Haffner Press has just announced its upcoming publications for the rest of 2010. Their four big retrospectives will publish a lot of early classic speculative fiction that isn’t often seen, presenting the work of Leigh Brackett (1915-78), Edmond Hamilton (1904-77), and Henry Kuttner (1915-58). All four books are available for pre-order from the publisher’s web site.
The previously announced The Collected Captain Future (Volume Two) by Edmond Hamilton, will be a $40.00, 700+ page hardcover introduced by Bertil Falk (It’s scheduled for publication in December). The Captain Future stories, first published between 1940 and 1951, were originally set in 1990, and began “when scientist Roger Newton, his wife Elaine, and his brilliant fellow scientist Simon Wright leave planet Earth to do research in an isolated laboratory on the moon. Simon’s body is old and diseased and Roger enables him to continue doing research by transplanting his healthy brain into an artificial floating case. Working together, the two scientists manage to create an intelligent robot called Grag, and a synthetic man, or android, with shape-shifting abilities called Otho. Unfortunately, the criminal scientist Victor Kaslan arrives on the moon and murders the Newtons. The deaths of the Newtons leave their son, Curtis, to be raised by the unlikely trio of Otho, Grag, and Simon Wright (often referred to as the Living Brain). Under their tutelage, Curtis grows up to be a brilliant scientist and as strong and fast as any champion athlete. He also grows up with a strong sense of responsibility and hopes to use his scientific skills to help people. In the first adventure, he offers his services to the President of the System. The publicity-shy Curtis suggests he work under the alias Captain Future. Simon, Otho, and Grag are referred to as the Futuremen in subsequent stories.” The Haffner volume will include:
“Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones” (first published in Captain Future, Winter 1941)
“Star Trail to Glory” (Captain Future, Spring 1941)
“Magician of Mars” (Captain Future, Summer 1941)
“The Lost World of Time” (Captain Future, Fall 1941)
“The Future of Captain Future”
a gallery of artwork
The Universe Wreckers will be Volume Three of Haffner’s The Collected Edmond Hamilton, will have an introduction by Eric Leif Davin, and will be a $40.00, 700+ page hardcover. Haffner says “This volume sees Hamilton established not only as a regular contributor to Weird Tales, but also to Amazing Stories, Hugo Gernsback’s new magazine Air Wonder Stories, and the young upstart publication, Astounding Stories. Eight of these stories are reprinted for the first time, including two novels: Cities in the Air and The Universe Wreckers. This book will include:
Cities in the Air (Air Wonder Stories, November-December 1929)
“The Life-Masters” (Weird Tales, January 1930)
“The Space Visitors” (Air Wonder Stories, March 1930)
“Evans of the Earth Guard” (Air Wonder Stories, April 1930)
“The Plant Revolt” (Weird Tales, April 1930)
The Universe Wreckers (Amazing Stories, May-July 1930)
“The Death Lord” (Weird Tales, July 1930)
“Pigmy Island” (Weird Tales, August 1930)
“Second Satellite” (Astounding Stories, August 1930)
“World Atavism (Amazing Stories, August 1930)
“The Man Who Saw the Future” (Amazing Stories, August 1930)
“The Mind-Master” (Weird Tales, October 1930)
“The Horror City” (Weird Tales, February/March 1931)
Original Pulp Illustrations
Readers’ Letters from Original Magazines
Correspondence between Hamilton and the SF Luminaries of the Day
Shannach—The Last: Farewell to Mars by Leigh Brackett will be a $40.00, 500+ page hardcover. They haven’t yet chosen who’ll write the introduction to the book, but it will “pick up where Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances left off, collecting the final 16 stories of strange adventures on other worlds from the undisputed ‘Queen of Space Opera’. Drawn from the last years of pulp magazines such as Planet Stories, Startling Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories, Shannach—The Last: Farewell to Mars sees Brackett at the peak of her talents. Oddly, it is at this point where she abandons the ‘planetary romance’ sub-genre and embarks on a small string of stories tinged with social relevance. This departure didn’t stop editors asking for some of ‘that old Brackett magic’ and she offered up two latter day tales (‘The Road to Sinharat’ and ‘Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon’) before returning to chronicle further adventures of Eric John Stark in her final ‘Skaith’ novels. Closing out the collection is a trio of tales written on commission from the ‘king of anthologies’, Roger Elwood.” Contents of this book:
“The Truants” (Startling Stories, July 1950)
“The Citadel of Lost Ages” (Startling Stories, December 1950)
“The Woman from Altair” (Startling Stories, July 1951)
“The Shadows” (Startling Stories, February 1952)
“The Last Days of Shandakor” (Startling Stories, April 1952)
“Shannach—the Last” (Planet Stories, November 1952)
“Mars Minus Bisha” (Planet Stories, January 1954)
“Runaway” (Startling Stories, Spring 1954)
“The Tweener” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1955)
“The Queer Ones” (Venture, March 1957)
“All the Colors of the Rainbow” (Venture, November 1957)
“The Road to Sinharat” (Amazing Stories, May 1963)
“Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon” (F&SF, October 1964)
“Come Sing the Moons of Moravenn” (The Other Side of Tomorrow, 1973)
“How Bright the Stars” (Flame Tree Planet, 1973)
“Mommies and Daddies” (Crisis, 1974)
“Afterword” by Leigh Brackett
Finally, Haffner will be starting a new series of the works of Henry Kuttner with Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One. This will be a $40.00, 600+ page hardcover. Haffner says of the author “Before his marriage to (and subsequent collaborations with) Catherine L. Moore, Henry Kuttner was a frequent contributor to the pulp magazines that specialized in the weird, supernatural, horror, and science fiction genre. Beginning in 1936, with the minor classic ‘The Graveyard Rats’, Kuttner launched a steady stream of short stories aimed Weird Tales, Thrilling Mystery, Spicy Mystery, and others. Writing for Weird Tales brought Kuttner into direct correspondence with that magazine’s premier contributor. H.P. Lovecraft. Kuttner set several stories in Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ and several are presented in Terror in the House including: ‘The Secret of Kralitz’, ‘The Eater of Souls’, ‘The Salem Horror’, ‘The Jest of Droom-Avista’, ‘The Frog’, ‘The Invaders’, and ‘The Bells of Horror.’ Given the short lengths of Kuttner’s stories, he had to be prolific and he contributed reams of copy to the weird-menace (a sub-genre of horror where a seemingly supernatural plot is resolved with a pedestrian ending) pulps, Thrilling Mystery and Spice Mystery. It was his specialization for ‘spicy’ or sexed-up stories that led Kuttner to write two stories and one novelette for the first issue of Marvel Science Stories, arguably the first ‘spicy’ science fiction pulp.” This volume will include:
“The Graveyard Rats”, (Weird Tales, March 1936)
“Bamboo Death” (Thrilling Mystery, June 1936)
“The Devil Rides” (Thrilling Mystery, September 1936)
“The Secret of Kralitz” (Weird Tales, October 1936)
“Power of the Snake” (Thrilling Mystery, November 1936)
“Coffins for Six” (Thrilling Mystery, December 1936)
“It Walks by Night” (Weird Tales, December 1936)
“Laughter of the Dead” (Thrilling Mystery, December 1936)
“The Eater of Souls” (Weird Tales, January 1937)
“Terror in the House” (Thrilling Mystery, January 1937)
“The Faceless Fiend” (Thrilling Mystery, January 1937)
“The Dweller in the Tomb” (Thrilling Mystery, February 1937)
“I, the Vampire” (Weird Tales, February 1937)
“Nightmare Woman” (Thrilling Mystery, March 1937)
“The Salem Horror” (Weird Tales, May 1937)
“My Brother, The Ghoul” (Thrilling Mystery, June 1937)
“I am the Wolf” (Thrilling Mystery, July 1937)
“The Jest of Droom-Avista” (Weird Tales, August 1937)
“Four Frightful Men” (Thrilling Mystery, September 1937)
“When the Earth Lived” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1937)
“Terror on the Stage” (Thrilling Mystery, September 1937)
“Lord of the Lions” (Thrilling Mystery, November 1937)
“The Bloodless Peril” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1937)
“Invasion from the Fourth Dimension” (Thrilling Mystery, January 1938)
“Messer Orsini’s Hands” (Spicy Mystery, January 1938)
“Worlds’ End” (Weird Tales, February 1938)
“The Graveyard Curse” (Spicy Mystery, March 1938)
“The Unresting Dead” (Thrilling Mystery, March 1938)
“The Shadow on the Screen” (Weird Tales, March 1938)
“Hell’s Archangel” (Spicy Mystery, April 1938)
“My Name Is Death” (Spicy Mystery, May 1938)
“Devil’s Masquerade” (Mystery Tales, June 1938)
“The Dark Heritage” (Marvel Science Stories, August 1938)
“Dictator of the Americas” (Marvel Science Stories, August 1938)
“The Disinherited” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938)
“Hands Across the Void” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1938)
“The Frog” (Strange Stories, February 1939)
“The Invaders” (Strange Stories, February 1939)
“The Bells of Horror” (Strange Stories, April 1939)
“Beyond Annihilation” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1939)