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Month: May 2014

A Ride Along with the Thought Police: John C. Wright, Foz Meadows, and Rachel Aaron

A Ride Along with the Thought Police: John C. Wright, Foz Meadows, and Rachel Aaron

the-legend-of-eli-monpress2There’s been a lively and far-ranging debate that’s arisen out of the 2014 Hugo nominations, recent turmoil inside SFWA, and even the lingering controversy over WisCon withdrawing Elizabeth Moon’s Guest of Honor invitation back in 2010. It began earlier this week with author John C. Wright drawing the threads of these (and other) issues together to illuminate a broad conspiracy to silence conservative writers, in his article Heinlein, Hugos, and Hogwash:

The lamps of the intellect were put out one by one, first in society at large, then in literature, then in our little corner called science fiction. What we have now instead is a smothering fog of caution, of silence, of an unwillingness to speak for fear of offending the perpetually hypersensitive. Science fiction is under the control of the thought police…

When Larry Correia was nominated for a Hugo Award, the gossips reacted with astonishing venom, vocal enough to be mentioned in the Washington Post and USA Today. He was accused of the typical menu of thought crimes. You know the selection: racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, insensitivity, fascism… The lunatic Left planned and struggled for years, decades, to achieve their cultural influence. Let us imitate their perseverance, and retake our lost home one mind, one institution, at a time. Start by praying.

Black Gate blogger Foz Meadows posted a thoughtful (and frequently very funny) response, “Silence Is Not Synonymous With Uproar: A Response To John C. Wright,” in which she ably disputes John C. Wright’s complaints point by point. Here’s an example:

You cannot state, as your opening premise, that SFF fandom is being handicapped by silence and an unwillingness to speak out, and then support that premise by stating the exact polar opposite: that there has, in your own words, been vocal uproarDoubtless, what Wright meant to imply is that the persons against whom the uproar is directed are being silenced by it – that he, and others like him, such as Larry Correia and Theodore Beale, are now suffering under the burden of enforced quietude. But given that all three men are still writing publicly and vocally, not just about the issues Wright raises, but about any number of other topics, the idea that their output is being curtailed by their own “unwillingness to speak for fear of offending” is patently false.

In her post “The Loudest Sound in the World is a Bigot Screaming That he’s Being Silenced,” Rachel Aaron, author of the The Legend of Eli Monpress and, under the name Rachel Bach, the military SF series Fortune’s Pawn, presents the radical idea that having readers react strongly to your ideas isn’t the same thing as being a victim of “thought police” — it’s something called criticism, a vital part of a free society.

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The Serious Novel isn’t Dead, It Won

The Serious Novel isn’t Dead, It Won

Click to see source (and more cartoons, and a book)

This week Will Self, one of the UK’s stars of Literary Fiction, told everybody that the “novel is dead.”  Just seeing the title of his piece was enough to make me bring up Amazon and check… but no, the books hadn’t gone, replaced by app downloads and cheap white goods. So, what did he actually mean?

Reading the actual article, I discovered he meant “the literary novel is dead”, plus — as far as I can tell from what’s a rather long piece that seems to have been savaged by a feral Thesaurus — difficult Art in general:

the hallmark of our contemporary culture is an active resistance to difficulty in all its aesthetic manifestations, accompanied by a sense of grievance that conflates it with political elitism.

You might guess that my gut reaction is, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THE WAR TRUMPETS HANG ON LET ME PUT DOWN MY AXE OMG WATCH OUT! ORK! GOT HIM! Now what were you saying Mr Self?”

What I mean is:

Just as authors have artistic integrity, readers have audience integrity. Sure, you wrote something you think is smart. However, that doesn’t give you a right to other people’s time and brainspace.

The sense of grant-grubbing entitlement from LitFic authors would be distasteful — nay, comic — if it came from any other sector, say, from typewriter manufacturers: “Wah wah, nobody wants typewriters anymore but they’re culturally vital where’s my grant and my tenure teaching typewriter engineering to young people?”

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Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies, Serial Killers, and the Horror of Mundane Lives: Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters

Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies, Serial Killers, and the Horror of Mundane Lives: Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters

North American Lake Monsters-smallNathan Ballingrud’s short stories have been making the rounds for a while, with some of the most prestigious names in contemporary weird fiction and horror sounding his praises. Jeff VanderMeer calls Ballingrud “One of my favorite short fiction writers” and Laird Barron claims that Ballingrud’s debut horror collection “deserves a place of honor in the canon of the dark fantastic.” Thus I’ve had my eye on Ballingrud’s collection, North American Lake Monsters, since last summer when it first came out. I recently got my hands on it and it was definitely worth the wait.

Ballingrud’s fiction is an amalgamation of some of the best elements of current dark fiction. The stories of North American Lake Monsters are poetic and literary (think Kelly Link or Caitlin Kiernan), forbidding and nihilistic (think John Langan), very real and raw (think Nic Pizzolatto), while also scaring the bejesus out of you (think Laird Barron).

I’m not a big fan of some of the dark and weird fiction coming out nowadays. Though much of it takes its trajectory from cosmic horror, which I love, set by late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers like Robert W. Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, and most singularly that of H. P. Lovecraft, the stories of many current masters, such as Thomas Ligotti, tend to leave me more depressed than horrified. (Not necessarily a criticism, more of a personal bias.)

Though Ballingrud’s stories are similarly dark and depressing in many ways, his characterizations, his use of horror tropes, and his building of suspense are so good that I usually end one of his stories with more of a horrified thrill than just simple heavy-heartedness.

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Vintage Treasures: The Book of Skaith: The Adventures of Eric John Stark by Leigh Brackett

Vintage Treasures: The Book of Skaith: The Adventures of Eric John Stark by Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett The Book of Skaith-smallI joined the Science Fiction Book Club in the fall of 1975, when I was in my last year at St. Francis Junior High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before I joined, I agonized over my introductory selection — three books for a just a dollar! — for days, reading and re-reading the tiny paragraphs in the brochure, and then waiting impatiently for my selections to arrive in the mail. My friend John MacMaster enrolled me and I’m pretty sure I’ll remember the contents of my enrollment package until the day I die: The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, The Hugo Winners, Volumes One and Two, edited by Isaac Asimov, and Before the Golden Age, edited by (can you guess?) Isaac Asimov.

John had introduced me to science fiction earlier that year, loaning me Clifford D. Simak’s Shakespeare’s Planet and Piers Anthony’s Ox when I was home sick from school. I devoured them both and wanted more. John explained how the club worked and it sounded terrific. “They sometimes have these big collections, a bunch of novels gathered into one book,” he said. “They’re the best.”

John was right. The year after I joined, in 1976, the featured selection for the month was The Book of Skaith: The Adventures of Eric John Stark, an omnibus of three novels by Leigh Brackett, under a new cover by Don Maitz. It was a marvelous introduction to one of SF’s great pulp writers, in an attractive and affordable package offered exclusively through the Science Fiction Book Club.

That’s one of the great things about the SFBC: its exclusive omnibus editions, highly collectible as they are, are generally still available at excellent prices. In February of this year, nearly 40 years after it was published, I bought a copy of The Book of Skaith in excellent condition on eBay for just $2.99.

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New Treasures: Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal

New Treasures: Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal

Valour and Vanity-smallBack in February, I had the good fortune to attend Capricon 34 here in Chicago, where I heard Mary Robinette Kowal read from her upcoming novel Valour and Vanity. It was a delightful affair, not least because Mary gave us a highly entertaining peek behind the scenes at what it really takes to produce a period fantasy novel.

Valour and Vanity is the fourth book in the successful Glamourist Histories, following Shades of Milk and Honey (2010), Glamour in Glass (2012), and Without a Summer (2013). Mary’s first collection, Scenting the Dark and Other Stories, was released by Subterranean Press in 2009.

Acclaimed fantasist Mary Robinette Kowal has enchanted many fans with her beloved novels featuring a Regency setting in which magic — known here as glamour — is real. In Valour and Vanity, master glamourists Jane and Vincent find themselves in the sort of a magical adventure that might result if Jane Austen wrote Ocean’s Eleven.

After Melody’s wedding, the Ellsworths and Vincents accompany the young couple on their tour of the continent. Jane and Vincent plan to separate from the party and travel to Murano to study with glassblowers there, but their ship is set upon by Barbary corsairs while en route. It is their good fortune that they are not enslaved, but they lose everything to the pirates and arrive in Murano destitute.

Jane and Vincent are helped by a kind local they meet en route, but Vincent is determined to become self-reliant and get their money back, and hatches a plan to do so. But when so many things are not what they seem, even the best laid plans conceal a few pitfalls. The ensuing adventure is a combination of the best parts of magical fantasy and heist novels, set against a glorious Regency backdrop.

Valour and Vanity was published on April 29 by Tor Books. It is 408 pages, priced at 25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The jacket art is by Larry Rostant.

Los Caballeros Templares

Los Caballeros Templares

Bld Tower itselfThere’s something about the history – and the legends – of the Templar Knights that catches at the imaginations of historical and fantasy writers alike. In The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser had his Red Cross Knight, Michael Jecks, write the Knights Templar Books, a mystery series, and, just to give one example from our genre, there’s the fantasy anthology, Tales of the Knights Templar.

Everyone knows something about the Templars, but not everyone knows about their presence in Spain.

The history of the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem begins around 1119, when nine Christian knights, settled in the Holy Land after the first Crusade, took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, like any other monks. But unlike ordinary monks, they also vowed to protect the pilgrims who now flocked to visit the area.

Sort of like holy policemen.

Their approach was a popular one, their numbers started growing, and the group received official recognition and papal approval around 1129. Like other official religious orders – the Benedictines, the Dominicans – the Templars started receiving donations of money and land. One of the early kings of Aragon, for example, part of modern day Spain, left the Templars almost one third of his kingdom.

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Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Fifteen

Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Fifteen

Flash Alpha 1Flash Alpha 2“Return to Mongo” by Dan Barry was serialized by King Features Syndicate from January 2 to March 24, 1956. The story gets underway with a party celebrating Dr. Zarkov’s newly discovered young adult daughter Zara and her arrival on Earth after growing up on an otherwise deserted swamp planet with her mother. Flash, Dale, and the Space Kids are at the party when Zarkov is alerted to the discovery that Mongo is once again entering Earth’s orbit and threatening our world’s stability. Willie, who still has the ability to psychically grant wishes, inadvertently teleports everyone from the party to Mongo.

Flash and the Space Kids are immediately set upon by Queen Azura’s cowled servants, who nearly massacre them. Working as a team to defeat Azura’s servants, Flash and the Space Kids are overcome by a paralyzing gas as they explore a nearby cave. They are subsequently captured and brought to Queen Azura’s palace, where they learn she is plotting to overthrow Prince Barin.

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Goth Chick News: Lovecraft Fans, It’s Time for a Road Trip

Goth Chick News: Lovecraft Fans, It’s Time for a Road Trip

The Atlas on your phone
The Atlas on your phone

In last week’s coverage of C2E2, I promised to share two of the coolest products from the show in upcoming posts – and I am about to do just that.

Though my buddy and Lovecraft devotee, comic artist Dirk Manning, was hoping for Cthulhu footy pajamas, I believe what I am about to serve up is (almost) as exciting.

Allow me to introduce you to Chris Karr and his Pnakotic Atlas.

Karr was first struck with the idea for the Pnakotic Atlas when driving through Maine. As a fan of Stephen King, Kerr became curious as to the actual locations of some of King’s more famous tales and thought it would be cool if there was a way to easily find some of them. Karr is an app developer by trade and an avid fan of H.P. Lovecraft (in addition to King). He decided to tackle the idea of an atlas that documented Lovecraft locations: a less potentially litigious option, as Lovecraft’s works are in the public domain.

The inspiration for the name Pnakotic Atlas, as all of you Lovecraftians know, comes from The Pnakotic Manuscripts, which are fictional manuscripts created by Lovecraft that first appeared in his short story “Polaris” (1918). They appear again in several other Lovecraft stories, including At the Mountains of Madness (1936), “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” (1926), “The Other Gods” (1933), and “The Shadow Out of Time” (1936).

The fictional library city of Pnakotus is where the Manuscripts are housed and where they, and Karr’s app, get their moniker.

Karr combed through Lovecraft’s works, pulling out any detail he could find about locations (the ones on Earth, anyway), and was able to document approximately 400 potential sites.  Then using the stories as guides, he went about meticulously locating each place on Google Earth.

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Baen Announces 2014 Fantasy Adventure Award

Baen Announces 2014 Fantasy Adventure Award

Baen Books logoAll right, all you aspiring fantasy writers. Here’s your chance to make a splash.

Baen Books has announced a new short story contest for the best original fantasy adventure tale under 8,000 words. They’re accepting entries in all categories of fantasy, including sword and sorcery, epic fantasy, heroic fantasy, urban fantasy, etc. Here’s the official announcement:

Baen Books is proud to announce the inaugural Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, to be given at this year’s Gen Con to the best piece of original short fiction that captures the spirit and tradition of such great storytellers as Larry Correia, Robert E. Howard, Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Moon, Andre Norton, J.R.R. Tolkien, David Weber and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

There’s no entry fee, but you’re limited to one entry per person. The story has to be original and not a reprint.

Only entries in English will be considered. Poetry or licensed fiction set in some else’s sandbox (such as Pathfinder, Star Wars, Doctor Who, or Twilight fanfic) will not be considered.

All submissions must be by e-mail. The contest is now open and entries must be submitted by June 30, 2014. A single winner will be announced at this year’s Gen Con.

Complete submission instructions are at the Baen website. Read them carefully, as they include very specific instructions.

Good luck!

May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

Fantasy and Science Fiction May June 2014-smallI’m so proud of myself. I had the latest issue of F&SF with me for my flight to New Orleans this week — which means I actually read it before it was time to tell you about it, for once. There I was, reading tales about mermaids and private eyes on Venus at 30,000 feet, while the guy on my left was playing solitaire and the woman on my right occupied herself with an article on Scarlett Johansson in Vanity Fair. Losers. Although admittedly, I kept getting distracted by glamor shots of Scarlett Johansson and tried to steal her copy of Vanity Fair when she started to nod off.

Anyway, I enjoyed this issue. It opens with David D. Levine’s pulp SF-hard boiled detective homage “The End of the Silk Road,” in which our hero, Mike Drayton (a man whose first thought is “Nice gams” when a woman collides with him in zero-g), takes a commercial prop-plane to Venus, land of foot-powered taxis and Venusian spider-silk factories, where he’s been hired to investigate a drug ring run by a froggie, a frog-like native. Of course, things aren’t what they appear to be and pretty soon the thick air of Venus is filled with the sound of gunshots, curses, and a lot of tough talk.

I was more impressed with Alyssa Wong’s first published story, “The Fisher Queen.” I was going to tell you all about it, but I made the mistake of checking Tangent Online first and discovered that the reviewers there (as usual) noticed a lot more than I did — including obvious allusions to William Faulkner and Angela Carter. So I’ll shut up and let Martha Burns & C. D. Lewis tell you about it.

“The Fisher Queen” by Alyssa Wong is stunning and smart. The first line, “My mother was a fish,” echoes a line in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. In Faulkner’s novel, a young boy’s lament that his dead mother is a fish functions as a metaphor for the boy’s grief together with a less obvious comment on the way women are caricatured and discarded. In Wong’s story, fifteen-year-old Lily’s mother truly is a fish or, rather, a mermaid. Her father jokes about this with his three daughters. In the early parts of the tale, this seems like a sweet way a beloved father helps his girls cope with their mother abandoning them, but when Dad’s fishing crew catches a different kind of mermaid on a deep sea expedition, Lily finds out the gut-wrenching truth. Like Faulkner’s novel, this is a meditation on the effects of motherlessness and brutality against women. It is also a deeply satisfying revenge story. Angela Carter is the acknowledged mother of retold fairy tales where the heroines are no Disney princesses. Now she has a daughter in Alyssa Wong.

Read the complete Tangent review here.

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