MPorcius
We here at MPorcius Fiction Log are exploring 1959 speculative fiction, and we've got a map to guide us, a map drawn by that Trotskyist cheerleader of the New Wave, Judith Merril. The map comes from the back of Merril's fifth Year's Best anthology, where lies a long list, alphabetically...
MPorcius
Usually here at MPorcius Fiction Log we read old stories, but today we're mixing things up and reading some recent speculative fiction. Last week I was in the District (you might know it as The Swamp) and took a look at the clearance carts at Second Story Books on Dupont Circle. Among the books...
MPorcius
We recently read a story from the October 1956 issue of Infinity by Harlan Ellison, and I noticed that advertised on the cover of the issue is a story by Damon Knight I have not read. So let's read it! And two other stories Knight published in the same period. We've already read a bunch of...
MPorcius
Here at MPorcius Fiction Log we are reading stories from my paperback copy (signed by the author!) of Alone Against Tomorrow by Harlan Ellison. Three stories today from the "man of passion," as Cecil Smith of Los Angeles Times likes to call him, "Try a Dull Knife," "In Lonely Lands," and "Eyes of...
MPorcius
The lake of the Horibs lies at a considerable distance from the eastern end of the mountains of the Thipdars, perhaps five hundred miles, and where there is no time and distances are measured by food and sleep it makes little difference whether places are separated by five miles or five...
.jpg)
MPorcius
Welcome back to MPorcius Fiction Log and to another 1943 issue of Weird Tales. Big names today, including two of the biggest, plus one of H. P. Lovecraft's closest associates and Robert E. Howard's literary agent. Within this July '43 issue of D. McIlwraith's magazine we also find a decent new...
MPorcius
The last time we mined stories from the Honorable Mentions list at the back end of Judith Merril's Year's Best SF: Fifth Annual Edition, we read stories by four people whose names began with "C" and with whose work I was not very familiar. Today we've got some Merril-approved "D"s and two of them...
MPorcius
In our last episode, one full of car wrecks, Hollywood-bashing and dangerous women, we read a good story by the Hugo- and Locus-Award winning P. Schuyler Miller, and thought it good enough that further exploration of the Miller body of work was warranted. Let's start in Miller's early days with...
.jpg)
MPorcius
In our last episode we read some "proper" science fiction, two stories about space aliens shipwrecked here on Earth and a story about an eight-year-old girl who has psychic powers that threaten all of humanity. (We also read a story about an upper-middle-class woman who dates a djinni and gets...
MPorcius
Judith Merril, favorite of the critics, cheerleader of the New Wave, recognized a lot of authors whose names begin with the letter "C" on her honorable members list at the back of her 1960 "Best of" anthology. Today we'll read four stories by such writers, none of whom I think I have read stories...
MPorcius
Recently, one of my well-read commenters recommended the author Robert Arthur. Not long after, I encountered at an antique mall a hard cover edition of the one Arthur collection listed at isfdb, Ghosts and More Ghosts, the one with an owl on the cover, not one of the editions with a ghost on the...
MPorcius
"In the Federation, human and non-human have managed to work together pretty well. The day may come when your world will want to join them."Someplace in the Middle West, I forgot to record where, I recently bought a copy of the 1965 Ace Double of Edmond Hamilton's Fugitive of the Stars and Ken...
MPorcius
We continue to creep through Weird Tales! Last time we read four stories from the January 1943 issue, and today we've got three tales from the issue dated March 1943, the second of the six issues of the Unique Magazine published that year. Big names today: Arkham House co-founder August Derleth;...
.jpg)
MPorcius
Here comes a new dawn! Here comes a new day! Here at MPorcius Fiction Log we are trying to read at least one story from each issue of influential speculative fiction magazine Weird Tales and today we begin chipping away at issues with a cover date of 1943. We've already got over a dozen years...
MPorcius
The November 1942 issue of Weird Tales has one of the worst covers in the magazine's history--the composition haphazard, the style primitive, the colors dull. Ugh. But there are some big names inside--Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Hannes Bok, Damon Knight, H. P. Lovecraft, David H....