Fear Planet and Other Unusual Destinations

The Reader's Bloch #1

by Robert Bloch, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz (Editor)

It's no secret that a hefty helping of Robert Bloch's fiction remains unreprinted or uncollected since its original publication in pulp magazines, digests and anthologies of original stories. What many readers don't know is how good much of this fiction is. These stories run the full gamut of genres for which Bloch wrote--fantasy, horror, science fiction, mystery--and all showcase Bloch's inimitable style. We can't presume to know why Bloch never collected them in his lifetime, even though he sanctioned the reprinting of some in anthologies. Possibly, he felt they didn't fit the scheme of specific books. Regardless, the stories provide interesting snapshots of Bloch's career at the time they were written, and the evolution of story markets where they appeared.Subterranean Press's The Reader's Bloch series was conceived to give these stories a well-deserved nesting place. It is currently planned to run to two, possibly three volumes, containing approximately fifty stories spanning Bloch's career from the late 1930s to the early 1990s. The series will stand independent of The Lost Bloch series, which concentrated primarily on novella and short-novel length works, but readers who enjoyed those volumes will find the same fun and thrills in these books. Currently, we've planned a volume devoted primarily to science fiction, and another primarily to horror. When you're talking Robert Bloch, however, genre categories have little meaning. Several of the science fiction stories Bloch contributed to Amazing, Startling Stories, Fantastic Adventures and other pulps would have fit comfortably into any of his horror collections. Likewise some of crime stories he contributed to Dime Mystery, DetectiveTales and Mammoth Mystery. Most of the latter were never reprinted, and more's the pity since they show Bloch mastering the hardboiled idiom and dealing with ghoulish themes that chart a line of direct descent from his early horror tales to the psychological suspense novels and stories that became his trademark in the 1950s and '60s. No, we don't plan to include any of the Lefty Feep stories from Fantastic Adventures, but we do have a few surprises up our sleeve, including at least one overlooked story that might be called the bookend to Bloch's Lovecraftian/Cthulhu Mythos stories. And we have a bounty of fantasy and science fiction satires that rank with Bloch's wittiest fiction and essays. In all, the series will offer readers a generous helping of Bloch's writing from his most active and imaginative years.

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror

301 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2004

About the author

Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer. He was the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884, Chicago-1952, Chicago), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880, Attica, Indiana-1944, Milwaukee, WI), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle; Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent.

He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville, and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960's, he wrote 3 stories for Star Trek.

Reviews

[Karl]

This hardcover is copy 617 of 750 copies produced.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Bloch is quintessentially known as the author of stunners like "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" and "A Toy for Juliette". The stories presented in this collection are paler compared to them, but still they are enjoyable in terms of lucidity, irony and humour (there is a surprisingly generous sample of the latter, esp.in the stories like "How bug-eyed was my monster?" and "Beep no more, my lady"). Stories like "Secret of the Observaory" and "Red Moon Rising" have become stale, but the funnier stories are evergreen. Recommended.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very nice stuff. Highly recommended if you're a pulphead or if you have any sort of predilection for the literary versions of vintage sci-fi or b-grade horror films. It reads in that old school Dashiell Hammett-kinda way and has plenty of humor and irony, and even though the stories don't get nearly as creepy as, say, Lovecraft, nor any of Bloch's other like-minded contemporaries, there are still plenty of heebie-jeebie moments, particularly the title story.