Browsed by
Year: 2011

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

Comments 10 comments

gnomesThis morning on my walk to work, I spotted a man crossing a lawn. His arms were very full. Of garden gnomes.

You know, gnomes? With the blue coats and the red hats? The Rien Poortvliet kind?

“Morning!” I said.

“Morning,” he said. “I got a delivery. Gnome delivery.”

After we’d passed each other, and I’d spent a good while grinning, I thought to myself, “I know why that just happened. That happened because I started reading Welcome to Bordertown on the train today.”

(Hey! Heads up! If  you follow the above link to the Bordertown website, then click through the fancy links there to Amazon to purchase any of the new books on that page, then Terri Windling’s Endicott Studio gets a small kick-back from Amazon.com. And all of that money is donated to a shelter for homeless kids. More info here.)

Now, I’m only half a story in — the first one. But half a story in means I’ve already read the two introductions, by Terri Windling and Holly Black respectively, and also the “Bordertown Basics” which is sort of like a mix of the Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago, and Wolfe and Gaiman’s wicked little chapbook, A Walking Tour of the Shambles. It includes a weekly advisory about gang movement, monster sightings, pickpockets and missing gargoyles.

This bit made me chortle:

“The Mock Avenue street association would like to apologize to everyone for fixing the church tower clock last week, which caused widespread confusion. It has now been restored to its usual wrong time.”

But let me back up a little. Reading the introductions, I started to get a strange feeling. Gene Wolfe described a poem once as giving him “that fairy tale feeling.” He may have been quoting someone famous, like Dunsany or something. He does that. This was like that feeling, but it was also another feeling mixed in. …

Read More Read More

Nat’l Poetry Month… In GOBLINLAND!!!

Nat’l Poetry Month… In GOBLINLAND!!!

Comments 0 Comment

goblin-fruitWhat? Another issue of Goblin Fruit is LIVE??? Aw, heck! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?

Okay, okay. All kidding aside. Yes – the Spring 2011 Issue is out!

And you know what? It’s special.

And you know why? Because I’m in this one it’s Goblin Fruit’s FIFTH ANNIVERSARY!!!

Hurray! Yippee! Three cheers!

They’re doing all sorts of cool things here. Wick and El-Mohtar have their usual, hilarious Note from the Editors, they have a PRIZE DRAWING, and their featured poet, Catherynne M. Valente has put up Act I of a four-act colossus, A Silver Splendour, a Flame, which she says will be, if she does it right, her “Cantos.”

Cat blogged about it yesterday:

This is a Persephone poem. It is a very long Persephone poem. It, in fact, will not complete for one year. The “acts” will come out on the solstices and equinoxes for the next year, as is appropriate for Our Girl. It is a sprawling thing, with much experimentation and madness. It is Persephone as a Vaudeville show. It is difficult and it is thorny and it is, I hope, beautiful. I hope you like it. I hope you’ll all read it, whatever you think about poetry, and Persephone, and girls scribbling verse. Give it a chance.

I started reading it yesterday, thinking just to peek — it is, after all, quite long — and then I fell in. Into a pool of my own slobber. I mean, I can’t even, AAAUUGGGHH!

…

Read More Read More

Fright: The Forgotten Dracula Comic

Fright: The Forgotten Dracula Comic

Comments 3 comments

untitledsonofdraculaMost comic fans are aware that while the Marvel Age of Comics may have begun with the 1961 publication of the first issue of The Fantastic Four, the imprint actually began in 1939 when Timely Comics published the first issue of Marvel Comics with the Golden Age Human Torch on the cover. In the 1950’s, Timely Comics became Atlas Comics who continued to publish Cold War adventures of Timely’s Golden Age favorites as well as horror anthology titles and westerns. Far fewer comic fans recall that Atlas Comics was briefly revived in the mid-seventies as a rival to Marvel under the auspices of estranged family members of Marvel’s publisher and editor-in-chief. They stole Marvel talent and did their best to give the industry giant a real run for its money.

At the time, Marvel had taken advantage of the loosening of the Comics Code Authority and produced the award-winning horror title, The Tomb of Dracula. The dark look and tone of the book combined with the consistently strong scripting by Marv Wolfman and stunning art work by Gene Colan (inked by Tom Palmer) made the 70-issue run of the original series one of the biggest artistic and commercial success stories of the decade. While Marvel has never quite managed to bottle lightning with the title a second time, revivals are frequent while sales of reprints remain strong nearly forty years after the fact. While the book was busy collecting industry awards for the exceptional talent of its creators and the level of maturity they brought to the title, the newly-revived Atlas Comics prepared their answer in the form of the first and (as it turned out) only issue of Fright featuring The Son of Dracula in the spring of 1975.

…

Read More Read More

A Review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

A Review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

Comments 3 comments

phantastes-carterWarning: Some spoilers ahead

Advancing a claim that something is the “first” anything is daring a slippery slope, but saying a book is the “first fantasy” is rather like taking a leap onto a Slip and Slide greased with the gelatin exudate of Cthulhu. George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) could be the first fantasy story … but then, what about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, or … you get the picture. I happen to agree with our own Matthew David Surridge that Phantastes is likely not the first pure fantasy novel, for the fact that, although it involves another world, it “never quite [leaves] the real world behind.” It’s the stuff of dreams, with a clear path back to earth.

Regardless, Phantastes is without question one of the cornerstones of the genre, and stands poised at the cusp of early works containing fantastic elements, to those that feature fully developed, independent secondary worlds.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Now Here’s One We Can Probably All Live With…

Goth Chick News: Now Here’s One We Can Probably All Live With…

Comments 2 comments

image0101On Sunday I had the unpleasant task of informing you that remaking the Terry Gilliam classic Time Bandits was actually being contemplated somewhere in the universe.

This sent all of you scrambling for the map and the location of the closest hole in the universe whereby you could pop in on these Hollywood geniuses at the moment when they made their career choices, and steer them neatly toward dentistry.

On the other hand, merely delivering this news sent me straight into the deepest depths of the underground offices of Black Gate to curl up in a fetal position and weep about the state of the entertainment industry.

However, light does eventually shine, even if it’s in the form of an intern with a flashlight in one hand, and a freshly made quad-latte in the other.

He also had some very interesting pictures hot off the wire.

On occasion we’ve all agreed that there are some movies, much like some people you know, that could do with a make over. Perhaps the original script was sound but the acting was painful; or the acting and the script were OK but wow, wouldn’t it be great to see those early-attempts at special effects updated with some new computer-generated magic? True that the list of these movies is short, but we can all think of a very select few.

Remember Fright Night?

…

Read More Read More

Knight at the Movies: Pontypool

Knight at the Movies: Pontypool

Comments 3 comments

pontypoolZombies, zombies everywhere
But not a trope worth a think. . .

I’ll cop to languishing under a surfeit of zombies.

Zombie filmakers suffer under the same burden a Shakespearean director does. You want to do a new production of Richard III, but how do you make your mark on four hundred years of canon?

As I see it, you have three choices. You try and set a new gold-standard in casting, costumes, set, stage direction and so on. A fine way to go about it, if you have the money. Your second option is to do an adequate job with the above, but add a gimmick, like the 1930’s fascist take on the play by Ian McKellen. The third option is to toss Shakespeare out the window, or at least make drastic changes to the material — ferinstance, enhance the many curses the characters throw at each other until the effect’s more fantasy than history.

A would-be zombie moviemaker is in the same besieged mall as our Shakespearean. Everyone labors in the justifiably popular shadow of George Romero, who took zombies out of the D-list Universal monster era, added a ghoulish twist, and sprinkled on some Rousseau. Romero’s zombie mythos is the new canon.

Zack Snyder set the new gold standard with his remake of Dawn of the Dead. The genre-tripping triad of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost created one of the best entries in zombie film-making by simply giving it all a Brit twist with Shaun of the Dead.

Then there’s 2008’s Pontypool, which tosses Romero out the window in a number of ways. I’d never heard of it until I happened to catch it on late-night cable, but then I’ve been living in a child-care submarine for the past couple of years, so it was a thrilling surprise.

…

Read More Read More

Art of the Genre: Star Frontiers

Art of the Genre: Star Frontiers

Comments 14 comments
Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Cover Copyright WotC
Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Cover Copyright WotC

It’s summer intern time here at Black Gate L.A., John having flown in Sue ‘Goth Chick’ Granquist to help break them in. She’s not in love with the beach and the sun, but I must say seeing her in a black one-piece, Jackie-O glasses, and a hat right out of Vampire Hunter D, I had to take a shot with my iPhone because Ryan Harvey [who was struggling with a deadline instead of taking in some sun] would have never believed it otherwise.

That picture, snapped at a moment’s notice, got me thinking about technology and the crazy almost science fiction world we live in. When I was in junior high, way back in the early 80s, my love affair with D&D was in full bloom, and TSR was expanding its brand with new genres like the 1920s prohibition classic Gangbusters, the Bond-like Top Secret, and my personal favorite the space opera Star Frontiers.

…

Read More Read More

Andrew Zimmerman Jones Reviews Shard RPG

Andrew Zimmerman Jones Reviews Shard RPG

Comments 1 comment

shardI first discovered the Shard RPG at GenCon in 2009. Despite being one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen, I was instantly enthralled by the premise. If the review below wets your appetite, then you can get more information (including a free Welcome Booklet download) from the Shard RPG website.

Shard RPG Basic Compendium

Aaron de Orive and Scott Jones
Shard Studios (352 pages, $39.99, August 2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

One of the pleasures of going to GenCon is to stumble upon some of the small press games, which are like little treasures sprinkled throughout the dealer’s room. The last time I went, one such treasure was Shard, a game with a spark of originality that is rarely found even in the gaming industry.

Don’t get me wrong, I love traditional fantasy settings and even love the permutations where tradition is turned on its ear, such as the way mythical creatures are portrayed in White Wolf’s World of Darkness line.

But still, there’s something to be said for a game that doesn’t rely on mages, elves, vampires, werewolves, and so on as the basis of their originality.

…

Read More Read More

I Still Don’t Understand the Amulet, But I Love The Secret of NIMH

I Still Don’t Understand the Amulet, But I Love The Secret of NIMH

Comments 3 comments

secret-of-nimh-theatrical-posterThe Secret of NIMH (1982)
Directed by Don Bluth. Featuring the Voices of Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Strauss, Dom DeLuise, Derek Jacobi, Hermione Baddeley, David Carradine, Arthur Malet, Paul Shenar, Wil Wheaton, Shannon Doherty.

Hello, my name is Ryan Harvey, and apparently all I do here at Black Gate is review animated fantasy films.

With 1982’s The Secret of NIMH now out on a fresh new Blu-ray Disc. . . .

Wait a minute. Seriously, MGM Home Video? (Or Fox, or whoever actually handled this disc.) This is the best you can do with your new release of The Secret of NIMH onto hi-def? Normally, I would wait until the end of a movie review to discuss the quality of a DVD/BD, but you require me upfront to take you behind the shed with a very large paddle. This is shameful. The Secret of NIMH is an acknowledged animated masterpiece, the film responsible for starting the uphill climb from years of “limited animation” doldrums toward the new flowering of the 1990s. This movie taught a generation of viewers what was possible in the medium. It has fans of freakish dedication, such as myself, a scads of websites dedicated to its deconstruction and analysis. And all you can do is slap down whatever print you had on hand and stick on 1080 lines of resolution?

No, no, this is unacceptable. Disney pours immense work into restoring their classics for Blu-ray release, using the best prints possible and cleaning them up so the films look as fresh as they did on the animators’ table. But your current version of The Secret of NIMH looks far worse than it did on theater screens in 1982. I should know, since I was there as a wide-eyed youngling, and recall how the movie blew apart my nine-year-old mind with its motion, depth of imagery, beautiful backgrounds, and bizarre fantasy effects animation. And yet you give us a Blu-ray slathered in scratches and noise with dulled colors and a washed-out palette. This is hardly a step up from the 2007 DVD release. You couldn’t even bother with an interesting popup menu font! Are you aware that this is a classic?

Ah, clearly not.

I think I have that out of my system. Breathe. Breathe. Okay, now I think I can talk about one of the greatest fantasy experiences ever put on animation cels.

…

Read More Read More

Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

Comments 0 Comment

clarkesworld-55The 55th issue of the Hugo Award-winning online magazine Clarkesworld has now been posted.

Clarkesworld is the brainchild of publisher/editor Neil Clarke, who conceived of the magazine while running his excellent (and sadly now defunct) online bookshop, Clarkesworld Books. The first issue was published in October 2006; since then it has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2009 and 2010, the World Fantasy Award (in 2010), and was a finalist for the 2010 Locus Award for Best Magazine. In 2010 it won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Every issue contains two complete short stories. This issue features “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (also available as a podcast, read by Kate Baker), and “Matchmaker” by Erin M. Hartshorn.

Non-Fiction this issue is Linguistics for the World-Builder by Brit Mandelo, and an interview with science fiction author John Scalzi by Jeremy L. C. Jones.

Clarkesworld is edited by Neil Clarke. The non-fiction editor is Cheryl Morgan. Cover art this issue, “Post-apocalyptic Fisherman,” is by Georgi Markov.

Ebook editions of Clarkesworld are available for $1.99 from Wyrm Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble (scroll to the bottom of the page). This month only the Clarkesworld #54 ebook is only 99 cents at Amazon and B&N.com. Try it out and support one of the finest magazines in the genre!

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #9.