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Month: August 2015

Science Fiction Classics #10 Now on Sale

Science Fiction Classics #10 Now on Sale

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Science Fiction Classics 10-smallIf you’re a pulp fan like me, you’re always interested in high quality facsimile reproductions of pulp magazines, especially ones available at reasonable prices. So I was delighted to discover Science Fiction Classics, a magazine that reproduces a complete pulp magazine with every issue. They’ve published ten issues, focusing (so far) exclusively on that grand old lady of the pulps, Amazing Stories.

The most recent issue, Science Fiction Classics #10, reproduces one of the rarest early pulps, and certainly the rarest issue of Amazing — the very first Amazing Stories Annual, from 1927. It includes the complete Barsoom novel The Master Mind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a short story by A. Hyatt Verrill, as well as five reprints — two classics from A. Merritt, including the long novella “The Face in the Abyss” and “The People of the Pit,” and tales by Austin Hall, Jacque Morgan, and H. G. Wells. It also contains interior artwork by Frank R. Paul, Gambee, and others. The complete contents are:

Preface by Hugo Gernsback
The Master Mind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“The Face in the Abyss” by A. Merritt (1923)
“The Man Who Saved the Earth” by Austin Hall (1919)
“The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt (1918)
“The Man Who Could Vanish” by A. Hyatt Verrill
“The Feline Light & Power Company Is Organized” by Jacque Morgan (1912)
“Under the Knife” by H. G. Wells (1896)

Science Fiction Classics is published by Pulp Tales Press. Issues are print on demand, and available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Lulu, and other places. Issue #10 was published on June 3, 2015; it is 132 pages, priced at $12.95. The cover is by Frank R. Paul. Order right at the Pulp Tales Press website.

See our August Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent magazine coverage here.

July Short Story Roundup

July Short Story Roundup

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Between Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, July was rich with fiction (nine stories, two poems, and a video treat), and some of it is pretty darn good. So let’s get started.

oie_105135GlDNN9g6Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #25, with beautiful banner art by Dana Martin, has the usual complement of stories and poetry, and, this month, a special bonus from editor Adrian Simmons.

“Beast Hunter’s Song” by Michael A. Liguori, is about Sedrick the monster hunter’s second chance in life. Dragon hunters get all the glory, but the really dangerous and dirty work is done by the men bold and crazy enough to stalk the caverns of the Underlands for beasts that can swallow a dragon whole. Since the High Lord of Hunters decided there aren’t enough monsters left underground to hunt anymore, men like Sedrick have been reduced to guard duty.

When a Trogon, a beast “twice the size of a dragon, with two or three heads and terrible claws that could cleave an ox in half with a single swipe” ravages a city, the High Lord has no choice but to call Sedrick back to duty. While the plot is nothing out of the ordinary, there’s a wild inventiveness to Liguori’s underground world and its denizens. The end felt a little abrupt, but it could easily serve as an introduction to more adventures for Sedrick, which I would like to read.

In Linda Donahue’s “White Elephants” Darius, sent to guard an Indian princess betrothed to the Persian emperor, becomes infatuated with his charge. When she and the priceless white elephant accompanying her are snatched by a roc, Darius is determined to rescue her. The thing is, neither the emperor nor the Indian king’s emissary care much about the princess; they just want the elephant rescued. There’s magic and mystery behind everything, and Darius is forced to make some dangerous choices along the road to save the princess. This is a solid adventure tale with a setting not used often enough in fantasy.

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Conquer a Dark and Dangerous Galaxy in Warhammer 40K: Forbidden Stars

Conquer a Dark and Dangerous Galaxy in Warhammer 40K: Forbidden Stars

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Forbidden Stars-small Last year I bought Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, Fantasy Flight’s two-player card game of interplanetary warfare in the Warhammer 40K universe, and enjoyed it quite a bit. But as much fun as it was, it wasn’t what I really wanted — a multi-player game of large scale strategic conflict in the stars.

So I was excited to discover today that Fantasy Flight has recently released Forbidden Stars, a competitive board game of interplanetary war set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and it looks to be exactly what I was hoping for. The base set features four iconic 40K factions: the loyalit Ultramarines Space Marines, Craft world Iyanden Elder, Evil Sunz Orks, and World Eaters Chaos Space Marines. Each faction has its own range of units and unique combat, event, and upgrade cards.

While I miss some of the other colorful factions in the 40K universe — such as Tyranids, Dark Eldar, and Tau — doubtless they will be included in later expansions.

The game uses the familiar moveable tile system, to give every conflict a unique scope and landscape (see the pic of the board below). The huge box comes packed with over 140 sculpted plastic pieces — always one of the delights of a Fantasy Flight game — and custom dice.

There was some concern in certain quarters that, following their acquisition by Asmodee last November, Fantasy Flight would lose some of its creative spark. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.

Fantasy Flight first dabbled with the Warhammer 40K license with a line of excellent role playing games, including Dark Heresy, Only War, and the superb Rogue Trader, one of the best space RPGs I’ve ever played. They have stopped producing supplements for the RPGs (and cleared out much of their back stock with a huge sale late last year), and have now turned their energies to board games. This is the third Warhammer 40K board game to be released by Fantasy Flight (the first two were Relic and Conquest), and this one seems by far the most ambitious.

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Atlantis, Vikings, and the Hordes of Kublai Khan: Merlin’s Ring by H. Warner Munn: Part I

Atlantis, Vikings, and the Hordes of Kublai Khan: Merlin’s Ring by H. Warner Munn: Part I

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Merlin2-smallMerlin1-smallA few months ago I wrote an article about H Warner Munn’s excellent books The King at the World’s Edge and The Ship From Atlantis. Munn wrote both in the 1930’s, although the latter was only published later. By all accounts he took a hiatus from professional writing to concentrate on raising a family and providing the financial security that entails.

His passion for writing had not totally subsided, and as his “day job” career wound down, Munn embarked upon what many consider to be his magnum opus: Merlin’s Ring. Please note that this article does contain a few spoilers, which are necessary to explain certain concepts.

The volume sat on my shelf for years, like so many under the “one day I’ll read it” tag, but having undertaken the previous two books in what is now considered the Merlin’s Godson Cycle, I felt obliged to start Merlin’s Ring.

Merlin’s Ring continues the tail of Gwalchmai, whom we last encountered in The Ship From Atlantis. The book was published by Ballantine in 1974 with a cover by Gervasio Gallardo. It appears to have been republished a few times under the same imprint and later by Del Rey, with the same cover, until 1981. (Click on the images at left and right for more detailed versions.)

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New Treasures: Flesh Like Smoke, edited by Brian M. Sammons

New Treasures: Flesh Like Smoke, edited by Brian M. Sammons

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Flesh Like Smoke-smallNew publisher April Moon Books has had a busy year. They’ve produced a number of highly acclaimed anthologies, including The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Amok!, and the monster anthology Stomping Grounds, as well as Rich Hawkins’ short novel Black Star Black Sun.

Flesh Like Smoke, a collection of shape-shifting tales by Tim Waggoner, Darrell Schweitzer, Cody Goodfellow, William Meikle, and others, is their second partnership with editor Brian M. Sammons, and it looks like another fine volume for horror fans of all stripes.

Shapeshifters, Skinwalkers, Moon Beasts, Lycanthropes….

Whatever you choose to call them, they are the last thing you want to encounter in a darkened alley, or in a jungle, or in your bathroom.

In Brian M. Sammon’s follow-up anthology to the critically acclaimed ‘The Dark Rites of Cthulhu’, sixteen contemporary masters of the macabre weave their fevered visions into tales that turn the werewolf trope on its head. True, there are a handful of traditional lupine monsters within the pages, but these creatures rub hairy shoulders with bizarre chimeras, cyberpunk beasts and scaly demons.

Flesh Like Smoke will transport you from our distant past to our distant future with more familiar locales dotted along the way, locales drenched in blood and echoing with screams.

Flesh Like Smoke was published by April Moon Books on July 1, 2015. It is 252 pages, priced at $18.99 in trade paperback and $3.49 for the digital edition. The cover and interior illustrations are by Neil Baker. Learn more at the website.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

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RonHoward_GunSheldon Reynolds, an American producer, went to England looking for an actor to cast as Holmes in a new television series. Alan Wheatley had appeared in six televised plays (filmed live) for the BBC in 1951. Reynolds had much broader horizons. He found Ronald Howard, son of the famous English actor Leslie Howard. It was the senior Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get to reprise his role of Duke Mantee when the successful play was turned into a film. It was Bogart’s first success on screen and helped launch his career. Howard was killed during World War II when the Nazis shot down his commercial plane over the Bay of Biscay.

Ronald Howard sold his house and took his family to France in early 1954. The entire series was to be shot there to save on costs. Reynolds had used this approach before, filming the American series Foreign Intrigue, in Stockholm for reasons of economy.  This time he would be an American producer, with a British Sherlock Holmes, shooting a television show in France.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Peer-Pressure Writing: Offering Encouragement & Just a Little Shame

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Peer-Pressure Writing: Offering Encouragement & Just a Little Shame

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Writing group 3Mama may have warned you as a child not to give into peer pressure, but that all depends on what the chanting crowd is pushing you to do. In more and more cases, in a variety of ways, writers are inviting other writers to pressure them to write, right? These can include formal educational writers’ retreats, but can be as simple as you and a buddy meeting at a coffee shop.

The classic model is to attend a writers’ retreat. There are lots of them with varied focuses on writing form, commercial genre, regional location, school affiliation, and more. Often, these retreats also offer work-shopping of the manuscripts written there, and in some cases, guest lectures by top tier authors and editors.

One of the best in the spec lit field is the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. A six-week program held on a college campus, it was established in 1968 and has a stiff competition among applicants to be accepted. It has other regional offshoots. As you can imagine, paying room, board, and instructors fees can add up: the 2015 Clarion workshop was estimated to cost around $5,000, plus travel, and that’s in addition to being able to afford six weeks away from your job.

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Future Treasures: Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea

Future Treasures: Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea

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Koko the Mighty-smallThe first Koko novel, Koko Takes a Holiday, set in a war torn future 500 years from now, flew under the radar for me. That was probably a mistake. Sandman Slim author Richard Kadrey called it “a vivid and brutal old school (in the best sense) cyberpunk headkick,” and Publishers Weekly said its “sheer velocity keeps the story rattling along like a big geeky pinball machine.”

A review copy of the sequel, Koko the Mighty, arrived last week, and this looks like a perfect time to jump on board. The book will be released in trade paperback by Titan at the end of August. Check it out.

With an outstanding Ultimate Sanction bounty still on her head, Koko Martstellar (ex-mercenary and saloon madam extraordinaire) and Jedidiah Flynn (former orbital sky-cop) have narrowly escaped death in paradise. Rescued during a storm, Koko and Flynn are taken in by what amounts to a self-sufficient outlander cult. To save Flynn’s life, Koko barters her warrior skills and assists the de-civ group in fending off their most imminent threat: a horde of genetic-mutant raiders. However, even with the group’s foes bested and their idealist lifestyle somewhat enticing, being among the outlander de-civs doesn’t sit well with Koko. In spite of the de-civ group’s hospitality and Flynn’s arguing that they have it pretty good, Koko suspects something is amiss. People within the outlander group’s interlocking compounds keep disappearing with flimsy explanations — people like the girl who died on the cliff before Koko and Flynn’s rescue — and soon the group’s leadership assesses Koko as a threat to their secret agenda. As the mystery unfolds, Koko’s limits and loyalties — perhaps even her love for Flynn — will be tested.

And as if that isn’t enough, bounty agent Wire has managed to track down Koko and, after a little politicking, is preparing to lead an army of genetic-mutant raiders in a last-man-standing battle against the cult…

Koko the Mighty will be published by Titan Books on August 25, 2015. It is 327 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition.

Cloud Sculptors, Dragon Riders, and an Unearthly Craps Game: Nebula Award Stories 3, edited by Roger Zelazny

Cloud Sculptors, Dragon Riders, and an Unearthly Craps Game: Nebula Award Stories 3, edited by Roger Zelazny

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Nebula Award Stories Number Three-smallNebula Award Stories Three
Edited by Roger Zelazny
Pocket Books (193 pages, $0.75, February 1970)

It looks like there were 16 works of shorter fiction nominated for the 1968 Nebula awards. Seven of them appear in this collection. Although the Ballard story included doesn’t appear on the ballots I found listed at various reference sites.

In any event, there are some holes in my reading history represented here. I’ve read lots of Ellison over the years and a fair amount of Ballard. As for Leiber, Moorcock, McCaffrey and Delany, not so much. But there’s some great stuff here, by my reckoning, and a few good ones and one that was not so much.

PICKS

“The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D,” by J. G. Ballard

As the title suggests, actual cloud sculptors are sculpting clouds in this one. At first they do it for small change and later for a wealthy and not-so-nice woman. Things fall apart at this point, in rather spectacular fashion.

“Gonna Roll the Bones,” by Fritz Leiber

Last things first. Leiber’s story has one of the best last lines I’ve read for a long time. And the story that precedes it isn’t half bad either. It’s actually quite good and deserving of an award. You could go wrong in so many ways when writing a story that’s just a play-by-play rendition of an unearthly craps game. But Leiber carries it off well.

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The Dark Issue 9 Now on Sale

The Dark Issue 9 Now on Sale

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The Dark Issue 9-smalThe Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace. The ninth issue features four all-original short stories:

“Hani’s: Purveyor of Rusks, Biscuits, and Sweet Tea” by Sara Saab
“A House of Anxious Spiders” by Jy Yang
“The Old Man in the Kitchen” by Patricia Russo
“Mother of Giants” by Kristy Logan

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 50 pages, and priced at $2.99 through Amazon, B&N.com, Apple, Kobo, and other fine outlets. A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15 – subscribe today.

If you enjoy the magazine you can also support it by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments. Read issue 9 here, and see their complete back issue catalog here.

The issue is cover dated August 2015. We last covered The Dark with Issue 8.

See our August Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent magazine coverage here.