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Month: September 2015

Another Old Fan Gone: “Ned” Cuyler Warnell Brooks Jr., 1938-2015

Another Old Fan Gone: “Ned” Cuyler Warnell Brooks Jr., 1938-2015

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Ned Brooks Georgia Institute of Technology credit: ©2006 Gary W. Meek Photography, Inc. 1525 Grayson Highway, Suite 410 Grayson, GA 30017 770.978.3618 gm@garymeek.com
Ned Brooks
Photo by Gary W. Meek

I was saddened to read in this month’s Ansible that longtime fan Ned Brooks had died from injuries sustained from a fall. He was 77.

Ned was one of the first to welcome me when I got into fandom way back in my fanzine days of the early 1990s. He and I shared an obsession with collecting books, with him beating me handily by several thousand volumes. I often joked with my wife that if she didn’t stop complaining about my ever-expanding library, she should visit Ned’s house and see what a real collection looks like.

I knew him primarily through his fanzine, It Goes on the Shelf, a review zine started in 1985 in which he wrote about all the strange books he picked out of used bookstores, estate sales, and thrift stores. He had an eye for the unusual, the quirky, the forgotten. More than once I’ve gone to my local university library clutching a copy of IGOTS in order to look up some intriguing title.

IGOTS came around Christmas time every year, and my wife I always looked forward to opening up that familiar manila envelope and reading through the colored pages of Ned’s witty reviews of all the books he’d gathered in the previous 12 months. While I fell out of the fanzine world several years ago, Ned’s zine was one of the only I still received. I wasn’t about to give that one up!

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New Treasures: Nod by Adrian Barnes

New Treasures: Nod by Adrian Barnes

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Nod Adrian Barnes-smallAdrian Barnes’ debut novel Nod was published in hardcover by Bluemoose Books in 2012, and is now available in trade paperback from Titan Books. The tale of an unusual and mysterious apocalypse — one night 99.99% of mankind finds itself unable to sleep, and as one night becomes many, civilization begins to collapse — Nod was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no one in the world has slept the night before, or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same golden dream.

After six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis will set in. After four weeks, the body will die. In the interim, panic ensues and a bizarre new world arises in which those previously on the fringes of society take the lead.

Paul, a writer, continues to sleep while his partner Tanya disintegrates before his eyes, and the new world swallows the old one whole.

Adrian Barnes is a Canadian writer. His next novel is titled Dickensian, which he describes as “about a post-modern uber-hipster who finds his life slowly transformed into a Dickensian orgy of the emotions.” It doesn’t yet have a release date.

Nod was published by Titan Books on September 1, 2015. It is 256 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Diablo 3: Fourth (Season)’s the Charm

Diablo 3: Fourth (Season)’s the Charm

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Screenshot093Diablo 3 has gone through a lot since its release in 2012: From the lead designer moving on, to patch after patch after patch attempting to address complaints about the design. Of course, we can’t forget about the Auction House system that left a major black stain on the game until its removal.

Flash forward to today. Diablo 3 has come a long way, as we just entered the fourth season of ladder play. Normally I don’t take a look at games I’ve already reviewed, but given everything that’s happened and the latest patch, today I’m making an exception.

Tormented

Before we talk about the latest patch, I want to bring everyone up to speed on what’s happened since Diablo 3 was released. For the first few years of its life, Diablo 3 was marked by polarizing reviews; many people loved the game’s streamlined design, but the poor loot distribution and auction system made the endgame a nightmare.

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Future Treasures: The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane

Future Treasures: The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane

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The Rim of Morning Two Tales of Cosmic Horror-smallI’m not familiar with William Sloane, but my interest was piqued this week when I saw his omnibus collection coming out next month from NYRB Classics. The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror collects two pulp-era tales of supernatural horror: To Walk the Night (1937) and The Edge of Running Water (1939). Here’s the description:

In the 1930s, William Sloane wrote two brilliant novels that gave a whole new meaning to cosmic horror. In To Walk the Night, Bark Jones and his college buddy Jerry Lister, a science whiz, head back to their alma mater to visit a cherished professor of astronomy. They discover his body, consumed by fire, in his laboratory, and an uncannily beautiful young widow in his house — but nothing compares to the revelation that Jerry and Bark encounter in the deserts of Arizona at the end of the book. In The Edge of Running Water, Julian Blair, a brilliant electrophysicist, has retired to a small town in remotest Maine after the death of his wife. His latest experiments threaten to shake up the town, not to mention the universe itself.

I did a little homework and found that both novels had a long history of paperback reprints from mainstream publishers, such as Dell, Bantam, and Panther. But they were also reprinted by Del Rey in the early 80s, in editions that dressed them up as supernatural SF and gothic horror.

Both have been out of print in the US for the last quarter century.

All of the editions had terrific covers, and immediately appealed to the paperback collector in me. I’m definitely going to have to get the NYRB reprint — if only for the new introduction by Stephen King — and also track down down the Dell, Bantam, and Del Rey paperback editions.

Here’s a quick look at a few of the earlier editions of these long-neglected supernatural classics.

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Art of the Genre: Kickstarter, Why I Hate Stretch Goals and You Should Too

Art of the Genre: Kickstarter, Why I Hate Stretch Goals and You Should Too

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11708033_10154052455508976_1237746949710068474_oOver the past three years I’ve written a lot about Kickstarter. In fact, I went back and looked at the Art of the Genre archives and found a rather impressive eight articles dedicated to the subject:

The Art of Kickstarter,
The Art of Kickstarter #2
The Pillaging Of Kickstarter
Why and How I Build a Kickstarter
The Pillaging of Kickstarter #2
Front Loading a Kickstarter
The Joy and Pain of Kickstarter (and how backed projects still fail)
Kickstater, It Really Shouldn’t Be About the Stuff We All Get

In those you can find all kinds of advice, statistics, opinions, and introspection, (or as my non-fans like to say, my sour grapes). But if I’ve learned anything over the course of my time on the platform, it is that it is constantly changing.

Sure, there are some static rules, but even those have some latitude if a developer happens to get lucky. And let me tell you, there is a lot of luck involved out there, as well as blind devotion.

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For Gonji Lovers: A Hungering of Wolves by T.C. Rypel

For Gonji Lovers: A Hungering of Wolves by T.C. Rypel

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oie_6235149uAZhq0luI’ve finally read A Hungering of Wolves, the last published volume of T.C. Rypel’s dimension-spanning swords & sorcery epic series about Gonji, the half Japanese, half Norwegian samurai, fighting his way across Renaissance Europe in hopes of discovering his destiny. It shouldn’t be the last book, but as of now, sadly, it is. While there is a collection of shorter tales scheduled for the near future, the sequel to this book is not.

It was orginally published as Knights of Wonder by Zebra Books way back in 1986. Rypel and his books fell victim to the whims of the publishing industry and an agent who wasn’t a big heroic fantasy fan. My earlier review of the first three Gonji books, collectively called the The Deathwind Trilogy, contains a more detailed account of Gonji’s publishing history.

I tend to avoid series that haven’t been finished because I fear they never will be. My dad went to his grave never seeing the end of Roland Green’s Wandor series. I dread the screams that will pierce the heavens if A Song of Ice and Fire doesn’t reach its end. So when I tell you that I read A Hungering of Wolves knowing it sets up a story that remains unfinished, that should tell you something about how much I like Rypel’s books.

If you have any love for swords & sorcery then you should read the Gonji books. Though thirty years old, Rypel’s books don’t feel dated and avoid the cliches that infect the worst heroic fantasy. Gonji, his associates, and opponents react like real humans, not puppet characters moved about in service to some pre-ordained plot.

While the books have more blood and thunder than even I can handle at times, they also have detailed and nuanced character development contemporary readers expect. For every loud and explosive scene the books have calmer moments that create atmosphere and a believable world. Just enough time is spent with secondary characters to make you care when something happens to them or buy their motives when they act.

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Fantasia Diary 2015: A Coda

Fantasia Diary 2015: A Coda

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JeruzalemWith my Fantasia coverage done for another year, I thought I’d write a final post looking back over what I saw to try to make sense of it all. And to talk about why I’ve done what I’ve done.

I saw over sixty films at Fantasia, almost half of all the features presented. I am tremendously grateful to everyone involved; to the people at Fantasia for putting the festival together, and to John and Black Gate for allowing me to cover it. I tried to focus on fantasy, science fiction, horror, and mystery films in that order, but also did not scruple to go beyond that broad remit. Sometimes that’s because the film in question seemed to have some element that might be of interest to Black Gate readers. Sometimes it was just because it seemed to fit in a way I couldn’t explain — seeing all these movies at Fantasia makes for a kind of juxtaposition that unites them in some way I can’t easily articulate. It may just be a shared sensibility of the programmers.

So: over sixty films. And yet there were something like a dozen more I wish I could have seen. The Israeli horror film Jeruzalem. The Spanish post-apocalypse zombie movie Extinction. The animated Japanese movie The Case of Hana and Alice. Various others. The programming’s so dense that I’m physically incapable of going to all the movies I want to go to in the short time of the festival. As it was, I averaged three movies a day.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 181 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 181 Now Available

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 181-smallBeneath Ceaseless Skies #181 has new stories by Fran Wilde and Suzanne Palmer, a podcast by Fran Wilde, and a reprint by Ferrett Steinmetz.

“Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” by Fran Wilde
In the sky behind, a group of children Calli’s age swooped and dove in unison, followed by one of the tower’s magisters. Calli heard scraps of song. A lesson about wind shifts. The students’ wings cut patches of bright color in the deep blue air. Calli knew each span and spar, even from this distance. She’d tested them all.

“Moogh and the Great Trench Kraken” by Suzanne Palmer
Moogh decided, with regret, that he would have to temporarily abandon his trek due west and instead walk alongside this water for a bit until either he outlasted or outpaced whatever curse made it seem to go on forever. He declared its true name to be the Tricksy River, and decided if he ever found the trickster responsible for it he might justifiably commit some minor violence upon their person.

Author Interview: Fran Wilde

Audio Fiction Podcast: “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” by Fran Wilde (51 minutes, 30 seconds)
Liras tried to remain at his workbench and finish the customer’s wings, but the pain grew too much.

From the Archives: “My Father’s Wounds” by Ferrett Steinmetz (from BCS #75)
Father guides my hand to the ruin of his belly. My fingers sink into the wound, touching something moist and pulsing —

Fran Wilde’s story “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” is set in the same world as her just-released debut novel from Tor, Updraft. And we recently reviewed Suzanne Palmer’s excellent story “Tuesdays,” from the March 2015 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

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SeptOberFright 2: What Greater Fear? Jersey Devil, Dinosaur Dracula, and Other Flashy Recommendations

SeptOberFright 2: What Greater Fear? Jersey Devil, Dinosaur Dracula, and Other Flashy Recommendations

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Dinosaur Dracula. Read more about Dino Drac's Halloween Countdown after the "Read More" jump.
Dinosaur Dracula. Read more about Dino Drac’s Halloween Countdown after the “Read More” jump.

Master horror director Wes Craven, who died last week of brain cancer, once said that horror entertainment provides “an inoculation against a deeper and darker and more frightening reality.”

…Like the reality of fighting brain cancer, or losing a child: realities much more horrifying than Freddy Krueger or Pennywise the Clown. Those boogeymen dress up the “deeper and darker” horrors in fright masks and scare us in a way that leaves no scars. Freddy has access to your brain that you can’t control. Pennywise steals away little children. But it’s all just a story. When you close the book or walk out of the movie theater, all is well. As long as you aren’t harboring nascent cancer cells, or about to get a telephone call from the police.

Our friends over at Every Day Fiction recently published a flash-fiction story that directly touches on this theme of horror story as inoculation. I offer “What Greater Fear” by J.C. Towler as my first recommended reading for the SeptOberFright 2015 season. It provides as good an introduction as any to the perennial question of why we enjoy telling and hearing horrible tales of murderous monsters like the Mothman and the Wendigo and the Jersey Devil (all of whom are name-dropped in the first paragraph of Towler’s tale: another reason I’m recommending it. That’s a roll-call of three of my favorite fortean monsters). Being flash, it isn’t longer than 1,000 words — a quick read to get you in the mood for spooky tales by a fireplace or around a campfire.

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New Treasures: The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1 by Clark Ashton Smith

New Treasures: The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1 by Clark Ashton Smith

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The End of the Story The Collected Fantasies Vol 1-smallThe End of the Story is the first of five volumes collecting all of Clark Ashton Smith’s short fiction, arranged chronologically by composition. It was originally published in hardcover by Night Shade Books on January 1, 2007, and quickly went out of print. The cheapest copies I can find online start at over $200.

I would love to have a copy, but that’s well outside my price range. So I was delighted to discover that Night Shade is printing the entire series in trade paperback, starting with the first volume, which goes on sale tomorrow.

The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith consists of:

  1. The End of the Story (January 2007)
  2. The Door to Saturn (June 2007)
  3. A Vintage from Atlantis (November 2007)
  4. The Maze of the Enchanter (April 2008)
  5. The Last Hieroglyph (September 2010)

The trade paperback edition of the second volume, The Door to Saturn — also long out of print in hardcover, and selling in some places for well over $300 — is scheduled to appear January 5, 2016.

The End of the Story contains 24 short stories and three poems, beginning with “The Abominations of Yondo,” first published in Overland Monthly in April 1926. It includes some of his most famous tales, such as the Captain Volmar novelette “Marooned in Andromeda” (1930), the Malygris tale “The Last Incantation” (1930), and the novelette “The Monster of the Prophecy” (1932).

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