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Month: September 2017

Future Treasures: The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson

Future Treasures: The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson

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The Psychotechnic League-small Cold Victory-small Starship Poul Anderson-small

Poul Anderson was one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction writers of the 20th Century, and one of his most popular series was The Psychotechnic League, which told the story of the rise of a new civilization after a devastating nuclear war in the late 1950s that very nearly obliterated mankind.

The Psychotechnic League began as a Future History, a popular beast among short SF writers of the 40s and 50s. Anderson published the first story, “Entity,” in the June 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and set the opening of his series a decade in the future. The series continued for the next two decades, (appearing in Astounding, Planet Stories, Worlds Beyond, Science Fiction Quarterly, Cosmos, Fantastic Universe, and other fine magazines), eventually extending into the 60s. In the process, his “Future History” gradually became an “Alternate History,” as actual history trampled all over his carefully constructed fictional timeline.

That didn’t seem to bother readers though, and the tales of the Psychotechnic League remained popular well into the 80s. The series included some 21 stories, including three short novels: The Snows of Ganymede (1955), Star Ways (1956), and Virgin Planet (1957). The short stories and one of the novels were collected in a trilogy of handsome Tor paperbacks in 1981/82, with covers by Vincent DiFate (above). Now Baen books is reprinting the entire sequence in a series of deluxe trade paperbacks, starting with The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, on sale next month.

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Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny

Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny

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“Have you given any thought to what you are going to do if — rather, when — you make it to the top?”

“Look for trouble,” Dilvish said. “Defend myself at all times. Strike instantly if I see the enemy.”

Black and Dilvish to each other in “Tower of Ice”

oie_1271358c5k3rMonDilvish, the Damned (1983), by Roger Zelazny, had been on my list of books and stories to avoid because of who recommended them. With this book, it was someone I played D&D with. In fact, he introduced me to the original D&D rules back in 1977 or ’78.

He was, and remains, the most voracious reader I’ve ever known, though he rarely reads outside of sci fi and fantasy. He would always tell me about whatever book he was reading — often read while he walked the mile and half to my house. When he’d describe a book to me, though, it was always about how cool and awesome the most powerful characters were. Big cowls and fancy wizardly skullcaps were symbols of greatness. The more absurdly godlike the protagonists were, the better.

A few years ago, he told me he was disappointed that the Twilight books didn’t end in an epic all out vampires vs. werewolves war. That Stephenie Meyer wouldn’t do that really didn’t make sense to him. It’s that sort of take on books that led me to take for granted that any book he suggested was going to annoy me as much as it excited him. I’ve overcome that block slowly. It took me nearly thirty years and a lot of positive recommendations to read Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles. Even loving those — which I do — it took me another decade to pick up Dilvish, the Damned.

Dilvish is heir to both a Human house and an Elvish house, and a heroic warrior of great prowess. Two centuries ago, he came up against the powerful, evil sorcerer, Jelerak. The wizard, far stronger than Dilvish knew, turned the half-elf to stone and imprisoned his soul in Hell. It is only when Portaroy, a town once saved by Dilvish, comes under a new attack, he is freed to return to the mortal world with a metal horse named Black, and a desire to avenge himself on Jelerak.

Dilvish is part of the rebirth of swords & sorcery in the mid-60s alongside Elric and the Lancer Conan. Several of Zelazny’s stories were reprinted in S&S anthologies from the 1970s. Some of the stories are at least equal to those of Moorcock and Leiber, and way better than most by Lin Carter and John Jakes. Dilvish, the Damned is a 1983 fixup of all eleven Dilvish short stories. The first was originally published in Fantastic in 1965, and the last two first saw light of day in this collection.

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How I Spent My Summer Vacation

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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A Scanner Darkly Dick-small The Deep Range Arthur C Clarke-small The Killer Inside Me Jim Thompson-small

On May 25th I finished my thirteenth year at the small private school where I teach fourth grade. I love my job and I love my students, but remember the transports of joy that you felt when you were a kid, when the dismissal bell finally rang on that last day of school? I can assure you that your happiness was as nothing compared to the incandescent elation teachers feel on that final afternoon of the second semester.

At my school, we get eight weeks off, and I spend them much as I did when I was in school myself — I make a big stack of paperbacks and I read as many of them as I can before the next school year begins. Last summer, for some perverse reason I no longer remember, I changed my routine a bit; instead of tearing through the usual pile of science fiction/fantasy/mystery yarns, I decided to take on a different kind of book: David Foster Wallace’s postmodern magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Though it is itself marginally science fiction, Wallace’s massive novel is about as far removed from the kind of genre reading that usually fills my vacation as it is possible to get. I originally had some notion of doing a fair amount of my “normal” summer reading alongside of Infinite Jest, but it didn’t work out that way. I’m glad I read the novel, but it absolutely exhausted me; after hewing my way through thirty or forty pages I barely had enough physical and mental energy to hoist myself out of my chair, much less crack open a gaudy-covered Ace reprint of Radium Raiders of Deneb by Lester Cragwell Griggs.

If you’ve never tackled it, reading Infinite Jest is like driving coast-to-coast on a state of the art superhighway… that has a speed bump every fifty feet, for three thousand miles. I did manage to get Son of Tarzan read in between bouts with Wallace’s knotted prose, but the two books didn’t mix well, and left me feeling slightly seasick, not to mention somewhat confused about the nature of reality.

In any case, this year I was determined to return to sanity and my standard procedure and see if it’s possible to overdose on the heady fumes that waft from the pages of forty year old paperbacks. I now submit the results of my experiment for your edification… or, if you wish, to act as a grim warning.

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Modular: Picking Pathfinder

Modular: Picking Pathfinder

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I’m curPatfhinder_Corerently running a Swords & Wizardry (S&W) campaign for a few friends. I wrote here about why I chose S&W instead of my preferred system, Pathfinder. In fact, that post served as the genesis for this Black Gate feature,  Modular. But now, I’m going to look at some of the strengths of Pathfinder and why, when this S&W campaign is done, I’m going to transition the group to a Pathfinder adventure.

So, though I had both played and run Pathfinder, I chose S&W for reasons I talked about in that prior post. I wanted a more story-driven, less mechanics-based system. Also, because two-thirds of the party was new to pen and paper RPGing, I wanted something lighter in the rules department. And there’s no comparison between the two in that regard. The S&W Core Rules comes in at just over 140 pages. The Pathfinder Core Rulebook is almost 600!

Now, I explained in that first post that while I was still reading RPG products, I had stopped playing during 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D): there simply hadn’t been time for it.

But I wanted to get back into playing, and the choice seemed to be between Pathfinder and the newly released 4th Edition. Now, I had only ever played D&D, going back to 1st Edition. I mean, it was synonymous with role playing games and 4th Edition was the natural choice. But as I researched both systems, Pathfinder clearly seemed to be the way to go.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

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Robert Jordan The Conan Chronicles-back-small Robert Jordan The Conan Chronicles-small

Our most popular blog post in July was M. Harold Page’s “Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?” Last month continued the Conan love: our top article for August was Bob Byrne’s survey of Tor’s years as a Conan pastiche publisher, including the popular series from Robert Jordan. Above — the first of multiple Jordan omnibus volumes from Tor, The Conan Chronicles (1995, art by Gary Ruddell).

Coming in second was our report on the Hugo Award winners, followed by Dominik Parisien’s announcement of the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Kickstarter. Fourth was Fletcher Vredenburgh’s look back at Frank Herbert’s classic Dune.

Rounding out the Top Five was our Future Treasures piece on Grady Hendrix’s upcoming Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction. Close on its heels was Sean McLachlan’s photo essay on his visit to Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, England. Ryan Harvey’s obituary for Haruo Nakajima, The Man Who Was Godzilla, was number seven.

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Companion Robots, Grave Robbing, and Monster-haunted Catacombs: July/August 2017 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Companion Robots, Grave Robbing, and Monster-haunted Catacombs: July/August 2017 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction July August 2017-smallCover art by Nicholas Grunas, based off “There was a Crooked Man, He flipped a Crooked House.”

“In a Wide Sky, Hidden” by William Ledbetter. This story gets the issue off to a strong start. MC and his companion robot are crossing the depths of space to unknown worlds looking for the MC’s sister. Not an easy task since humanity has never found a way to beat the light-speed barrier, so people have to have their body destroyed in one place and then sent to a quantum-linked box in another to be rebuilt. The MC had wanted to be an explorer, his sister had wanted to be an artist. He gave up on his dreams because robots do that work now, but she succeeded in hers, at least until she disappeared into one of the hundreds of uninhabited worlds out there and challenged him to find her. I liked this story quite a bit: short and with a great deal of depth and heart. And I don’t just say that because Ledbetter is an editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly either! Nor do I say it because he scored a Nebula last year!

“The Masochists Assistant” by Auston Habershaw. Young wanna-be fop Georges is a famulus to the mage Hugarth Madswom. A famulus is not quite an apprentice, and not quite a servant, more of an intern/helper. Magus Hugarth’s particular area of magical expertise is that of killing himself and then resurrecting himself — which makes him a bit of an odd-man out in the etiquette-heavy world they live in. This is one of those stories that manages to successfully navigate the grisly with the funny and make Georges’ struggles to better his station in life actually mean something.

“The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet” by Robin Furth. Grave-robbing, necromancy, and masturbation make for a powerful combination in this story. It is all a bit much, but like “Masochists Assistant” it is quite well written and moves quite fast. The story suffers, I think, from having a cast of not-likable characters; at the end one can see why, but the larger point of the story would, I think, have made a stronger impact if there had been some redeemable person in the cast.

Column — Books to Look For, by Charles De Lint. De Lint dishes de dirt on books, going into enough detail without giving anything away. Books reviewed: Tillie Madison Vs. Reality (P.L. Winn), In Times Like These, The Chronothon, and The Day After Never (Nathan Van Coops), Goblin Market (Chrstina Rossetti and Omar Rayyan), Silence Fallen (Patricia Briggs), Gods & Goddesses: the Fantasy Illustration Library Volume Two (edited by Malcolm and Michael Phifer), Creaking Staircases: Gothic Tales of Supernatural Suspense (James Coplin).

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

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Literary Wonder and Adventure Show The Golden Age of Science Fiction Part 2 Rich Horton

Part II of II; read a review of Part I here.

Host Robert Zoltan has returned with his second installment of a look back at the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Zoltan and (Edgar the Raven’s) guest for Part II is Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (Prime Books), reprint editor for Light Speed, and columnist for Locus and Black Gate.

Horton endorses the standard narrative of the start and finish of science fiction’s “golden age,” which begins with editor John Campbell fully assuming the reigns of Astounding Stories around 1938, and ends when the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy began publishing in 1949 and 1950, respectively. These latter two magazines moved the genre in new directions, though not necessarily worse ones: Horton in fact argues that the fiction published in the silver age of the 1950s was often higher in quality, which seems to undercut the Golden Age moniker affixed to the Campellian era. But the golden age had the benefit of the “shock of the new”; it was a time when new ideas sprang from the pages of Astounding Stories with each new issue. It saw the emergence of some of science fiction’s greatest ideas and lasting tropes, if not consistently high execution or literary sophistication.

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Vintage Treasures: Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin

Vintage Treasures: Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin

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Dragonfly Frederic Durbin-small Dragonfly Frederic Durbin-back-small

Dragonfly was published in 1999 by Arkham House — the last novel the legendary publishing house produced in the 20th Century, and very nearly their last novel, period (they published one subsequent novel, John D. Harvey’s The Cleansing (2002), and about a dozen collections and anthologies, before effectively shutting down in 2010.)

It was an extraordinary coup for a debut novelist to win a contract from the publisher behind the earliest collections of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and numerous other major American fantasists. But Dragonfly was an extraordinary novel. The International Horror Guild nominated it as Best First Novel of the year, and Weird Tales called it “A marked success… makes us marvel that if could be a first novel.” Rambles labeled it “The perfect book for the Halloween season.”

Ace Books reprinted Dragonfly in paperback six years later, with a cover by Merritt Dekle (above). The paperback is becoming harder and harder to find these days, so when I stumbled on a new copy at Half Price Books this summer, I snapped it up immediately.

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A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 3: A Vintage from Atlantis

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 3: A Vintage from Atlantis

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the-collected-fantasies-of-clark-ashton-smith-a-vintage-from-atlantis-9781597803649_hrHorrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. —“Ubbo Sathla”

Clark Ashton Smith was approaching his writing peak and fortunate to have multiple markets open to his best work during the period of the stories in this volume (1931–32). Three magazines were publishing him on the regular: Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Strange Tales. The situation didn’t last; Smith suffered a slowdown when Strange Tales folded at the start of 1933. Without the Clayton Magazine, Smith lost a reliable alternative for whenever editor Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales turned something down for being too outré or sexual. The deepening effects of the Great Depression pinched the surviving magazines and delayed payments. Wonder Stories, like any Gernsback mag, was dilatory enough with payments already. Although we’re approaching the CAS apex in this and Vol. 4, the omens of the end of his fiction-writing days are already clouding the cerulean skies.

Boilerplate recommendation for The Collected Fantasies: If you’re new to Clark Ashton Smith, these Night Shade editions aren’t the best starting point. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies for readers who want to get started with a collection of some of Smith’s key short stories and poems.

Contents

Vol. 3 contains stories written over a little more than a year: April 1931 to June 1932. Each is listed with its original date and place of publication, sometimes in a modified form different from the corrected text the editors include here. Unlike previous volumes, every story reached professional magazine publication within a few years of composition, with the exception of “The Double Shadow,” which Smith self-published.

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In 500 Words or Less: Allaigna’s Song: Overture by JM Landels

In 500 Words or Less: Allaigna’s Song: Overture by JM Landels

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Allaigna’s Song Overture JM Landels-smallAllaigna’s Song: Overture
By JM Landels
Pulp Literature Press (288 pages, $17.99 paperback, $6.49 eBook, July 2017)

I’m a fan of the slow reveal in fiction, particularly if the writer provides just enough detail to intrigue you and increase the tension, but makes you wait to get a clearer picture about what’s going on. That’s part of the reason why Fringe is one of my all-time favorite shows. Building that tension and deciding what information to provide to the reader (or viewer) and when is very tricky; I’ve been told that some of my published stories have pulled it off, but I’ve written other pieces that totally buggered it up. And one thing I’ve never attempted is doing so with parallel narratives in a single work, where the connection isn’t clear at the outset and the tonal change is severe, since I’m always afraid that doing so will throw off my readers.

But in Allaigna’s Song: Overture, Jen Landels manages to avoid all of that, as she tells the story of child Allaigna and parallels it with two other narratives that, over time, are revealed to be the stories of her mother and grandmother. While the core is Allaigna’s discovery of her royal family’s true heritage and her capacity for magic, our real understanding of the world and the Game of Thrones-esque politics involving her family comes from these parallel narratives, since Allaigna is kept out of a lot of discussions and sometimes doesn’t understand or care about what’s really going on. The really neat thing is that when these parallel narratives first appear, there’s no indication about who we’re looking at or where the story has moved to – the first flashback to “Lauresa,” for example, occurs before we learn that Lauresa is Allaigna’s mother’s name – and there’s a shift in tense and narrative structure, which is really experimental and something I’ve never attempted. But Landels pulls it off, constructing a great slow reveal as details come to light.

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