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Month: April 2014

Bazaar of the Bizarre: Sci-Fi Creeps and Horror Crawlies for a Quarter

Bazaar of the Bizarre: Sci-Fi Creeps and Horror Crawlies for a Quarter

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photo-13Because I don’t collect enough crap already, I’ve kinda started a new hobby collection. A few months back I shared about my childhood affinity for rubber critters, plastic spaceships, puffy-sticker monster faces, and a myriad of other pocket-sized products that could be had for a quarter from the supermarket vending machine. Well, why buy them individually when you can have the whole vending card?

You may yourself fondly recall the windows of enchantment that lured you to plunk your silver into the slot and eagerly turn the crank: displayed behind the glass were all the amazing things — artfully arranged and shrink-wrapped to a colorful cardboard backing — that might plop into the palm of your hand in an acorn- or bubble-shaped plastic capsule.

It’s easy enough to postulate a psychological motivation behind this new pursuit of hounding down vintage vending cards. Surely you experienced the same disappointment I often did: you’re looking at a rubber monster or a plastic tank with swiveling turret or a metal cap-gun; you go through the rigmarole of begging your mother to spare some change from her purse (this was often quite a feat requiring a great deal of persuasion — sometimes called “throwing a tantrum” — and it didn’t always pay off; in fact, the more you put into it, the greater the odds that you’d be denied on principle: “Well, I can’t give it to you now, because then you’d get the impression that you can throw a fit and get rewarded for it” — a line of reasoning that, as a new parent, I now find myself paraphrasing quite frequently); you succeed in scoring the quarter and feed the machine — crank crank crank — (anticipation) —  the clank of the metal trapdoor — the popping of the lid…

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Tribulations Herculean and Tragic: Beyond Wizardwall by Janet Morris

Tribulations Herculean and Tragic: Beyond Wizardwall by Janet Morris

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Beyond Wizardwall

Woe betide the soul who loves too much, wants too much, dares too much.

I finish my reviews of the 5-star, Author’s Cut editions of Janet Morris’s classic of Homeric Heroic Fantasy, the Beyond Sanctuary Trilogy, with the third and final book, Beyond Wizardwall. This was the toughest of the three to review because there is so much that happens and so much ground to cover. This is also the most dramatic, tense and emotionally powerful of the three books. Let me begin with a little recap in Janet’s own words:

Heavy snows had put the war against Mygdonia and its Nisibisi wizards into hiatus. Niko’s commander, Tempus, called the Riddler, had employed magic to bring his mixed cadre of shock troops (Rankan 3rd Commando rangers, Tysian ‘specials,’ hillmen of Free Nisibis, and Niko’s unit of Stepsons) back to Tyse for the winter. Fighting had ended inconclusively, with the Mygdonian warlord Ajami still at large.

They ride into Tyse triumphant and settle in to wait for spring, content with the season’s work. All except Niko. Everything in this excellent novel revolves around Niko (who is also known by his war name, Stealth), for what trials he endures and what tribulations he suffers are Herculean and tragic and form the core of this novel.

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New Treasures: Crack’d Pot Trail by Steven Erikson

New Treasures: Crack’d Pot Trail by Steven Erikson

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Crack'd Pot Trail-smallIt was Jason Waltz, the hard-working mastermind behind Rogue Blades Entertainment, who first introduced me to the twisted and entertaining adventures of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the famed necromancers from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. With little in the way of redeeming qualities, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach — and their hard-drinking manservant, Emancipor Reese — are the unlikely protagonists in a series of short novels that mix comedy and horror in equal measure. This time they find themselves on the run from a group of skilled hunters determined to bring them to justice for their foul misdeeds.

It is an undeniable truth: give evil a name and everyone’s happy.  Give it two names and… why, they’re even happier.

Intrepid necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, scourges of civilization, raisers of the dead, reapers of the souls of the living, devourers of hope, betrayers of faith, slayers of the innocent, and modest personifications of evil, have a lot to answer for and answer they will. Known as the Nehemoth, they are pursued by countless self-professed defenders of decency, sanity, and civilization. After all, since when does evil thrive unchallenged? Well, often — but not this time.

Hot on their heels are the Nehemothanai, avowed hunters of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach. In the company of a gaggle of artists and pilgrims, stalwart Mortal Sword Tulgord Vise, pious Well Knight Arpo Relent, stern Huntsman Steck Marynd, and three of the redoubtable Chanter brothers (and their lone sister) find themselves faced with the cruelest of choices. The legendary Crack’d Pot Trail, a stretch of harsh wasteland between the Gates of Nowhere and the Shrine of the Indifferent God, has become a tortured path of deprivation.

Will honor, moral probity, and virtue prove champions in the face of brutal necessity? No, of course not. Don’t be silly.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach previously appeared in Blood Follows, The Healthy Dead, The Lees of Laughter’s End (all previously collected in a single volume, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire, Volume One), and The Wurms of Blearmouth. Crack’d Pot Trail was published September 13, 2011 by Tor Books. It is 204 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. I bought mine remaindered from Amazon.com for just $5.20; a handful of copies are still available at the discounted price.

Kirkus Looks at The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Gnome Press

Kirkus Looks at The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Gnome Press

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judgment-nightThe legendary Gnome Press, founded by David Kyle and Martin Greenberg in 1948, put some of the most important SF and fantasy ever written between hard covers for the first time — including C.L. Moore’s Judgment Night and Shambleau and Others, The Coming of Conan and Conan the Conqueror by Robert E. Howard, Clifford D. Simak’s City, Robert A. Heinlein’s Sixth Column and Methuselah’s Children, Two Sought Adventure by Fritz Leiber, plus Arthur C. Clarke, Edward E. Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, Leigh Brackett, Murray Leinster, A. E. van Vogt, and dozens of others. It kept the genre’s most important writers in print, at a time when they appeared only in magazines, and in the process introduced them to a whole new generation.

Andrew Liptak at Kirkus Reviews has dug into the history of the press with an excellent piece, part of his ongoing look at the origins of SF and fantasy in America. Here’s his retelling of one of Gnome Press’s most famous acquisitions:

In 1950, Isaac Asimov began looking for a new home for some of his short stories… Rebuffed by his current publisher, Doubleday (who wanted new material, rather than repackaged short stories), Asimov approached Greenberg, who was eager to publish his stories. Asimov pulled together nine of his robot stories… into a single volume called I, Robot. Gnome released the collection at the end of 1950, with some of the stories reworked to include his character, Susan Calvin, telling a larger story of the evolution of robotics. The collection was a successful one, and Asimov brought Greenberg another series of books for which he would be well known: Foundation. First serialized in magazines, Gnome brought Asimov’s Foundation trilogy to hardcover between 1951 and 1953.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

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Gently_HolisticThe plan is to go non-Holmes every fourth post or so, just to mix it up a bit.  So, today, we move over to the mystery field. Well, sort of…

Race Williams, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Peter Kane, Max Thursday, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, Dave Robicheaux: the list of accomplished private eyes is a long one. And of course, Sherlock Holmes was the first professional consulting detective. But there has only been one holistic detective. Dirk Gently.

It’s hard to imagine a better science fiction parody than Douglas Adams’s marvelous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Five books (plus one short story and an authorized sequel), they are the standard.

Adams’s brilliance was equally on display when he tackled the private eye genre with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

If you’ve read any of the Hitchhiker’s books, you know that Adams was not your typical writer. Gently, though mentioned earlier, does not appear until page 114. In fact, the main character is really Richard MacDuff, though Gently is certainly at the center of things.

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Descend Into the Depths of the Earth in Forgotten Realms: Underdark

Descend Into the Depths of the Earth in Forgotten Realms: Underdark

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Forgotten Realms Underdark-smallI’ve been fascinated with underground gaming ever since I took my first steps in Gary Gygax’s imaginative underworld in the classic 1978 AD&D module D1: Descent into the Depths of the Earth. That adventure — which first introduced the complex and sinister machinations of the drow — was one of the most popular ever released for AD&D and it has been much copied and imitated over the decades since.

A message not lost on TSR and WotC over the years, who have explored and expanded on Gygax’s concept of ancient and hostile subterranean civilizations in several releases — especially the popular Underdark products. With the publication of D&D Third Edition, the masterminds at WotC commissioned an updated version of Underdark for their Forgotten Realms setting, and it appeared in hardcover in 2003.

All of which is background to explain why I was sitting in the front row at the Spring Games Plus Auction and nimbling up my bidding arm when I saw a brand new copy of Underdark make its way to the auction block.

Bidding opened at a buck and was never very enthusiastic. D&D supplements one or two editions out of date don’t seem to command much interest these days and I walked away with it for the criminal price of seven bucks.

Their loss. Underdark is a terrific buy for any D&D gamers looking to add a fully fleshed-out subterranean setting to their existing campaign.

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Book Review: Gold and Glass by E. Catherine Tobler

Book Review: Gold and Glass by E. Catherine Tobler

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

250_bigfinal_GG_Anubis1_ETobler_CovArtSince I’ve started reviewing self-published books, I’ve received a lot of submissions that aren’t really self-published. Usually these are from small presses and imprints where the authors are expected to do a lot of their own marketing. Up to now I’ve kept to a slightly stricter definition of self-published, but I decided to make an exception this month.

Gold and Glass by E. Catherine Tobler is published by the Masque Imprint of Prime Books. Prime Books is a well-respected independent publisher, mainly known for their anthologies. Masque is their fairly new digital imprint, which, while it does publish general SF/fantasy, focuses largely on genre romance. So it’s not surprising that Gold and Glass is a steampunk romance.

The main character, Eleanor Folley, has for years been haunted by her Egyptian mother’s disappearance in the desert of her homeland, shortly after they discovered the remains of the Lady, a mythic figure from the ancient past. The Lady wore four rings that may have opened a doorway to another time, through which Dalila Folley vanished. Eleanor’s father, the archaeologist Renshaw Folley, believes that Dalila is dead, but Eleanor is not convinced. She has spent years searching Egypt for some sign of what became of her mother, but was forced to return home empty-handed after a falling out with her partner, Christian Hubert.

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Convention Report: Ad Astra Science Fiction Convention in Toronto

Convention Report: Ad Astra Science Fiction Convention in Toronto

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I hit a few science fiction and fantasy conventions a year, for professional reasons, but more importantly for the fun of meeting new people and catching up with friends I haven’t seen in months. This weekend, I’m in Toronto, Canada, at Ad Astra, one of the two major literary fan-run conventions held every year (the other being SFContario).

100_0259Ad Astra is a nice-sized convention with a number of programming tracks book, TV, and movie fans, writers, costumers, and shoppers. They have a great line-up of guests. David Mark Weber, creator of the Honor Harrington series and other military scifi works, is here, as is Steven Erikson, epic fantasy author of The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Anne Lesley Groell is representing Random House (she’s an Executive Editor) and Ad Astra also has Patricia Briggs, author of the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series. Some returning guests of previous years are science fiction authors Julie Czerneda and Robert J. Sawyer, as well as Ed Greenwood, famed D&D creator of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world.

Some of the things I’m hoping to see include “Podcasting After Dark,” a pod-cast interview to be run by noted critic and reviewer Adam Shaftoe, “Carbine-tipped Pens,” a panel about an upcoming all-original scifi anthology edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi. I might miss the “Steampunk Costuming for Newcomers” to catch back-to-back readings by Ottawa-area writers Matt Moore and Marie Bilodeau.

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Vintage Treasures: The Vizier’s Second Daughter by Robert F. Young

Vintage Treasures: The Vizier’s Second Daughter by Robert F. Young

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The Vizier's Second Daughter-smallI don’t know much about Robert F. Young. His first short story, “The Black Deep Thou Wingest,” appeared in Startling Stories in 1953; it was followed by roughly 140 more in Astounding Science Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly, Science Fiction Stories, IF, Fantastic Universe, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and many other places. His story “Little Dog Gone,” from the February 1964 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, was nominated for a Hugo Award.

His first novel, La Quete de la Sainte Grille (1975), was written in French; it was released only in France and has never appeared in the U.S. He only wrote four novels in English, including Starfinder (1980), The Last Yggdrasill (1982), and Eridahn (1983). His last, The Vizier’s Second Daughter (1985), was a time traveling science fantasy romp, featuring genies, Ali Baba, and the kid sister of Sheherazade. It looks like a great place to start my education in the the work of Robert F. Young.

They sent him into the past to kidnap and bring back Sheherazade, the famous narrator of the Thousand and One Nights. But when he had grabbed a lovely lady out of the Sultan’s harem and scooted away on his “magic carpet” time machine he discovered that he had muffed it — for she was the Vizier’s second daughter — Sheherazade’s kid sister!

He thought he could rectify the mistake before going back to the 21st Century — but it was already to late. Because the ifrits were on his trail, Ali Baba had jumped aboard, and the enchanted Castle of Brass awaited his arrival with ghoulish glee.

It’s a wonderful romp through time and legend with the kid sister pulling marvels out of her hair faster than you could pull the cork on a djinn bottle!

Robert F. Young died in June 1986, at the age of 71; he continued writing right until his death. The Vizier’s Second Daughter was published by DAW in February 1985. It is 203 pages, priced at $2.50 in paperback; the cover is by Sanjulian. It has never been reprinted and there is no digital edition.

BattleLore: You Got Your Goblins in My Hundred Years War!

BattleLore: You Got Your Goblins in My Hundred Years War!

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Battlelore-smallWhen I set up our first game of BattleLore (no easy task), my wife wasn’t in the room. The game ready, I said, “Do you want to play the French or the English?”

“French.”

I know my wife so well. Still, I’m not a complete bastard.

“It’s the battle of Agincourt.”

Pause. “Maybe I can change the outcome.”

She did and decided this was a strategy game for her. Stepping back even further in time, she proceeded to stomp me at Chevauchee and Burgos. A funny thing happened at Burgos, though. I brought goblins to the party. They were eager to charge into battle, eager to flee. The latter was my undoing. Failing to provide a clear path of retreat for units that retreat with haste can be… messy.

Dwarves then weighed in on the side of the French, and eventually a giant spider showed up, first for the French, then the English. (Fickle creatures, arachnids.)

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