Ghost stories, vintage science fiction, and some cosmic horror this month.
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (Wordsworth Editions, 2009)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, this was my first time reading anything by Edith Wharton and I was blown away. Beautiful prose and deeper themes than I was expecting from ghost stories.
This consists of three short stories and a novella from the 1950s about Captain Flandry of the Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps. It's labeled Book 3, but it collects the earliest written stories. There’s also an essay by Sandra Miesel that gives an overview of the character. Flandry is a suave rogue who works to stop the collapse of the Terran Empire, what he refers to as “The Long Night.” He’s a little like James Bond (Flandry came first though) who eventually travels with the alien Chives, a character who very much reminds me of Jeeves from the Jeeves and Wooster stories by P. G. Wodehouse. You can really see Anderson’s growth as a writer in these stories.
Swordsmen from the Stars by Poul Anderson (DMR Books, 2020)
This collects three sword & planet pulp stories that originally appeared in Planet Stories in 1951. I enjoyed the first one, thought the second was pretty generic, and loved the third one. More detailed review to come.
I read this a few years ago and re-read some of the stories this month for Cosmic Horror January. Lovecraft is hit and miss for me but when he’s good he’s really good. This time I read from an edition that includes annotations from Lovecraft authority S. T. Joshi. I didn’t read every note but those that I did were fascinating and added to my enjoyment of the stories.
The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales by H. P. Lovecraft (Sterling Publishing, 2015)
I also read parts of this for Cosmic Horror January. I had read about half the stories before and read the rest this month. This is a beautiful hardbound edition with an introduction by S. T. Joshi.
Future Reading
Now that I’ve read all of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories, I’ll be reading some Mythos stories by other authors including Robert Bloch, Neil Gaiman, and Caitlín Kiernan.
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