Christian

Wollheim started to reprint most of that stuff when space opera and “Sword & Sorcery” stuff started to get popular again in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ace reprinted Gullivar Jones under Wollheim as editor.

I didn’t mean that Gullivar Jones was called that term (which didn’t yet exist) when it was first published, but that Wollheim was using the term to describe fiction like Gullivar Jones when he was reprinting those types of stories at Ace starting in the 1960s.

I can’t believe that there is no topic about the Joker movie on this site. Probably the best “superhero” comic book-based movie, at least out of the Marvel/DC comic book movie boom period which started with the original Spider Man and X-Men films.

It’s quite dark and depressing, and is the one comic book-based movie that I could see existing without the world of comics.

The movie reminds me a lot of Taxi Driver.

I am shocked (but shouldn’t be surprised) that liberal reviewers were condemning the movie as glorifying the rise of the modern Right-Wing populist movement.

I mean, yes, you can see how the plot could appeal to the alt-Right as well.

Look at some of the scenes in the movie though:

a.)The billionaire who is running for mayor states that those who are envious of their betters are clowns. That’s something straight out of Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein, or the Tea Party movement.

b.)The city’s funding cuts leads to closure of social services programs which helped the main character receive the medication he needed for his mental health issues.

Socialist publications, on the other hand, seemed to understand the message.
It’s, largely, about wealthy elites being out of touch with society and the fact that society’s most vulnerable are ignored and how the situation is leading to a decaying society.

Funny how out of touch and elitist is the response of most liberals.

(While not directly related to the themes, it’s funny that a year after the Joker was in theatres, America has seen mass-protests and riots against the police by a population which feels it is disenfranchised from many parts of American society.)

My how things have changed since the Dark Knight Rises back in 2012, when both liberals and the Left saw Bane’s movement as a statement about the Occupy movement, with many pointing to Batman ending up on the wrong side at the end, while conservatives* praised the movie for still presenting Batman and the police as the heroes.

*Ignoring Rush Limbaugh’s bizarre rant about the movie featuring a subliminal anti-Romney message because the villain was named “Bane”.

I think what they missed about Rises is that...of course Batman was on the wrong side...but, it was also a warning about the direction society was moving; a warning about the rise of a figure like Bane who could play off the very real problems faced by the so-called 99%. It was a movie without any true heroes.

There was certainly an unmistakable overtone that the point being made in Rises was to compare modern America to the period of the French Revolution as presented in a Tale of Two Cities.

Even more so, there is certainly no hero in The Joker. It doesn’t glorify anything, it rather condemns a sick society.

Another piece of fiction I was reminded of was The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell.

I also like that it reverses the usual roles of Batman and his villains. The line taken by the comics is that “Batman creates his supervillains”, but in this version of reality, it’s the Joker that creates his Batman.

Gullivar Jones used to be referred to in that context.

I think it’s become more of a pejorative term in recent years, sort of mocking the work, as there is also the “Sword & Sandals” designation.

In it’s original context, I think “Sword & Planet” was referring to the works lacking in any scientific rationale, but that took place on a planet in outer space. Like how characters would use astral projection or some sort of magic to arrive on the planet, and that they would only have access to medieval-level technology once they arrived on the planet.

”Planetary Romance” was reserved for the same type of stories, but which had at least the veneer of some scientific basis. The characters used a space ship to arrive at the world or they had futuristic rayguns to use when they arrived.

I am beginning Silk Roads and Shadows by Susan Shwartz. It is considered the first novel in the sub-genre of historical fantasy known as “Silk Road fantasy”.

It’s about Byzantium facing a blight that is killing all the mulberry trees, which will lead to the death of Byzantium’s silk worm population, and therefore the looming loss of the Byzantine Empire’s silk industry as a result.

The sister of the Emperor decides to go on a quest to China in order to get more silk worms.

She will travel the route of the Silk Road and then across the mountains of Tibet to reach China. Along the way, she will encounters mythological beings and magic from multiple cultures.

The novel does also seem, in part, to have been inspired by Gore Vidal’s novel Creation, as the main character will also come to learn about and reflect on the different religions effecting the world of her travels.

My only problem with it so far is that it seems to have been written on speed. There is something to be said for a book that suffers overcompression as compared to a book that drags, I suppose. Still, the book doesn’t want to be still, as if the author had one thousand pages of story but was only given 340 pages to work with, yet she couldn’t give up any of her plot.

If they are fearful of losing profits, then you cut your added expenses where you can to try to make up some of the potential lost profits.

Marvel also canceled a load of their lower-selling titles after they had to furlough production of new comics back in April and May due to the pandemic.

I thought the term came in to use around many of the stories published in John Campbell’s Unknown magazine.

That was such a great outlet for genre fiction.

C.S. Lewis’ Space trilogy is another great example of science fantasy.

I don’t see how anyone who reads That Hideous Strength could ever doubt the appellation as being a legitimate term.

”Sword & Planet” is usually the designation for the space opera stuff.

Yes, fourth actually; it’s the book they love to cancel.

Gotta-The thing is, the sales on this version of JC were still higher than what Vertigo HB had gotten in many years. Not to mention that the DC Rebirth series got higher sales than the current iteration.
The DC Convergence series had relatively low sales, but that line didn’t appeal to fans the same way as other DCU reboots. 
I mean, the New 52’s sales are still the ones to beat (as far as contemporary versions of JC), but you could argue your point: It was bad, so fans dropped off. Still, fans eventually came back for the DC Rebirth series, but those sales still weren’t strong enough to keep the book from being canceled.

The comic market is just so deflated at this point, as you pointed out. The types of figures that HB was getting during the Ennis years are never going to be found again.

Really, the only way a new HB would not be canceled within about a year is if Bendis did take over the book. Fans will read anything Bendis is writing. I’d rather see HB stay dead than get watered down again like New 52, Convergence, or Rebirth.

“Black Charlie” by Gordon R. Dickson (1954)-I thought it was a sweet story. I liked the aliens he created.

Everything was going well until the last sentence, when he had to get all racist.

He compares artwork made by this alien, which was described as akin to a highly-intelligent otter, to art made by Native American people.

I still liked this story more than most fiction I’ve read by Dickson.

There was a hint of Legion returning with the Reign of X promo art. Spurrier had a quality run on that character, so maybe he’s the writer bringing Legion back.
Dr. Nemesis could be another choice. We haven’t seen the X-Club since Hickman’s run started, and they would seem to fit with the Krakoa-era, so maybe. Nothing with Dr. Nemesis is shown on the promo art, so maybe a greater chance of him writing Legion again. Maybe something new though.

Hickman is picking some better writers for the next stage of his X-saga (Al Ewing too). Hopefully, some of these X-books will end before the new books launch. There are already way too many X-titles, and Marvel keep announcing more.

Both stories are still listed for the contents that you can find online.
They were both Jerry Cornelius stories: “The Swastika Set-Up” (the earlier story)* and “The Murderer’s Song”.

*”The Swastika Set-Up” was first published in a magazine during 1972, so quite some time ago.

The first was republished in Moorcock’s The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius and the second in his short story collection Casablanca. The two stories were later both republished in Jerry Cornelius: His Lives and His Times. I’ve read both.

Holy shit! Now here we are with the complete opposite of St. Clair’s short story. “The Misogynist” by James Gunn. Well, it does what it says on the tin, I guess I can give it that. Maybe Gunn wrote it on a bar bet that he’d never do it or be able to get it published. It’s just dreck.

This story definitely wouldn’t be getting published today, not that it deserves to be reprinted. I’ve read some other fiction by Gunn, and it wasn’t bad. This was just terrible. It’s one of the most sexist things I have ever read. Even by 1950s sci-fi standards, this story stands out.

It’s the story of two husbands telling each other about how awful women are. The one man has developed a conspiracy theory about how women are secretly an advance force for an alien invasion of Earth, and that women are truly another species than males.

The best part of the story is that the two men are relaxing on the couch, laughing it up, while the wives are in the kitchen preparing food and refreshments for their husbands. (All the while we are being regaled by the despicable nature of women, the secret masters of the planet, while ignoring any faults by men.)

I’d like to give Gunn credit that he was being sly and this was really the secret subversive joke about this story, but I can’t give Gunn credit enough to think this was on purpose. I found that little aspect genuinely funny though.

I mean, I’m sure that Gunn must have been playing the story for a joke, I can’t see the frothing hatred of Ibsen as a traitour to the human race by the one character as being meant to be taken seriously.

The twist ending...which it was my hope that this would turn out to be an early, crude version of a James Tiptree Jr. plot, where the man with the conspiracy would prove to be the real alien, sowing discord...was proven to be that the man’s conspiracy theory was true.

If you’ve ever watched Tim Allen’s Tool Time and thought it was great humour, but wished that Dave Sim had been the writer of the show, then you must rush to try to find this short story.

Now I’m going to start questioning the quality of some of the fiction Frederick Pohl assembled for this old, musty anthology I once found at an antique store.

Yeah, a lot of those who withdrew their stories were some of the better writers that Ellison gathered.

At least there’s a story by Howard Fast that has never been published....

Orson Scott Card can turn in a decent story here and there. Ender’s Game is trash, but I’ve read some short fiction and novels by him that are worth reading.

I liked his post-apocalyptic future history series about the establishment of the State of Deseret.

It’s fantasy, but the early Alvin Maker stories were pretty good, until they turned to complete garbage.

“Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory” reads like a Harlan Ellison story. I was impressed by that one.

The novel Pastwatch was a fun read with a nice message.

Pournelle is horrible though. His was one of the names I was surprised to see that Ellison bothered.

Anyway, some of the bigger names, like Moorcock, you can find their stories that were originally supposed to be published by Ellison.

Other names that I wanted to see included in a Dangerous Visions book, like Langdon Jones, you can’t find their stories. So, JMS would hopefully still include some of that original content, even if it did get published.

-Ward Moore’s story was never published though.

I doubt that Zahn is effected. He has continued to contribute original Star Wars novels after 2012. Zahn has written a lot of SW tie-ins.

Looking at his Wikipedia page, he actually just finished a Thrawn prequel trilogy for Disney in 2019.

L. Neil Smith might be the other living name effected. His Lando books were released around the same time as Splinter.

Only a few of the stories commissioned by Ellison ever reverted back to their authors and got published, so hopefully most of the contents will be made up of Ellison’s original choices, if this sees the light.

I’m not sure how many current science fiction writers I would like to see included. The style of writing for science fiction in 2020 is just so different than what most of the writers in the 1970s would have contributed.

Well, the contents page for the Last Dangerous Visions shows that Ellison was starting to run low on top names for inclusion. Even the sequel was starting to show that strain as compared to how much quality genre fiction the original maintained almost cover to cover.

There are still enough quality writers (even with the writers who published their contribution elsewhere) to make up one more book worth reading though, I think.

There are some names that I feel wouldn’t seem out of place....Ken MacLeod and Paul McCauley come to mind as two that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Dangerous Visions.

Well, I guess all the Cyberpunk-associated names could also figure in with a new edition, as they all came along after Ellison finalized the contents. So, I guess Bruce Sterling would count as a “new writer” compared to the writers Ellison was planning to publish. The strangeness of retroactive editing.

On the other hand, some of the themes that modern writers could deal with as far as sex and gender would be very far advanced over the types of stories that were being published in the ‘60s and ‘70s. So, in that sense, maybe the plots could grow a bit more “dangerous” again.

I’m guessing the secret of why the book was never published had something to do with the three Men in Black who visited Albert Bender revealing to Harlan Ellison that if the third Dangerous Vision is ever published, it will lead to end of the world. JMS simply doesn’t care anymore, and is willing to unleash Armageddon.

Hey, at least Gore actually did win!

I’m thinking everyone else in his administration said that this is childish and it’s time to move on. So, Trump had to grudgingly agree that there’s nothing else he could do to win.

Most of the Trump cabinet are politicos who need to try to keep their standing for future jobs, and can’t just stick out the “elections are phoney” Trumpist party line, considering that the majority of the rest of the GOP has already moved on.

Trump isn’t a politician, so he doesn’t have to care. Trump will continue to whine and complain, while everyone else bails.

The Trump administration has officially authorized the transition of the presidency to Joe Biden.

I read a deliciously cruel tale of ironic revenge by Margaret St. Clair tonight. It was a short story titled “Thirsty God”. St. Clair was so great.

The story takes place on Venus. The main character has raped a female of the native species. Her tribe is out to kill him, but he manages to hide in one of their temples, where it is forbidden for any of the native species to trespass. He thinks he’s outsmarted them and gotten away with his act.

The tribe are content to leave him in the temple and depart. He feels he will sleep in the temple and escape the next morning.

The next morning, he finds that he has somehow grown to giant size and can no longer move or speak.

A different, more animalistic species that also lives on the planet arrives at the temple. These frog-like beings are the ones who worship the god in the temple.

The main character finds himself helpless as he’s forced to perform sexual relations with these aliens, having to absorb their excess water during the act. Some days, he is forced to perform the intimate sexual relations with multiple aliens.

He finds himself wishing for death, and the only way he can make it through his days is to imagine different ways he could die.

The rainy season comes to an end on Venus. The frog-like creatures enter a period of estivation, so they will no longer be visiting the temple.

Even more relieving, the man finds himself shrinking down to a smaller size. He feels that his torment has finally come to an end.

Instead, he finds that he will enter a period of suspended animation through the dry season as well. When the rainy season on Venus begins again, he will become their god once more.

It’s definitely a piece of weird fiction. It reminded me of the tradition of the contes cruels. St. Clair’s feelings about rapists are made quite obvious.

Yeah, I mentioned that PKD listed The World of Null-A as his favourite sci-fi novel.

Let’s not also forget Harlan Ellison praising Van Vogt.

Oh yeah, add  Colin Wilson to the list also.

I’m surprised to discover Lem did too though. I had read comments by him where he said that PKD was the only American science fiction author who could write.

With some of those New Worlds contributors, seriously, if you were going to get high on drugs, all of those Golden Age writers would be a huge comedown. Van Vogt is the only one you could read while tripping.

I think it was more to do with the Futurians not being fans of Van Vogt’s writing (because it wasn’t boring and uninspired like Asimov’s, I’m going to guess).

Then, later on Leftist fans took it that the Left-Wing Futurians hated Van Vogt because of his politics rather than his prose style and plotting, so most of them never bothered to actually read Van Vogt’s fiction.

Hence, they think they should not like Van Vogt because he was an Ayn Rand apologist.

Van Vogt got the last laugh though, because Boris Vian was apparently a fan of Van Vogt’s fiction.

I don’t hear anything about Vian reading Asimov or Knight or Pohl...

Although I would have recommended “The Rule Golden”, because that story is simply amazing.

I read a hilarious anecdotal pondering online once where someone was imagining Boris Vian giving Sartre and Camus a copy of The World of Null-A as a gift.

I can only imagine that Sartre decided to shag Vian’s wife after reading the book.

True. Constitutionalists are definitely not the same as libertarians. There is certainly quite a bit of overlap though. You find a lot of those types hanging around with actual libertarians.
I don’t personally sympathize with the Constitutionalists.

There’s a direct disconnect from them and the authentic forebears of modern American libertarianism in the works of names like Josiah Warren or Lysander Spooner.

I think that Van Vogt getting lumped in with Randians by Leftists is due to the Futurians hating Van Vogt’s fiction. He was part of the Campbell stable, but him and L. Ron Hubbard were doing different things than the other Campbell faithful.

I never really thought of Van Vogt as a libertarian, myself.

He gets grouped with Heinlein and Anderson by Leftist sci-fi fans bitching about how there are all these Ayn Rand-wannabe science fiction writers.

I know that libertarian-fans rave about “Weapon Shops”, but that’s about it.

The World of Null-A was basically rewriting Gnosticism using a basis in materialism. PKD said it was his favourite sci-fi novel.

I’m a fan of Anderson and Van Vogt, I like both of them.

4 minutes ago, A. Heathen said:

Is it not a 360 or two 180s because he was not considered well until the Twin Towers aftermath?

He did make an appearance on an episode of Seinfeld in the mid-1990s.

I usually consider Golden Age as anything published between when John W. Campbell took over as editor and the start of the New Wave period.

Anderson’s writing fits well with the science fiction from that time-period (1940s, 1950s), but the style doesn’t exactly hold up to what was to come later with genre fiction.

What I was saying with Anderson’s fantasy fiction (which, yes, were quite few) was that they were better written than a lot of the genre fiction that was being published at the time, not anything particularly about content or politics.

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I have no idea what you mean by Anderson turning back towards the Left at the end of his career. He probably moved further to the Right. He still supported the Vietnam War during the late-1960s. During the 1970s, he started to actively namedrop Robert Heinlein in his fiction. His final couple novels were explicitly written to praise Ayn Rand. The Stars are Also Fire (I think that was the last book he published) is one long love-letter to Rand.

There were other examples of Anderson’s fiction that the Ayn Rand crowd loved:

”No Truce with Kings” is a favourite short story with libertarians who read sci-fi I’ve noticed. That one is a good story.

The New America fix-up novel is as solidly pro-libertarian as anything written by Heinlein.

Anderson even decided to explicitly name drop the Libertarian Party in one of his earlier stories (the horridly written “A Man to My Wounding”).

There are other novels by Anderson that won the Prometheus Award too.

Not all of Anderson’s fiction is something that explicitly appeals to Ayn Randians, no. The same is even more true of Van Vogt though. It’s basically the “Weapons Shop” stories and, maybe, Slan that appeal to them with Van Vogt. The rest of his stuff offers very little appeal to libertarianism.

Van Vogt only has one Prometheus Award to his name.

I saw that the Trump administration was going to have a press conference today in order to show a path to how they can still win the election....

Stranger in a Strange Land certainly stands out. Heinlein did change his style later, when he attempted to do a more post-modern writing style towards the end of his career, but it just ended up unbearable. Heinlein would return to the comfort of the Golden Age style at times though.

So, yes, I agree. He evolved more than Asimov, certainly.

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I’m not sure how you could say that Anderson’s style wasn’t fitting for the Golden Age or that he wasn’t popular at that time.

His stories were usually about can-do genius scientists or explorers setting out to accomplish great things. Or, strong manly men who know how to survive.
A lot of them are based in the Cold War, with Communist (or Commie-like) forces needing to be fought against by the individualist protagonists.

He wasn’t at the very top tier, but he was at the second tier with people like Frederick Pohl.

I prefer Anderson’s writing to Heinlein or Asimov too. Anderson was highly popular with the Ayn Rand acolytes who loved Heinlein and Van Vogt though. He has the second most Prometheus Awards of any writer, after Heinlein.

He won a lot of Hugo Awards.

-Now, if you mean purely his fantasy fiction, I agree he was at another level. I’m solely talking about Golden Age sci-fi, and not pure fantasy.