Winner Lose All is Star Wars e-novella featuring Lando Calrissian set in the time period between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The novella is a prequel to Zahn’s new novel Scoundrels due out January 1st. It will star Han, Chewie and Lando and will be set in roughly the same time period in relation to the films.

Readers may be familiar with Zahn’s work because of his much lauded Thrawn Trilogy, the first novel of which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The Thrawn Trilogy revisited the principal characters in the original Star Wars trilogy five years after the events of Return of the Jedi and established Timothy Zahn as one of the most beloved authors in crafting stories that are respectful to the universe created by George Lucas.

Needless to say I was thrilled to learn of this latest project, particularly since it would feature some of my favorite Star Wars characters and would more deeply examine events happening off camera, as it were, in between films. So thrilled in fact that I pre-ordered the e-novella and when it arrived on my Kindle Fire HD today (a recent acquisition), I fired it up and devoured it in one sitting.

Continue reading Winner Lose All ~Timothy Zahn →

I first became aware of this collection of pulp-era short stories by author Robert Silverberg when George Kelley posted a picture of the book and its table of contents on his site last fall. The moment I saw Kieran Yanner’s dynamic retro cover I knew this book would have to be mine. I was reminded of the book when posting about my favorite SFF covers from books published in 2011 and promptly ordered a copy. Over the last two days I have immersed myself in the world of pulp-era science fiction and in so doing have discovered the talent that later propelled author Robert Silverberg to Grand Master status.

Pulp-era stories are all too often written off as something of inferior quality and in many ways in a best case scenario the term “pulp” has come to be synonymous with nothing more than guilty pleasure reading. I suspect that there is a great deal of merit in that. Common sense would dictate that in the heyday of pulp magazines publishers were cranking out magazines as fast as they could and authors were expected to follow a formula, write quickly, and be as prolific as possible if they wanted to make a living and keep their work in the public eye. And to be certain there is probably much in the days of pulp science fiction that wasn’t worth reading then and does not merit attention now. By the same token, there are common themes, archetypes, and story structures in pulp adventure stories that resonate with today’s audience. In my childhood it was creators like George Lucas who reached back into the pulp era for inspiration when crafting what would become the pop cultural phenomenon Star Wars. And though some may be loathe to admit it, there is a universality to these tales that are the ancestors of popular stories today.

The stories are often sensational, featuring rugged heroes prone to decisive action, conflict between defined “good guys” and “bad guys”, action over characterization or science, romantic melodrama over reason. These are space yarns, at times little different than their mystery or western counterparts. The setting may be on another planet or on Earth in the far-flung future but the stories themselves are as recognizable to fans of fiction in general as they are to fans of the genre of science fiction.

Continue reading Hunt the Space-Witch! ~Robert Silverberg →

(photo of my actual copy)

In my ignorance of the history of science fiction anthologies I was unaware of Damon Knight’s long-running Orbit series until a late autumn 2010 trip to the treasure-filled Antiquarian Books in Missouri’s capital city brought this beauty to my attention. Artist Paul Lehr has only been on my radar for a few years now, but I’m a fan and slowly but surely plan to amass a collection of his works. Earlier this week I rescued it from the basement library as part of a potential January vintage reading pile and started in.

What is that saying? Beauty is only skin deep?

Despite a few strong entries, Orbit 7 breathes life into this old proverb.

Continue reading Orbit 7 ~edited by Damon Knight →