Ten Classic Female Fantasy Authors

May 9, 2016 greydogtales 5 Comments

There have been a lot of lists going around recently. So this isn’t really one of them. It is instead a celebration of ten women who wrote the fantasies that built up our love for the genre, from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties. We don’t care whether or not they’re the best, or what-have-you. We grew up on them. If you read modern fantasy, by women or men, you should check out at least some of these.

Most of our articles happen by accident. This one came from seeing a list of authors and going “Hey, she’s not in this. You suck!” And reading a post on Facebook which asked “Are you influenced by the gender of the writer when you buy a book?”

The answer to that question is no, we’d never thought about it until then. Why would we? We don’t check their shoe size or their hair colour either. Our youthful reading, as far as we could remember, was full of women authors. So we checked again, and yes it was.

In those far-off days the library was the first port of call, and the Children’s Section especially, because that held some of the most imaginative fantasy books. The ones they brought out for kids, then they got popular and suddenly they cashed in by publishing them as adult books. Watership Down (not by a woman) is an obvious example.

Then a job in an actual bookshop turned up during those awkward teenage years. Harrumble! First the Puffin Books, then the Penguin range, and finally the SF and Fantasy section came under our grimy wing. Within months, we owed the bookshop more money than we’d started with (30% discount for employees was the ruination of us). As a result, virtually every book mentioned below is still up there in the Magic Loft. So here are our Ten Classic Female Fantasy Authors…

These are in a sort of chronological order, and focus on the books which hit home at the time. Fittingly, we start with with someone who spent nearly twenty years as a librarian before she became a full-time writer.

1) Andre Norton

American Andre Norton (born Alice Mary Norton) also wrote as Allen Weston and Andrew North. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, first to be SFWA Grand Master, and first inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Although we came across her SF initially, what grabbed us was the Witch World series.

Basically, the action starts with a chap called Tregarth escaping trouble through a portal to ‘somewhere else’. There are suggestions of other worlds and dimensions, but nothing is laid out as rational science. Tregarth ends up in Estcarp, where ancient and sorcerous powers still struggle for dominance, with the added menace of the cold, technological Kolder race, who also come from ‘somewhere else’. This starts what is called the Estcarp Cycle, initially covering the adventures of Tregarth, his witch wife Jaelithe, and their children Kyllan, Kemoc and Kaththea.

Witch World itself was the first of five linked books which establish the scene.

Witch World (1963) – Simon Tregarth’s arrival and meeting with Jaelithe
Web of the Witch World (1964) – the continuing struggle of the witches and their allies against their enemies the Kolder
Three Against the Witch World (1965) – the start of the saga of the three (grown-up) children
Warlock of the Witch World (1967)
Sorceress of the Witch World (1968)

Later on the series was expanded with the High Hallack Cycle, on a different continent from Estcarp and its neighboring lands. In the end there were over twenty novels.

A lot is owed to these books. Despite being from the sixties, they are not Tolkien-based, and any other races introduced are strange and fey, including those of the Light, those of the Dark and some who are quite neutral. There is no one hack Dark Lord or Magic Hairpin – instead, there are many conflicts and misunderstandings between different peoples and beliefs – and a lot of magic! Check them out.

2) Susan Cooper

A British author, Susan Cooper is an entirely different kettle of badgers. Her main fantasy sequence, The Dark is Rising, is still very well known, and draws on British lore for much of its symbology – in particular, there are strong elements of Welsh mythology underlying much of what happens in the sequence.

Plenty has been written about her work, so we won’t bang on about it here.

Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) – more for younger readers, but sets the scene
The Dark Is Rising (1973) – you can actually start with this one, if you want
Greenwitch (1974)
The Grey King (1975) – probably the most powerful of the five
Silver on the Tree (1977)

Note: The more recent Dark is Rising film was dreadful. It mangled the story, spoiled the feel, and should NOT be watched. We will say no more.

3) Katherine Kurtz

Katherine Kurtz, another American, wrote a lot of fantasy, including sixteen fantasy novels in the Deryni series. The first novel, Deryni Rising sets out a clearly-defined fantasy world governed by religious beliefs and ritual magic, with substantial conflict between the two.

Unlike the Witch World books, the Deryni series is fantasy which has the ring of a solid historical saga, with classic tropes of heresy and religious duty. Not as ‘different’ as Norton, but maybe deeper in some ways. One critic called Kurtz “the first writer of secondary-world historical fantasy”.

The Deryni in question are a line of humans who have hereditary powers, such as telepathy, certain spells or healing, and are variously respected or reviled in different lands. We admit we never finished all sixteen, but try the first one or two:

Deryni Rising (1970) – Kelson Haldane must protect his crown from a Deryni usurper.
Deryni Checkmate (1972) – Alaric Morgan and Duncan McLain face the wrath of the Holy Church.
High Deryni (1973) – Kelson Haldane attempts to repair an ecclesiastical schism on the eve of a foreign invasion.

4) Joy Chant

Joy Chant, a British fantasy writer, is probably less well-known that some of the other women here. We came across her because of her House of Kendreth series, set in the world of Vandarei, and the Puffin edition of Red Moon and Black Mountain. This time it’s easier to see influences, including echoes of C S Lewis and Tolkien, but there’s also a great feel to Vandarei and a certain wildness there. The first book won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for 1972.

The trilogy is, in order:

Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970)
The Grey Mane of Morning (1977)
When Voiha Wakes (1983)

Editor and critic David Pringle (coincidentally another alumnus of Leeds SF and a founder of the SF magazine Interzone) rated Red Moon and Black Mountain as one of the hundred best fantasy novels in 1988. This book was also included as the thirty-eighth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in March, 1971.

5) Patricia Wrightson

Patricia Wrightson was an Australian writer who might be said to have specialised in magical realism. She wrote nearly thirty books, but the one which caught our eye and got us into her work was The Nargun and the Stars. Importantly, she incorporated Australian Aboriginal beliefs into her work, which gives them a wonderfully different feel to a lot of fantasy.

The four we recommend looking at are:

The Nargun and the Stars (1973)
The Ice is Coming (1977) – first of the three Song of Wirrun books
The Dark Bright Water (1978)
Behind the Wind (1981)

Read these to get away from Western medievalism for a change.

6) C J Cherryh

You might say that C J Cherryh (from the US) is more of a science fiction writer, but she has a touch for, and fascination with, other cultures which has always drawn us in. Conflict between cultures is a key element in some of her work, and to be honest, our favourite collection of hers is probably the Faded Sun trilogy.

To counter that, we do like the Morgaine Cycle, which we would call fantasy or science fantasy – excepting that there is no ‘real’ magic, so be warned. Morgaine is a time-traveling heroine straight out of heroic fantasy, accompanied by her loyal companion Nhi Vanye i Chya as she seeks to destroy gateways in time and space. Many of the societies with which she has to deal are typical feudal/medieval ones, and she certainly packs one hell of a sword, called Changeling.

Gate of Ivrel (1976)
Well of Shiuan (1978)
Fires of Azeroth (1979)
Exile’s Gate (1988)

7) Patricia McKillip

Patricia McKillip is an American author who has written plenty of works which are most definitely fantasy. You might know her because of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974), the winner of the 1975 World Fantasy Award, or the marvellously titled The Throme of the Erril of Sherril (1973). Our interest today is in her outstanding Riddlemaster trilogy.

Again there’s a Celtic influence, but only indirectly. Morgon, the Prince of Hed, was born with three stars on his forehead (but no-one knows why) and has a crown under his bed which he won in a riddle-game with the spirit of a dead king. When Morgon finds out that Mathom of An has pledged to marry his daughter to the man who wins that crown from the ghost, he sets off from his quiet farming community…

It sounds like a typical heard-it-all-before quest fantasy, but it’s not. It’s fabulous. It contains some of the most moving moments and twists, especially involving the apparently hostile shapechangers and Morgon’s wish for things to make sense and be at peace. Great characters and concepts, such as the land law which resides with the land ruler of each of the kingdoms, making them theoretically aware of everyone and everything which is within their boundaries.

The three books are:

The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976)
Heir of Sea and Fire (1977)
Harpist in the Wind (1979)

It’s hard to believe that you would be disappointed by them, even in 2016.

8) Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones was another writer from Britland, and produced a range of fantasy for children and adults. Some would probably be described nowadays as YA, and in this case we’d suggest browsing her range to see if there’s anything you like. There’s the Chrestomanci series, started in 1977 with Charmed Life, and of course the Howl series:

Howl’s Moving Castle (1986)
Castle in the Air (1990)
House of Many Ways (2008)

That’s not why we’re here though. Our own introduction to Wynne Jones, and the reason why she came to mind, is the Puffin book, Power of Three, which we grabbed from that shelf in the bookshop (remember). It received a Guardian Prize commendation, and is a slightly different cross-cultural fantasy, where youngsters of two myth-type races find common ground – but there’s also an interesting twist.

Power of Three (1977)

This is a children’s book, but it was a surprisingly satisfying find back in the day.

Our last two authors drag us into the early eighties, which is as far as we’re going.

9) Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly, from the USA, has written fantasy, mystery, science fiction and all sorts (a technical writers’ term). The books which brought her to our attention were the Darwath books, set in what could be called an alternate dimension, and these are definitely fantasy.

Darwath is a place of conflict, and if we claw our way back to Katherine Kurtz, also contains a degree of struggle between religion and magic. Society is threatened by the Dark, which is an actual semi-physical foe. Warriors, wizards and less gifted folk must fight to protect their communities, with some hard choices, betrayals and consequences along the way.

Intelligent fantasy, which holds up well nowadays and is still quite exciting. There are three main linked books, and then a few with the same general background:

The Time of the Dark (1982) – first of the trilogy
The Walls of Air (1983)
The Armies of Daylight (1983)

Also Darwathian:

Mother of Winter (1996)
Icefalcon’s Quest (1998)

10) Sheri Tepper

Sheri Tepper is another American writer who, like Hambly, has produced work across a range of genres, including science fiction, horror and mystery. While we could pay tribute to some of her more challenging and thoughtful fiction, we’re here for a specific fantasy series – although this too has its moments.

Our interest is in the trilogy of trilogies known as The True Game. In actual fact, the trilogies were written and published out of chronological order, although they are deeply intertwined. The Peter series was the first published. The Mavin series takes place earlier, providing some deep background to the Peter books along the way. The third trilogy, the Jinian series, is notable because it takes place during and after the same time period as the Peter series, giving a different perspective on the same events.

It’s fairly important to start with the Peter trilogy. This starts with the young protagonist, Peter, learning to control talents which come as part of a person’s heritage – shape-changing, telekinesis, energy storing, mental dominance and many others, often in set combinations. Society is predominantly feudal and dominated by the stronger talents – the Gamesmen – and their demesnes, but all is not what it seems. Dot dot dot.

We don’t want to spoil the books if you haven’t read them yet, because there are a lot of twists. They’re a rich and rewarding read, with new ideas and revelations coming in every book, some lessons in morality and some very original takes on the use of magic and power, including the nature of wizards.

The Books of the True Game: Peter

King’s Blood Four (1983) – the first novel
Necromancer Nine (1983)
Wizard’s Eleven (1984)

The Books of the True Game: Mavin Manyshaped

The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

The Books of the True Game: Jinian

Jinian Footseer (1985)
Dervish Daughter (1986)
Jinian Star-Eye (1986)

There we are. Classic fantasy by women writers, the bulk of it from over thirty years ago. No, we haven’t included Ursula LeGuin, or a number of other female notables – ten is quite enough for now. You go and write your own blog – we’re busy here. Explore and enjoy.

Back in a couple of days with something completely different…

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A Colossus of Mars: John Guy Collick

May 6, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

Gripping science fantasy, Shakespeare in Russian, working with editors, and the Moomins. What else could it be except one of our mega-interviews? Today we feature the erudite John Guy Collick – author, scholar, cinematographic critic, lecturer and a man who bought us the odd pint in the late seventies. That last one is perhaps the most important fact. John has just completed his four volume epic The Book of the Colossus, and it seemed a damned good time to corner him…

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, John. This is an unusual interview for us, because it’s also a sort of reunion. So we’ll start with John Guy Collick the person, and shift to your own fiction a little later on.

We knew each other on and off in the eighties, as part of the venerable and vocal Leeds Science Fiction movement – some of whose members were a moving force in the creation of the SF magazine Interzone. Do you have fond memories of those days, or was it all a terrible dream?

john: Fantastic memories, especially of Friday nights in the West Riding pub. I used to get there about 7-ish so the only other fan around was D. West who we sadly lost last year – who used to sub me with his somewhat scrawny rollies and the occasional 50p for fish and chips on the way home. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that Leeds SF made me what I am and it’s great to be in touch with the other members again after so many years via Facebook. Of course the two crowning achievements of Leeds SF when I was around were Yorcon 79 and the film Invasion Des Bollardes Enormes, which would have re-written Indie fan film-making if it hadn’t been stolen the night after it was completed, probably by powers who Did Not Want The Truth To Be Known.

john collick (l) & the late d west (r) — the picture they wanted to ban – john collick channels western noir (l) with the late d west. photo courtesy of gifted fellow thespian simon ounsley

greydog: D was a hugely talented artist, and a great loss. And we still remember the shocking Bollardes incident. Now, you’re a scholarly sort compared to us grizzled old dogs, and you lecture. Tell us a bit about the subjects you cover on the podium.

john: In the old days I used to give lectures on literature and philosophy in Japanese to an audience of up to 450 students at Waseda University in Tokyo though whether I made any sense or not is still up for discussion. These days I go to conferences and give talks about education and technology, which I usually cunningly twist round to the themes of cyberpunk, science fiction and futurology. Outside the UK these subjects are taken far more seriously, and that’s very gratifying. Recently I’ve been talking quite a bit about using SF to install a sense of wonder in kids so they get fired up about science and the universe etc… and this is getting a very positive response from teachers and Ministry of Education experts, especially in the ex-Soviet bloc countries. It’s a buzz to spend twenty minutes blathering on about H. G. Wells, Asimov and Tarkovsky to the Russian Minister of Education.

greydog: And you have an academic background in Shakespearian studies. This gives us an excuse to say how much his play Hamlet annoys us. Hours of watching a privileged ditherer wonder what to do and then get it wrong anyway (it did at least give us the line in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, where the protagonist looks at his tortoise Pat, and says “Now might I do it, Pat.”) Do you think we’re too harsh?

john: Watch the Russian film of Hamlet directed by Grigori Kozintsev – it’s a true masterpiece with a 100ft high ghost, loads of Eisenstein montage and tons of Kruschev-era Soviet politics chucked in. That’s how the play should be done, not as an introspective study of a procrastinator with his head up his bum but as a vast, brooding Piranesi-esque Gothic tale of politics, double dealing and passion. Olivier mangled the play in his film, turning it into a self-absorbed essay in cod psychology, and we’re still recovering.

greydog: You’ve sold us on that one. Can we also address the Moomin in the room while we have you here? You’ve also written about that Bohemian and unusual writer Tove Jansson. The Moomin stories, for us, were full of threat, mystery and strange longings, hardly kids’ tales. Do you feel she intended that, or was it a by-product of her own nature?

john: If I remember rightly, the Moomintroll started off in Jansson’s paintings as a symbol of encroaching Nazism (Watercolour with Black Moomintroll, painted in Germany in 1934), round about the time Tove Jansson fell out with her dad, who’d turned into a bit of a fascist. So she’d already created him as a conscious symbol of menace before putting him into the books and comics (she transferred that original negativity to the character of the Groke).

As a kid I always thought there was something oddly melancholic about the later Moomin books, and towards the end they got downright weird. Instead of going off on adventures the family spent more and more time sitting around moping existentially, and then in the last book Moominvalley in November, they completely disappeared.

Jansson herself battled with the frustration of trying to be an artist while at the same time dealing with this immense fame and attention the books brought her. She wanted to go live on an island with her girlfriend (on whom Too Ticky is based) and just paint, but people followed her in boats so she had to throw rocks at them to make them go away. In Moominpappa at Sea, Moominmama goes and hides in a painting because she’s sick of everyone – and I think Jansson really identified with that – and probably wrote the scene deliberately. When you read her non Moomin writing and about her work in general it’s clear she was a very canny artist, so yes, she knew what she was doing

greydog: It seems that film has always been a great part of your life. In the eighties we remember you making those short films, and you’ve written many critical pieces in this area. Share a bit of your passion with the listeners.

john: On no account whatsoever read the book The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook by Chris Jones and Genevieve Jolliffe, Continuum Press 3rd Edition, available for £32.99 from Amazon. It is a truly evil tome that should be destroyed – even worse than the Necronomicon. On the surface it looks like a simple collection of interviews with all the people involved in making an indie movie but it worms under your skin until one day you wake up and find yourself in the all-consuming horrendous other universe of film production.

That’s what happened to me in Tokyo. I ended up writing and co-producing a movie (Let’s Do Talk) which was reviewed as ‘The Most Offensive Film I’ve Ever Seen’ in The Japan Times, although what happened off set was infinitely more lurid than what ended up on camera. One of the highlights was when a main actor came up to me and said ‘John, you have inspired me so much with your passion and creativity in making this film that I’m going to leave my wife and kids and become a writer!’

One of these days I’ll blog about the whole sorry tale, probably when the other production members are safely dead. Yes – film has always been a passion since my mum introduced me to Kurosawa, Bergman and Eisenstein in the days when BBC 2 showed classic foreign films instead of mindless rubbish.

greydog: You also seem to have a love for the pulps, and the era of Edgar Rice Burroughs – Barsoom and its wonders. Another friend, Neil Baker of April Moon Books (see once in an april moon), is seeking to put together an anthology of SF which captures the old joy of just ‘getting out there’. Have we lost some of that sense of open, go-for-it adventure in science fiction and fantasy?

john: I have a soft spot for ERB and the Barsoom series. I cut my teeth on A Princess of Mars as a kid and Warlord of Mars is the only book I ever read that had me on my feet and breathless at the end. Seeing the movie was a dream come true. Once in a while I enjoy reading swords and planets tales, though nothing comes close to 14-year old me, John Carter and Dejah Thoris. I don’t think we’ve lost that wild imagination and gripping sense of adventure in modern SF. Iain Banks certainly hit it for me with Consider Phlebas, and I’m working my way through Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt which is huge swashbuckling fun. I do love the old pre-Golden Age pulp tales though – you can’t beat Professor Jameson and the Zoromes, or early Clark Ashton Smith.

greydog: Huge fans of Neil R Jones’ Professor Jameson here (and CAS). Does anyone stand out for you in modern SFF?

john: At the moment – Adrian Tchaikovsky as I mentioned above, Gareth Powell and Gaie Sebold. I have a big stack of books I need to read through, Neil Asher, Charlie Stross etc. I find that reading another writer’s novels gets in the way of my own work when I’m actually writing, unless their style and approach is similar to what I’m trying to achieve, so I go through phases of reading comics, or classics that are completely different in style and setting to my own books. At the moment I’m working my way through Jodorowsky’s Incal series – I became a fan of his after seeing the documentary about his failed movie of Dune.

greydog: On to JGC the writer. You began your major work The Book of the Colossus with Thumb in 2013. When you drafted Thumb, did you do so in the knowledge that this would be a lengthy four book arc?

john: In the very beginning, no. It started as a germ of an idea from a dream I had in the early 1990s in which I saw a man in a blue robe in a desert standing in front of a vast body. People had been building this monster to save them but very quickly society had degenerated so that those who built the head fought the ones who’d crafted the hands etc. The story developed in my mind (and the body got bigger) and pretty soon I saw it as a four-book series, mainly because my favourite writer at the time was Gene Wolfe and I wanted to write something as weird and intriguing as the four volume Book of the New Sun.

The Thumb I published is version 3, with about ten false starts and a couple of very bad complete manuscripts before. Now that I’ve created the setting I can see there’s a lot more material I can turn into stories, though probably not with Max and Abby as their arc is pretty much complete. The other day I had the wild idea of another seven books about the Colossus, like Wolfe’s Long sun and Short sun series, but that would be another seven years of my life and I’ve probably come to this too late.

greydog: Is there a market or genre definition for Colossus with which you feel comfortable? We would settle for science fantasy, but we’re not entirely sure what that means. SF which isn’t tech-heavy? Fantasy with a harder, futuristic feel?

john: I saw it as Science Fantasy similar to Moorcock’s Hawkmoon/Count Brass books (another massive influence) – books set in a universe where the science is so advanced or outré that it’s indistinguishable from magic. I guess The Book of the Colossus is an extreme Dying Earth series as in Gene Wolfe’s Severian novels, or Jack Vance’s Rialto and Cugel books. John Jarrold told me he thinks it’s Space Opera.

I also wanted to write it as an ‘Indiana Jones meets Franz Kafka’ book – a straight forward action tale set in a fundamentally absurd universe. The setting is extreme to the point of semi-surreal, but the characters behave and act as if everything is perfectly normal. A couple of readers have found this disorienting – in Thumb people smoke cigarettes and listen to jazz in a fantasy Prague at the end of time in the shadow of a marionette half a million miles long. But the vast majority of readers have been overwhelmingly positive, so I think I managed to get it to work.

greydog: There’s another nostalgic blast, finding out that you’ve worked with John Jarrold, the agent/editor who is another old bar-friend from SF convention days. In general terms, what did you get out of working with an editor that made the process worth it – as opposed to doing it all yourself?

john: I couldn’t have got to the point I’ve reached without John’s coaching and editorial input, for which I’m eternally grateful. Even though the books were self-published I wanted them to be the same quality as a good professionally published series. John was (and is) utterly ruthless and tore the first version of Thumb to bits, which was exactly what I wanted and needed. With his help I think I’ve now got the basics under my belt and all I need to do now is constantly practice and experiment. In general terms, everyone should work with a good editor if you want a professional book at the end, and if you’re serious you need to pay for the best. You also need someone to tell you like it is (and be prepared to take criticism on the chin) and not what they think you want to hear.

greydog: And now the quadrilogy is complete, with the launch of Dark Feathered Hearts. Here’s a typically unfair poser – tease us into wanting to read the conclusion (if we didn’t already).

john: Everything’s bigger. If you’ve read the other three then in this last book the threats, twists and encounters increase exponentially to encompass the whole of humanity’s future. Is it actually possible for humanity to build a God half a million miles tall who will carry it into the next universe, or is it all a deranged, desperate fantasy concocted by a species on the point of extinction? For the first time the price of Max and Abby’s failure really will be the destiny of mankind. If you haven’t read any of the books then think Indiana Jones meets Kafka, and also that several of my readers have told me that the story has given them disturbing dreams – what more could you ask for?

greydog: This is a good time to mention the covers as well, which are very striking. The covers of Thumb and Dark Feathered Hearts in particular are reminiscent of the work of Bruce Pennington and other artists of the eighties. A deliberate choice?

john: Yes – Chris Foss and Bruce Pennington were the two giants of 70s/80s UK SF covers for me. I wanted to recreate the feel of a NEL or Sphere paperback from that era and Pennington’s work is so wonderfully exotic – a fantastic blend of the baroque and the semi surreal with a very distinctive and bold palette. Even his simplest paintings (for example his cover to Van Vogt’s The Silkie) carry this wonderful fin de siècle vibe. The cover to Dark Feathered Hearts is a deliberate tribute to his work – the floating tetrahedrons in the sky are taken from his cover to Brian Aldiss’s Space, Time and Nathaniel. I also wanted each cover to illustrate a key scene from the book, rather than be just a more generic mood-piece SF or Fantasy painting.

greydog: We must end with our usual question – where next? Sit back on your laurel wreath and watch The Book of the Colossus work its way across the world, or grapple with new fiction?

john: I’ve got decades of ideas stacked up so it’s no rest for me. Like I said I feel I came to this a bit too late so it’s a race to get them all down on paper. I’ve worked out a system using Scrivener and top-down planning which should allow me to write a book a year, though I’d like to go faster. I’m working on the next one now – it’s a completely different setting to The Book of the Colossus – a bit more down to earth but still SF. With a fair wind behind me it should finished by the start of next year.

greydog: Many thanks again, and we wish you good fortune with Dark Feathered Hearts.

john: Thank you!

You can find John at home on his blog here – john guy collick and his books are on Amazon. Here are quick links for the first and the last volumes of The Book of the Colossus –

thumb on amazon uk

thumb on amazon us

dark feathered hearts on amazon uk

dark feathered hearts on amazon us

Coming up next week: An introduction to the greydogtales family of little donkeys (dogs, to you), a feature about Clark Ashton Smith and a new film, plus lots more…

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A Pleasing Terror, Three Dogs and an Ambush Bug

May 4, 2016 greydogtales 1 Comment

Welcome, dear listener, to our usual mid-week medley, that great tradition which always provides not enough of the stuff you personally like. Today, more sight-hound action photos, an update on the super M R James card game from Pleasing Terror Games, and DC’s Ambush Bug comic. Plus a hello to Black Gate, a new friend.

Avid enthusiasts of weird, fantastical and supernatural fiction will be delighted that our first topic is sighthounds. Last week we published our illustrated guide to Bitey Face (see lurchers for beginners 9), but we had some terrific photographs left over, so here they are, courtesy of Katrina from the fastgreyz blog. Firstly fun…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — snow day, from katrina

And then real fun – bitey face again…

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We may have mentioned that we’re going to interview Swedish artist Richard Svensson some time this month. In the process we were in touch with Pleasing Terror Games, as it is indeed Richard’s art which adorns their game card. James Drewett of PTG has supplied an update on where they’re at and their current plans. Rather than rewrite words from the terrifying spectral horse’s mouth, we offer up his communication with greydogtales here:

Pleasing Terror Games produces games based on the ghostly writing of the great M.R. James. Our aims are to bring Jamesian literature fans into a new immersive, interactive experience, as well as enticing gamers who are new to M R James to discover these wonderful stories for themselves.

Monsters & Miscreants is a light introduction game; a simple trump-style game, familiar to most people and easy to learn.

Each card has a depiction of a ghost, monster or villain from one of James’ stories, such as ‘The Linen-Faced Pursuer’ from ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’, and has a set of statistical categories such as Fright Factor, Wall of Weird, Slayer Score etc. On your turn you choose a category on your top card which you hope will beat your opponent’s top card. The artwork features the unique styling of the multi-talented artist and designer, Richard Svensson.

6ea082af8dee79501229b6e16706fd36-5723c8a263158 — prototype for monsters- don’t treat them gently!

The game has exceeded all our expectations, selling over 130 copies worldwide since January. UK buyers can purchase a copy via PayPal from the facebook site: monsters and miscreants or from the website page: https://pleasingterror.wordpress.com/buy-now/ for £9.99 including postage and packing. Non-UK buyers can purchase a copy by sending $18.99 to Richard Svensson’s paypal account loneanimator@gmail.com

I am currently working on three follow-up games which are detailed on the website: pleasing terror games

Monsters – Don’t Treat Them Gently! is a solitaire or two player strategy card game featuring 20 Jamesian protagonists and characters, 20 artefacts cards, a Jamesian map and counters, all strikingly illustrated by Richard Svensson. It’s time for the humans to fight back – team up your protagonists to take on the infamous monsters from Monsters & Miscreants in a host of eerie places in the locality of Jamesville. This game is in the latter stages of game-testing and design, and about half-way through the art-work. There is currently a poll running to help us decide which colour style people prefer: http://poll.fm/5ljcu
Stories I Have Tried to Tell is a multi-player story telling game featuring tables on every aspect of a Jamesian story. Players take on the role of narrator, scene setter, protagonist and monster and get given random story ingredients which they must work together into an authentic sounding Jamesian tale (maybe to be told at Christmastime by candlelight!).
Cards for the Curious – a solitaire or two player strategy card and dice game where you play the role of the protagonist in your favourite M.R. James stories – embarking on a terrifying journey of the imagination to try and survive the nameless dread that hunts you, with either your life or your sanity intact. The prototype has been produced and game-tested, but as there is a huge amount of components, this may have to be a future Kickstarter project (advice gratefully received!).

9dd75601ee646edf8e13312e4c23b509-5723c945b2964 — prototype for monsters – don’t treat them gently!

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It is true that our infamous Magic Loft contains a lot of rubbish. The process of exploring it is a slow one, especially given the special anti-rat, anti-squirrel protective suits required (and the special foot-gear which stops you falling through the beams into one of the bedrooms).

This week yielded more comics, few of which we actually remember buying. Fortunately, most of DC’s Ambush Bug had survived, and so we have been able to read once again the mini-series Son of Ambush Bug, six comics by Keith Giffen which make very little sense.

Apart from the fact that Ambush Bug knew he was in a comic, which allowed for many japes, the high-spot was the search for his son, Cheeks. Cheeks, if you didn’t know, was a vacant-looking, inanimate stuffed doll. A heretical thing to mention, but it must be said. And the series within the miniseries, Combat Cheeks – Frontline Medic, was pure joy.

The perfect way to spend an evening when you’ve been watching doom-and-gloom superhero movies (or you could just read our spiffing film review here, which is pretty Giffen-esque – batman v superman – prawns of justice).

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To end with, a quick mention of the site Black Gate – Adventures in Fantasy Literature. We’ve been hopping back and forth and enjoying ourselves, and they’ve even said some kind words about greydogtales. The site is updated constantly with book news, reviews and fantastical oddities, and well worth a browse around.

https://www.blackgate.com/

We also note that you can still get pdfs of back copies of the late Black Gate magazine through the site, which is tempting.

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a bug, but probably not an ambush bug - we just liked its little face — a bug, but probably not an ambush bug – we just liked its little face

Farewell, best beloved, and we shall see you in a few days. Don’t forget you can now buy old greydog’s Holmesian thriller A Study in Grey – look right and up to find the link. Or you can pass on that one. We still have dogs to feed, though…

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A Chill Equation – John Coulthart and More

May 1, 2016 greydogtales 2 Comments

We’re back, with bumper fun in the form of the wonderful Equation Chillers series, including Algernon Blackwood. We’re also going to enjoy the work of a couple of weird artists in the field – the renowned John Coulthart’s Lovecraftian art and the mysterious Boris Dolgov with his pulp illustrations from the forties and fifties.

We’ll start with John Coulthart, because we’ve been in touch with him recently. When we interviewed him at length on greydogtales at the end of last year (see john coulthart – axioms & other dark beasts), he alluded to various forthcoming projects, and two of these are here, or on their way soon.

The first is the new collection from Barnes and Noble, The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales by H P Lovecraft, a massive book of six hundred pages in their Collectible Editions line. As you might expect, it contains twenty three of those Lovecraft stories which relate to what later became a whole myth cycle (for which August Derleth is mostly to be praised or blamed). The book includes six collaborative “revisions”, and has an introduction by Lovecraft scholar S T Joshi.

Mostly importantly for us (we have read a lot of HPL already, after all), it has wonderful front and back covers, plus endpapers, by John.

We haven’t yet seen a UK distributor for this, but here’s the link to the US source:

cthulhu mythos- barnes and noble

Also worth a mention is John’s work for a new collection, Out of Tune Book Two, for which he has provided fifteen new illustrations. This is due to be published by JournalStone sometime soon.

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Right, let’s go back a few years. Nearly three decades, in fact. One of our finds of the late eighties was the short-lived Equation Chillers series. Sadly, only eight books were ever produced directly under the imprint. We have battered copies of all of them which we bought at the time, thank goodness.

They were, in a way, the precursor of the Wordsworth Editions, where lost, rare or unusual stories of the supernatural suddenly became available at an affordable price. Equation revived a whole haunted house full of Victorian and Edwardian short stories, and it’s worth noting all eight volumes here, with the occasional comment from us.

1) THE FLINT KNIFE. Further Spook Stories by E.F. Benson
Selected and introduced by Jack Adrian (1988).

2) IN THE DARK. Tales of Terror by E. Nesbit
Selected and introduced by Hugh Lamb (1988).

(No, you’re right – we couldn’t find our copies of the two above to scan them. It’s that damned Magic Loft again…)

3) WARNING WHISPERS. New Weird Tales by A.M. Burrage
Selected and introduced by Jack Adrian (1988)

4) STORIES IN THE DARK. Tales of Terror by Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain, and Robert Barr
Selected and introduced by Hugh Lamb (1989)

An uneven but fascinating collection from the author of Three Men in a Boat and two of his friends and colleagues. Jerome and Barr founded The Idler magazine together in the late 19th century, though Barr is best remembered for his crime and detective novels. Pain was a writer and editor himself, producing a lot of non-supernatural work. Readers may already be familiar with his story The Undying Thing.

The Haunted Mill by Jerome himself is an especially wonderful example of his dry sense of humour.
5) BONE TO HIS BONE. The Stoneground Ghost Tales of E.G. Swain
Introduced by Michael Cox (1989).

We daren’t say much about this one, because we’ve often droned on about E G Swain being one of our favourite writers of the supernatural. Gentle, humorous and wonderful little stories with perfect characterisation, to be read again and again.

Uniquely, this volume not only reprinted the 1912 edition of The Stoneground Ghost Tales but included six stories by David Rowlands, excellent later pastiches of Swain’s content and style. Rowlands has also written many tales of his own, including those concerning “the endearing Father O’Connor, who is constantly brushing up against the supernatural and the uncanny in stories that range from the whimsical to the terrifying”.

6) THE MAGIC MIRROR. Lost Supernatural and Mystery Stories by Algernon Blackwood
Selected and introduced by Mike Ashley (1989)

An interesting and diverse collection, particularly as it includes a number of Blackwood’s tales for the BBC, including the text of the very first official radio ‘talk’, by Blackwood, from July 1934 – The Blackmailers. The BBC director responsible apparently commented “I don’t doubt that we shall have a good many letters from listeners saying that we are corrupting the youth of England with morbid fancies and distasteful subjects”.

Blackwood went on to make over sixty radio broadcasts, and you can listen to one of them here:

7) DRACULA’S BROOD. Neglected Vampire Classics by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Others
Selected and introduced by Richard Dalby (1989).

A most fine collection because Dalby deliberately avoided well-known or commonly anthologised tales. His choice of twenty three stories ranges from 1867 to 1940, and includes Mary E Braddon, Vernon Lee, Alice and Claude Askew, M R James and Frederick Cowles. Worth trying to find because of its range and the rareness of some of the stories.

8) THE BLACK REAPER. Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes
Selected and introduced by Hugh Lamb (1989).

After this the series folded, rather tragically. They had announced, but never released:

FEAR WALKS THE NIGHT. Tales of Terror by Frederick Cowles
To be selected and introduced by Richard Dalby.

Equation Chillers can still be found second hand. Amazon even has a few on offer through its marketplace dealers.

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While musing on Blackwood and looking at related illustrations of his work, we were reminded of the artist Boris Dolgov. A New York artist, virtually nothing is known about him, not even the dates of his birth and (presumed) death.

Dolgov produced seven (we think) covers for the magazine Weird Tales, and numerous interior illustrations, a few of which we’ve included in this post, from the mid-forties to the early fifites.

It is known that Dolgov was a friend of the artist Hannes Bok, and he collaborated with Bok a few times under the name Dolbokov. He also produced at least one book cover, that of A E Van Vogt’s 1952 book Destination: Universe!

You can see more of Dolgov’s work here:

dolgov on monsterbrains

And to close, a mention that Equation also produced the book Ghost and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James. This fine collection was not under the Chillers imprint, though. Selected and introduced by Richard Dalby (as mentioned above) and Rosemary Pardoe, this came out in 1989, and included an essay by MRJ, himself, “Ghosts–Treat Them Gently!”

“Following James’s lead, the writers represented here conjure up an ordered, placid world into which the supernatural–usually in malevolent form–slowly but surely intrudes itself.”