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Month: December 2013

The Worst Fantasy Films of All Time

The Worst Fantasy Films of All Time

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Highlander II The Quickening-smallWatch out, my friends. This weekend there is a storm a’blowing! The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is in theaters, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much angst among the fantasy lovers of the world.

Personally, I really enjoyed both Hobbit movies, just as I loved The Lord of the Rings movies. Hell, at this point Peter Jackson could make a movie about the struggles of union workers in ancient Moria and I’d go see it.

I understand every movie (and every book) has flaws, but some people are absolutely livid about Jackson’s rendition of The Hobbit on the big screen. I feel it’s my duty as a fellow fantasy-phile to point out how awful these movies could have been under different management.

There is an entire industry of bad fantasy movies out there. Maybe if we take a stroll back through history, we’ll gain a little perspective. So here I give you, my list of Least Best Fantasy Movies.

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A Look Inside Gorizia Castle, Italy

A Look Inside Gorizia Castle, Italy

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DSC_0107
Gorizia castle as seen from the town square.

The Isonzo River on the border with Italy and Slovenia has long been of strategic importance. Most famous as the site of the World War One Battles of Isonzo, you can find fortifications dating much earlier than the old bunkers and trenches that dot the hillsides.

One of the most magnificent is Gorizia Castle, which sits atop a steep hill overlooking the Italian city of Gorizia on the Isonzo River a few miles before it reaches the sea after its long trip from the Alps.

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New Treasures: Spirits From Beyond

New Treasures: Spirits From Beyond

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Spirits From Beyond-smallI don’t think I’ve given Simon R. Green a fair shake. The man is so prolific, with so many popular series, that he’s almost ubiquitous on book store shelves. I tend to overlook him when I scan the racks for new releases every week — my eyes are trained to ignore him, the same way they ignore the shelves dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien and Jim Butcher.

But being prolific certainly isn’t a crime, and neither is being popular. Being open to new things sometimes means trying that familiar midlist author you’ve ignored for too long. So last week I picked up a copy of the fourth and latest novel in his Ghost Finders series. After all, anyone who names his supernatural think tank the Carnacki Institute has got to be worth a look…

Meet the operatives of the Carnacki Institute — JC Chance: the team leader, brave, charming, and almost unbearably arrogant; Melody Chambers: the science geek who keeps the antisupernatural equipment running; and Happy Jack Palmer: the terminally gloomy telepath. Their mission: Do Something About Ghosts. Lay them to rest, send them packing, or just kick their nasty ectoplasmic arses…

Their latest assignment takes JC and the team to a small country village, site of a famously haunted inn. At first, JC thinks that the spirits in the King’s Arms are more the stuff of urban legend than anything that needs the Ghost Finders’ expertise. Then one story rings true: the tale of a traveler trapped by an unusual thunderstorm who retired to her room for the night — and vanished.

Trapped by an unusual thunderstorm — like the one that begins raging outside shortly after they arrive… As the team investigates, they are forced, one by one, to face some hard truths about themselves, their relationships, and the haunting itself — truths that may push Happy Jack over the edge into the madness that he has always feared…

Green is also the author of the Deathstalker space opera (8 novels), Hawk and Fisher (7 novels), The Forest Kingdom (4 novels), The Secret History series (7 novels so far), and Nightside (12 novels), among several others. I told you he was prolific. The Ghost Finder books take place in the same universe as his Nightside, Secret History, and other assorted novels, with frequent references to some shared characters, places and events. I bet keeping tabs on all that continuity drives him nuts.

The Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute tackle the paranormal with some gusto (their motto is “We don’t take any sh*t from the Hereafter.”) This looks like a fun Friday-night series, and I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Spirits From Beyond was published in September 2013 by Ace Books. It is 298 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital editions.

Explore The Dark

Explore The Dark

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The Dark Issue 1-smallSean Wallace is an editing powerhouse.

I don’t use that term lightly. But let’s just look at the man’s accomplishments: in the last few years he’s edited or co-edited multiple magazines, including Jabberwocky, Fantasy Magazine, and the prestigious Clarkesworld, for which he was nominated for the Hugo four times (winning three times) and the World Fantasy Award three times. He’s edited numerous anthologies, including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A.I., and War & Space.

Of course, that’s on top of his day job as founder, publisher, and managing editor of Prime Books — where he’s produced a terrific assortment of excellent titles. We covered more than a few, including Weird Detectives, Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy series, Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top, The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith, the War & Space anthology, and others.

So I was extremely intrigued when I heard he was launching a new online magazine of dark and strange fiction with Jack Fisher, former editor and publisher of the award-winning Flesh & Blood magazine. The debut issue of The Dark was released in October, 2013, and the second issue arrived on December 1st.

The first issue feature original fiction from Lisa L. Hannett, Nnedi Okorafor, Angela Slatter, and Rachel Swirsky. Issue 2 has all-new stories from Willow Fagan, Amanda E. Forrest, Sarah Singleton and E. Catherine Tobler.

The Dark is published bi-monthly; you can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by subscribing to the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 49 pages, and priced at $2.99.

A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15, and so far I really like what I see. Get in on the ground floor of a promising new magazine — subscribe today.

Prologomenon to Fantasy

Prologomenon to Fantasy

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bullfinchOne of the things that I frequently blather about is that, when I was growing up in the 1970s, “fantasy,” as it’s understood today didn’t really exist, at least not as a mainstream, popular genre.

Don’t get me wrong: the ’70s were a decade of fantasy par excellence, especially literary fantasy, from reprintings of earlier works, such as the Lancer Books Conan series (begun in 1966) and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (begun in 1969), to the Tolkien imitators, like Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara (1977) and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane (1977) – not to mention Tolkien’s own The Silmarillion (1977 once again!) – to modern classics like Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (guess what year?). The ’70s also saw fantasy rise to prominence in other media, like comic books, where Roy Thomas’s Savage Sword of Conan cultivated an entire generation of artists, and movies, where special effects artists continued to acquire the skills and technology to bring fantasy to life on the silver screen. And, of course, the decade also saw the appearance and flourishing of fantasy roleplaying games, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

Despite these strides, spearheaded by the faddish popularity of D&D and its imitators, I’d argue that fantasy didn’t really come into its own as a pop cultural phenomenon until much later. Consequently, when I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons very late in 1979, I had almost no direct experience of what we’d nowadays call fantasy. Indeed, I wouldn’t read a word of The Lord of the Rings or the tales of Conan until after I’d begun rolling polyhedral dice. For that matter, I don’t think I’d even heard of J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard until I encountered both their names in the pages of the J. Eric Holmes-edited D&D rulebook that was my introduction to the game. The same goes for Lovecraft, come to think of it, and most of the other authors whom we typically regard as the “founders” of fantasy. In that respect, my youth is very different than that of 21st century fantasy aficionados, almost all of whom I’d bet didn’t make it to the age of 10 without at least being familiar with the characters and ideas these authors birthed.

However, this isn’t to say I had no experience with fantasy before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, only that my introduction to it was of a different sort, one I expect I shared with many kids of my generation.

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Why I’m Here – Part One

Why I’m Here – Part One

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I don't want to be this man
I don’t want to be this man

A couple of times this past summer I felt really old. Somehow the classic sci-fi/fantasy books I grew up reading weren’t well known to younger readers (really, you don’t know who Manly Wade Wellman is?!?) or even all that important anymore. In the forty-year span of my sci-fi and fantasy reading life, the genres’ audiences had changed.

Now you could be a sci-fi reader without having read Dune or planning to ever read it. Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber was “shockingly discordant and unsatisfying to actually read all the way through.” This was nuts — cats-and-dogs-living-together nuts.

After my brain stopped spasming and cooled off a little, I started to actually think. Sure, there are certain — I’d say canonical — books important to the development of fantasy and sci-fi. But if you haven’t read them will somebody revoke your fandom card? If you don’t like the books I like, does that make you less discerning than I? I doubt it.

Besides, discerning is not a word I’d use for a lot of my own book choices. I mean, there’s a certain Lord of the Rings ripoff homage published by Ballantine in 1977 that I, along with the whole fantasy-reading audience, went nuts for. (You had to be there when fantasy pickings were meager.) I still love The Sword of Shannara today. It doesn’t get less discerning than that.

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)

A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)

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Return of Godzilla 1984 PosterOther Installments

Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)
Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)
Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1997)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

With the release of the teaser trailer for the upcoming Godzilla from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, a decade of cinematic silence has come to an end. Godzilla last appeared in 2004 in the Japanese movie Godzilla: Final Wars, which Toho Studios intended as the monster’s final bow before going on sabbatical. It’s the longest break in the iconic monster’s career, and regardless of what happens next, the forthcoming Godzilla ’14 is a reason for G-fans to celebrate. Maybe stomp a few cities. The trailer makes San Francisco look particularly stomp-able.

At this point, we only know as much about Godzilla ’14 as we’ve seen in the teaser. But it was an exciting glimpse that at least assured fans the new movie would not repeat the horrible mistakes of the first American attempt at a stateside Godzilla, the 1998 Roland Emmerich disaster.

This is the first of five (projected) installments covering the history of Godzilla on film, written and condensed for a broad audience. I hope these articles will help readers who have only a passing relationship with Godzilla — the general knowledge from pop culture osmosis — see the unusual variety of one of the longest and most durable film franchises in history. Many Black Gate readers are probably familiar with much of the information I’ll provide in these articles, but since I’ll also sling around my own opinions about the movies mixed in with the history, Godzilla fans may find parts of this worthwhile … if perhaps only to ignite arguments.

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The Cartoon Revolution Will No Longer Be Televised

The Cartoon Revolution Will No Longer Be Televised

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Young-JusticeI hadn’t really kept up on children’s TV cartoon programming, not since I was part of the target demographic for it back in the ‘80s. As a young adult, I checked out the Batman series now and again, impressed by how well done it was. I became minorly obsessed with The Tick, because that was just a wonderful parody send-up of the whole superhero milieu I grew up in. The Simpsons crossed my radar, of course. But that’s about it.

I’ve been watching a lot of cartoons lately, because I have a daughter who’s almost five and a son who’s nearly three. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised. It turns out that television programming for kids has enjoyed something of a Renaissance in the last decade or so, similar to its counterpart programming for mature audiences.

But enjoy it while you can, because that era may be coming to an end…

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New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

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The House of R'lyeh-smallI feel like I’m in the middle of H.P. Lovecraft week.

On Sunday I talked extensively about Lovecraft, a propos of his inclusion in the latest round of Advanced Readings in D&D. This morning I invoked his name while discussing Robert Bloch’s Nightmares collection. Now here we are again, with the latest collection on adventures for one of my favorite role-playing games, Call of Cthulhu, based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

I bought my first CoC adventure — the classic Shadows of Yog-Sothoth — over 30 years ago (yes, I’m aware that’s longer than most of you have been alive. Shut up), and the most recent, Cthulhu By Gaslight, last April. I haven’t played CoC in years (decades, probably), but the adventures are marvelously inventive and always a pleasure to read for a veteran game master like me. But The House of R’lyeh has extra appeal for Lovecraft fans of all kinds, not just CoC players, I think: it draws directly from five of the Master’s short stories. I’m looking forward to digging in and seeing how successful it is.

The House of R’lyeh contains five Call of Cthulhu scenarios that follow or expand upon events in five of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories: “Pickman’s Model,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” “The Hound,” “Arthur Jermyn,” and “The Nameless City.” Set in Boston, Providence, the British Isles, continental Europe, and the Middle East, none of the scenarios need be played at set dates or in a set order, but they could be run in the order presented to form a loose campaign using optional link between scenarios to draw investigators from one to the other.

Alternatively, the scenarios may be used to supplement classic Call of Cthulhu campaigns such as The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth which suggests that its component scenarios should be interspersed with others.

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Vintage Treasures: Nightmares by Robert Bloch

Vintage Treasures: Nightmares by Robert Bloch

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Nightmares Robert Bloch-smallI’ve been on something of a Robert Bloch kick recently.

It started with the Vintage Treasures article on The Best of Robert Bloch I wrote back in July, the second in my series on Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction. That lead me to his Lovecraftian novel Strange Eons, first published in 1979, which I wrote about in October.

Strange Eons was fun, but honestly I think I prefer Bloch’s short stories. And he certainly has a lot of them, gathered in dozens of collections starting with The Opener of the Way, published in 1945 by Arkham House when he was just 28 years old, and ending the year he died with his final collection The Early Fears (1994, Fedogan & Bremer) — which won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

As usual, I tend to gravitate towards the paperbacks. Last week I bought a copy of Nightmares, a slender 1961 paperback from Belmont which contains 10 short stories originally published in Weird Tales, Fantastic, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other fine publications.

Nightmare is a selection of tales from Pleasant Dreams — Nightmares (1960), an Arkham House hardcover which contained 16 short stories and novelettes (and cost, according to a note on the copyright page, an outrageous $4). The paperback is dedicated to August Derleth, Fritz Lieber (sic), and Star Trek writer Samuel A. Peeples, author of “”Where No Man Has Gone Before” (one of my favorite episodes, incidentally, although doubtless he’s listed here for his horror work).

And yes, Fritz’s Leiber’s name was misspelled. Clearly the paperback editions were not edited as tightly as they could have been, or Fritz Leiber wasn’t yet a big name. Probably both.

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