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Month: December 2017

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Casebooks (Vol 2) & The Thinking Engine

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Casebooks (Vol 2) & The Thinking Engine

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Lovegrove_MiskatonicLast December I wrote about Sherlock Holmes & the Shadwell Shadows, volume one of James Lovegrove’s Cthulhu Casebooks trilogy. And this December, it’s on to book two, Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities. I wasn’t quite as fond of the second installment, though not because it’s a bad book.

As I wrote in that first review:

The basic premise of the… trilogy is that Watson made up the sixty stories in the Canon. He did so to cover up the real truth behind Holmes’ work. And that’s because the truth is too horrible to reveal. In a nutshell, Watson has written three journals, each covering events fifteen years apart, to try and get some of the darkness out of his soul.

The darkness exists because Holmes, with Watsons’s assistance, waged a career-long war with the otherworld beings of the Cthulhu mythos.

Somewhere in another Black Gate post, I calculated the percentage that Holmes is absent in each of the four novellas which Doyle wrote featuring the great detective. Lovegrove chose to use that novella model and it’s my biggest complaint about the book. Holmes and Watson find a journal and read it. It reminds me of the Mormon interlude in A Study in Scarlet and it takes up thirty-five percent of the book.

Fully one-third of this novel has nothing to do with Holmes or Watson. It provides background to the mystery, but it could be a standalone story and it would have no more tie-in to Holmes than an account of my going out to lunch yesterday.

The flashback takes place in Arkham and it is essentially a Cthulhu short novella. Lovegrove got to write a Lovecraft pastiche within a Holmes pastiche. Of course, these three books are aimed at fans of the Cthulhu stories, so it’s not totally out there. I’ve read stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and others. I don’t mind them, but I’m not a particularly big fan. So, I’m not the target audience for the trilogy.

Those who are avid Holmes and Cthulhu fans are likely to enjoy this second book more than I did. But the fact is that this was a third of the book with no Holmes and/or Watson.

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True to the Specters of the Dead: The Big Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Otto Penzler

True to the Specters of the Dead: The Big Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Otto Penzler

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Two weeks ago I wrote a quick piece on Otto Penzler’s latest anthology, The Big Book of Rogues and Villains. I dashed off a list of the previous Penzler books we’d covered over the years… and I realized to my dismay that we’d somehow overlooked one of my favorites, The Big Book of Ghost Stories, an 836-page treasure trove released in 2012. I figured the time was right to rectify that oversight.

Michael Dirda gives a great summary in his Washington Post review.

Otto Penzler’s The Big Book of Ghost Stories largely focuses on classic tales. No one should go through life (let alone death) without experiencing W.W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” Perceval Landon’s “Thurnley Abbey,” Ambrose Bierce’s “The Moonlit Road” and M.R. James’s “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad.” But Penzler also includes many stories that should be equally well known. This year, for instance, I read for the first time Ellen Glasgow’s “The Shadowy Third,” a wonderfully ambiguous tale of a nurse hired by a charismatic doctor to care for his apparently demented wife. Yet Mrs. Maradick is strangely afraid of her handsome husband, and there is something odd about her silent young daughter. Glasgow’s narrative is deeply haunting, in more ways than one.

Penzler stresses that he has “tried to remain true to the notion that ghosts are spirits or specters of the dead. Some stories that frequently have appeared in other ghost story anthologies have nothing at all to do with ghosts. They may be trolls, or evil plants, vile fungi, monsters, or other creatures of that ilk. Rightly or not, I have attempted to be a bit of a narrow-minded purist about it all.” This means that there is nothing here by Arthur Machen, who specialized in ancient and malignant races lurking in the Welsh hills, while Algernon Blackwood is represented by “The Woman’s Ghost Story” instead of his masterpiece, “The Willows.”

The book contains tales by HP Lovecraft, Conrad Aiken, Rudyard Kipling, Ramsey Campbell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Donald E. Westlake, Fritz Leiber, Albert E. Cowdrey, Wilkie Collins, Manly Wade Wellman, Saki, Edith Wharton, and many others. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Old Empires and Armored Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Smasher by Edmond Hamilton and Starhaven by Ivar Jorgenson

Old Empires and Armored Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Smasher by Edmond Hamilton and Starhaven by Ivar Jorgenson

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The Sun Smasher Edmond Hamilton-small Starhaven Ivar Jorgenson-small

Rich Horton has been reading through the Ace Double library over at his blog Strange at Ecbatan. His last few selections have been duds, but I’m optimistic about Edmond Hamilton’s The Sun Smasher and Ivar Jorgenson’s Starhaven, Double #D351, published in 1959. Edmond Hamilton was my favorite pulp SF writer, and “Ivar Jorgenson” was a pen name for none other than Robert Silverberg.  Here’s Rich.

Each of these novels was published earlier in a single issue of a magazine, possibly (especially in the case of the Jorgenson novel) in shorter versions. The Sun Smasher appeared as “Starman Come Home” in the September 1954 Universe Science Fiction, while Starhaven appeared as “Thunder Over Starhaven” in Science Fiction Adventures for October 1957. (I suspect the Hamilton novel, which is the shorter of the two at about 30,000 words, probably is the same version as appeared in the magazine, but the “Jorgenson” story, some 40,000 words long or more, is expanded, as Silverberg discusses below.)

The covers of the magazine editions of these stories are something of a real delight, so I’ve reproduced them here.

I always enjoy Rich’s reviews of classic SF. But when he starts throwing in vintage magazine covers, you know he’s really speaking my language.

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Watching the Justice League Movie

Watching the Justice League Movie

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I have a poor track record seeing DC movies. The trailers have usually turned me off with their enthusiasm for finding the grim-dark cinematic angle that the regular comic book version of the DC universe chucked when it diversified its tone with the launch of Rebirth. So, I didn’t see Man of Steel kill people, or Batman and Superman fight, or any of that stuff, because I wasn’t interested.

Hearing that Wonder Woman was different, I happily checked that out, and thought it was a great expression of the superhero cinematic form (in this sense, I mean nothing more than the WW movie did what it could to make a great story within the conceits, conventions and expectations of anything based on super-powered vigilantes).

So my 12-year old son and I checked out the Justice League movie. By now, you’ll have seen many of the reviews, both good and bad, and will have seen that Warner Brothers isn’t making enough money of it for its investors to consider it a success. If you haven’t you can check out “Justice League’s Mediocre Box Office” and “shake-up in the works.”

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Vintage Treasures: Changing Fate by Elisabeth Waters

Vintage Treasures: Changing Fate by Elisabeth Waters

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Elisabeth Waters’ first publication, “The Keeper’s Price,” was co-authored with Marion Zimmer Bradley and appeared in Bradley’s 1980 Darkover anthology The Keeper’s Price and Other Stories. That launched a lengthy writing career that includes over 40 short stories and a novel in the Trillium series, also co-authored with Bradley. Since 2007 Waters has been the driving force behind the Sword and Sorceress anthology series, taking over with Volume XXII at Norilana Books. The most recent,  Volume 32, was released last month by the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust.

Waters published a single standalone novel, Changing Fate, in 1994, with a striking wraparound cover by Lord of the Rings artist John Howe. It grew out of the short story “A Woman’s Privilege” in Sword and Sorceress 3, published in 1986; it was nominated for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and won Andre Norton’s Gryphon Award. A sequel, Mending Fate, finally appeared last year, 22 years after the first volume, from the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust.

Changing Fate was published by DAW Books in April 1994. It is 240 pages, priced at $4.99 in paperback. The cover is by John Howe. It was reprinted in trade paperback and digital formats in 2015. Read more at Elisabeth Waters’ website.

Peplum Populist: Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963)

Peplum Populist: Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963)

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goliath-sins-babylon-US-posterWhen you have an Italian sword-and-sandal (peplum) film, and the hero of the title has an oblique name like “Goliath” or “Colossus,” the immediate question that comes to mind is, “Is this hero actually Maciste?”

The answer with Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is “Yes.” The Italian title of this 1963 muscleman epic is Maciste l’eroe più grande del mondo, “Maciste, The Greatest Hero in the World.” This isn’t strictly true, because in the rest of the world, Maciste habitually lost his name and was turned into Hercules or Atlas or Colossus … or Goliath.

And Maciste isn’t even in Babylon! This is another deception of the English-language title and dub. The setting is the usual vague Greco-Roman Mediterranean world that served as the backdrop for the majority of peplum flicks, where fictional kingdoms constantly warred with each other until a bulky hero appeared to help the underdogs to victory.

The story of Goliath and the Sins of Babylon isn’t much more complex than that description, although the events of the plot as it lunges from scene to scene create a needless tangle. The short version: The Kingdom of Cafaus (“Babylon”) has forced a cruel treaty on its neighbor, Nephyr, that demands an annual tribute of twenty-four virgins (upped to thirty in the English version). The current king of Nephyr, Pergasos (Piero Lulli), arranged for this awful treaty so he could keep the throne after his brother’s death. The wandering strongman Maciste (Mark Forest) arrives in Nephyr and befriends a group of rebel gladiators who plot to free the city from the grip of the king of Cafaus and his wicked agent, Morakeb (Erno Crisa), and place Regia (José Greci), daughter of the previous king, onto the throne of Nephyr.

Between the lines of this story is a naval battle, a chariot race, copious sword fights and wrestling moves, a populist uprising, a pitched battle between armies on horseback, a rush of lions and leopards mauling everybody in sight, comic antics with a dwarf, and jarring shifts in the story that can make it tricky to follow the specifics. There’s a lot packed into this movie, including chunks of other movies, which makes for a choppy narrative and moments of, “Wait, who is this guy again?”

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Read Black Gate in Italian!

Read Black Gate in Italian!

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Black Gate in Italian

Black Gate has partnered with Heroic Fantasy Italia (HFT) to translate and post some of our most popular articles in Italian. Here’s Editor Alessandro Iascy, from his original e-mail.

I’m Alessandro Iascy and I am the publisher and editor of the Heroic Fantasy Italia portal, heroicfantasyitalia.altervista.org. I’m contacting you because I always read Black Gate with great pleasure and I would like to start a sort of joint venture with you. Heroic Fantasy Italia is the most important heroic fantasy divulgation portal in Italy, and I would like to be authorized to translate and publish some of your articles on our pages… I am writing to you on my friend Mark Lawrence’s suggestion.

Although BG articles have frequently been reprinted (sometimes without our permission), this is the first time we’ve partnered to present some of our content in a foreign language. The first article to get the multi-lingual treatment was Steven Silver’s November 24th post “Elric and Me.”

Alessandro and his team did top-notch work reformatting and presenting Steven’s article; check it out here. Thanks to Alessandro, we look forward to offering more BG articles to our Italian readers.

New Treasures: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

New Treasures: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

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Canadian SF writer James Alan Gardner published seven novels between 1997 and 2002, including Expendable, Commitment Hour, and Radiant. Then he switched almost entirely to short fiction, producing 17 short stories and one collection between 2005 and 2017 (with the exception of one media tie-in novel, Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze).

There’s nothing wrong with short fiction, of course. But when you stop writing novels for a dozen years, people think you’ve vanished. So I was both pleased and surprised to tear open an envelope from Tor this week and find a review copy of Gardner’s first new novel since 2005. It’s good to have him back — especially with something that looks as fun as All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault. It’s the tale of Kim Lam and her three housemates who are transformed from ordinary college students into superheroes by “a freak scientific accident (what else?),” and find themselves caught up in a war between super-powered humans and sinister darkling creatures (vampires, ghosts, and worse things.) The sequel, They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded, arrives next year.

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault was published by Tor Books on November 7, 2017. It is 382 pages, priced at $17.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Getty images. Read an excerpt here.

Chance Encounters

Chance Encounters

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Bond casino 2Between lotteries and televised poker tournaments, horse racing and casinos, games of chance play a large part on the world’s stage. It should come as no surprise that they play an equality large part in fiction, and perhaps in genre fiction in particular. As writers, aren’t we always looking for something for our characters to do while they’re talking to each other? Preferably something that also reveals character, and is interesting in itself?

I’m not talking about giving a character a gambling addiction – that’s deeper than I mean to go. I’m referring to the game of chance as literary or narrative device.  It can provide characters with motive (win money to achieve purpose, defeat opponent); provide an opportunity (meet someone); and the winning or losing of these games can be the cause of a number of interesting effects. Games like poker or a bridge can be a microcosm of the world of the novel and they reveal the characters of the players in a way that very few other activities can.

Of course any movie or TV series set in Las Vegas, or Montecarlo, is going to involve gambling or casinos as part of the backdrop. But when it comes to characters, the one who comes to mind first is James Bond. In the novels, and in many of the films, Bond is generally playing baccarat. In the most recent film version of Casino Royale the game itself (poker in this case) is the central pillar of the plot, but it’s a rare Bond film that doesn’t have him in a casino somewhere. Since he’s often playing against one of the villains of the piece, the way they play the game reveals aspects of both their characters; sense of fair play, stoicism, nerve, and if they lose – or win – gracefully.

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Fantasia 2017, Day 17: Futures Human and Otherwise (Attraction, “Valley of White Birds,” “Scarecrow Island,” and “Cocolors”)

Fantasia 2017, Day 17: Futures Human and Otherwise (Attraction, “Valley of White Birds,” “Scarecrow Island,” and “Cocolors”)

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AttractionThere were two screenings I wanted to attend at the Fantasia Festival on Saturday, July 29. First was the Russian science-fiction film Attraction (Prityazhenie). After that was a triple-bill of animated shorts: “Valley of White Birds,” from China; “Scarecrow Island,” from Korea; and “Cocolors,” from Japan. All together, a promising day of fantastic imagery on the big screen in the 400-seat D.B. Clarke Theatre. (In addition, a long short film preceded Attraction, “Past & Future Kings”; as it happens I know some of the local creators, and so feel it would be inappropriate to write about the movie here.)

Attraction was directed by Fedor Bondarchuk from a script by Oleg Malovichko and Andrey Zolotarev. It is an epic (132 minutes, though the IMDB claims there’s a 117-minute version as well) story about an alien spacecraft that crashes into a neighbourhood in the south of Moscow. I saw a trailer before going in that made the film look like an Independence Day–like story about humans rallying to fend off an invasion; I don’t think it’s giving away a major twist to say the movie’s nothing like that at all. Instead, it’s about the Russian government trying to negotiate a first contact situation while assorted everyday Muscovites react with more or less suspicion — and one of the aliens (Rinal Mukhametov) ends up making contact with the young daughter (Irina Starshenbaum) of the army officer (Oleg Menshikov) overseeing the crash site. They fall in love, but he has to get back to his ship as the hate and fear of the humans reaches a boiling point.

Attraction has some very definite echoes of Starman and (by the end) of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Like those movies, it’s about idealism and human nature; about both the good and bad of the human condition and human emotional terrain. Like those movies, it derives tension from pitting the stupidity, fear, and violence of humans against human generosity and the human ability to love. If the result isn’t really in question, it’s a reasonably convincing trip getting there. There’s romance and action and character beats and a few laughs, and all are managed reasonably well, even if the movement from one to another can come as a swerve.

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