Xenograffiti (15 page)

(1993)

This award is the culmination of all I’ve worked for during the past quarter century. I started my first book in 1968 as a senior Honor’s project at Gonzaga University. While attending Baycon in Berkeley that fall, and meeting for the first time a number of writers who had just been names on the title pages of their books, I realized that no one had ever compiled a “who’s who” of the science fiction field. I decided to produce one myself. It was my first experience as both author and publisher.

I was too dumb and too inexperienced to realize the utter impossibility of the task, so I rented a post office box, ordered some stationery and questionnaires, and began mailing them out. Much to my surprise, writers began responding in great numbers, many of them providing illuminating comments and quotations that I could use to highlight their entries. I compiled their bibliographies from the sources available to me, and typed up the individual entries on offset masters. Gonzaga found a little money somewhere to help complete publication, and I had my first reference book.

Stella Nova
, as it was called, had serious flaws, including design problems with the index and an overuse of obscure abbreviations. But I learned more from working on that first nascent publication than from all of my academic classes. There’s a vast gulf between theory and practice that separates the amateurs from the professionals in almost every field of knowledge.

Even this early publication wasn’t produced in a vacuum, however, since I partially patterned the book’s design on the style used in
Contemporary Authors
, adapting it to suit my own needs. Within a year of its publication in 1970, I had proposed and sold to Gale Research Company two new books: a bibliography of the first twenty years of the mass market paperback, and a reworking of
Stella Nova
into a bio-bibliography of science fiction, replacing and updating Everett F. Bleiler’s pioneering guide,
The Checklist of Fantastic Literature
.

Bleiler’s influence on all subsequent reference works in our genre should not be underestimated. Produced at a time when bibliographical resources were minimal,
The Checklist
set a standard rarely to be exceeded or even equaled in the following decades, save by Bleiler himself. The book is an extraordinary piece of scholarship: authoritative and comprehensive, with an attractive, easy-to-use format. That such a work could have even been published in early 1948—coincidentally, within a month of my birth—is a remarkable testament to the man and his abilities, and to the acumen of my late friend, Ted Dikty, who published it.

Bradford M. Day and others had produced supplements to Bleiler’s guide, but I envisaged a complete re-verification of the original database, using the
National Union Catalog
,
British Museum Catalogue
, and other works not available in the mid-1940s, plus the collection of the late Dr. J. Lloyd Eaton, which had recently been purchased by the University of California, Riverside. I also intended to extend coverage through 1974, the year I actually started work on
Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature
. The two-volume set was published by Gale in late 1979; the supplement, covering the years 1975-1991, was issued by them in 1992, and covered more works in seventeen years than the original volumes had recorded in more than two and one-half centuries of SF publications. Together, the books cover some 38,000 original monographs of fantastic literature published in English.

In the forty-five years since the publication of Bleiler’s
Checklist
, some 530 additional bibliographies, indexes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference tools relating to SF and fantasy have been issued in monograph form. We critics have been extraordinarily blessed with this cornucopia; our brothers and sisters working in mystery and detective literature, a field with twice the number of primary works, have many fewer resources upon which to draw for background information, and those active in the field of Western literature have virtually none. Only a few of these publications, of course, are professionally written, but a surprising number possess at least some utility or merit, and a few are of surpassing excellence, as good as anything produced on “mainstream” literature.

Among the modern compilers of outstanding SF reference tools are: Mike Ashley, Neil Barron, John Clute, Bill Contento, Lloyd Currey, Hal W. Hall, Peter Nicholls, Leslie Kay Swigart, Donald H. Tuck, and, of course, Everett F. Bleiler himself. In particular, special mention needs to be made of Hal Hall, whose work so directly supports that of
all
SF critics. Without his
Science Fiction Book Review Index
and
Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Index
, the standard guides, respectively, to book reviews and secondary sources relating to fantastic literature, none of us would be able to do systematic searches of the secondary literature. His name is one that has been consistently overlooked by the awards committees.

The work that remains to be done is significant. We badly need a current, annotated guide to critical monographs in the field, something that will provide both detailed descriptions and full comparative evaluations of books and dissertations on SF writers and themes. The genre has yet to produce any literary biography of an SF writer equivalent in size and scope and authoritativeness to John J. McAleer’s
Rex Stout: A Biography
(1977), although critical guides have been published on most of the major science fiction and fantasy authors, plus scattered autobiographies and remembrances. The latter provide interesting details on the early publishing history of the field, but lack the kind of objective evaluations of each writer’s life and career that is so badly needed.

We have too many mediocre critical guides available on writers like Stephen King, and far too few on other, less prominent individuals who nonetheless deserve some further consideration for their work; and too many of the critiques and bibliographies that have been published fail, ultimately, even in their understanding of how and why this genre originated and developed. Where other genres and literatures have produced dozens of
festschriften
to honor their esteemed senior colleagues, we have thus far issued none.

All of us have an obligation to act as mentors to the newer members of our group, to provide guidance and assistance in developing projects of all kinds, to make certain that their works are well-organized and -conceived, with appropriate academic apparatus and indexing, and that finally they are brought to some king of successful conclusion through professional publication as essays or books. The Science Fiction Research Association bears the additional responsibility of providing some general guidance and publishing opportunities to its membership. We need to do more to encourage the younger talents among us, to nurture those who receive no support or even castigation from academic colleagues on their own campuses.

We should also issue a list of recommended reference and critical works and standards, for use by our members as pattern works, and by the library world as potential acquisitions. We have the perfect jury in place for determining such a list: the surviving Pilgrim Award recipients. We could further produce an
Annual Review of Science Fiction
, not a yearbook, but an anthology of essays by members on major topics of current interest, similar to those produced by Annual Reviews Inc. and JAI Press. The proceeds from such publications would benefit the organization, while simultaneously providing refereed publication outlets for SFRA members. The possibilities are limited only by the limits of our vision.

We should never forget that
we
are the pioneers,
we
are the pilgrims of fantastic literature. There is scarcely a person in this room who has not or will not at some point in his or her career pen the first critical or biographical or bibliographical essay or book on some SF or fantasy writer. As my Latin teacher would have said,
mirabile dictu!
—what a marvel to say! Instead of treading the broad boulevards of mainstream literature, we have chosen the byways little trodden, the back alleys, the suburbs of criticism, where it is still possible to unearth genuine literary treasures and to make the first significant observations about them. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred years hence, the critics of the future will be examining
our
works to find the first extended contemporaneous examinations of the SF writers of our time. In great measure, we have it within our power to shape the literary consciousness of the future. We must not fail this challenge—or the equal challenge of convincing our academic colleagues of today of the inherent value of fantastic literature. If the history of literature is any judge, many of the “darlings” so highly touted today will not survive the passing of the century in which they lived; while others not as highly regarded by their contemporaries, including many of our genre writers, will continue to be read and enjoyed and discussed into the indefinite future.

For my own part, I expect no phone calls from Ted Koppel or Oprah Winfrey. I won’t be stopped by the man on the street, or even by my fellow professors at Cal State. And I certainly won’t find my advances increasing. But I am very pleased—and deeply honored—that you have found my work worthy of notice, and I hope to spend the next quarter century trying to live up to this honor.

Thank you all very kindly.

A HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY (1993)

When Starmont House, Inc., ceased operations on March 1, 1993, the event marked the end of a publishing era. For almost seventeen years, Starmont published some of the best work of both established and new SF critics, in addition to reprinting a number of previously uncollected pulp classics. Its passing meant the loss of a major outlet for innovative nonfiction books about fantastic literature.

Starmont House was founded by Thaddeus Maxim Eugene “Ted” Dikty (1920-1991). Dikty had received his editorial baptism by becoming managing editor of the then-new specialty house, Shasta Publishers, in 1948, and by working on that company’s first book, E. F. Bleiler’s pioneering bibliography,
The Checklist of Fantastic Literature
. For the next five years Shasta issued dozens of significant books in the field, but eventually collapsed after trying to expand too quickly into mainstream trade publishing. Dikty also edited (with Bleiler) the first “best SF of the year” story anthologies, and later worked for a Chicago-area publishing house.

In 1972 Dikty and Darrell C. Richardson formed FAX Collector’s Editions to reproduce selected pulp-era (and earlier) SF stories and novels; their reprints of lesser-known works by Robert E. Howard were commercially successful, but as the Howard boom began to die, Dikty began searching for new publishing ventures.

By then Dikty and his family (including his wife, SF writer Julian May) had relocated to West Linn, Oregon (and later to Mercer Island, Washington). He envisioned a new publishing company, one wholly owned by the Dikty family, that could capitalize on the growing interest in SF criticism. In 1976 Starmont House, Inc. issued its first book, a guide to the work of Robert E. Howard by Robert Weinberg, with a second guide by Lee N. Falconer (
i.e.
, Julian May) being published the following year.

Neither of these works was packaged as part of a series. However, Dikty had seen the first few books in The Milford Series: Popular Writers of Today, and envisioned a similar series of paperbound books devoted exclusively to science fiction and fantasy writers. To edit the Starmont Reader’s Guides, as they were called, he hired a well-known academic critic, Roger C. Schlobin, who was directed to prepare a series format and to begin soliciting manuscripts.

Schlobin proposed a package similar to that of the Twayne U.S. Authors series, but limited the size of the books to about half that of the Twayne standard. The first twenty titles averaged eighty pages in length, although the small typeface used in the guides enabled Starmont to pack 40,000 words or more into some of its books. The guides were attractively packaged into an innovative series format that first featured Stephen Fabian drawings on the front covers, and later substituted author photographs. Cloth bindings were added as an option in 1980, vastly increasing potential sales in the lucrative library market.

The Starmont Reader’s Guides became the flagship series for the company, eventually reaching Number 61 in 1992 (although some numbers were skipped). As the series progressed, the average length of the guides grew, with one of the later books (
Frederik Pohl
, by Thomas D. Clareson) reaching 178 pages, longer than the average page count of a Twayne critique. Editor Schlobin kept tight control over the guides: the series format required a chronology of the author’s life and works, an introduction summarizing the subject’s biography, coverage of the major books or collections of short stories, detailed primary and secondary bibliographies, and index.

In the early 1980s Starmont added two other series to its list, Starmont Studies in Literary Criticism, intended to feature somewhat longer author- or subject-oriented anthologies and monographs on fantastic literature; and Starmont Reference Guides, which included magazine and publisher indexes and SF bibliographies. More series followed. These later entries to the Starmont list suffered somewhat from a lack of strict editorial guidelines.

In the mid-1980s Starmont acquired its own printing and binding facilities at Eugene, Oregon, using high-speed copiers to produce Starmont’s own titles, while soliciting outside work to keep the plant fully operational. In retrospect, this proved to be an unfortunate choice, for the immediate result was a serious diminution in the production quality of the books, with very little actual savings in cash. When the recession of the early 1990s began hitting specialty and academic publishing, Starmont was affected with the rest, while outside printing jobs also diminished. Ted Dikty’s death on 11 October 1991 removed the founder’s guiding hand from Starmont at a crucial point in its history; and although his daughter, Barbara Dikty, had already been made President of Starmont House, Inc., she could not stem the tide. When Barbara was herself severely injured in a car accident on 26 December 1992, there was no one left to continue. Starmont had published its last few titles the preceding summer.

In total FAX Collector’s Editions issued seventeen books and Starmont House, Inc. another 131 volumes (one book appearing under both imprints), many of them the first extended examinations of their particular subjects, plus two art folios and a fantasy map. Starmont’s authors included such leading critics as: Thomas D. Clareson, Donald M. Hassler, Gary K. Wolfe, Michael R. Collings, S. T. Joshi, Gorman Beauchamp, Kenneth J. Zahorski, Randall D. Larson, Joan Gordon, Hoda M. Zaki, Marshall B. Tymn, Tony Magistrale, Robert M. Price, Darrell Schweitzer, and Sheldon Jaffery, among many others. One Starmont book (
Isaac Asimov
, by Donald M. Hassler) was honored with the Eaton Award as best critical monograph of 1991, and Dikty himself received the 1984 Milford Award for his contributions as editor and publisher. The demise of Starmont House, Inc. represented the loss of both a major market for nonfiction works in the field, and the permanent absence of a strong editorial voice. Starmont House—and the great man who founded it—are both sorely missed.

A FAX Collector’s Editions Bibliography

1972

The Checklist of Fantastic Literature
, by E. F. Bleiler. xix+455 p. Dust jacket illustration by Hannes Bok. ISBN 0-913960-01-2 cloth $10. The ISBN number was assigned retroactively. A facsimile reprint of the 1948 Shasta edition.

The Moon Metal
, by Garrett P. Serviss, with a new introduction and bibliography by Darrell C. Richardson. 163 p. Cover illustration by Eric Bess. ISBN 0-913960-02-0 boards $3.95. The ISBN number was assigned retroactively. A facsimile reprint of the 1900 Harper & Bros. edition of this science fiction novel.

Through the Earth
, by Clement Fezandié. [32] p. LC 80-130879. ISBN 0-913960-00-4 paper $2.50. The ISBN number was assigned retroactively. A facsimile reprint on slick paper of the pulp novella published in
St. Nicholas
magazine in 1898, including the original illustrations.

Valdar the Oft-Born: A Saga of Seven Ages
, by George Griffith, introduction by Darrell C. Richardson. 128 p. Cover illustration by Dean Richardson. ISBN 0-913960-03-9 cloth $3.95. The ISBN number was assigned retroactively. A facsimile of the 1895 C. Arthur Pearson edition of this novel of immortality.

1974

Famous Fantastic Classics #1
, anonymously edited by Robert Weinberg. 128 p., illus. LC 74-20652. Four-color cover art by Stephen E. Fabian. ISBN 0-913960-10-1 paper $3. A facsimile reprint of several pulp stories. Contents: “Tomorrow,” by Arthur Leo Zagat; “The Man in the Moon,” by Homer Eon Flint; “The Snow Girl,” by Ray Cummings; “Creatures of the Ray,” by James L. Aton.

Far Below and Other Horrors
, edited by Robert Weinberg. 151 p. LC 74-82615. Jacket illustration by Lee Brown Coye. ISBN 0-913960-05-5 cloth $6.95. Contents: “Introduction,” by Robert Weinberg; “Far Below,” by Robert Barbour Johnson; “The Execution of Lucarno,” by Julius Long; “Thing of Darkness,” by G. G. Pendarves; “The Accursed Isle,” by Mary Elizabeth Counselman; “Masquerade,” by Mearle Prout; “Naked Lady,” by Mindret Lord; “Out of the Deep,” by Robert E. Howard; “Doom of the House of Duryea,” by Earl Pierce, Jr.; “The Chapel of Mystic Horror,” by Seabury Quinn; “Return to Death,” by J. Wesley Rosenquest; “Under the Tomb,” by Robert Nelson.

The Incredible Adventures of Dennis Dorgan
, by Robert E. Howard. vii+165 p. LC 74-83075. Four-color jacket art by Tom Foster. ISBN 0-913960-06-3 cloth $11.95. Contents: “Introduction,” by Darrell C. Richardson; “The Alleys of Singapore”; “The Jade Monkey”; “The Mandarin Ruby”; “The Yellow Cobra”; “In High Society”; “Playing Journalist”; “The Destiny Gorilla”; “A Knight of the Round Table”; “Playing Santa Claus”; “The Turkish Menace.”

The Lost Valley of Iskander
, by Robert E. Howard. xiv+194 p. LC 74-83076. Four-color jacket art by Michael William Kaluta. ISBN 0-913960-07-1 cloth $12.95. Contents: “Introduction,” by Darrell C. Richardson; “The Daughter of Erlik Khan”; “The Lost Valley of Iskander”; “Hawk of the Hills.”

1975

Famous Fantastic Classics #2
, anonymously edited by Robert Weinberg. 128 p., illus. LC 74-20652. Four-color cover art by Michael William Kaluta. ISBN 0-913960-11-X paper $5. A facsimile reprint of two pulp stories. Contents: “The Stagnant Death,” by H. Bedford-Jones;
The Radio Flyers
, by Ralph Milne Farley.

Famous Pulp Classics #1
, anonymously edited by Robert Weinberg. 128 p., illus. LC 74-20653. Four-color cover art by Michael William Kaluta. ISBN 0-913960-12-8 paper $5. A facsimile reprint of several pulp stories. Contents: “Lances of Tartary,” by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson; “Black Flag,” by Talbot Mundy; “Cave of the Blue Scorpion,” by Loring Brent; “Uneasy Lies the Head,” by Theodore Roscoe; “Four Lashes an Hour,” by Johnston McCulley; “Berber Loot,” by H. Bedford-Jones.

The Shudder Pulps: A History of the Weird Menace Pulps of the 1930s
, by Robert Kenneth Jones. xv+238 p. LC 74-82614. Four-color jacket art by Michael William Kaluta. ISBN 0-913960-04-7 cloth $11.95. Illustrated with reproductions of cover art and interior drawings from the pulps.

1976

Swords of Shahrazar
, by Robert E. Howard. xv+133 p. LC 76-16707. Four-color jacket art by Michael William Kaluta. ISBN 0-913960-08-X cloth $12.95. Contents: “Introduction,” by Frederick Cook; “The Curse of the Crimson God”; “The Treasures of Tartary”; “The Treasure of Shaibar Khan.”

1977

I Found Cleopatra
, by Thomas P. Kelley. 111 p., illus. LC 77-87563. Four-color cover art by Stephen E. Fabian. ISBN 0-913960-18-7 paper $4. A facsimile reprint of the pulp fantasy novel, apparently intended to be a second volume in the “Famous Pulp Classics” series.

The Return of Skull-Face
, by Robert E. Howard and Richard A. Lupoff. 96 p. LC 77-89158. Four-color jacket art by Stephen E. Leialoha. ISBN 0-913960-17-9 cloth $17. An original novel by Lupoff continuing the adventures of Howard’s well-known character, Skull-Face.

Son of the White Wolf
, by Robert E. Howard. xiv+170 p. LC 77-73604. Four-color jacket art by Marcus Boas. ISBN 0-913960-09-8 cloth $12.95. Contents: “Introduction,” by Frederick Cook; “Blood of the Gods”; “Country of the Knife”; “Son of the White Wolf.”

The Weird Tales Story
, by Robert E. Weinberg. ix+134 p. LC 77-73602. Four-color jacket art by Alex Nino, Frank Magsino, and Orvy Jundis. ISBN 0-913960-16-0 cloth $17.50. An illustrated history of the best-known professional magazine of horror.

1979

American Fantasy and Science Fiction: Toward a Bibliography of Works Published in the United States, 1948-1973
, by Marshall B. Tymn. ix+228 p. LC 76-55151. ISBN 0-913960-15-2 paper $12.95.

A Starmont House Bibliography

A comprehensive, descriptive bibliography of the printing and binding states of Starmont House books is probably impossible, given the diversity of styles and formats used throughout its existence, particularly in its last five years. The following list arranges Starmont’s titles in chronological order by year of publication, and gives complete bibliographical information, plus occasional notes:

1976

The Annotated Guide to Robert E. Howard’s Sword & Sorcery
, by Robert Weinberg. viii+152 p. LC 76-16708. ISBN 0-916732-20-7 cloth $13.95 (not available until 1980); ISBN 0-916732-00-2 paper $7.95.

1977

A Gazeteer of the Hyborian World of Conan, Including Also the World of Kull and an Ethnogeographical Dictionary of the Principal Peoples of the Era, with Reference to The Starmont Map of the Hyborian World
, by Lee N. Falconer [
i.e.
, Julian May]. xiv+119 p. LC 77-79065. ISBN 0-916732-19-3 cloth $10.95 (not available until 1980); ISBN 0-916732-01-0 paper $4.95.

The Hyborian World of Conan: Being Here Newly Researched and Embellished for the Information and Edification of the Faithful, and Including All Locales Set Forth in the Immortal Saga, As Well As in Divers Works of a Comical Nature, and in Certain Incunabula Attributed to the Master, Robert E. Howard
, Juliana ux. Thaddei Maximi fecit [
i.e.
, by Julian May]. ISBN 0-916732-11-8 colored map (77 x 103 cm.) $4.95. Printed on glossy paper, and mailed rolled in a tube.

1978

No titles published.

1979

Arthur C. Clarke
, by Eric S. Rabkin.
Starmont Reader’s Guide
, 1. 80 p. LC 79-84709. ISBN 0-916732-12-6 cloth $9.95 (not available until 1980); ISBN 0-916732-03-7 paper $3.95.

Portfolio
, by Stephen E. Fabian. [8] leaves of colored art, housed loosely in a portfolio case. $17.50?

Roger Zelazny
, by Carl B. Yoke.
Starmont Reader’s Guide
, 2. 111 p. LC 79-17107. ISBN 0-916732-13-4 cloth $9.95 (not available until 1980); ISBN 0-916732-04-5 paper $3.95.

1980