Feb. 18th, 2025

jamesenge: (eye)

Typos of the day, from trying to type Batgirl in a hurry on a small screen: Vatgirl and Gatgirl. Both of these sound like they belong to the Legion of Regrettable Supervillains.

The cover of John Morris’ THE LEGION OF REGRETTABLE SUPERVILLAINS, featuring six knockoff villains by various artists: a golden guy with a lightning bolt through his head; a guy in an iron helmet attacking a Batman-knockoff; a green guy with scales pressing a button; a creepy, drippy green monster in an orange robe; a bald devil wearing a business suit, backed with flames; a giant shaggy red monster, pierced through by several projectiles, preparing to hurl a boulder.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

jamesenge: (eye)

I realized this weekend that one of the pleasures of inventing a Martian language was coining new names for all the planets. (Including ones that don’t really exist, like Vulcan, Antichthon, and the Lost Planet that was once supposed to be the precursor for the asteroids.)

I think this version of the Solar System will have 12 planets, including Pluto & a trans-Plutonian planet. 12 is a magic number & if I end up wanting to add a 13th or even a 14th planet, that’s still a dozen (cf the baker’s dozen, the “12” Olympians, tribes of Israel, apostles, Labors of Herc, etc).

This made me nostalgic to read Rocklynne’s The Men and the Mirror (Ace, 1973), which includes one of the few stories written about Vulcan (not Spock’s planet, but the planet that was briefly believed to exist closer to the sun than Mercury). My sword-and-planet version of Vulcan will have to be different–possibly an invisible and/or dirigible planet.

Two men in space suits with bubble helmets are sliding down a mirrorlike object; both men and some planets in the background are reflected in the mirror.
The cover for the 1973 Ace edition of The Men in the Mirror; artist unknown.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

jamesenge: (eye)

A judicious review by Paul Weimer of a great NESFA volume linked below.

I liked this book a lot, but for me the most distinctive feature of this series is the one that I like least: the stories are a mixture of early & late. I’d prefer a chronological ordering, or an ordering by series, or some kind of order. (The ebook only edition of the complete short fiction of Clifford Simak had the same unprinciple, and I didn’t like it there, either.)

On the other hand, you could get hold of all the volumes and use ISFDb to go through them in your preferred order. The “Collected Poul Anderson” volumes are all available pretty cheaply as ebooks from NESFA, so that’s not as flippant a suggestion as it may seem.

https://www.nesfa.org/press/available-books/?ebooks=e

I’ve often wished for a single volume “Best of Poul Anderson” I could hand to or recommend to people. But The old Pocket Book “Best of PA” didn’t really fit the bill; the DAW “BOOK of PA” was a little closer, but was light on fantasy as I recall. And of course they’ve all been out of print forever.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1 2345 67
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 13th, 2025 11:02 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios