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Month: June 2014

Kirkus Looks at Andre Norton’s Young Adult Novels

Kirkus Looks at Andre Norton’s Young Adult Novels

Star Born Andre Norton-smallAndrew Liptak has written a fine series of pulp and classic SF retrospectives SF at Kirkus Reviews over the last few months. In his latest, which he introduces at his website, he looks at the often-neglected YA novels of the great Andre Norton:

Norton wrote largely for what we now call the YA audience: teenagers, with fantastical adventures throughout numerous worlds and times. She was also largely ignored or dismissed for writing ‘children’s literature’, which is a shame, because it’s likely that she had as great an influence on the shape of the modern genre as Robert Heinlein, [whose] Juvenile novels attracted millions of fans to new worlds. Norton was the same, and influenced countless readers and writers for decades. It’s fitting that the major SF award for YA fiction is titled The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Go read the entire article here. Or have a look at some of Andrew’s previous articles, including:

Astounding Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction
Donald A. Wollheim and the Ace Double
The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Gnome Press

Digging further, I note that Andrew has also published blog posts on Leigh BrackettHeinlein and Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Francis Stevens, C.L. Moore, Judith Merril, Margaret St. Clair, Katherine MacLean, and Anne McCaffrey, all at the Kirkus site. How did I miss all that? Clearly, I have some catching up to do!

New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies

New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies

Eternal Lies-smallI haven’t played Call of Cthulhu or its sister game Trail of Cthulhu in a long, long time. But that’s okay, because I still enjoy reading the fabulously creative adventures.

One of the best — and certainly one of the most elaborate and ambitious — I’ve come across in some years is Eternal Lies from Pelgrane Press. A massive new campaign for Trail of Cthulhu, Eternal Lies is packed full of surprises and adventure.

I originally covered it here when it was first released last year (see my original post for more details), but this week I finally got my hands on a copy. I was not disappointed, even after the lengthy wait.

Trail of Cthulhu is a standalone game of Lovecraftian horror, and one of Pelgrane Press’s most successful and acclaimed products. Set in the 1930s, it uses  Robin D. Laws’s GUMSHOE system, which is also the basis for several other successful games, including The Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and Mutant City Blues. Now in its third print run, Trail of Cthulhu won two Ennie awards for Best Rules and Best Writing, as well as an honorable mention for Product of the Year.

It is superbly supported, with some of my favorite recent RPG releases, including Rough Magicks, Bookhounds of London, Arkham Detective Tales, The Armitage Files, and two omnibus adventure collections: Out of Space and Out of Time.

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Review: They Say the Sirens Left the Seas

Review: They Say the Sirens Left the Seas

12742577d05381f961017e2b538dc745fd253fc50a37d322-thumbThe very talented darkly-humored poet James Hutchings returns with his third collection, They Say the Sirens Left the Seas. I previously reviewed his first offering, The New Death and Others, back in 2011. This new collection offers readers more of what they have come to expect from this eccentric and highly original voice.

Hutchings is just as much at home spinning fables as he is dishing up Gothic treats or plunging into the ridiculous with no consideration of social conventions. All three of his excellent collections are available at Amazon as eBooks or direct from the Smashwords website for download for less than a dollar apiece.

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Dawn Duellist Society: 20 Years of an Urban Fantasy

Dawn Duellist Society: 20 Years of an Urban Fantasy

DDS
…an international Historical European Martial Arts movement.

Twenty years ago this week, an odd assortment of young men gathered in — I kid you not — a pagan temple beneath a crystal and incense shop on Edinburgh’s Morningside Road.

Though the walls were covered in murals of gods and goddesses, these fellows weren’t here to worship; this was just the kind of venue you end up with if you’re plugged into the local Bohemian scene. No, they were here to found the Dawn Duellists Society, devoted to studying the Historical European Martial Arts.

And fighting. And drinking. And, before the world got twitchy and trigger happy, sneaking into the park to fight duels at dawn (hence the name). A couple of years later, the club got its venue in a Gothic church hall (which is when I joined ostensibly for a year so I could write good fight scenes… that was about seventeen years ago) and has been meeting there ever since.

Believe it or not, even then the Dawn Duellists were actually part of an international Historical European Martial Arts movement.

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In Praise of Paperbacks

In Praise of Paperbacks

The Chessmen of Mars-smallFirst, a disclaimer. The Luddite rant that follows is my personal view only. I acknowledge the many benefits and advantages of electronic reading devices and to all of the people (many of them dear friends of mine) who would never think of parting with their Kindle, iPad, Nook, or whatever, this is in no way a judgment or condemnation of you or your reading preferences. It is simply about me and my preferences. Now, let the rant begin.

I teach elementary school, and when I began that job, ten years ago, I was faced with the “problem” of what to do with my summers. Yardwork? Get the garage in order? Any of the thousand other home projects that clamor for attention during the working week and never get done for lack of time or energy? Attractive as these options are, I quickly hit upon the happy idea of passing my summers in the same way I did as an adolescent, in reading through as many SF/fantasy paperbacks as I possibly could in the allotted time. Though age does take its toll, and gone are the days when I had the stamina to read The Chessmen of Mars or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel through in a single sitting, as I did when I was thirteen, I still manage to do all right. The choice to spend my extended vacations reliving those great days of blissful, carefree reading is one of best I’ve ever made.

A couple of summers ago, having just finished one book (I think it was one of E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest of Terra novels), I looked around for my next read. There on the shelf was a paperback copy of The Stars Are Ours by Andre Norton. My copy is a 40 cent paperback, published by Ace in 1954. The book is great fun and I quickly zipped through it.

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Future Treasures: Grudgebearer by J.L. Lewis

Future Treasures: Grudgebearer by J.L. Lewis

Grudgebearer-smallJ.F. Lewis is the author of the Void City novels, about a vampire who runs a strip club and suffers from short-term memory problems.

With Grudgebearer, the first volume of the Grudgebearer trilogy, Lewis turns to more classic second-world fantasy with a setting full of action, adventure, and carnivorous elves…

Kholster is the first born of the practically immortal Aern, a race created by the Eldrennai as warrior-slaves to defend them from the magic-resistant reptilian Zaur. Unable to break an oath without breaking their connection with each other, the Aern served the Eldrennai faithfully for thousands of years until the Sundering. Now, the Aern, Vael, and Eldrennai meet every hundred years for a Grand Conjunction to renew their tenuous peace.

While the tortures of slavery remain fresh in Kholster’s mind, most of the rest of the world has moved on. Almost six hundred years after the Sundering, an Eldrennai prince carelessly breaks the truce by setting up a surprise museum exhibit containing sentient suits of Aernese armor left behind, never to be touched, lest Kholster kill every last Eldrennai. Through their still-existing connection with their ancient armor, the Aern know instantly, and Kholster must find a way to keep his oaths, even those made in haste and anger. While Kholster travels to the Grand Conjunction with his Freeborn daughter and chosen successor Rae’en, his troops travel by sea, heading for war.

Grudgebearer will be published on September 2 by Pyr Books. It is 400 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent articles on upcoming books here.

Can Writing Be Taught?

Can Writing Be Taught?

Can Writing be Taught-smallFor those who regularly read articles and blogs about writing, this is probably a question you’ve seen raised before. Can a person be taught how to write well, or is it an inborn talent? Good old nature-vs-nurture.

Once upon a time, I firmly believed you’re either born with writing talent or you’re not, and I was afraid my own skills were only mediocre. Oh, I could spin out some decent prose and even a little poetry, but I didn’t feel I was a good storyteller and that meant I never would be.

Mainly that was because I’m a self-made author. I took a couple creative writing courses in college, but they didn’t help much, and so I kept on believing that writers were born, not made.

This view changed slowly, reflecting my own path. It took me almost twenty years to go from bright-eyed kid writer to published author with a multi-book contract, and often that progress was hard for me to see. But the difference between my first attempted novel and my first published novel, almost two decades later, is like night and day. Somewhere along the line, I had learned how to tell a complete story, and well enough for someone to pay me to publish it.

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A Reconstructed Celtic Village in Spain

A Reconstructed Celtic Village in Spain

Typical Cantabria house of the late pre-Roman period.
Typical Cantabrian house of the late pre-Roman period.

When the Romans marched into the Iberian Peninsula 218 BC, they found it to be a patchwork of small Celtic kingdoms and tribes, each with its distinct local traditions, but sharing the same overall culture.

Like with the other Celtic peoples they faced, the Romans met fierce resistance, and didn’t fully conquer the peninsula for 200 years. The last holdouts were the mountain tribes of northern Spain–the Cantabri, the Astures, and the Gallaeci. They have left their names as three of Spain’s northern provinces–Cantabria, Asturias, and Galicia. In a bitter war from 29 to 19 BC, the Emperor Augustus brought these tribes to heel and took their land for the empire.

“Cantabri” means “mountain people.” They were an isolated and independent-minded culture living a mostly pastoral lifestyle. Several of their villages and cemeteries have been excavated and the regional government has also built a reconstructed Cantabrian village. The Poblado Cántabro at Cabezón de la Sal, an hour’s train ride from the regional capital Santander, gives the visitor an insight into the lives of these ancient people.

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Vintage Treasures: The Great Steamboat Race by John Brunner

Vintage Treasures: The Great Steamboat Race by John Brunner

The Great Steamboat Race John Brunner-smallJohn Brunner is one of my favorite writers. He wrote one of the finest SF novels I’ve ever read, the Hugo Award-winning Stand on Zannibar, and over a career that spanned 40+ years he produced nearly 60 SF novels  and 15 short story collections.

I have virtually all of his SF output, but a few months ago I stumbled on a Brunner novel unknown to me: The Great Steamboat Race, published in a premium trade paperback edition by Ballantine in 1983. Based upon the true story of an epic race between the steamboats Natchez and Robert E. Lee down the hazardous Mississippi River on the July 4th 1870 weekend, The Great Steamboat Race is a massive historical saga and a significant departure for Brunner. It’s the only book like it in his catalog and Ballantine obviously sunk some money into the production — it’s packaged very much like a historical bestseller.

A decade before it appeared, a virtually unknown sword & sorcery writer named John Jakes escaped midlist obscurity by turning from SF and Fantasy to historical fiction with his novel The Bastard. That single novel made Jakes one of the most popular writers in America and the series that grew from it, the Kent Family Chronicles, eventually sold 55 million copies (to put that in perspective, that’s roughly twice George R.R. Martin’s sales for all the volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire.) Jakes’s success inspired many of his fellow SF writers to experiment with straight historical fiction, including Robert Silverberg (with Lord of Darkness, 1983) and a handful of others.

Although The Great Steamboat Race was well-reviewed, it was not a success. It was never reprinted in mass market paperback (although copies of the trade paperback edition are easy to find, even today) and John Brunner returned to writing SF and fantasy. He never wrote another historical novel.

The Great Steamboat Race was published by Ballantine Books in February, 1983. It is 568 pages, originally priced at $7.95. New copies are available on eBay for roughly the same price today.

Scenic Dunnsmouth

Scenic Dunnsmouth

dunnsmouth1I have a complicated relationship with adventure modules.

As a someone introduced to Dungeons & Dragons during the Fad Years of the late ’70s to early ’80s, TSR Hobbies was only too glad to satiate my appetite for all things D&D with a steady diet of ready-made scenarios to inflict upon my friends’ characters. I had a lot of fun doing so and, even now, more than three decades later, some of the fondest memories of my youth center around the adventures those modules engendered. Having spoken to lots of roleplayers over the years, I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that one of the most important functions of TSR’s modules was creating common experiences that gamers across the world could share. To this day, I can mention the minotaur in the Caves of Chaos or the juggernaut from Acererak’s tomb and players of a certain vintage know exactly what I mean, because they, too, have had to deal with these threats.

At the same time, there’s a part of me – a snobbish part of me, I suppose – that looks down my nose at “pre-packaged” scenarios, seeing them as the adventure design equivalent of fast food. This elitist part of me prefers “home made meals,” created by the referee from hand-picked ingredients and prepared using original recipes. Anything less than that is a concession, whether it be to mere practicalities, such as time, or something far worse, such as a lack of imagination. Such pomposity wonders, “If you can’t be bothered to make up your own adventures, why would you dare to present yourself as a referee?”

I’ve favored each of these positions, to varying degrees, at different times in my life. It should come as no surprise that the “adventure modules are for the unimaginative” position was something I adopted most strenuously in my later teen years, whereas the “Cool! Queen of the Demonweb Pits!” position was what I adopted earlier. Nowadays, I’m more fond of adventure modules than I have been in quite some time, in part, I think, because there are a lot of really good ones being produced these days. A good example of what I’m talking about is Zzarchov Kowolski‘s Scenic Dunnsmouth, published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess in Finland.

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