A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hammett & The Continental Op – Volume 4 (My intro)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hammett & The Continental Op – Volume 4 (My intro)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Pulp Fest takes place in Pittsburgh first week of the month. It’s a really cool event, and the Hilton Doubletree is a nice site. Steeger Books rolls out its summer line at this event. And for the fourth year in a row, there was a new Continental Op collection, with a brand new intro by yours truly. Getting to write about Dashiell Hammett remains a definite thrill. This volume contains the first great hardboiled novel, Red Harvest. 

Unable to make a living writing for Phil Cody, Dashiell Hammett quit Black Mask – and the Pulps, entirely – after “The Creeping Siamese,” which appeared in the March 1926 issue. It was also the last story in Volume Three of this series.

Hammett had written some top-tier stories, such as “The Girl with the Silver Eyes,” and “The House in Turk Street.” But he was not yet THE Dashiell Hammett when he took a full-time job as advertising manager for Albert S. Samuels Co. Jewelers, in March of 1926. Hammett worked, drank, got a second apartment as a writing studio, and romanced the office secretary; all while his second child was being born. The stress was too much for his war-damaged lungs and he collapsed, coughing up blood. Unable to work full-time, he did free-lance advertising writing. He simply did not want to write fiction again. Enter Joseph ‘Cap’ Shaw.

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Ever After: John Crowley (December 1, 1942 – August 8, 2026)

Ever After: John Crowley (December 1, 1942 – August 8, 2026)

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John Crowley

John Crowley has died, at 83. He was my favorite living writer, and remains one of my favorite writers of all time. He was born in 1942 in Maine, and grew up in Vermont, Kentucky and Indiana. He went to the University of Indiana, then to New York, originally with a goal of working in film, and indeed he has written numerous scripts for documentary films.

But his true calling was surely prose, and in 1975 he published his first novel, The Deep. A dozen more novels followed, including a four-book series collectively called Aegypt. He also published more than two dozen short stories, and many essays. He was a Professor of Creative Writing at Yale beginning in 1993. His wife, Laurie Block, is a documentary filmmaker.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, April 1923 (Volume 1, Number 2) Part 1

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, April 1923 (Volume 1, Number 2) Part 1

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Weird Tales, April 1923, front and back covers

The second issue of Weird Tales, on sale from March of 1923 through to April, looked much like the first: a pulp magazine 6 and a half inches by 9 and a half, with 192 pages. The black-white-and-red cover was more striking than the previous issue’s, with the main image contained in a thick red frame, and the date and price more easily visible under the title. There was a new and smoother-looking logo. Unlike the first issue, this cover didn’t share a format with that month’s issue of Weird Tales’ older sister publication Detective Tales.

In fact, the cover’s about all you might hope for from a magazine called Weird Tales. Mysterious gigantic eyes stare out of darkness, while from just below them pink rays shoot out to strike a man who screams and throws out his hands. It’s not terribly sophisticated — background details are nonexistent or lost in the ink wash, and you can’t help but wonder if the mysterious creature in shadows is firing rays from its nostrils. But it is an image that tells you things supernatural and horrific lurk within these pages.

This post will take a look at the physical and editorial package of the second issue of Weird Tales, with an eye to tracking the magazine’s evolution. It’ll run long, because I’ve included numerous extracts from pulp magazine editorials — mostly for the sake of making an argument about how Weird Tales was positioning itself in its marketplace, but partly, I have to admit, for historical interest and potential amusement value.

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Vampires, Shoggoths, and the Monsters of the Suburbs: The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVI, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Vampires, Shoggoths, and the Monsters of the Suburbs: The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVI, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVI (DAW Books, October 1988). Cover by J.K. Potter

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XVI was the sixteenth in the lineup and the eighth volume edited by the great Karl Edward Wagner (d. 1994). This book was copyrighted and printed in 1988 and represents the best short horror in the field for 1987. After twelve straight covers with Michael Whelan’s art, we now have a new cover artist, American illustrator J. K. Potter (b. 1956).

If this were published today, I’d think we’d suspect the cover was AI-generated. It looks almost photographic; but rather than being scary, it seems a little silly to me. But it’s still a horrific scene and was also on the cover the convention booklet in 1986 for the 12th World Fantasy Convention (see below). I’m sure in the mid-1980s it was quite original.

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Forgotten Authors: John T. Phillifent

Forgotten Authors: John T. Phillifent

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John T. Phillifent (a.k.a. John Rackham)

John T. Phillifent was born in Durham, England on November 10, 1916.

As with last week’s entry, Henry J. Kostkos, Phillifent worked as an electrical engineer.

Although Phillifent wrote some short fiction and three The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels under his own name, he also used the pseudonym John Rackham for the majority of his fiction. According to Phillifent, he reserved his own name for his best material.

His first published work was the Jupiter Equilateral, published by the Tit-Bits Science Fiction Library in 1954 under the Rackham name.  He wouldn’t publish anything under his own name until the story “Point” appeared in the December 1961 issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.

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A Science Fiction Film Noir: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

A Science Fiction Film Noir: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

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Lord of Light (Avon Books, January 1969). Cover by Ronald Walotsky

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god.

Roger Zelazny was considered to be one of the major New Wave writers of the 1960s. But where many of those writers found inspiration in naturalism, modernism, or even surrealism, much of Zelazny’s work was inspired by mythology, somewhat in the style of poets such as Yeats or Eliot.

Early novels in this mode included The Dream Master (expanded from the novella “He Who Shapes”), This Immortal (originally titled And Call Me Conrad, which I think is a much better choice), and Lord of Light, which I’ve long considered his single greatest literary achievement.

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David C. Smith, Part Three: Oron and the Tales of Attluma

David C. Smith, Part Three: Oron and the Tales of Attluma

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The Oron series by David C Smith

Although David Smith’s work in the Robert E. Howard Universe is memorable, his best creations to me are his original stories of Attluma.

Attluma is an island continent that evokes the spirit of Atlantis. Smith himself drew a map of the continent that appeared in the first published book in the series. Shown below. This book, simply called Oron, was also my first exposure to the world of Attluma. Five books in this series came out from Zebra between 1980 and 1983.

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Writing Anyway

Writing Anyway

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Good afterevenmorn Readers!

This is going to be a personal post, brought on by the various, incredibly depressing discussions around A.I. and artistic creation. As I’m primarily a writer, or, at least, I’m hoping to make a living as a writer. I draw and paint as well, but those are things I do mostly for me and I’m not trying to make a career of that. Perhaps more than one of you can relate to the state of, well, creation right now.

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You Need Some Strong Medicine: The New Holmes on the Range

You Need Some Strong Medicine: The New Holmes on the Range

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This updated essay, a comprehensive chronology, and a Q&A which Steve Hockensmith kindly did with me, represent the deepest dive anyone has done on the terrific Holmes on the Range series. It incorporates all the novels and short stories featuring Otto and Gustav Amlingmeyer, as well as the two novels and one short story for the spin-off Double-A Western Detective Agency.

I just read the new novel, Strong Medicine, and it was great Big Red and Old Red fun, as always. Throughout the year I listen to various Holmes on the Range audiobooks and they keep entertaining.

If I still haven’t convinced you to try that first novel, Holmes on the Range (or the short story collection, Dear Mr. Holmes), give me the benefit of the doubt. Steve’s a really good writer, and these are fun Western mysteries, with a Holmes underlay. Don’t be a saphead. 🙂

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In the Summertime: The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

In the Summertime: The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

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This news, which is called true, is so like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.

Second Gentleman, Act V Scene ii

Over the past several years, I’ve written about three of Shakespeare’s plays; The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Macbeth. All are steeped in the magical and wondrous. Part of the whole point of this column is to force myself to read some things I haven’t already. With plenty of the his plays left unread, I turned once more to his works. While no more of his works are as overtly supernatural, I knew there were elements to be found in at least one or two more. Perhaps, the most obvious is Hamlet, wherein a dead king’s ghost spurs his mopey son on to action. As I’ve read and seen it performed numerous times, I dug around a bit and came upon The Winter’s Tale. While in the end it’s doesn’t near the three first mentioned plays in mystical content, there is some, and, more importantly, it’s a fascinating and strange play.

First published in the First Folio in 1623, the exact date of the play’s composition remains uncertain. Nonetheless, most authorities consider it one of his latter works, probably written around 1610. It’s catalogued among his problem plays, a term first used by critic F.S. Boas to describe All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida. These are plays that veer from the tragic to the comic, not sticking to a single major tone as do his comedies and tragedies. Later, The Winter’s Tale, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice were added to the list by others. Boas felt the plays allowed the exploration of complex themes in unique ways. That The Winter’s Tale veers from the terrible and tragic to the comic and pastoral before achieving reconciliation can definitely be seen in this light.

The title implies we are going to hear a story, one that might be told around the hearth on a cold winter’s night. Filled with implausibilities, it will draw us into a tale both tragic and comic, but in the end, provide us with a happy ending (more, or less) that we want to hear.

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