#AtoZ Challenge: F Is For Fast and Forsyth

This year’s theme is Fantasy and SF - authors and their worlds. 

F is for Howard Fast. You may or may not have heard of Howard Fast, but you will almost certainly be familiar with his work, via Hollywood. Spartacus, anyone? He didn’t write the script for that, it was done by blacklisted script writer Dalton Trumbo, but he did write the book - which was also used as the basis for Laszlo Seregi’s version of the ballet. 

So, what has this to do with science fiction and fantasy? It’s true most of this author’s output was historical fiction, usually left-leaning as he was a member of the Communist party till he decided it was no longer for him and wrote a book about it, The Naked God, which I picked up at a local fete for about 50 cents. Howard Fast was blacklisted and had to self publish Spartacus, using a sort of early type of crowdfunding. 

He wrote some crime fiction under the pen name E.V Cunningham.

But he also wrote quite a lot of short science fiction and fantasy under his own name, most of it published in Fantasy And Science Fiction. You can now get it in three collections, The Edge of Tomorrow, The General Zapped An Angel and A Touch Of Infinity. In fact, his first sale, when he was in his teens, was to Amazing, a science fiction and fantasy magazine. It was called “The Wrath Of The Purple” - here’s a link to it. https://www.trussel.com/hf/purple.htm. 

Another of his SF short stories, “The General Zapped An Angel”, was updated for television, from the Vietnam war to the war in Iraq. 

His stories are all thoughtful, usually serious, though sometimes satirical, such as the above mentioned. Some have something to say about our attitudes to each other. In “The Large Ant” a man wakes up in his cabin to find a giant ant at his bedside, and kills it. The ant is an alien, carrying tools, not weapons. But he will never know, having killed it. 

F is also for Aussie author Kate Forsyth, who is well known for her children’s fantasy books, but also fairy tale re-tellings, such as The Beast’s Garden. Many of her novels are straight historical fiction, such as that one, but her Rapunzel re-telling, Bitter Greens, is definitely fantasy. It is seen from the viewpoint of the author of the French version, Charlotte-Rose De La Force, but also from that of the witch, Selena Leonelli, who was once a model for Titian. I can’t go into detail, due to spoilers, but it’s fantasy. It’s a gorgeous piece of writing. Here is my interview with the author. 

I also love filk songs and fan fiction, but I’ve posted about those, so check my posts! 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2006/06/filk-music-remember-when.html

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2015/01/an-old-fanwriter-reminisces.html