Browsed by
Month: July 2016

The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

Comments 0 Comment

Plane Shift: InnistradOver at Dragon+, Wizards of the Coast has published James Wyatt’s Plane Shift: Innistrad, a free pdf that introduces Dungeons & Dragons to Magic: The Gathering’s world of Gothic horror:

The starting point for this document was The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Innistrad. Consider that book to be a useful resource in creating your Innistrad campaign, but not strictly necessary. An abundance of lore about Innistrad can be found on the Magic web-site. This document is designed to help you turn the book’s adventure hooks and story seeds into a resource for your campaign with a minimum of changes to the fifth edition D&D rules.

It’s hard to determine where the snake’s head begins and its tail ends here: Innistrad was MtG’s version of D&D’s Ravenloft, which itself has gone through umpteen editions, the most recent being WotC’s Curse of Strahd hardback; and Plane Shift: Innistrad contains suggestions for moving the action of Curse of Strahd from Barovia to Innistrad.

…

Read More Read More

Teaching History through Wargaming: Strategy & Tactics #280: Soldiers 1918

Teaching History through Wargaming: Strategy & Tactics #280: Soldiers 1918

Comments 4 comments

ST280-2I’ve been a history buff all my life, and this interest led me to a career as an archaeologist before becoming a writer specializing in history and historical fiction. Thus it’s not surprising that I want my ten-year-old son to have a firm grounding of history, even though he takes more after his astronomer mother and will almost certainly go into one of the STEM fields.

One of my main interests is World War One, so when I visited Belgium a couple of years ago for the centenary I brought him back some Belgian comics on the conflict. Now we’re watching the excellent Channel Four series The First World War. I’m also vocally hoping he’ll read my Trench Raiders series, so far with no luck! I’ve been pushing this particular era of history because we live in Madrid. Since Spain wisely stayed out of the war, I don’t think the Spanish educational system will teach him as much about WWI as I think he should know.

So why not add a little extra knowledge through wargaming? He’s been expressing an interest in it lately since his favorite comics shop has some wargaming tables, so I invested in issue #280 of Strategy & Tactics, a classic wargaming magazine that’s older than I am. This issue comes with the game Soldiers 1918: Decision in the Trenches, which one BoardGameGeek labeled as “medium light” in difficulty.

…

Read More Read More

Clarkesworld 118 Now Available

Clarkesworld 118 Now Available

Comments 0 Comment

Clarkesworld 118-smallClarkesworld #118 has five new stories by Mike Buckley, Eric Schwitzgebel, John Chu, Jack Schouten, and A Que, and two reprints by Linda Nagata and Mary Rosenblum.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“Helio Music” by Mike Buckley
“Fish Dance” by Eric Schwitzgebel
“The Sentry Branch Predictor Spec: A Fairy Tale” by John Chu
“Sephine and the Leviathan” by Jack Schouten
“Against the Stream” by A Que
“Nahiku West” by Linda Nagata (from Analog Science Fiction, October 2012)
“Lion Walk” by Mary Rosenblum (from Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2009)

The non-fiction is:

Paradise Lost: A History of Fantasy and the Otherworld by Christopher Mahon
Talkative Creatures and a Mesozoic Cocktail: A Conversation with Michael Swanwick by Chris Urie
Another Word: Burning Bridges by Peter Watts
Editor’s Desk: What is it with Readercon? by Neil Clarke

…

Read More Read More

Belated Movie Review #7: Towards a Unified Theory of Hudson Hawk

Belated Movie Review #7: Towards a Unified Theory of Hudson Hawk

Comments 13 comments

Hudson Hawk poster-smallSo there’s this network, Comet TV, that shows old sci-fi shows and movies and such. As I live in a media cave without cable or Netflix I sometimes catch said old movies there. A couple of weeks ago I caught the 1991 Bruce Willis vehicle Hudson Hawk — a movie both loved and reviled! An action/comedy that is, in most senses, the final word on action comedies.

Most people absolutely HATE this movie. Especially snobs whose jobs depend on them hating movies. Can I provide examples? Oh yes:

Terry Cliffored, writing for the Chicago Tribune notes:

Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked, Hudson Hawk is beyond bad.

Kenneth Truan scribbling gloomily for the L.A. Times had this to say:

The saddest thing about Hudson Hawk is that director Lehmann and co-screenwriter Waters were previously responsible for the clever, audacious “Heathers,” a film that represented all that is most promising about American film, while this one represents all that is most moribund and retrograde. Perhaps they both earned enough money here so that they won’t be tempted to indulge themselves in similar big-budget fiascoes. Here’s hoping.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t include Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers trying to be cool by bemoaning it thusly:

A movie this unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop.

You know what? Screw them! There are some movies that are simply beyond the grasp of tiny minds — and this is one of those movies, if not the king of such movies.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, edited by Stephen Jones

New Treasures: In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, edited by Stephen Jones

Comments 3 comments

In the Shadow of Frankenstein Tales of the Modern Prometheus-smallMary W. Shelley’s gothic horror masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was published in 1818, shortly after the author turned 20. As we approach the 200th anniversary of one of the greatest horror novels in history, we can expect to see plenty of tribute volumes. But for my money, the only one you need is Stephen Jones’ massive In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, a 712-page tome which collects pulp stories from Astounding and Weird Tales, modern riffs on the legend of Frankenstein, and three complete novels.

Frankenstein… His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments, and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world’s most famous creature lives again.

Here are collected together for the first time twenty-four electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest — with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow, and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and new contributions from Graham Masterson, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton. Plus, you’re sure to get a charge from three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and Mary W. Shelley’s original masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it’s time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know.

In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus is a revised an updated edition of The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Carroll & Graf, 1994), and if you have that volume, you probably don’t need this one. This new hardcover edition adds a new Foreword by Neil Gaiman and one new story, Stephen Volk’s “Celebrity Frankenstein,” from Postscripts 28/29 (2012), bringing the total to 24 stories. Diabolique Magazine calls the new edition “a stunning array of stories;” check out their complete review here. In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus was published by Pegasus Books on July 5, 2016. It is 712 pages, priced at $27.95 in hardcover and $26.23 for the digital edition.

To Ride a Rathorn by P. C. Hodgell

To Ride a Rathorn by P. C. Hodgell

Comments 4 comments

oie_11225225XvvToolIt’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally returned to P. C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath Cycle, with the fourth book, To Ride a Rathorn. A rathorn is a deadly, carnivorous, horned, horse-like animal covered in heavy plates of ivory. For the Kencyrath, to ride a rathorn is to try to do something insane, and our heroine Jame is about to do just that. She has accepted her destiny as a crucial element of the final showdown with Perimal Darkling, a world-devouring force of chaos and evil. At the same time, several forces are arrayed against her: the enemies of her family, the weight of millennia of traditions, and terrible agents of utter darkness. Instead of just crawling away and hiding, Jame has decided to take on all comers, and figuratively — and perhaps literally — ride a rathorn.

Four books in, to say the series is complicated is like saying the sun is hot or the oceans wet. Hodgell has created one of the densest and tremendously detailed fantasy settings, and to even look at this book without having read its predecessors just might make a reader’s brain explode. But as I often ask: have you taken my advice and read the other books yet? Because you should have by now. To get a better understanding of what’s gone on before, you can read my reviews of the first three — God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, and Seeker’s Mask — right here at Black Gate. If you don’t have time, though, here’s a relatively brief synopsis:

Thirty thousand years ago, Perimal Darkling began to devour the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. To fight against it, the Three-Faced God forged three separate races into one; feline-like Arrin-Ken to serve as judges, the heavily muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen, and the fine-featured humanoid Highborn to rule them. For 27,000 years, the Kencyrath fought a losing battle, one universe after another falling to the darkness. Three thousand years ago, the High Lord Gerridon, fearful of death, betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. Fleeing yet again, the Kencyrath landed on the world of Rathilien. Since then, they haven’t heard from their god, and Perimal Darkling has seemed satisfied to lurk at the edges of their new home. Monotheists trapped on an alien world with many gods, the Kencyrath have had to struggle to find their own place and survive on Rathilien.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer

Future Treasures: Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer

Comments 4 comments

Swords v Cthulhu-smallAre you a Lovecraft fan? Are you just a little bit tired of nodding to yourself at the 5-page mark at every tale, thinking, “Well, this is going to end horribly.” And are you tired of being right every single time?

If you are, you’re not alone. And editors Jesse Bullington (The Enterprise of Death) and Molly Tanzer (Vermilion) have the answer: Swords v Cthulhu, a collection of brand new sword & sorcery Mythos fiction by a stellar list of contributors — including Black Gate authors Jonathan L. Howard and Jeremiah Tolbert, plus Michael Cisco, John Hornor Jacobs, John Langan, E. Catherine Tobler, Carrie Vaughn, and many others — featuring stalwart adventurers squaring off against the greatest horrors of the Lovecraftian pantheon. Okay, sure, most of the tales within probably still end horribly. By at least the protagonists go down swinging!

What hope has a humble adventurer when faced with a fight against Cthulhu himself? No matter; the true swordsperson cares not for hope — only for the bite of steel against flesh, whether that flesh be eldritch or more conventional. So, grab your khukuri knife, your iklwa spear, or a legendary blade and journey with us from ancient Rome to feudal Japan, from the Dreamlands to lands there are no names for in any of the tongues of men.

If you have any doubts, inside this tome you can consult ask some of Lovecraftiana’s hottest voices, be they seasoned veterans or relative newcomers… Hope be damned. Glory awaits!

Relentlessly hurtling you into madness and danger are: Natania Barron, Eneasz Brodski, Nathan Carson, Michael Cisco, Andrew S. Fuller, A. Scott Glancy, Orrin Grey, Jason Heller, Jonathan L. Howard, John Hornor Jacobs , John Langan, L. Lark, Remy Nakamura, Carlos Orsi, M. K. Sauer, Ben Stewart, E. Catherine Tobler, Jeremiah Tolbert, Laurie Tom, Carrie Vaughn, Wendy N. Wagner, and Caleb Wilson.

Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft will be published by Stone Skin Press on August 1, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $13.99 in paperback. No news yet on a separate digital edition. See more details at the Stone Skin website, including teaser excerpts from many of the stories.

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. Also Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, and a Tangent on Modernism

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. Also Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, and a Tangent on Modernism

Comments 8 comments

Astro_City_A_Visitors_Guide_Vol_1_1This is mostly an homage to Kurt Busiek and Astro City, and to one story in particular, but buckle in because we’re going to cover a lot of rambling ground getting there in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way, taking in stuff by random association — sort of like the streets of Astro City itself…

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is one of my favorite superhero comics. It consistently delivers brilliant, funny, poignant, human stories in a colorful, wonderfully idiosyncratic comic-book world. It is Busiek’s magnum opus — like Bendis’s Powers, it towers above his other work for the big publishers using their branded characters. He brings the sensibilities he honed in the groundbreaking Marvel miniseries Marvels to his own universe and, beneath all the ZAP! BANG! POW!, weaves tales you will never forget.

What Marvels did that was so fresh in 1994 is it “lowered the camera” from the god-like supers knocking each other through buildings and focused in on the ordinary humans down here at street level, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, watching it happen. What impact did the existence of such powers have on their day-to-day lives?

In Astro City the camera is completely unfettered, ranging to the heights to reveal very human dramas among people who have the power to level cities and then zooming down to the alleys to follow a day in the life of a two-bit petty thief who is really a pretty ordinary, decent human being (with the exception that his skin is covered with a steel alloy). Through the course of following Carl Donewicz, aka Steeljack — in the classic story “The Tarnished Angel” — we come to sympathize with and like him, and even find ourselves rooting for him: just once, could one of his heists go off without a hitch and not be foiled by The Jack-in-the-Box? And in Astro City, where narratives don’t always follow the comic-book formula, he does have his day. A fun, feel-good story, that one.

And then there are Astro City stories that rip your heart out. “The Nearness of You,” I contend, is among the great American short stories of the late twentieth century, and I think it could be anthologized as such. (Wizard Magazine does rank it number 6 on their list of “100 Greatest Single Issue Comic Books Since You Were Born.”) Publishers these days would have no problem formatting a four-color comic story into their prose collections. But should they? It is, after all, a comic book.

…

Read More Read More

Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Comments 9 comments

FROG GOD GAMES

Last November, I did a post on the history of Necromancer Games. I wrapped up with, “And there, our saga of Necromancer Games draws to a close. But our story has most certainly not come to an end.” That’s because Slumbering Tsar would rise from the ashes and a new RPG company would be built on its foundations. Welcome to Part Two: Of Necromancers & Frog Gods.

Waking the Tsar

FGG_DesolationShortly after Necromancer hung it up, co-founder Bill Webb established Frog God Games just to publish Greg Vaughan’s The Slumbering Tsar as a fourteen-part subscription saga, to be issued as one massive book at the end of the project.

Starting at 7th level, Tsar is divided into three books. If you want to start from 1st level, I suggest using The Wizard’s Amulet and/or The Crucible of Freya, then part of Tomb of Abysthor as a 1st through 6th level lead-in. The Lost City of Barakus is another excellent option, though not as thematically linked. Though it wouldn’t take much to give the villainous Devron a tie-in to Tsar.

Book one, The Desolation, is three installments (parts) dealing with a small settlement in the barren plains. It totals about 125 pages and gives the party a staging area for adventuring towards Tsar. Think of a Necromancer version of The Village of Hommlet – but way nastier. The story of The Army of Light at the very end of part one is worth it alone for me.

Part two includes the Ashen Waste: with such highlights as The Tomb of the Sleeping Knight (not a lot of sleeping going on here) and the burial mound of the barbarian warriors led by Tark. The Chaos Rift, featuring The Sepulcher of the Last Justicar, is even more deadly.

Part Three gets the party to the walls of Tsar, though it might well perish in The Boiling Land or The Dead Fields first. And a sticky situation waits outside the walls…

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Nominated for a World Fantasy Award

Black Gate Nominated for a World Fantasy Award

Comments 11 comments

World Fantasy AwardThe 2016 World Fantasy Awards Ballot, compiled by the voting attendees of the World Fantasy Convention, has just been released. And I’m very pleased to note that several contributors to Black Gate feature prominently, including:

Long Fiction — “Farewell Blues,” Bud Webster (BG blogger and poetry editor)
Short Fiction — “Pockets,” Amal El-Mohtar (BG blogger)
Collection — Bone Swans, C.S.E. Cooney (BG website editor)
Special Award, Nonprofessional — John O’Neill, for Black Gate

This is a tremendous honor for Black Gate, and for me personally. The awards will be presented at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, on October 30th. I hope to see you there.

The winners in every category are selected by a panel of judges. Here’s the complete list of nominees, with links to our previous coverage:

…

Read More Read More