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Month: June 2014

Gygax Magazine #4 Now Available

Gygax Magazine #4 Now Available

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Gygax Magazine 4-smallIt’s been terrific to see Gygax Magazine maintain a regular quarterly schedule, especially after an occasionally bumpy start last year. 2014 has been much better — two issues so far, and we’re not even halfway through the year.

That’s not all that’s terrific about Gygax. Under Art Director R. Scott Taylor (author, editor, and BG blogger extraordinaire), the art in the magazine has really blossomed. The cover for issue 4 is by none other than my fellow Ottawa native Denis Beauvais, another entry in the famous chess series he did for Dragon magazine in the early 80s. And a fabulous piece it is, too (click on the image at left for a mega-sized version).

The interior art is just as lush, and it’s produced by folks who should be familiar to Black Gate readers, including the talented Chuck Lukacs, who illustrated every one of James Enge’s Morlock the Maker stories for us (including his now iconic portrait for “Turn up This Crooked Way.”) Other artists you may recognize include Russ Nicholson (Fiend Folio, Fighting Fantasy), Chris White, Michael Wilson, and many others.

The non-fiction is just as captivating as the art. It includes a new Top Secret adventure by the game’s creator, Merle Rasmussen, an intriguing article on Vancian verbalizations for 13th Age by Ed Greenwood, Leomund’s Secure Shelter by Lenard Lakofka, The Necromancer’s Cookbook by Dave Olson, an article on Djinn by RuneQuest 6 Lawrence Whitaker & Pete Nash, and much more. There’s also comics from Aaron Williams (Full Frontal Nerdity) and Rich Burlew (The Order of the Stick.)

Gygax Magazine #4 is edited by Jayson Elliot and published by TSR.  It is 70 pages (including a gatefold map), priced at $8.95. It’s currently available in PDF format, and in print format before the end of the month. Order directly from the website. We last covered Gygax Magazine with Issue #3.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: New Treasures: The Game’s Afoot (Wordsworth)

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: New Treasures: The Game’s Afoot (Wordsworth)

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Wordsworth_GamesAfootOur fearless leader, John O’Neill, has been reviewing entries in Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural series: with emphasis on the supernatural end. So…I figured I’d look at one of the mystery entries.

Sherlock Holmes: The Game’s Afoot, offers twenty new tales of the world’s first private consulting detective. The real mystery is why I couldn’t find a single reference to this book anywhere on Wordsworth’s website. Curious, indeed.

Sherlockian pastiches are meant to emulate the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original tales. As opposed to parodies, which spoof Holmes.

With the explosion of self-publishing, the quality of pastiches has come to vary wildly. There is quite a bit of dreck out there and the days of buying every Holmes story listed on Amazon are long gone.

The eleven authors who contributed to this collection worked hard to create the same kind of atmosphere Conan Doyle did. David Stuart Davies is the editor of this Wordsworth series and is a well-respected Sherlockian. He includes three of his tales. June Thomson, John Hall, Dennis O. Smith … there are some well-respected Sherlockian names in this collection.

 

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Were These the 10 Best Ghost Stories as of 1927?

Were These the 10 Best Ghost Stories as of 1927?

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photo 1In 1927, Funk & Wagnalls Company published a 10-volume set titled The World’s One Hundred Best Short Stories. Edited by Grant Overton, each small (about 4” by 6.5”), red, hardbound book had a distinct sub-heading: V1. Adventure, V2. Romance, V3. Mystery, V4. Love, V5. Drama, V6. Courage, V7. Women, V8. Men, V9. Ghosts, V10. Humor.

Before I get to the meat-and-potatoes of this post (and if you think that would be volume 9, you would be eerily correct), a couple random observations about the series overall…

First: what an idiosyncratic parsing of genres! Four or five of them would be recognizable genres today, but I’ve yet to see a “courage” section in any bookstore.

Second: I wonder what distinguishes stories of “love” from stories of “romance”? My first thought was that maybe “romance” was being used in an earlier sense — as describing literature like the tales of King Arthur and stories that we would today classify as “fantasy.” Nope. A brief perusal was enough to see they’re romance stories in the modern sense.

Third: “Drama” here is meant to denote what we’d probably just deem mainstream or literary fiction. That volume includes stories by Kathleen Norris, Stephen Crane, and Guy de Maupassant (“The Necklace”, one of my first introductions to “literary fiction” in school — a story that fostered the oft-reinforced impression that “literary” fiction has to be depressing). “Drama” as it is used today — and back then too, for that matter — denotes stage scripts, at least in literary studies. Come to think of it, “drama” as Overton applied it to short stories back in 1927 is how it is now used in classifying films.

Okay, enough of the general observations. What really piqued my curiosity, when I came across these little volumes in a box dropped off at the bookstore where I work, was that ninth volume. Ghosts.

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Future Treasures: The Godless by Ben Peek

Future Treasures: The Godless by Ben Peek

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The Godless Ben Peek-smallI’ve been covering a lot of new and upcoming anthologies recently — from John Joseph Adams’s Dead Man’s Hand to Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8 and George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois’s massive Rogues. Nothing wrong with that. But every once in a while, I like to settle down with something a little more weighty. Not just a quick read, but a genuine fat fantasy with an epic scope, huge cast of characters, and intriguing premise. Ben Peek’s The Godless, the first installment of a new series, weighs in at 562 pages and looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

The Gods are dying. Fifteen thousand years after the end of their war, their bodies can still be found across the world. They kneel in forests, lie beneath mountains, and rest at the bottom of the world’s ocean. For thousands of years, men and women have awoken with strange powers that are derived from their bodies. The city Mireea is built against a huge stone wall that stretches across a vast mountain range, following the massive fallen body of the god, Ger.

Ayae, a young cartographer’s apprentice, is attacked and discovers she cannot be harmed by fire. Her new power makes her a target for an army that is marching on Mireea. With the help of Zaifyr, a strange man adorned with charms, she is taught the awful history of ‘cursed’ men and women, coming to grips with her new powers and the enemies they make. Meanwhile, the saboteur Bueralan infiltrates the army that is approaching her home to learn its terrible secret. Split between the three points of view, the narrative of Godless reaches its conclusion during an epic siege, where Ayae, Zaifyr and Bueralan are forced not just into conflict with those invading, but with those inside the city who wish to do them harm.

The Godless will be published on August 19 by Thomas Dunne Books. It is 562 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

New Treasures: Adventure Tales #7

New Treasures: Adventure Tales #7

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Adventure Tales 7-smallHurrah! Hurrah! The latest issue of Adventure Tales has arrived! And a spectacular issue it is.

It starts with the cover, a reprint of my all-time favorite Planet Stories cover. I’ve always wanted to know who painted it — and I still don’t know, as the cover artist remains uncredited. (Maybe nobody knows? Sadly, that’s entirely possible.)

It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen an issue of Adventure Tales, Wildside Press’s flagship magazine of pulp reprints. And speaking as a magazine publisher who thought he was doing well putting out one issue a year, that means something. Here’s an explanatory snippet from John Betancourt’s (anonymous) editorial:

We are, as usual, managing to keep to our “irregular” schedule with an issue that’s “only” 4 years in following the last one. Hopefully that won’t happen again. (Blame the economy… we’ve had to focus on things that actually make money, rather than the publisher’s time-consuming pulp-magazine hobby!)

I’m hugely appreciative of Wildside’s tireless efforts to keep countless genre authors — many of whom have no other outlet — constantly in print. But having said that. I still vote for more issues of Adventure Tales. Let’s hear it for time-consuming pulp-magazine hobbies! They make the world go round.

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At the Mountains of Merchandise

At the Mountains of Merchandise

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Legends of Cthulhu

Three forty-something toy-industry veterans have formed their own company, Warpo, dedicated to creating retro action figures. Their first product line? The Legends of Cthulhu series, featuring Spawn of Cthulhu, Cultist, Deep One, and Professor figures:

We always felt that Lovecraft’s worlds were deserving of their own action figure line and what better time period than the late 70’s / early 80’s when his work first began its modern-day resurgence … The result is our interpretation of what a major toy company in that era would have done with these characters and how a creative team of the period would have translated H.P. Lovecraft’s stories into a mass-market children’s toy property.

In keeping with the early 80s ethos, Warpo hired Eddy Mosqueda, who worked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Masters of the Universe, for the figure sculpts. For the blister-pack art, they engaged the talents of Ken Kelly, who painted some of the most incredible art ever to adorn a backing card; just check out the packaging he did for Micronauts and the Dungeons & Dragons toy lines.

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The Economics of Short Fiction Writing

The Economics of Short Fiction Writing

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Jim-WFC-Full
Jim Hines

I am a writer, and have been for some time, although I live on a busy full-time job and I only started getting paid for writing in 2006. I feel like I had a long training wheel stage, although maybe because I’m only comparing myself to my expectations. My dreams of writing as a living, like those of many, started when I was a teenager.

There’s a lot of talk out in the world about making it as a writer, whether through traditional publishing, self-publishing, large press, or small press: how much marketing is needed, how much it costs, and whether it has any effect. It becomes a bit dizzying and pretty much bereft of data.

One bright light of hard data is Jim Hines’s yearly “Writing Income” on his blog. Hines is a fantasy writer and he’s blogged very frankly about his income since 2008, partly inspired by a John Scalzi post at that time. Scalzi admits he’s an outlier, but many of the financial points he makes are very good for anyone, including me.

The yearly Hines blog posts are also very instructive for anyone hoping to make a living as a writer. If you’re thinking (or dreaming) of making a living as a writer through the traditional publishing route, these kinds of posts are super-important for you to read. Here they are by year:

2007
2008
2010
2011
2012
2013

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Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence Wins the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Award

Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence Wins the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Award

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Emperor of Thorns-smallMark Lawrence’s Emperor of Thorns, the final volume of The Broken Empire trilogy, has won the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2013.

The David Gemmell Legend Award (DGLA) is a fan-voted award administered by the DGLA. This is its sixth year; it was first granted in 2009.

The DGLA also recognizes the top debut fantasy of the year and best cover art. This year, the Morningstar Award for Best Debut Novel went to Brian McLellan for Promise of Blood and Jason Chan received the Ravenheart Award for Best Cover Art for his cover for Emperor of Thorns.

The nominees for the 2014 Legend award also included The Daylight War by Peter V Brett, The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch, A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson & Robert Jordan, and War Master’s Gate by Adrian Tchaikovsky. See the complete list here.

The previous winners of the award were:

Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves (2009)
Graham McNeill’s Empire: The Legend of Sigmar (2010)
Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings (2011)
Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear (2012)
Brent Weeks’s The Blinding Knife (2013)

Complete details are available at the DGLA website.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Future Treasures: Path of Smoke by Bailey Cunningham

Future Treasures: Path of Smoke by Bailey Cunningham

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Path of Smoke-smallBailey Cunningham’s Pile of Bones, the first novel of Parallel Parks, came out in July of last year and introduced us to Wascana Park, which transforms into the magical kingdom of Anfractus after midnight, and the group of ordinary university students who step inside and become a company of heroes — warriors, bards, and archers in a real-life role-playing game. (See our write-up from last August here.)

Now in the second volume, the stakes are raised and the team must learn to function without one of their most important members. Path of Smoke will be released late next month, which gives you plenty of time to get caught up with the first volume!

The company of heroes has thwarted the plan of the power-hungry basilissa to conquer Anfractus, but not without a cost. Andrew’s character, Roldan, died, leaving him cut off from the mystical realm without any memory of its existence. If the others reveal the park’s magical nature to Andrew, his banishment will become permanent. So they must hide their nighttime adventures — and hope that his memory returns.

Pursued by the basilissa’s forces, the rest of the group keeps a low profile in Anfractus until they uncover an unholy alliance between their enemy and the silenoi, satyrlike creatures who hunt humans — an alliance that threatens to cross the barrier into the real world.

And while his friends struggle to prevent an invasion in both worlds, Andrew receives a visitor determined to restore his memory of Anfractus by leading him down a very dark path…

Path of Smoke will be published by Ace Books on July 29, 2014. It is 304 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $5.99 for the digital version.

Doug Draa on Weird Tales and Keeping the Brand Alive: The Paperback Years

Doug Draa on Weird Tales and Keeping the Brand Alive: The Paperback Years

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Creeps by Night-smallLong before Doug Draa became an occasional blogger for Black Gate, I was a reader of his blog, Uncle Doug’s Bunker of Horror, which we’ve celebrated before. I especially enjoyed his habit of using any excuse whatsoever — and I do mean any excuse — to post luscious high-res images of countless beautiful old paperbacks. Reading Uncle Doug’s Bunker was like browsing a superb used bookstore (without any money).

As Doug has become busier with other projects, including becoming an Online Editor for Weird Tales, he’s been less and less able to keep up his blog. So I was delighted to see that he’s now started to post at the Weird Tales site. His recent articles include “The 15 most entertaining Horror Films from the 1980s,” “Four Decades of the Lovecraftian Aesthetic in Paperback,” “Lin Carter’s Weird Tales” and more fun stuff like that (see a complete archive here.)

On May 25, Doug posted one of his best recent articles, continuing his series on 90 Years of Weird: Keeping the Brand Alive: The Paperback Years. Doug surveys three decades of paperback anthologies reprinting WT fiction, from the death of the pulp magazine in September 1954 through its rebirth in 1988, generously illustrated with nearly three-dozen high-res scans. Here’s a quick snippet:

Lin Carter has a special place among the ranks of Weird Tales preservationists and revivalists. During the late 1960s and early 70s he edited and reprinted many H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith collections as part of his Adult Fantasy Series published by Ballantine. Mr. Carter never failed to sing praises to Weird Tales from the roof tops in his numerous introductions to the collections in this series. At the beginning of the 1980s Mr. Carter even went as far as to revive Weird Tales in paperback format for four issues. This incarnation wasn’t a darling of the critics, but I found it to be enjoyable and true to the original vision of the magazine… Thank you Mr. Carter, I drink to your Shade!

See the complete article here.