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.
