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Month: February 2011

Hello Jetpacks! And About Time

Hello Jetpacks! And About Time

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jetlevIt’s 2011.  As far as I’m concerned, personal jetpacks have been overdue for about a decade.

Fortunately, CNN is reporting that a new commercial jetpack is getting set for a release in a few short months:

This summer you could be whizzing around on a Jetlev, a new water-powered jetpack. It’s taken over 10 years for its Canadian inventor, Raymond Li, to realize his dream and see his jetpack go on sale, but judging by the pictures it looks well worth the wait. The Jetlev has three main components — a lightweight carbon fiber backpack, a 10-meter hose and an engine unit which floats on the water. The engine sucks water up through the hose and forces it through two adjustable nozzles on the backpack, creating up to 500 pounds of thrust.

At the age of 12, when I first imagined buying one, a jetpack wasn’t something advertised as a recreational water accessory. But after thirty years of waiting, I’ll take what I can get.

I bet it makes the inevitable crash landings during the “student driver” phase a little less painful, though. So I suppose it’s got that going for it.

jetlev2The Jetlev has a reported top speed of 22 mph, and max achievable altitude of 10 meters.  So I can’t realistically use it to get to the moon, which I swore would be my first jetpack destination (at the age of 12). 

Not without a few modifications, anyway. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the 10-meter max altitude has something to do with that 10-meter hose attachment. So my first modification would be to lengthen it to, oh I don’t know, something that can reach the moon.  

It also retails for $136,000. That’s a bigger obstacle than I thought it would be (at the age of 12).  Back then I figured I’d just get in line and pay whatever the guy at the counter wanted.  I mean, come on.  Jetpack.

So for various mundane reasons, I won’t be rushing out to buy the first JETLEV-FLYER — breaking a promise I made to myself all those decades ago. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

You know what your inner 12-year-old would do.  And when has he (or she) ever been wrong?

We Are Gods, We Are Wolves: A Review of Shadow of the Torturer

We Are Gods, We Are Wolves: A Review of Shadow of the Torturer

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shadow1The Shadow of the Torturer
Gene Wolfe
Simon and Schuster (303 pages, 1980)

In the business of reading, which is as industrious and thankless a hobby as ever there was, there are opening lines and then there are melodies, words that ring like bells and stick in your mind, forever.

It was my fortune that a creature of the second sort happened on me one extremely lucky day, in a used bookstore on the last shelf of science fiction. First, it lured me out with its eerie title.

“Shadow of the Torturer?” said I, to myself, plucking the book off of the shelf. It is the first of four books by Gene Wolfe, and the cover of the little novel I held in my hand depicted a hooded man with a bare chest and a sword.

I thought, “What an odd profession, torturing. I mean. Can you even BE a torturer by profession?”

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Three – “The Avenue Mystery”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Three – “The Avenue Mystery”

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lyonsfu1“The Avenue Mystery” was the third installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on February 6, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 7-10 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

mysteriousfu2While I hold political correctness in contempt recognizing it to be censorship under a different guise, it is inevitable that in revisiting books or films of the past one encounters racial or sexist stereotypes that are now offensive. I do not support banning a work or editing for content anymore than I support minimalizing the issues raised by their inclusion. A simple disclaimer noting offensive content is contained that reflects acceptable attitudes at the time of the work’s creation should suffice to address the matter.

Readers of pulp adventure or mystery fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are accustomed to offensive stereotypes of Asian, African, Italian, Greek, and Jewish characters among others. While Rohmer’s early Fu-Manchu stories contain a good deal less racial stereotyping of Asians than film adaptations or illustrations of the character would suggest; a lamentable streak of anti-Semitism runs through “The Avenue Mystery.” This fact is all the more regrettable because the Jewish character in question, Mr. Abel Slattin ranks among Rohmer’s finest bit players.
 

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Why realism does not equate to adult (or even good) fantasy

Why realism does not equate to adult (or even good) fantasy

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the-steel-remainsThat foul smell in the air? There’s something rotten in the realm of fantasy fiction, and its name is realism.

Two of the blogs I frequent and another one I’ve recently stumbled across have all recently commented on (and lamented about) a new trend gripping fantasy these days: Realism, and the corresponding claim that it somehow makes fantasy more adult and serious.

Lagomorph Rex of Dweomera Lagomorpha says that the new trend leaves him cold: It’s no secret that I dislike the current trend in Fantasy. It’s almost as if every author has decided they will up the misery and muck quotient and see who can make the nastiest world in which to force their characters to try and survive in.

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… Not to mention Matthew David Surridge and C.S.E. Cooney

… Not to mention Matthew David Surridge and C.S.E. Cooney

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bg-14-cover3Congratulations to James Enge on the inclusion of his latest novel The Wolf Age in the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List!

This is the second time on the list for James — his first novel, Blood of Ambrose, made the list in 2009.

Both novels feature Morlock the Maker, who appeared in Black Gate 8 in James’ first published story, “Turn Up This Crooked Way.”

Since that first appearance Morlock has been in our pages a half-dozen times. We’re practically his second home — he doesn’t even knock when he drops by anymore.

But that’s not the only reason we’re celebrating the Locus list. Also on the list is Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael“, from Black Gate 14, which was recently selected for the upcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Richard Horton.

And although she was too modest to mention it in her post below, C.S.E. Cooney’s own story “Braiding the Ghosts“, from the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 3, made the list as well.

[While we’re on the topic, C.S.E. made the list last year too, with “Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden“, from Subterranean magazine, Winter ’09. “Braiding the Ghosts” will also be in Rich’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy volume, coming this summer.]

Congratulations to all!

Locus Magazine Recommends The Wolf Age

Locus Magazine Recommends The Wolf Age

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thewolfageAs a growing number of people rightly come to the conclusion that reading James Enge’s The Wolf Age will probably be the most fun they’ll have since the invention of soul-sucking swords and the new Olympian-approved “rubber grip” thunderbolts, Black Gate has been pelting to keep up with the praise.

Now, panting from the effort but grinning widely withal, we call your attention to the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List, under the sub-heading “Novels.” See anything familiar? Yup! That’s our man James, and we’re so dang proud of him we could bust.

Congratulations!

Goth Chick News: Get That Raven an Agent

Goth Chick News: Get That Raven an Agent

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image002Here is definitive proof there is life after death.

Over the last couple years, the lovely Ms. Betty White has been blogged, tweeted and Facebooked back into the Hollywood limelight at the age of 89. She is “cute” and “sweet” and now apparently even “hot” by the standards of an entertainment industry which generally saves its highest praise and adoration for the youthful (or at least the youthful appearing).

Betty White’s resurgence of popularity is nothing short of miraculous when taken in this context.

However, relatively speaking, Ms. White is jail bait beside Mr. Edgar Allen Poe, who last month turned 202 and seems to be enjoying a second public life of his own.

And the one thing he is which Betty White definitely is not (as far as we know) is dead; a state Poe has been in for 162 years but which is not stopping him from recently getting his name in the press, or starring in several upcoming Hollywood projects.

Of course it doesn’t hurt to be terminally interesting as well.

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Twilight Sector & Astra Titanus

Twilight Sector & Astra Titanus

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astraWith Black Gate 15 just around the corner I thought I’d start devoting some time to some products that arrived too late for us to cover, or that just didn’t fit into an issue nearly as large as issue 14.

I was particularly taken by two science fiction titles. The first is a campaign setting, and while it utilizes the Mongoose Traveller rules, it’s in a completely different universe from Traveller itself.

The other is a solo tactical board game. If, like me, you name “The Doomsday Machine” as one of your favorite classic Star Trek episodes, it’s a must have, but it’s pretty darned cool even if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

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Chris Braak Reviews Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11)

Chris Braak Reviews Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11)

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turn-coatTurn Coat
Jim Butcher
Roc (576 pp, $9.99, April 2009 – March 2010 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Private-eye wizard Harry Dresden returns in Jim Butcher’s Turn Coat though, in point of fact, he hasn’t been doing altogether that much investigating lately. Between wars with vampire courts and secret enemies finally getting the Black Council on the move, it doesn’t seem like Harry is going to have the opportunity to track down a missing person or provide evidence in a divorce dispute any time soon.

Butcher jumps right in with his trademark wit. The characters in Turn Coat are, by now, so familiar that they provide a little thrill of recognition just by being mentioned. Waldo Butters, for example, has next to nothing to do with the story, but I can’t help but be pleased to see him again because I like Waldo Butters. That is something that plays to Butcher’s strong suit: the dialogue and relationships are so easy and natural that they cannot help but be compelling, even when no one is doing anything.

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Art Evolution 20: Keith Parkinson [1958-2005]

Art Evolution 20: Keith Parkinson [1958-2005]

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Art Evolution turns twenty, and in so doing fades from this prestigious stage provided by Black Gate, but as the name contends, art is ever changing, and so I will never say never where the process and these articles are concerned. Still, if you’ve missed any of these wonderful works, the journey’s beginning can be found here.

After the addition of last week’s ‘Demented Lyssa’, I’ll take a step back to the place where the true power of this article first struck me.

dragon-mag-106-254In late 2009 I’d just signed Larry Elmore and Wayne Reynolds, my spirits flying high as I spent my nights searching the web for artwork that might also apply to art evolution. It was during this process that a distinct sorrow assailed me in regards to the passing of Keith Parkinson.

To me, Keith represented my youth, so many of his images galvanized in my mind along the way it was difficult to think of this article without him. For the first time I regarded this journey as a thing not involving me, but instead the artists, and the lives they’d touched along the way.

Having heard so much about Keith from his fellows, I couldn’t help but feel that it would be selfish not to include him in the article because he couldn’t do a rendition of Lyssa. Lyssa was secondary to the art, after all, and the mission statement I now followed pushed for a thing greater than my ego.

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