Recently in Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Category

One of science fiction legend Robert A. Heinlein's earliest novels, 1951's The Puppet Masters is a great, goofy "alien invasion" tale that keeps you hooked from beginning to end.  Set in the early 21st century (when space travel is commonplace by the year 2007!), the book is a first-person account by "Sam" (not his real name), an intelligence agent for a CIA-like organization, who, with his boss "The Old Man", and fellow operative Mary, discovers that parasitic "slugs" from another world have taken over the bodies of various political, business and military leaders to mount a complete takeover of Earth! 

In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), a failed businessman who had been working in a series of various dead-end clerical jobs and was desperate to feed his family, submitted a story to the then-popular pulp magazine All-Story under the pen name of "Normal Bean" (changed by somebody in editorial to "Norman Bean").  The story, originally titled Under The Moons of Mars, was picked up and serialized by All-Story in 1912 and became a popular hit with readers, resulting in a successful literary career for Burroughs (whose third novel was Tarzan of the Apes in 1914, having also been serialized in All-Story two years before). Under the more familiar title A Princess of Mars, Burroughs' first story also inaugurated the popular "Martian" series of adventures when first published in book form in 1917. 

Another fun Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds, originally published in 1975, has just been reissued by Titan Books and will be of interest not just to fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective but to ones of H.G. Wells ' works also.  

My extended second childhood continues with the Classic Media DVD release of the 1965 Japanese/US co-production/Godzilla-and-friends monsterfest Invasion of Astro-Monster. (It was released in America under the less awkward and more accurate title Monster Zero as part of a double bill with 1966's War of the Gargantuas in 1970; I caught both on TV in the early 70s.)  

"Griswell awoke suddenly, every nerve tingling with a premonition of imminent peril."  With that opening line, Robert E. Howard's  short story "Pigeons from Hell" (originally written before the author's death in 1936 and first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1938) sets up the dark and moody atmosphere that permeates the tale throughout it's length.  Griswell and his friend John Branner, traveling through the South, make a big mistake when they decide to spend the night at a deserted and deteriorated old mansion, surrounded by ominous looking pigeons. 

When writer Mickey Spillane passed away in 2006, he left behind a number of unfinished manuscripts  that wound up being completed by Max Allan Collins for publication (such as the recent novels Dead Street and The Goliath Bone).  These manuscripts included a novel spotlighting Spillane's private detective character Mike Hammer which the author began in the mid sixties then shelved until Collins finished it.