Some magazine covers by Hubert Rogers, along with correspondence about them

Filed under Found on the Web

Doug Ellis recently purchased this painting by Hubert Rogers for the cover of Astounding magazine in April of 1941, and he’s not only shared that with us over at Black Gate but provided several bits of correspondence between the artist and two of the authors he illustrated.

The letters – from L. Sprague deCamp and Robert Heinlein – discuss the paintings and characterizations and, in deCamp’s case, even the picture that one of these would displace on his wall. (It’s a nice Edd Cartier, also shown in the article, and it was only being replaced because it might scare the bejeezus out of the littlest deCamp once he’d figured out what it was.)

Altogether, some interesting insights into the relationships between the authors and at least one of their illustrators. (Thanks to File770 for the link!)

Also, it’s about time that starry briefs made a fashion comeback.

Unexplained graphic snippets of late 2015

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

Here are a few little graphic non sequiturs; they’re just tiny cropped bits of some things that I’m working on. Because I felt like almost showing them.

My work here is done.

Save 15% on all T-shirts from Retropolis, The Celtic Art Works, and the Pulp-O-Mizer

Filed under Works in Progress

So, here’s the deal: in an apparent commemoration of Pearl Harbor Day (coming up on Monday!), you can save 15% on any T-shirt order from The Retropolis Transit Authority, The Celtic Art Works, or the Pulp-O-Mizer. The sale runs through Monday the 7th. All you have to do is enter the coupon code MERRY15 during your checkout.

And since the sale is running on all my T-shirts, you can combine a whole bunch of shirts from all three of those places and slash a mind-melting 15% off the whole order.

I’d like that; in fact, I wish you’d consider just getting one of everything. But the actual real-world beauty of this sale is that there is no minimum order. You can get the same reduced price on a single shirt, if you like.

But, you know, consider that one of everything idea anyway. You could cover a heck of a lot of torsos that way, believe you me.

But say you’re not shopping at one of those fine web sites because you do all your online shopping at Amazon?

Well. If you happen to be shopping at Amazon, and if maybe you just need to add a little something to get free shipping… you can take advantage of my ongoing Amazon experiment with a selection of Retropolis Transit T-shirts over there. They’re not on sale, but those (slightly lighter) shirts are already priced lower than the ones I sell myself.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. You should probably get every one of those, too.

3 volumes of science fiction & horror stories from 1940 with covers by the Pulp-O-Mizer

Filed under Found on the Web

I ran across a post at File770.com featuring the third volume of a collection of stories eligible for the 1941 Retro Hugo Awards at next year’s Worldcon. The collection is an ongoing project by File770 user von Dimpleheimer.

Since the third volume is a big batch of stories by Henry Kuttner and Ray Cummings I followed the link and grabbed a copy, only to discover that von Dimpleheimer had made the eBook cover with my very own Pulp-O-Mizer. This put a smile all over my face. Like, actually, all over my face.

So I went back and downloaded the first two volumes and, sure enough, they had also been Pulp-O-Mized. This may be my very favorite use of the Pulp-O-Mizer to date.

But I started out by looking for the stories, and of course I found them, too. Now, I’m a big believer in the Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore cooperative, but I don’t think I’ve read Cummings before. I’m having a great time correcting that oversight.

There’s a lot of variety in the stories. This is partly due to the different magazines they were written for – Cummings’ WeirdTalesian stories for the horror magazines are entirely different from his SF and humorous pieces. And you also have to factor in the astonishing rate at which these pulp writers ground out their work. Every story in this volume was written in the year 1940: there are twenty-three by Kuttner, and thirty by Cummings. That’s not their whole output; that’s just what’s included here. These writers were just pounding those words out.

There are places where this shows, of course, but Cummings has already taken a place on my virtual humor shelf next to Kuttner and Fredric Brown. That’s largely on the strength of one story, World Upside Down, but I’m sure there will be more. (The Vanishing Men, while it’s not about time travel, underscores one problem with time travel that’s always overlooked.)

Want to find out for yourself? You can get the download links for Volume One here; for Volume Two, here; and for Volume Three, here.

Go download this PDF catalog of the auction for Dave Winiewicz’ collection of art by Frank Frazetta (and others)

Filed under Found on the Web

On December 11 an extensive collection of drawings, watercolor roughs, and paintings by Frank Frazetta will be going on auction through Profiles in History. The pieces – which also include a large number of works by Hannes Bok, Roy Krenkel, Al Williamson, Hal Foster, and others – was previously available for private viewing on the East Coast. The West Coast previews will run through the fourth of December.

Odds are that neither you nor I is going to be bidding on any of these. But I (and possibly you) can be quite excited about the auction’s catalog. You can download the PDF version of the catalog from this page. I did, and I lost a whole lot of time this morning as a result.

The man who assembled this incredible collection is Dave Winiewicz. Over the years he got to know Frazetta and many of his contemporaries, as you can easily see from the catalog notes.

“Incredible” isn’t hyperbole. The collection, which is heavy on drawings, represents almost every phase of the artist’s career.

The fact that so much of this work is in pencil or ink is just fine by me. When I rediscovered Frazetta it was his ink work that I found I admired the most. Those deft lines, with their inevitable certainty, present the form and lighting in the scenes beautifully while each of them has an essential prettiness and grace that in no way interferes with the shapes they communicate. At its best, it’s pure mastery.

Included in the auction are two pens that the artist liked so well that he stored them away to use again… only to forget about them. Nice! But surprising, to me, since I thought he inked exclusively with brushes.

New paperback editions of Matthew Hughes’ Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice

Filed under Works in Progress

Matthew Hughes has just published new paperback editions of his earliest Archonate novels, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice. I’m always happy to do the layouts for his books and I’m especially happy to do the print layouts. Say what you like: I really do like paper.

As with most of Hughes’ self-published editions, the cover paintings are by Ben Baldwin. I just adapted them to the book’s shape, which I did here with knotwork borders.

From the description of Fools Errant:

Wise, witty and just a little weird, Fools Errant wryly strolls the satirical path laid down by Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jack Vance, heralding the brilliant debut of a gifted new voice.

Foppish young Filidor Vesh wants only to dally among his shallow pastimes. But a simple errand for his uncle, the vaguely all-powerful Archon of those parts of Old Earth still populated by human beings, becomes a frenetic odyssey across a planet speckled with eccentric nations pursuing odd aims with intense determination.

Harried at every step by the irascible dwarf, Gaskarth, and frequently at the peril of wild beasts, enraged mobs and a particularly nasty thaumaturge, Filidor makes a relucant progress toward a final encounter with an ancient and possibly world-ending evil.

Fool Me Twice continues the adventures of Filidor – who we’ll see again, in the Hapthorn novels and elsewhere – in his new position as apprentice to his uncle, the Archon. Once again we have travels to far and peculiar corners of Old Earth – in what’s remarkably like the last age before Jack Vance’s Dying Earth – while Filidor “must cope with philosophical pirates, prophet-seeking aliens, light-fingered mummers, and a tiny, bothersome voice in his left ear.”

As always, lots of fun. If you’re more of an ebook reader – I don’t judge – you can also get the books in electronic form through your favorite outlet or at Hughes’ own Archonate Bookstore.

And now, a word from our sponsor

Filed under Works in Progress

… who is me.

I know. That does seem redundant. Pretty much everything you see here is a word from me, whether or not I’m wearing my Sponsor Hat, so you could argue that it doesn’t really bear mentioning that this is A Word From Our Sponsor. On the other hand, it’s my blog (and my hat) so I’m going to call it whatever I like.

Sorry. Lost track of my thought there. The actual Word, then, is that from now through November 8th you can save a bunch of money on T-shirts from The Retropolis Transit Authority and Saga Shirts. Twenty per cent, in fact. All you have to do is add at least $30 worth of T-shirts to your shopping cart and then, when you check out, use the coupon code JOY20.

Since men’s and women’s tees are priced at $21.95, after the discount a shirt will be just $17.56: a pittance, honestly. Kids’ shirts are even a little less.

The same discount applies to T-shirts you design in the Pulp-O-Mizer. I just don’t have nifty sales banners over there. Why not? I’ll have to ask Our Sponsor.

New Retropolis calendars and a free shipping sale on t-shirts at Retropolis and The Celtic Art Works

Filed under Works in Progress

I use several different vendors for my merchandise at Retropolis and The Celtic Art Works. They often offer similar products; but when I’m deciding which to use I try to use the one that I think does the best job for that particular product.

That’s the theory. What happens, now and then (and often when I’m not looking), is that a vendor discontinues a product that I really like. If I haven’t created an alternative in advance I run around the room in frenzied circles until I’ve put together a replacement from someplace else.

That happened, recently, to the paperback blank books I used to sell. Last week I discovered that it had happened to my large wall calendars, too.

So for the past few days I have been running around in frenzied circles. The result is a new incarnation of my calendars – almost all of them. Still a little work to do at The Celtic Art Works.

For now you can find the new calendars at Retropolis.

I miss the square calendar pages from the old ones. Square pages meant that any image, whether in a portrait or a landscape orientation, would work equally well. Or equally unwell, if you want to be picky. The new calendars have pages that are wider than they are tall, so they’re not as good a fit for vertical illustrations.

But there’s an upside: they’re available in three different sizes, from a width of seven inches to fourteen inches. You can also pick whatever wire binding color you want, and even the holidays are (somewhat) configurable. Altogether, not a bad deal.

You can also select what year you want for your calendar. Which is nice, though I’m not sure how many of you buy your calendars eight years in advance. Oh, I know someone does, ’cause this is the Internet.

Other news from my online stores: for the next few days you can get free shipping on a t-shirt order of $30 or more from The Retropolis Transit Authority and Saga Shirts or, for that matter, from the Pulp-O-Mizer. Just use the coupon code FREESHIP30 through October 29.

Catherynne M. Valente on her new novel Radiance

Filed under Found on the Web

Today sees two posts by Catherynne M. Valente about her new book, Radiance, at the Barnes & Noble SFF blog and at John Scalzi’s Whatever.

The year is 1944. But not our 1944. No Blitz, no rationing, no Russian front—not yet, anyway. In fact, most of Earth is looking a little empty. The Solar System, however, is bustling, buzzing, bursting with human life. Each and every one of our familiar planets is inhabitable and inhabited, from the red swamps of Venus to the frozen neon streets of Uranus to the opium fields of Pluto. New industries and intrigues are everywhere—and the Moon is where they make movies. Silent movies, mostly, for the scions of the Edison family keep an iron grip on their sound and color patents. In the world of Radiance, Space exploration began around 1870, but film still streams along in black and white silence.

To that, add a noir mystery, Uranian porn theaters, heavily armed movie studios and – not to be missed! – space whales.

It’s out today. Really looking forward to this one.

The Curious Incident of the Imaginary Editor

Filed under Imaginary Editor

My imaginary editor strikes from the shadows, as swift as a serpent and as inscrutable as something that defies being scruted. This week, he’s criticizing our book’s point of view.

And this book, whatever it is, seems to have made an unusual choice. I won’t say it’s never been done (not lately, anyway) but these days the idea of a first person narrator who knows all and sees all would be a departure. My preference would be a first person narrator who knows all, and sees all, but doesn’t tell all; or, better yet, one who lies.

Even though I’m almost positive that the imaginary editor is not editing my book, this does touch on Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. That’s because my book has a narrator who is a character. He’s just not a character in that book.

This was such an odd circumstance that there was no room in the book to explain it. And odder still is the fact that within a story, this narrator always refers to himself in the third person. You may have figured that out if you read The Lair of the Clockwork Book.

It’s another one of those weird correspondences I keep finding between the imaginary editor’s notes and the book I actually wrote. But I guess the harder you look, the more you find.