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Hannes Bok



"Beyond the Golden Stairs" (nv)
(exp.of "The Blue Flamingo")
© 1949, Startling Stories
book : 1950, Arkham House
--/ fourth place f novel
--/ wonder award
--/ style award


"The Blue Flamingo"
(exp. into "Beyond the Golden Stairs")
© 1948, Startling Stories
--/ fourth place f novel
--/ wonder award
--/ style award


"One Touch of Terra"
© Fantastic Universe, Oct 1956
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ rare find


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"Starstone World" (nv)
© Science Fiction Quarterly, Summer 1942
--/ cool sf novel
--/ rare find

Illustrations by Damon Knight!! What a surprise! By the way this is a novel written by a famous sf artist, with artwork painted by a famous sf writer - quite funny. But also unfortunately, both are of an average quality. This is a very "visual" but totally un-involving novel by Hannes Bok, in contrast to his other wonderful novels. I could not really follow the plot and soon got tired of descriptive passages. However, this must be a total rarity, as it wasn't reprinted, to my knowledge.
review: 07-Jul-06 (read in 2006)

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Hannes Bok
"Web of Moons"

© Future, Apr 1942
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ style award
--/ awesome scale
--/ rare find

An Impressionist Painting... Hallucinations on a Cosmic Scale... Epic Canvas of Fantastic Imagery, compressed in only three pages of text. Hardly a story, but an author's "trip" under the influence of his favorite music (in this case, Tschaikovski's ballet masterpieces) - to the places both splendid and utterly exotic. Prepare for sensory overload: there is bizarre Universal Eroticism for Planets and Nebulas, some Lovecraftian "living tree" beings thrown in for good measure, some Tolkien-sque mythical poetics - all, I repeat, in three pages of text. Hannes Bok was famous for his paintings, so here we have what he does best: a record of his WILD imagination.
review: 20-Dec-07 (read in 2007)

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"SF&F Reading Experience" is part of "Dark Roasted Blend / Thrilling Wonder" family of sites. We try to highlight the most entertaining and rewarding science fiction and fantasy, with emphasis on memorable reader experience, not necessarily general acceptance by the critics. Have fun, and delve into our extensive ratings and reviews!

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