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Month: September 2013

Who Took the Flowers Out of my Prose?

Who Took the Flowers Out of my Prose?

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Conan Red Nails-smallOver here in England, we have a shop called ‘Poundland,’ which is pretty much what it says on the tin: a shop where everything costs a single pound, and for a boy of about ten, it was a dream come true. All the flimsy toys, dodgy sweets and budget DVDs my little mind could conjure — there was a book section as well, but it mostly consisted of either absolute rubbish or books about Simon Cowell.

But one particular day, when I was about ten, I happened to spot a diamond hidden amongst the rubbish: an anthology of stories by Robert E Howard. I’d never heard of him at the time, but the book had Conan in the title.

I had heard of Conan. My brief experience with the two movies told me I liked big swords, big monsters, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as much as the next ten-year-old, so I decided to buy it. On the train ride home, I found myself introduced to a new, vivid, and lively world, one of blood and savagery, of death and shadow, of lurking devils and skulking gods. I was exposed to a land of witchcraft, sorcerers, devils and demons, nations torn apart by brooding crusaders kings and swashbuckling puritans. It was the best train ride of my life.

“That’s all well and good, Connor,” you might say, “but what’s this got to do with prose?” Show a little patience; I’m getting to that.

What enchanted me most throughout these adventures was the prose; it just had its own nature and flavor, its own distinguished way of presenting things. I’d never encountered anything like it before; it was poetic, haunting, powerful. It lent every blow a sort of impact, made every monster tangible. Even the heroes — too powerful, too fast, too smart to ever be real — it made them come alive.

And in fantasy, where a key aspect is immersion, this is an impressive achievement. I touched upon this not too long ago with my Fantasy Face-off article; noting that prose dictates the way we see the world on the page and, therefore, how vivid and real it is. Prose overshadows flaws when it’s successful and highlights them when it’s not.

But what I didn’t mention was how prose can amplify the tone of the book. Fritz Leiber’s prose is rather light, reflecting the comic, satirical feel of his books. Howard’s is fast, rip-roaring and powerful, much like the pacing of his books and the characters within them. Tolkien’s prose, though it can sometimes be lacking, feels reminiscent of a fairy tale.

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GenCon 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 3: The Pathfinder Booth

GenCon 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 3: The Pathfinder Booth

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One of the most fun booths at GenCon (a land of many fun booths) is the Paizo booth. They have their own table with nearly round-the-clock author signings and great promotional giveaways, plus they produce fantastic gaming products … this year, having topped previous years in all categories. Their goblin masks were ubiquitous throughout the convention hall, though I did miss the Goblin flash mob on Wednesday evening. But I did have an opportunity to spend time at the booth and talk with CCO Erik Mona about the new developments with their line of games.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

PathfinderRotRLDefinitely the biggest hit at the Paizo booth was the release of the first boxed set in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (Amazon, Paizo), a massive box containing nearly 500 cards. The demo area where they were running through the game was packed and I never actually made it into a demo slot, though I did watch a few of them.  When I arrived on Thursday morning, there was a line nearly halfway down the wall of the Exhibit Hall, consisting mostly of people who were buying this game.

This isn’t a simple card game, but instead a roleplaying campaign in a box. It can be played by 1 to 4 players – that’s right, it can be played solo – who create a character, and then build a deck of equipment, allies, and magic to help progress through the events of Paizo’s classic Rise of the Runelords adventure path.

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The Other Appendix N

The Other Appendix N

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runequest2coverThe death of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and one of the fathers of the roleplaying game, provided added impetus to the already-extant (in 2008) re-evaluation and appreciation of what have come to be popularly known as “old school” roleplaying games. An important part of that re-evaluation centers on the literary origins of RPGs, particularly the books that fired the imaginations of their designers. Gygax helpfully provided us with a list of the authors who were, in his words, “of particular inspiration” to him. This list is now known quite widely simply as “Appendix N,” since it first appeared as just that, a lettered appendix at the back of his Dungeon Masters Guide (1979).

Appendix N has been much discussed over the last half-decade, becoming a significant talking point for those interested in the origins of the hobby of roleplaying. For example, there is much debate regarding the extent to which D&D truly captures the spirit of the books Gygax presented as being “the most immediate influences.” So energetic has the discussion of Appendix N become that it has not only spilled over into the wider world of fantasy (including this very site), but it has led to a mini-revival in pulp fantasy, with authors such as Abraham Merritt, Fletcher Pratt, and Margaret St. Clair (to cite but three on Gygax’s list) receiving more attention in recent years than they probably have in decades. Within the roleplaying hobby itself, Appendix N is well on its way to becoming a “brand,” with at least one RPG, Goodman Games’s Dungeon Crawl Classics, heavily promoting its own adherence to Gygax’s canon as one of its major selling points.

The creators of other early roleplaying games were usually not as forthcoming in acknowledging their literary inspirations, though there are, of course, exceptions, such as Steve Perrin and Ray Turney’s RuneQuest. First published in 1978, RuneQuest is, in its own words, “a departure from most FRP (as they are abbreviated) games” in that it is “tied to a particular world, Glorantha.” The brainchild of Greg Stafford, Glorantha is a fantasy world evocative of ancient history and myth and one of the most enduring settings in the hobby. For that reason, Glorantha is also frequently described as being both complex and idiosyncratic to the point of being inaccessible to newcomers.

I do not share this judgment of Glorantha, but I understand why some might make this claim. Fortunately, its designers offered some insight into their own inspirations in a bibliography that they coincidentally also labeled “Appendix N,” a full year before Gygax would use the same designation. Like Gygax’s own list, it is not exhaustive, but only “contains those [books] we felt exemplary or exceptional.” RuneQuest‘s Appendix N one-ups Gygax, in my opinion, by being an annotated bibliography, which provides additional insight into not just what books and authors were inspirational, but why.

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Ancient Worlds: The Island of Circe

Ancient Worlds: The Island of Circe

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AN: Hello all. My name is Liz, and you may remember me from a few years back! I was a Black Gate blogger for a brief period before life happened, as it does, in spectacular fashion. But our esteemed editor has been kind enough to invite me back! So I’ll be posting regularly now, and continuing this series. Ancient Worlds will focus on the roots of Fantasy and Science Fiction in Ancient Literature, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Circe.

Circe, Wright Barker, 1889The Odyssey is full of compelling archetypes, but she’s hard to top. She’s beautiful, powerful, terrifying, and sexy as hell. If you’ve ever been attracted to, or wanted to be (or both), the femme fatale, you should raise a glass to her.

Circe first appears in The Odyssey. As Odysseus leads the longest road trip in the history of the world, they wash up on Aiaia. Seeing a cookfire in the distance, Odysseus sends a band of men to investigate.

A few hours later, only one of them returns to inform the king that all of his men have been turned into pigs by an evil witch.

He couldn’t take those guys anywhere.

Odysseus heads off to rescue his men, again. He’s stopped by Hermes, the messenger god, who has been sent to warn him that he should eat a magical herb, moly, in order to be immune to the witch’s transformation spell.

Following this advice, Odysseus survives dinner without being turned into one of Circe’s pets. He then draws his sword and threatens to attack her. Circe responds by inviting him into her bed.

Yeah. There’s nothing even vaguely Freudian about that.

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Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

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Night Winds-small

“He’s evil incarnate! Stay away from him!”
— from Darkness Weaves

Long before the coiners of the term grimdark were born, Karl Edward Wagner was creating some of the most aggressively unheroic fantasy. There had always been a dark current to swords & sorcery from the genre’s beginnings in the 1930s with Robert E. Howard. But not even Michael Moorcock’s 1960s antiheroes prepared S&S fans for Wagner’s 1971 novel Darkness Weaves and its amoral mystic swordsman, Kane.

Six feet tall and “three hundred pounds of bone, sinew, and muscle,” Kane is cursed to live forever for rebelling against the god who created him. Peering out from his fiery red hair and beard, his blues eyes blaze with a killer’s fury — a warning to all who cross his path. Though a violent death can free him from his accursed immortality, he is determined to survive.

Over the course of three novels and seventeen stories, Kane plots and murders his way across continents and centuries. He is by turns a mighty sorcerer, a bandit lord and a lone wanderer. While it’s explicitly stated in one story that Kane is “seldom needlessly cruel,” he’s seldom sympathetic.

It’s in the two collections of short stories, Death Angel’s Shadow (which I reviewed last year at my site) and Night Winds, that Wagner crafted his greatest swords & sorcery. His novels, Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Darkness Weaves, all have their moments, but they don’t have the short, sharp, shock of the stories. While the books are memorably epic, the stories are fast-paced nightmares.

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New Treasures: She Returns From War by Lee Collins

New Treasures: She Returns From War by Lee Collins

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She Returns from War-smallI love Angry Robot books. I don’t pay much attention to publishers when I’m at the bookstore. But when I’m home, and my purchases are stacked by my big green chair, it’s hard not to notice that half of them have the Angry Robot logo on the spine.

I think they’re just in tune with the kind of books I’m most interested in. Which is weird, because I’m not exactly sure what they are myself. But I know they involve great cover art, intriguing settings, and women in cowboy hats. This week, anyway.

She Returns From War is the sequel to the supernatural western The Dead of Winter, released last October. The tag line is True Grit Meets True Blood, which is clever. Have you noticed this burgeoning mini-trend of western-horror-fantasies, including Guy Adams’s The Good The Bad and the Infernal, Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill’s Dead Reckoning, and the Bloodlands novels of Christine Cody? Apparently it’s a thing. See? We’re paying attention.

Four years after the horrific events in Leadville, a young woman from England, Victoria Dawes, sets into motion a series of events that will lead Cora and herself out into the New Mexico desert in pursuit of Anaba, a Navajo witch bent on taking revenge for the atrocities committed against her people.

She Returns From War was published by Angry Robot on January 29, 2013. It is 361 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

The recent coverage Angry Robot titles we’ve covered were The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe, The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu, The Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar, and The Corpse-Rat King, by Lee Battersby.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Blogging Arak 10: Arak Goes Greek!

Blogging Arak 10: Arak Goes Greek!

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Arak_Vol_1_10Arak has had his share of sea serpents, vampires, Lovecraftian cave-beasties, demons, and devils. What was this comic lacking?

Legendary creatures from Greek myth, of course! So with issue 10, Arak and Valda make a side trip to Mount Olympus. And there are some surprises in store for both of them…

We open on very human terrain, in medias res. Arak and Valda, on horseback, are being ambushed by Byzantine soldiers.

Last issue, we left them adrift at sea after the Pompeian undead vengefully sank the merchant ship they were hitching a ride on. Between the two issues, we’ve skipped how they got to land, procured new mounts and (if we’re going to be nitpicky) all of their weapons and gear. Later in the issue, we’ll get a one-line flashback-thought from Arak about having purchased the horses from a Grecian farmer — but where did they get the money? Valda even still has the scrolls bearing endorsements and writs of passage from Carolus Magnus and the Pope — though given what will happen shortly, those may as well have just been lost at sea.

Anyway, while Arak and Valda are trying to be diplomatic, some of the mounted soldiers charge down the hill toward them, weapons drawn. One is nocking an arrow even as he rides, ignoring his commander’s warning cry: “Hold, archer! Do not go near them! They are dangerous!” A shame such skill as both horseman and archer is wasted, a couple panels later, on Valda’s blade. It’s on.

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Adventures On Film: Pan’s Labyrinth

Adventures On Film: Pan’s Labyrinth

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Heart of Summer Having panned Merlin some weeks back, it’s time to dive headlong into one of the best fantasy films of this century, and possibly one of the best, period.

Yes, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) is that good. Director Guillermo del Toro, he of Hellboy fame, was clearly out to prove that given solid material, sufficient devotion, and a lack of Hollywood oversight, he could deliver a contender.

True, Pan does invite several divisive questions, such as why must contemporary filmed violence be so jarringly graphic? Del Toro loves jets of blood almost as much as that eternal child-man, Quentin Tarantino, and he indulges himself more than once along his tale’s labyrinthine path. But is it necessary?  Does the vivid bloodletting aid the narrative? Pan is a hybrid, true, a film about war and revolution, and such chronicles cannot easily avoid bloodshed. But as anyone who has ever seen Pan’s sewing and stitching scene can attest, this movie achieves prime “I can’t look!” status. It’s visceral; it hurts.

Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) also begs a second question, perhaps even more sinister: is it allowable to put a child (or child character) into such peril? Pan doesn’t pull its punches. Our heroine, young Ofelia (played with no affectation whatsoever by Ivana Baquero), is in mortal danger throughout this film, and unlike, say, Harry Potter or Buffy (Slayer of the Dentally Challenged Undead), there is no guarantee she will survive.

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Shock of the New: Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang, and Metropolis

Shock of the New: Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang, and Metropolis

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MetropolisI’ve always had a fascination with Frtiz Lang’s Metropolis that I’ve never been able to explain. Obviously, it’s a visually powerful film and a tremendous influence on later films and later sf. But that imaginative magnificence seemed almost disconnected from the actual story of the movie. To a large extent, that’s because the Metropolis I knew for most of my life was a greatly-reduced version of Lang’s film. On its premiere in 1927, the movie was 4189 metres (13,823 feet) long, and ran 153 minutes; it was subsequently edited heavily, down to about 3100 to 3200 metres, without the input of husband-and-wife team of director Fritz Lang and scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. For decades, only short versions of Metropolis were believed to have survived, with major subplots and characters missing from the movie. A 2002 re-edit from rediscovered footage recreated something close to the original 1927 film and a 2010 version, based on a newly-recovered negative of the film, finally returned Metropolis to Lang and von Harbou’s original vision. Still, even seeing the whole thing, I have that sense of a kind of gap between the literal content of the film and what might be called its latent content — the mythic feel of the world it imagines.

I didn’t entirely understand that gap until I read Thea von Harbou’s novel of the story. Published in 1925, the book clarifies a number of things: elements of the plot, the character motivation, and the symbolism. The use of the pentacle, the presence of a cathedral, the imagery of Babel and Apocalypse, the vision of Moloch superimposed over Metropolis’s machines, and especially the seemingly self-destructive urge of Joh Frederson, “the Master of Metropolis,” all become clearer. At the same time, I was conscious that I was reading the book with memory of the film always present. It seems to me that the two things, book and movie, work together to make a rich and full experience out of a distinctive fusing of science fiction and the gothic.

It has to be said that there’s been some difference of opinions about the book. Critic Holger Bachmann describes the novel as “a disparate, trivialized collection of motifs from various literary sources,” and refers to its “trivial romanticism.” John Clute, in the entry on von Harbou in the SF Encyclopedia, states that novel doesn’t have much of the film’s “symbolic force.” Personally, I tend to agree with Gary Westfahl, who stated that “von Harbou excelled in the one aspect of literary craftsmanship that critics tend to ignore because it is utterly beyond their ability to comprehend: the power of myth-making.” The sense of latent power I felt in the film of Metropolis has to do with its evocation of myth, both old and new, and I think that’s more clearly present in the book. It’s not a technical triumph like the film, but it’s not to be overlooked.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Stand at Dubun-Geb” by Ryan Harvey

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Stand at Dubun-Geb” by Ryan Harvey

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Ryan Harvey-smallRyan Harvey returns to Ahn-Tarqa, setting of “The Sorrowless Thief,” for another heroic fantasy packed with adventure, swordplay, and weird magic.

Jelmez, the lookout, waved to them from his perch over the ravine.

“What is it?” Guyuk yelled. “The Sorghul?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to see this for yourselves. Only an old tale-spinner could describe such a thing.”

A hundred feet along they reached a stretch of sheer limestone wall. Centuries of erosion from winter storms had caused a landslide that ripped a wound in the mountains’ roots.

Even the oppressive Dubun-Geb could not diminish the majesty of the forty-foot giant revealed inside that gash. It had the outlines of a man, but there was nothing of warmth or life to its gargantuan frame of bronze and steel. A flattened oval served as a head, and the rain washed over an obsidian visor that covered the place where eyes should be. Like any creation of the Art, it exuded the Sorrow. None of them had felt it so potently before; it crushed the breath from their lungs.

“A colossus,” Khasar exclaimed.

Ryan Harvey won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2011 for his story, “An Acolyte of Black Spires,” part of his science-fantasy series set on the continent of Ahn-Tarqa. His previous Ahn-Tarqa story for Black Gate, “The Sorrowless Thief,” appeared here on April 7th. Ahn-Tarqa is also the setting for Ryan’s e-book novelette, “Farewell to Tyrn,” and his upcoming novel, Turn over the Moon. His work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, Beyond Centauri, Aoife’s Kiss (upcoming), and the anthology Candle in the Attic Window. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and the shadowy realm between both, as well as a long stint writing a column at Black Gate.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Peadar Ó Guilín, Dave Gross, Mike Allen, Vaughn Heppner, Mark Rigney, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Stand at Dubun-Geb” is a complete 5,500-word short story of heroic fantasy. It is offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.