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Post by ropardoe on Jun 28, 2019 18:05:16 GMT
2. Mike Ashley, Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction (1977)I've consulted my copy so many times that the pages have come unglued from the spine. This book is amazing. It's difficult to believe so much information can be crammed into a mere total of 240 pages. That many entries are now outdated and that some writers are not included are not as surprising as that so many writers (as well as magazines and anthologies) are included. Despite ISFDB and a myriad of other internet resources, I still find myself referring to it routinely.
And, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Ashley published it when he's only 29. Looks like anthologists, like musicians and poets, start young. And, unlike many works mentioned in this thread, this book is still easily available at a low price (I know I got my copy very cheap). Mr. Ashley's liberal use of exclamation marks in it is also very endearing!
Mike has always been into creating bibliographies, etc. I remember his first fanzine Xeron, which I think he started publishing in 1965 (i.e. around the age of 17 - the same age as me when I published my first fanzine!). I wasn't in fandom in 1965, but I came in on the end of Xeron's run a few years later, so my memory is more of his short-lived, slightly later fanzine Monolith. He's been and continues to be incredibly prolific - and he's really nice too.
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Post by humgoo on Jul 17, 2019 14:50:03 GMT
He's been and continues to be incredibly prolific - and he's really nice too. Replace "he" with "she" and you're describing ... you know who! Is there any other zine that has been running for 40 years and edited by the same person the whole time? Meanwhile, Mr Ashley is still unearthing unknown stories! JUST A-MA-ZING.
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 18, 2019 8:15:54 GMT
He's been and continues to be incredibly prolific - and he's really nice too. Replace "he" with "she" and you're describing ... you know who! Is there any other zine that has been running for 40 years and edited by the same person the whole time? Meanwhile, Mr Ashley is still unearthing unknown stories! JUST A-MA-ZING. Gosh - I don't know what to say! But you're right about the forty years - G&S has been going forty years this year. Also the next G&S will be the 100th Haunted Library publication. Not sure how that happened!
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Post by helrunar on Jul 18, 2019 15:48:54 GMT
Those are truly amazing milestones, Ro. Congratulations!
Best wishes,
Steve
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jul 19, 2019 10:40:41 GMT
Replace "he" with "she" and you're describing ... you know who! Is there any other zine that has been running for 40 years and edited by the same person the whole time? Meanwhile, Mr Ashley is still unearthing unknown stories! JUST A-MA-ZING. Gosh - I don't know what to say! But you're right about the forty years - G&S has been going forty years this year. Also the next G&S will be the 100th Haunted Library publication. Not sure how that happened! Will the next G&S be in colour?
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Post by johnnymains on Jul 19, 2019 11:52:10 GMT
Will it be the previous 99 issues in one bumper omnibus?
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 19, 2019 15:28:55 GMT
Gosh - I don't know what to say! But you're right about the forty years - G&S has been going forty years this year. Also the next G&S will be the 100th Haunted Library publication. Not sure how that happened! Will the next G&S be in colour? Er, no!
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 19, 2019 15:29:17 GMT
Will it be the previous 99 issues in one bumper omnibus? Er, no!
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 19, 2019 15:30:02 GMT
But it will be a larger than usual (and slightly later than usual!) issue with an extra booklet. More shortly.
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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 30, 2019 22:44:20 GMT
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Feb 18, 2020 16:02:53 GMT
I wholeheartedly recommend Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson's Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction, published in 2019 by Quirk Books (the same folks who brought us Grady Hendrix's excellent Paperbacks from Hell). The authors profile writers from the Gothic era to the present, including many Vault favorites, and offer a wide array of suggestions on works to read--some of which are impressively obscure. Fans of weird tales by women writers will particularly enjoy the section on pulp stars such as Margaret St. Clair, C. L. Moore, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, and Everil Worrell. There are even charming illustrations by Natalya Balnova.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 18, 2020 19:33:52 GMT
I wholeheartedly recommend Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson's Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction, published in 2019 by Quirk Books (the same folks who brought us Grady Hendrix's excellent Paperbacks from Hell). The authors profile writers from the Gothic era to the present, including many Vault favorites, and offer a wide array of suggestions on works to read--some of which are impressively obscure. Fans of weird tales by women writers will particularly enjoy the section on pulp stars such as Margaret St. Clair, C. L. Moore, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, and Everil Worrell. There are even charming illustrations by Natalya Balnova. Thanks, CB, looks terrific! "These misbehaving women who write horror in all its nasty forms" Natalya Balnova Ama*z*n.ukAm*z*n
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drauch
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 56
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Post by drauch on Aug 17, 2021 15:33:58 GMT
The Essential Guide to Mummy Literature (1997)
Checked this out from the library and read through it over the last week, making notes as I went. Invaluable for discovering stories, but I found it highly flawed in its execution. Granted, the wealth of knowledge would be quite the undertaking to synopsize equally, but the disproportional contrast in entries is a bit off-putting, ranging from terse, almost apathetic entries like, "Tale of a mummy back to life.", to verbose, multiple revealing paragraphs describing the entire plot of a story, twists and all. And, I know some of these stories can be quite rare, having only been published in magazines nigh one-hundred years old now, hence some of the succinct descriptions possibly based only on the immediate knowledge at-hand, but from the way the author writes, he clearly goes to excessive lengths with more popular tales that he enjoyed, describing every major plot point until the spoiled end.
It's just a confusing read, being that I'd consider anyone to check out a mummy reference book, especially one MSRP priced at $100, to be a fairly niche reader, so to spoil said stories in excessive detail is quite perplexing.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2021 16:06:15 GMT
The Essential Guide to Mummy Literature (1997)Checked this out from the library and read through it over the last week, making notes as I went. Invaluable for discovering stories, but I found it highly flawed in its execution. Granted, the wealth of knowledge would be quite the undertaking to synopsize equally, but the disproportional contrast in entries is a bit off-putting, ranging from terse, almost apathetic entries like, "Tale of a mummy back to life.", to verbose, multiple revealing paragraphs describing the entire plot of a story, twists and all. And, I know some of these stories can be quite rare, having only been published in magazines nigh one-hundred years old now, hence some of the succinct descriptions possibly based only on the immediate knowledge at-hand, but from the way the author writes, he clearly goes to excessive lengths with more popular tales that he enjoyed, describing every major plot point until the spoiled end. It's just a confusing read, being that I'd consider anyone to check out a mummy reference book, especially one MSRP priced at $100, to be a fairly niche reader, so to spoil said stories in excessive detail is quite perplexing. This is the Brian J. Frost biblio? Never seen a copy, and got so frustrated about it we set to compiling an alternative: The Mummy in Horror & Supernatural Fiction. Bet it's more spoiler ridden than his!
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drauch
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 56
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Post by drauch on Aug 17, 2021 16:15:31 GMT
It is! And I've been going through the Vault's lovely contribution to all-things Mummy, with much more enjoyable results. Especially pleased with the addition of comics as well, which is unfortunately missing in Frost's guide.
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