In every way this monograph should be regarded as merely a preliminary study of Campbell. Because much of his work is not widely known to the general public, I have felt the need to provide fairly detailed synopses of his major novels and tales, and this has reduced the space available for analysis. While I have chosen to study Campbell's work thematically, I am aware that many other perspectives could be employed. Although the opinions in this book are of course my own, I have also received much useful information from Stefan Dziemianowicz, Michael A. Morrison, and Steven J. Mariconda
A celebration of Australia's current Golden Age of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and magical realism. Jack Dann-the multi-award-winning author and co-editor of the classic Dreaming Down-Under, the anthology that "has been credited with putting Australian writing on the international map" and the first Australian book to win a World Fantasy Award-has collected a wonderfully eclectic range of short fiction that showcases what our best fantasists are doing right now at this genre-bending moment in time.
Prisms are instruments, mirrors, metaphors, gateways humankind must pass through in order to achieve, to overcome, to realize, to become. Contained herein are nineteen transformative tales from some of speculative fiction’s most brilliant minds. So open your eyes and let the light pass through . . .
I hope the title of this book is not misleading. If you are expecting an entire volume of spinoffs from Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time, complete with consciousness-swapping across the aeons, cone-shaped scholarly beings compiling their archives while dinosaurs roam outside their cities and some nameless doom threatens them from below, this isn’t it. I did indeed include a few stories of that sort, as such titles as Robert Guffey’s “Toward a General Theory of Yithian Psychology” and Robert M. Price’s “Crom-Ya’s Triumph” imply. (Crom-Ya, as aficionados will recall, was a Cimmerian chieftain that Lovecraft’s protagonist met when imprisoned in one of those alien bodies during his sojourn in the past.) But the focus of this book is a lot broader. In his 1933 essay “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” Lovecraft "The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and terrible thing in the universe. Conflict with time seems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression." Italics are his, by the way. Contributors were given that quote and told, “Go. Great Race of Yith optional.” This book is the result.
