp's "Planet Krishna" stories?
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I myself think that the "lost civilization" story has the highest turd rating per capita, since a huge percent of them are racist garbage, and they all follow exactly the same formula.
In fact, I have yet to read a single good story of this type, though I've acquired a few that look promising.
I have the whole Planet Krishna series, but it is buried pretty low on my to-read pile, I'm afraid. They look quite interesting.
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G%@ d$*n are you one argumentative son of a b@%&+.
I am aware that racism is a "concept that evolves over time." Most of my reading lately, for enjoyment or for "work," is from the pulp era of the early 20th century, so of course I know you need to take stuff with a grain of salt.
But a lot of the "lost civilization" themes are implictly racist, since culture always comes from the "lost" white society and the "blacks" are almost universally regarded as crude, lazy, violent, and a threat to the lost society. Even if it's period appropriate, it gets tiresome after a while, especially as this sub-genre follows the "checklist" pattern far more often than any I've ever encountered.
I suggest reading James Churchward's "Children of Mu" (1926) to get a better idea of what I'm talking about. The first half of the book explains the ancient lost continent of Mu, and includes two italicized sentences. I don't have the book in front of me so I'm doing this by memory, but basically the italic sentences are as follows:
1. And so, I have shown, that the civilization of Mu is undoubtedly the first advanced human society of Earth.
2. And thus it is shown irrefutably that the race of Mu was unmistakably a White race.
Children of Mu and other books like it are major touchstones in the "Lost Civilization" subgenre. Certainly not all such stories follow this model (I've of late been impressed with the treatment given Africans in cetain Ki-Gor tales from Jungle Stories). And, as you mention, one must allow for political and social views that seem "backward" by today's standards in accounting for the time in which a piece of fiction was written.
For many authors (Lovecraft and Howard spring immediately to mind), this is easy to do, because the payoff in solid writing and fun storytelling is worth putting up with the racism of the time.
I have yet to read a Lost Civilization story from the pulp era that is anything but rote checklist hackwork, but I'm certainly open to any suggestions from the readers.
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My appraisal of your argumentativeness was at least partially a statement of awe and appreciation, so don't take it too hard.
I think the part that bothered me the most about it was the "history lesson" swipe, which came off as extremely patronising.
I am building a number of Planet Stories pulp compilations in my notebooks, and indeed I'd like to do a Lost Civilizations one eventually--I just haven't found too many non-Burroughs stories in this vein that are worth reprinting.
I appreciate your comment on the Innsmouth compilations. I agree that a certain degree of repetition (particularly thematic repetition) is to be expected and can even be appreciated. I'm not really talking about thematic repetition so much as plot point repetition, though.
So, for example, while almost all of the Lost Civilization stories I've read feature hidden cities, "time capsule" societies from the real world past, and steely faced heroes, none of those things bother me. I consider them trappings of the sub-genre and they're most welcome, in my mind.
On the other hand, the order in which certain plot elements occur and the stock nature of most of the characters, situations, and plots gets tiresome after a while.
By no means am I putting any kind of moratorium on this type of story in the Planet Stories line. I've just been really disappointed by all of the examples of this sub-genre that I've read as an adult.
I agree with your assessment of the Mu books, of course, as well as the ancient astronaut psudohistory sub-genre. That's not to say I don't find them enjoyable, though!
I've already mentioned my desire for you to do Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories in another thread. Count this as another vote for Wellman!
Let's seem, some off the wall books I would like to see printed:
Flash Gordon in the Caverns of Mongo by Alex Raymond (1936), originally published by Grosset & Dunlap.
There's also the 1973 series of Flash Gordon books by Avon, but those seem less likey a target.
Anything by H. Rider Haggard, especially the Allan Quatermain stuff.
The Carkacki stories by William Hope Hodgson.
I know these are totally inappriate for Plant Stories, but the Lone Ranger novels by Gaylord Dubois and later by Fran Striker.
I am sure I could come up with more, if I think about it enough, but those were the first that came to mind.
Stephen
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I posted this to the Sinharat product page, but just in case you missed it there:
We've got three more Brackett's coming soon (The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith, and The Reavers of Skaith), and we're in discussions about The Sword of Rhiannon. I'd frankly expect an announcement about that on in a couple of months.
I am only now getting into A. Merritt. Give me a little time with this author, and I will get around to him. So far I really like what I've read, and a great deal of it is out of print.
I'm not familiar with Stevens at all. We considered a few A.E. Van Vogt books early on, but most of them are spoken for. It'll probably be a while before we try that route again.
Thanks for the suggestions, and especially for the support!
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First a compliment for this very insightful thread.
For most people abroad the authours mentioned here are virtually (or as a matter of fact) unknown. For that veryreason I already enjoyed John D. Rateliff's survey on classical works of fantasy (over on the old WotC site, unfortunately can't provide a link anymore).
And now I was positively surprised to find this thread at least as informative.
Ok. My proposal is a more recent "classic": The follow up anthologies to Thieves' World's First Blood. I just recently used the Green Ronin sale on your site to complete my collection of d20 Thieves' World books. Unfortunately I was only able to find the original first two anthologies (Thieves' World and Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn, published as First Blood by TOR). The follow up anthologies don't seem to be available anymore.
Would you be interested in re-issuing some of them?
Cheers,
Günther