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Month: October 2015

Vintage Treasures: Soulstring by Midori Snyder

Vintage Treasures: Soulstring by Midori Snyder

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Soulstring-smallMidori Snyder is the author of eight fantasy novels, including the Oran Trilogy (New Moon, Sadar’s Keep, and Beldan’s Fire), and The Innamorati, which won the Mythopoeic Award in 1999.

Her first novel was Soulstring, a fairytale fantasy based on the Scottish legend of Tam Lin. It was one of many American fantasy novels to draw on that source in the 80s and 90s, but it had the good fortune to have a great cover by Segrelles (click the image at right for a bigger version), and get solid notices. It launched her career, but sadly has remained out of print since its original paperback appearance in 1987.

Her power could ruin her family, the might de’Stains, whose magic has passed from firstborn son to firstborn son for thirteen generations.

Her power could defy her vicious father, who rules like a shadow over the land of Moravia… and whose only use for his daughter is that she produce a suitable heir.

Her power could defeat his evil enchantments, free her from his grasp and rock the walls of Moravia Castle itself…

If only she can learn how to use it.

Soulstring was published by Ace Books in November 1987. It is 182 pages, priced at $2.95. The cover is by Segrelles. It has never been reprinted, and there is no digital edition. Copies in good condition are available online starting at around $1.

See all our recent Vintage Treasures here

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tying in the BBC Sherlock Special

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tying in the BBC Sherlock Special

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Special_VictorianCostumeBack in July, what seems to be the most popular ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ post appeared here at Black Gate. I looked at what I think went wrong with season three of the BBC’s Sherlock. I included the just-released ninety-second, ‘first look’ video for the upcoming Special, to be aired around Christmas. And I pointed out it seemed to be full of the “Look how clever we are” bits that I lamented in my post.

Now, just about everyone, including myself, loves that the Special is set in Victorian times; unlike the episodes in the first three seasons. Cumberbatch and Freeman would be given their first (and quite likely, only) opportunities to play Holmes and Watson in the Doyle mold. I view it as a chance for the show to get back on track and reclaim the multitude of fans it lost during season three.

That trailer was a fun little look at the Special and a second trailer came out earlier this month. “Fun” is not a word I would use. This is clearly not going to be a cute little Christmas episode, or a hunt for the owner of a goose and a hat (not a goose with a hat). In fact, it’s not about the yuletide at all. As you can see, it’s going to be some very serious business.

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Cover Reveal: Dark Run by Mike Brooks

Cover Reveal: Dark Run by Mike Brooks

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Dark Run Mike Brooks-small

Saga Press had hands-down the most impressive launch of 2015, kicking off their new line of fantasy and SF titles with four popular launch titles early this year, including Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings and Genevieve Valentine’s Persona. I caught up with editor Navah Wolfe at the Nebula Awards this year, and she assured me I hadn’t seen anything yet.

That wasn’t hyperpole… Saga has released over two dozen books in 2015, and their 2016 line up promises to be even more stellar, with titles from Kat Howard, A. Lee Martinez, Genevieve Valentine, and Black Gate author Frederic S. Durbin, with a novel that editorial director Joe Monti calls “a lyrical fantasy — his first in seventeen years! — which made me think of Peter Beagle and Patricia McKillip.”

At Black Gate, we like to go where the action is. So I’ve been pestering the good folks at Saga for a peek at their upcoming titles, and earlier this month they delivered in style, with a look at some of their 2016 releases, and exclusive comments from the authors on the cover art. We’ll be sharing it all with you over the next few weeks, and we start with Mike Brooks’ debut novel, the space opera Dark Run, which Stephen Baxter calls “Great fun … Golden Age chic!” and about which SFFWorld said “If you’re looking for a Firefly-like tale… you won’t be disappointed with this one. A quick read, but an immensely entertaining one.” It goes on sale June 7, 2016.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Wrath of Fu Manchu, Part One

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Wrath of Fu Manchu, Part One

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Wrathdaw_fu_manchuThe Wrath of Fu Manchu was a 50-page short story serialized in five installments in The Toronto Star weekly supplement from January 26 to February 23, 1952 under the unlikely title Green Devil Mask. It was given its current title when Rohmer scholar, Dr. Robert E. Briney made it the centerpiece of a posthumous hardcover collection of previously uncollected short fiction, The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other New Stories first published in the U.K. in 1973 by Tom Stacey. A U.S. mass market paperback edition from DAW Books followed in 1976. It was subsequently reprinted in Allison & Busby’s Fu Manchu Omnibus – Volume 5 in 2001. Titan Books will reprint the original collection as a trade paperback in March 2016.

The story was initially published only in Canada due to a copyright loophole. Rohmer had recently sold the option to the television rights to the Fu Manchu characters and was prohibited from publishing new works about the characters in Britain or the United States until the courts resolved a dispute over whether the literary rights transferred with the agreement. This situation persisted for the next five years until the literary rights were eventually restored to the author. The character was an easy money-maker for Rohmer at a time when his bank account was suffering. Rohmer’s desire to fly under the radar with the Canadian publication of the story likely accounts for his original decision to avoid using the name Fu Manchu in the title of the story.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Alyssa Wong

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Alyssa Wong

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Alyssa WongThis week’s Pro-Tip comes from Alyssa Wong, a Nebula-, Shirley Jackson-, and World Fantasy Award-nominated author, shark aficionado, and 2013 graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop.

How Do I Know When a Piece is Ready to Send Out?

I think it’s important to have a handful of beta readers/critique partners whose taste and judgment you really trust. Personally, I prefer people who are very, very critical readers, but who also like my work and understand what I’m trying to accomplish in a piece when it’s a hot mess.

When two separate, very picky readers suggest that it’s ready to send out, I usually do it. That doesn’t mean that I have to agree 100% with the changes they suggest, but knowing that they feel it’s ready really helps me.

Alyssa’s work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Black Static, among others. And just out this month, in Nightmare Magazine’s Queers Destroy Horror! Special Issue, is her story “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” about “living in the big city and eating love in all the wrong places.”

Her website is crashwong.net, and her Twitter unsername is @crashwong.

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Future Treasures: Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran

Future Treasures: Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran

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Warrior Women-small

Editor Paula Guran has had a good year, with an impressive list of top-notch anthologies in 2015, including: New Cthulhu 2, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, Blood Sisters, and my favorite book of the year (so far), The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015. But she’s not done yet, and her next release looks like one of her most intriguing: Warrior Women, a collection of tales of courageous fighting women from Mary Gentle, George R. R. Martin, Aliette de Bodard, Nalo Hopkinson, Robert Reed, Nancy Kress, Tanith Lee, and many others. It will be released in trade paperback from Prime Books on December 17, 2015.

Here’s the Table of Contents.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 183 and 184 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 183 and 184 Now Available

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 184-smallAs I’ve noted before, if you neglect Scott H. Andrews and his magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies for more than 15 days or so, he’ll publish two issues, making you look out of touch and behind the times. So here I am playing catch-up, because Scott publishes magazines faster than I can write about them. In this post I’m going to cover the latest issue, #184, as well as their big Seventh Anniversary Double-Issue, #183. The cover art for both issues is “Sundown” by Feliks Grzesiczek.

Let’s start with issue #184. The issue is cover-dated October 15, and contains two short stories, and a podcast.

“A Careful Fire” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
They turned their backs to Mabella. Her stomach twisted as it did when she pilfered too many sweets from the kitchens. She wanted to say something and nothing. She wanted to run, but her feet throbbed. Instead she turned and walked from the winged women’s cackling silence.

“Unearthly Landscape by a Lady” by Rebecca Campbell
I found myself examining the impeccable rooms and gardens in these photographs, fearing that they, too, betrayed another world. I am ashamed to say that I was happy to have shut the door on such rooms, on Flora herself. But I could not erase the memory of the man with the Gatling gun, and the five-armed green creatures lying on the ground below him.

Audio Fiction Podcast:
A Careful Fire by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Duration: 30:21 — 20.85MB)
She bursts each night when he leaves her. She does not wash the juice from her skin but hides the blue stains beneath her clothes.

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Human Enclaves and Experimental Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Saboteurs/The Light of Lilith

Human Enclaves and Experimental Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Saboteurs/The Light of Lilith

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The Sun Saboteurs-small The Light of Lilith-small

Over at Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton reviews another great old Ace Double, this one featuring Damon Knight’s The Sun Saboteurs, paired with G. McDonald Wallis’ The Light of Lilith.

Damon Knight of course was one of the great writers in SF history, a Grand Master. The Sun Saboteurs was his second of four Ace Double halves (three separate books). It is an expansion of his 1955 novella “The Earth Quarter,” and it is about 37,000 words long. G. (for Geraldine) McDonald Wallis is almost unknown in the SF field — this novel and her 1963 Ace Double half Legend of Lost Earth are her only in-genre publications. However, she had an extensive career under the name “Hope Campbell”…

I don’t really think that Don Wollheim (or whoever else selected Ace Double pairings) necessarily chose stories that were thematically or otherwise related, but every so often it happened. This is a particularly striking case. Both The Sun Saboteurs and The Light of Lilith present a strikingly anti-Campbellian theme. In both, humans are presented as evil warmongers amid a generally peaceful Galaxy. In both, humans are forced to accept their inferiority to many alien species, and in both, many or most humans simply fail to do so. In both, humans are faced with isolation in the Solar System, and eventually with extinction. That said, one novel is far better than the other.

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New Treasures: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

New Treasures: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

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Perchance to Dream Charles Beaumont-smallCharles Beaumont authored several highly regarded short story collections, including Yonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1958), Night Ride and Other Journeys (1960), and The Magic Man and Other Science-Fantasy Stories (1965), and was also the screenwriter for a number of classic horror films, including 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder and The Masque of the Red Death. But he’s best remembered today as the writer of some of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes, including “The Howling Man,” “Miniature,” and and “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You.” Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories is a new collection of his classic tales, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner. Shatner’s piece recalls meeting Beaumont when he was cast as the lead in The Intruder, and their misadventures on the set together.

It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone — for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.

Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories was published by Penguin Classics on October 13, 2015. It is 336 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Canadian Inventor Creates the Goblin Glider

Canadian Inventor Creates the Goblin Glider

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This week Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru conducted the first successful test flight of a working hoverboard over a pond in Quebec.

Duru broke the world record for the longest hoverboard flight — more than 250 meters, five times the previous record — at Quebec’s Lake Ouareau in May of this year, but he’s been working on a “secret, next-generation version” of his device for the past five months. On Wednesday of this week, the 31-year-old Canadian inventor and his company, Omni Hoverboards, invited Reg Sherren of the CBC to witness the first test of the new prototype in Quebec. Watch the one-minute clip above for the results, and read all the details at the CBC website.

All I can say is: It’s about time, 21st Century. And now I know what I want for Christmas.