I’ll vote for EC Tubb and Alan Burt Akers (a pen name)—Prince of Scorpio: I really enjoyed these.
In the spirit of recovering lost books…what are your favorites in that category?
by CJ | Mar 26, 2012 | Journal | 67 comments
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H. Beam Piper’s books and stories are, I think, mostly available as ebooks. His short story, Naudsonce, is a favorite. A group of archaeologists / xenolinguists puzzle out an alien language, based on surviving text. His fiction varies and by today’s standards, it’s a little dated sometimes in its views, but still very enjoyable. The editions I read are around the same time I learned what one of the fonts used was: Melior, by Hermann Zapf, who has done a lot of fine font work over the years. Melior still seems like a good text font for science fiction. It was built on a “super-ellipse,” a sort of squarish oval reminiscent of the old TV picture tube outlines. 😉 (Yes, I was an early type and language geek….)
I remember a few writers from the 80s that never got the play they deserved.
David Palmer wrote a couple of books, Emergence and Threshold; one was postapocalyptic (world decimated by superbug, survivors genetically enhanced) and the other was rather unclassifiable (boy meets girl, girl turns out to be alien with incredible powers, girl kidnaps boy and abandons him on her homeworld to see if he will survive the quest to find her).
Ann Maxwell normally wrote romance novels, but branched off once and wrote a series of 3 sci-fi novels: Fire Dancer, Dancer’s Luck and Dancer’s Illusion that were pretty good, if spiked with a few steamy scenes. Two refugees of different but symbiotic species, the last (they think) survivors of their world’s destruction, kidnapped and sold into slavery. Rheba is a fire dancer, who can control energy of all types; Kirtn is her guardian and trainer. The trilogy follows their escape from slavery with a motley crew of fellow slaves from different worlds; Rheba has promised to deliver as many of them home as possible in exchange for their help in breaking out and looking for other survivors from their planet.
Tom Reamy wrote one novel, Blind Voices, and one collection of short stories, San Diego Lightfoot Sue. Who knows what evil (and good) lurks in the heart of the Midwest? It looks like someone acquired rights to republish Blind Voices, but SDLS is still out of print.
I have some very tattered copies of Ann Maxwell’s Fire Dancer series somewhere here.
I liked Ann Maxwell’s work. THere was another book—another writer—called WIzard of Glass, which I particularly liked. NEver saw another by the same writer.
I couldn’t find any mention of a book called Wizard of Glass. Do you mean Masters of Glass by M. Coleman Easton? (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0445200642). If so, there was a second book in the series, The Fisherman’s Curse. Here’s his bibliography: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?3025 .
I loved Hal Clement’s _Needle_ and _Mission of Gravity_ so much that I went out and bought more of his books. I’d love to see those recovered. I remember loving Leigh Brackett, but it’s been so long since I read her, it would be like discovering her all over again. Of the Gordon Dickson books, my favorites are _Way of the Pilgrim_ and _Wolf and Iron_. Though it’s fantasy, one of my all time favorites is the Mary Stewart’s Merlin series. It isn’t digitally available, and it’s such a cornerstone to the genre, I think it should be digitized. Then there’s John Brunner’s _The Sheep Look Up_, which seemed too dark when I first read it, but nailed so much of today’s culture it’s scary.
Wolf and Iron by Gordon Dickson is another of those I was thinking of. A more realistic portrayal of collapse and recovery of society.
John Ford’s “The Dragon Waiting”
Harrison”s “Viriconium” series
John Brunner’s “The Traveler In Black”
Kieth Laumer’s “Retief” series
Robert Adams’ “Horseclans”
Manley Wade Wellman’s “Silver John” stories
@Logan: Retief’s been digitized, it’s up on Kobobooks-dot-com.
Logan, are you referring to Wellman’s “John the Balladeer” stories? If so, you can find them in the e-book version of Mountain Magic published by Baen (http://www.baenebooks.com/p-288-mountain-magic.aspx).
Hiya folks 🙂 It seems like some good folks here haven’t found the Baen e-books website yet! (http://www.baenebooks.com/) Some of the authors mentioned here, that Baen has available in e-books, are Keith Laumer (Retief, etc.), Robert Heinlein, Fritz Leiber (Fahfrd & the Grey Mouser series), Spider Robinson, and Andre Norton (many omnibus books, e.g. Time Trader books, Moon Singer series, Forerunner series, and many more). One specific Norton book mentioned here, The Iron Cage (along with Breed to Come), will be in a Baen omnibus coming out in Jan 2013 called The Iron Breed. Robinson’s Callahan books are also available as e-books on Amazon.com. I’ve noticed a bunch of Robert Heinlein e-books are also up on Amazon.com lately. Oh, and the Dray Prescot books (by Alan Burt Akers aka Kenneth Bulmer) are being published in omnibus editions by Mushroom eBooks (http://www.mushroom-ebooks.com/authors/akers/akers.html), and are also available on Amazon.com.
My own reading is not as broad as all of you; I read a lot of Jack Chalker when I still had access to my grandfather’s (impressive) paperback collection. I tended to gravitate toward series of books; so I read Varley’s Titan trilogy, and Chalker. Later, I read Zahn’s Conqueror trilogy and Card’s Ships of Earth books…
As for things that are out of print, for years I tried to track down Tanith Lee novels – I’d got hold of Don’t Bite the Sun, and Drinking Sapphire Wine, from a used-book place in Texas…when I moved to Mississippi those went missing, as did my treasured hardcover omnibus eds of Night’s Daughter and Lords of Darkness. Well…at one point someone gave me a reprint of the 4-BEE books (reprint was titled Biting the Sun). Now *that* has gone missing, in some move or other.
I did get my hardcovers back; it turned out some family did indeed listen when I begged them to store as many of my books as they could.
But I haven’t seen any of Tanith Lee’s work digitized, and that seems a great pity to me.
For me, fantasy novels are a quick read; sci-fi is much more “work” to read, and so I take more time to read them. I can think of books I’ve read in the past that I wish I could find again, but I never do know where to look for them. Things like the old “Aces High” series of books – about which all I can clearly recall are the characters and not any of the authors, sadly.
I do wish we could preserve books better. I adore the *smell* of a book. There’s something special and magical about that paper-and-ink scent; about the feel of pages under the fingers and the weight of words in the hand.
And, well, real books don’t make my eyes hurt when I’m having an allergy attack. E-books (let it be said I’m using Microsoft Reader) tend to be a lot of bright white background and nice crisp black letters. The background kills me when I’m having a flare-up. Printed books don’t seem to irritate my eyes as much.
Ah, Chalker! I got hooked on his “Well of Souls” series, then his “The Four Lords of the Diamond” series, and ended up getting every single book he wrote 🙂 (I even have The Devil’s Voyage) I was lucky enough to meet him at Nolacon II (1988) and chat with him at lunch. As far as I know, only a few of his books are available as e-books (seven e-books on Amazon), and I definitely list him as an author who’s books need to be digitized.
I enjoyed Chalker, but some of his novels seemed horribly misogynistic. I may have to reread them and see how much of that was true and how much of that was how I was feeling at the time (I left college for a while around then due to a misfit between my goals and their teaching styles).
I think the ‘Aces High’ series you remember might be ‘Wild Cards’, organized by George R. R. Martin. Alien superbug infects Earth — 10% die outright, 1% develop unusual abilities, 1% of that 1% become (for lack of a better term) comic book type superheroes, or villains. Characters like the Sleeper, who goes dormant for months at a time, then wakes up with a new super ability. Or the Great and Powerful Turtle, whose TK only functions when he’s concealed from view due to psych issues. Sound familiar?
Ah yes! I knew I had only half the name. I really liked the Sleeper. Great and Powerful Turtle was a good one, too. I only got to read two of the books…the first one and one other (I don’t think sequence matters much with that series?).
Andon: I liked Soul Rider and Well of Souls so much that I nagged my family for an entire year to get me all the books off of Amazon. I wouldn’t have been such a nag if they could’ve found e-book formats!! A bonus was that my grandfather gave me the Four Lords of the Diamond series as a gift, too.
I second the “Callahan’s” series. Has anybody voted for MA Foster, MZB, or Anne McCaffrey? Wish I could remember the author of a book of several short stories I read back in highschool that did as much as any to get me hooked! 🙁 Still have it, packed from last move, thought I had a second copy lying about. 🙁 Cover had a cloudy blue planet agains a green nebulous background.
Noticed nobosy’s voted for Tolkein yet–I agree. Only read The Hobbit, because I thought I should, but I disliked his “cardboard cutout”, flat characters. “Hey fellows, lets all go rushing off to who knows where for no rational reason to have an adventure!” “Doh, OK. I’m in.” CJ is much, much more to my liking for characterization!
There may have been “grand old men of SF”, but I swear, in the past couple decades the women have been puttin’ ’em to shame on their characterization.
I have some Anne McCaffrey e-books and audio books. They came in a massive “package” of e-books that my stepfather assembled for me…I’m not entirely sure where he got them. I was glad though, because that package also had the entire Miles Vorkosigan series (Lois McMaster Bujold) and I’d never had a chance to read the *other* books after Borders of Infinity…!
I’d be sort of glad to find Larry Niven in e-book format. My father gave me The Smoke Ring for a gift once, and I was entranced. The only other Niven I have is the anthology they made (N-Space) which was nifty but…
I will take polite exception to your opinion of Tolkein *grin* I can understand not everyone likes his work. I admit to coming to the Lord of the Rings after the films came out; but Hobbit was a childhood staple of mine. It was designed to be read aloud, really. I didn’t find the characterization to be flat, but simply in a style different from modern fiction, and no more objectionable than CS Lewis. (Because really, what eight year old wouldn’t just hug a lion to pieces?)
I did find one character in The Hobbit: Gollum.
Brian Daley-Doomfarer series (He was a bright light lost to early)
James Blish-Cities in Flight
Micheal Bishop-Michealmas
Karl Edward Wagner-various
David Bischoff-The Gaming Magi series
Clifford D. Simak Where the evil Dwells (among others)
The Doomfarer books by Daley (and the Alacrity trilogy) are available from Amazon. SFGateway has Cities In Flight as the individual novels, and a bunch of Simak, including Where the Evil Dwells (although they haven’t gotten around to City, which I’ve been waiting for since they announced they’d signed Simak’s estate).
AHA! IDEA! — Not only is it useful to name what authors and books we’d like to see in ebooks, but — It would be very handy for someone to keep track of who has a copy pb/hb available to scan/type in, should it be needed.
I know I have some of the books mentioned here (e.g. John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting and Poul Anderson’s The Peregrine (aka Star Ways)). My list of books, although I still have another 1000 to enter in the database, is at http://connect.collectorz.com/users/AndonSage/books/view .
Remember that scanning a copy of your own to use in your e-reader, thus preserving it against accidents, is ok; providing that scanned copy to a friend without payment to the author—or his estate—is not, as you know. That’s where these big efforts have the wherewithal to take proper precautions and be sure of the rights. Wiki will help advise you of status of the author—but remember the rights go to next-of-kin like any other inheritance, and that’s info you can only get by asking their agent, usually. For instance, Karen Anderson is still actively in charge of Pohl’s books, and they continue available.
I have a small penchant for the sole SF outings of writers from other genres: EM Forster’s The Machine Stops is still classic and hasn’t been beat for an internet dystopia. PD James’ Children of Men – both the book and the movie, which barely have the same story at all apart from the underlying meme. Neither of those are exactly hard to find, though. In the same vein, Cecelia Holland’s Floating Worlds had a 30th anniversary reprint, and Amazon have stock.
My other lost (as in, I have it somewhere but can’t find it) masterpiece was James Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon)’s Up the Walls of the World, which is an interesting exploration of really alien psychology.
Late to the party…’net was down for a week at my house 🙁
Chondrite, Ann Maxwell also wrote a few other books which I adored, my favorite being Name of a Shadow; also there was The Jaws of Menx, and A Dead God Dancing. I just loved her characterization. And Name of a Shadow had a line which haunts me to this day (referring to the people of that story, some of whom were called Galactics, and a particular race called the Sharnn): “A Galactic believes the universe is beyond human comprehension. A Sharrn believes the universe is shaped by human comprehension.” Gives me shivers every time I read it. I think her books can still be found on Alibris.
Someone else mentioned McKillip’s Riddle-Master trilogy, also a great favorite of mine. That can be found in one volume on Alibris, possibly at Amazon.
I would also throw in M. A. Foster’s The Gameplayers of Zan. There were two sequels and I found all 3 in one volume on Alibris. Oh, and Tanith Lee’s The Birthgrave, that’s one I need to replace if I can find it.
I’ve also got PB’s of Ann Maxwell’s “Name of a Shadow”, “Jaws of Menx” and “Dead God Dancing”.
None of them are available for my Kindle, and used copies are expensive! Waaahhhh!
Sharrn? Somehow, that rings a bell as if I’ve heard it somewhere else, but I don’t think I’ve read anything by Ann Maxwell. Maybe a nod to it elsewhere?
On second thought, maybe I’m thinking of the Narn from B5. (Huh, Narn? Narnia? Never thought of it that way before, heheh.)
Never mind, I thought I had something cogent/salient to add, but apparently I’m just confoozed.
@BlueCatShip Perhaps you’re thinking of Bai Sharn from the Faded Sun books?
Could be. I haven’t reread the trilogy in a few years; I think I’ve only read it twice.
By comparison, I’ve reread the Chanur books at least four times; probably Downbelow Station, Merchanter’s Luck, and Finity’s End about that many.
There are a few of hers I haven’t yet read: The Dreaming Tree and Faery trilogy and the Rusalka/Russian novels among them. Would’ve read more of the Rider at the Gate series, and I haven’t yet read Hammerfall/Iron Forge or the Fortress books. — Dang, I’d better get busy.
But the biggest is, I’m still in book 2 of the Foreigner series. However…I can relate to Bren a *lot*, a little more than I’d like to admit, sometimes. 🙂
Somehow, this has reminded me to check about Ardath Mayhar. (Her name always sounded hani to me!) She was a fantasy author. I got a chance to meet her once at a con, didn’t know who she was, but we were both early and struck up a conversation. Sweet lady, quiet and personable, grandmotherly or aunt type. I was saddened to hear from another fan that she’d passed away a few years later. She is evidently well liked personally and for her writing. So, good reminder for me to look for her books. She was at the con like most SF&F authors, to meet fans, sell books, and — enjoy the con too. That was either the first or second year for ApolloCon in Houston. 🙂
Ardath Mayhar — Oh my goodness! Amazon lists 22 books, ranging from historical fiction, Texas folklore, American Indian history/lore, a couple of juveniles (YA), fantasy, possibly some non-fiction…several have American Indian background…wow, this looks terrific. (Now I’ll have to see what Ms. Mayhar’s own background was. Looks like an interest in history and culture there for sure.)