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Month: June 2020

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Philip Marlowe – Private Eye (Boothe)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Philip Marlowe – Private Eye (Boothe)

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Marlowe_BootheSuit“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

In April of 1983, HBO aired the first episode of Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. Powers Boothe played Raymond Chandler’s world weary detective. I am a big fan of the movies which Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet) and Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep) made from Chandler’s novels. But neither man played the character very true to the books.

Picking Iron (trivia) – Powell was a successful song and dance man when he was quite unexpectedly cast in Murder My Sweet. He nailed the part and it was the first of four hardboiled movies out of his next five: all good flicks. It allowed him to recreate his  Hollywood career. It also made him perfect for the light-hearted, singing radio detective, Richard Diamond.

Season one covered five stories: “The Pencil,” “The King in Yellow,” “Finger Man,” “Nevada Gas,” and “Smart Aleck Kill.” Season Two returned in 1986 with six more episodes: “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” “Spanish Blood,” “Pickup on Noon Street,” “Guns at Cyrano’s,” “Trouble is My Business,” and “Red Wind.”

Philip Marlowe made his first appearance in The Big Sleep, which was a novel cobbled together from several existing short stories. Marlowe was really a composite of previous detectives, such as John Dalmas and Carmody. It’s those stories, written mostly for Black Mask and Dime Detective, that were adapted for this series.

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Weird Tales Deep Read: October 1934

Weird Tales Deep Read: October 1934

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Weird Tales October 1934-small

Cover by Margaret Brundage

This third installment of the Weird Tales deep read covers the eleven stories in the October 1934 issue, including the first Jirel of Joiry story by C. L. Moore. Her flame didn’t burn as long in the Unique Magazine as the Lovecraft-Howard-Smith trinity’s did, but it did burn as brightly. Moore had sixteen stories in Weird Tales between 1933-1939, twelve in an incredible burst of creativity in the years 1934-1936.

This issue had three stories set in the U.S. (27%) and one each in France, Hyperborea, the U. K., Hyboria, Africa, Serbia, Italy, and an unknown locale (9%). Six had a contemporary setting (55%) and five were set in the past (45%). All in all a decent issue, with the stories averaging 2.27, the score being dragged down by some of the shorter pieces, which were largely undistinguished.

Notable authors include Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, with one of his longest and most ambitious stories, the aforementioned C. L. Moore, and fairly reliable veterans Paul Ernst and H. Bedford-Jones, and Manly Wade Wellman. The Ernst and Eadie offerings could be considered science fiction, the rest fantasy.

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In 500 Words or Less: The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan

In 500 Words or Less: The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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The Book of Dragons-smallThe Book of Dragons
Edited By Jonathan Strahan; illustrated by Rovina Cai
Harper Voyager (576 pages, $35 hardcover, $16.99 eBook, July 7, 2020)

More than a year ago now, I was hanging out with Kelly Robson and she mentioned a new anthology she’d been invited to contribute to. The topic? Dragons. When was it coming out? 2020 sometime, probably, and we promptly moved on to talking about other things.

It’s now the middle of 2020 and that anthology is here, my friends.

Look at this freaking contributor list. You might think that an anthology about dragons is going to hit a few specific themes or styles, but you would be wrong and should know better, especially with Jonathan Strahan at the helm. I grinned with excitement reading JY Yang’s “The Exile” – dragons that terraform new worlds! (Also a poignant piece about loneliness and consequence.) Pretty sure I muttered a silent “ooooooh” at how Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky present bee-like dragons dealing with hive collapse in “We Continue.” Plus there’s Elle Katharine White’s story “Matriculation,” about a young woman with tuition debt, her machinework dragon and a kindly vampire bookseller, which I already described on Twitter as an emotional gut punch.

If I had to pick a thematic through line (not sure if that’s the right term, but I’m going with it) that seems to tie most of The Book of Dragons together, it would be family. In some cases, the focus is reforming bonds and learning to trust each other, like in Zen Cho’s “Hikayat Sri Bujang, or The Tale of the Naga Sage” or Kelly’s “La Vitesse” – an epic ride of Alberta school bus vs dragon. Or it’s about the loss and heartache that sometimes comes with family – like the adopted human watching the hive collapse in “We Continue,” or in R.F. Kuang’s story “The Nine Curves River,” about someone escorting their younger sister to be sacrificed to end a drought. Or the idea of found family, which Seanan McGuire captures brilliantly with “Hoard,” about a long-lived dragon who cares for foster kids close to aging out the way others care about gold.

The idea of gold or treasure comes up often, too. Sometimes as more of an addendum than a focus, like in Sarah Gailey’s “We Don’t Talk About the Dragon.” The real story there is a young girl growing up in a harsh, abusive family – though there’s also a dragon living in the barn.

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Vintage Treasures: Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson

Vintage Treasures: Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson

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Sword-Dancer Jennifer Roberson-small Sword-Dancer Jennifer Roberson-back-small

Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson. DAW paperback original, 1986. Cover by Kathy Wyatt

Jennifer Roberson was one of the 80s class of DAW women writers. Her first short short story, “The Lady and the Tiger,” the genesis for the Tiger and Del series, appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s groundbreaking Sword and Sorceress 2 in 1985. Like Mercedes Lackey, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Cheryl J. Franklin (whom I covered last week) and others, Roberson was a fixture on bookstores shelves and the DAW catalog all through the 80s and 90s. She launched several popular paperback series that ran for decades, and helped transform DAW into an industry powerhouse.

Her first novel was Shapechangers (1984), the opening book in the long-running, 8-volume Chronicles of the Cheysuli. In September 1986, with the first three novels in that series under her belt, she released Sword-Dancer, the first book in perhaps her most popular series, Tiger and Del, which follows the adventures of Tiger, a legendary warrior and sword-dancer, and Del, the sword-singer who hires him to rescue her brother, and who turns out to be as good with a blade as he is — something that vexes him greatly at first.

Tiger and Del ran to seven volumes (so far). The first six were collected in a handsome trio of omnibus trade paperbacks in 2006 with new covers by Todd Lockwood, making a nicely complete set on my bookshelf… until Roberson released a seventh book, Sword-Bound, in 2013. It’s tough being a collector sometimes.

As a series opener, Sword-Dancer is a little uneven, but still well worth reading. Here’s a snippet from one of my favorite Goodreads reviews by Dana.

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Rogue Blades Author: An Empire of Ghosts and Smoke

Rogue Blades Author: An Empire of Ghosts and Smoke

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Howard changed my lifeThe following is an excerpt from Scott Oden’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time, there was a kid from the Deep South, a fairly bog-standard middle-class white boy who was small for his age and a bit asthmatic. He wore glasses, had the profusion of freckles endemic to gingers, and possessed far more hair than he (or his mother) knew what to do with. On the surface, he seemed the normal sort.

This kid, though, he saw things. Things that weren’t there. He saw gnarled trolls lurking under fallen trees, dragons soaring among the clouds, and goblins hiding in fields of waving grass. The rusted-out shell of a boat drawn up on the bank of the pond behind his house was, in this kid’s reality, the Argo of legend. It was not a knotty pine branch he carried, stripped of its bark and dark from weathering. No, it was a sword: a great blade like Excalibur or the sword of Perseus. The old galvanized trash can lid on his arm was a shield wrought of silver; the tablecloth tied around his neck was a magic cloak, spun of silk and moonlight.

This kid’s domain was an eighteen-acre fiefdom with fields and woods and boggy creeks; at its heart: a two-acre fishpond thick with cattails and catfish, frogs and snakes, and surely haunted by merfolk and the ghosts of lost sailors. When the goblins swarmed down from the North, the kid met them blade-to-blade in the tall grass of a fallow field. When the trolls encroached from the East, he hunted them through the woods with spear and shield. And when the dragons threatened, the kid wisely retreated to his fort made from hay bales and old canvas, its walls impervious to dragon-fire. There, he plotted their demise.

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New Treasures: The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso

New Treasures: The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso

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The Obsidian Tower-smallMelissa Caruso is the author of Swords and Fire, a 4-book fantasy trilogy (there’s more of those than you think). I don’t know much about it, so that doesn’t tell me anything — although I note that the first book, The Tethered Mage, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Morningstar Award in 2017, and that’s definitely an asset in my book.

Her latest is The Obsidian Tower, the opening volume in a new series, and it’s been warmly received. Publisher Weekly calls it “no-holds-barred epic fantasy,” and James Tivendale at GrimDark magazine raves, saying:

Like Caruso’s previous trilogy, The Obsidian Tower is set in the world of Eruvia. The action takes place at least 150 years after the events of Swords and Fire… Ryx is a vivomancer but her magic is flawed and so twisted that it is dangerous. Anyone she touches dies, which, to her dismay, has happened a few times. At twenty-one years old, her role is to look after the castle in Gloamingard and at the beginning of the narrative, she is hosting a conference with neighbouring Alevar and the Serene Empire. Her castle is full of nooks, crannies, and secret passages, many of which seem only known to Ryx, as well as being host to a mysterious tower with a magical door which must not be unsealed….

Caruso is a terrific writer who weaves fascinating and intricate fantasy tales that are heavily focused on magic and politics. In The Obsidian Tower Caruso also introduces mystery elements to the mix which fit perfectly with her style…. [it’s] brimming with many well-crafted and colourful characters… My personal favourites were the formidable ruler of Morgrain The Lady of Owls, the mysterious Severin, the envoy from the neighbouring Alevar, the talking fox-like Chimera and castle guardian Whisper, and the loveable oddballs that make up the Rookery….

The Obsidian Tower is an entertaining, well-written, and expertly-paced novel with incredible magic schemes and a great cast of characters.

The Obsidian Tower was published by Orbit on June 2, 2020. It is 528 pages, priced at $16.99 in paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Peter Bollinger. Read a lengthy excerpt here.

See all our recent coverage of the best new SF and fantasy here.

Goth Chick News: Game Night Reinvented for the Horror Fan

Goth Chick News: Game Night Reinvented for the Horror Fan

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The Shining Board Game-small

The Shining Board Game

I was once a digital game enthusiast.

In the ‘before times’ when we were allowed to physically be in the company of other humans, I often found myself far too immersed in humanity, however unthinkable a state that is today. I sat in an office with other people, ate with other people, sat for hours in traffic with other people and came home to other people. It was therefore a welcome escape to place that VR helmet over my head and get away from everyone, often doing very geeky alone-things like touring virtual museums or take a virtual climb up Mount Rainer.

Today, in the upside-down, we’re going to great lengths to create those human interactions which I, at least, used to try and escape. We now have video meetings and Zoom cocktail parties, and frankly, spending time alone as entertainment is no longer as appealing as it once was. Instead, virtual game nights have become so popular that there are now online services you can hire to host them for you. According to a May article in USA Today, Walmart has seen their sales of board games double since March, and Amazon sales are up 4,000% in the same timeframe. The article specifically called out the game publisher Ravensburger, as having seen a 370% jump in sales since March.

Which brings me to the topic du jour.

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Artifacts: SixMoreVodka’s First Rules Expansion for Degenesis

Artifacts: SixMoreVodka’s First Rules Expansion for Degenesis

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degenesis-artifacts-coverDegenesis, SixMoreVodka’s post-apocalyptic, Europe-and-North Africa-centered tabletop RPG, released its first rules expansion last month. Called Artifacts and featuring the new Degenesis black-and-gold look, it’s the first gaming supplement I’ve ever owned with gilt-edged pages.

But that’s SMV for you, a company “founded by artists and run by artists.”

As I said in my initial review of the game, you can look at Degenesis as an expensive art book which comes with a free game, or an expensive game book with the most lavish art design in the history of the format. So you can convince yourself that even at USD 60 you’re getting a great deal, FedEx shipping from Berlin included, using many of the same mental gymnastics car enthusiasts might when signing for a new BMW.

Degenesis is already a complete game. But one of the 4chan descriptions of it is “90% fluff and 10% crunch.” While I don’t think that’s near accurate – I’d put it at 70/30 — Artifacts adds plenty of crunch. It gives additional rules to build, motivate, and describe your avatar and player group. There are enhancements to your campaign and a good deal of new technology for the players to use and fight over and a bunch of imaginative new rules for clawing advantage out of the much-altered Earth. And of course there’s first-rate art.

Here’s a quick overview of the game enhancements. Artifacts is divided into twelve parts, and I’ll spend the rest of this review providing thumbnails of the contents.

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Exploring Post-Apocalyptic Poland in Twilight: 2000

Exploring Post-Apocalyptic Poland in Twilight: 2000

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Twilight 2000-medium Twilight 2000-back-small

Twilight: 2000 (GDW, First edition box set, 1984). Click for bigger versions.

I have vivid memories of receiving the boxed set of Twilight: 2000 in 1984, cracking it open, and diving into its dark and gritty world. Each generation that spent its formative years growing up during the Cold War has its memories attached to that long, usually dull, and occasionally terrifying epoch. The Korean War. Sputnik. The Berlin Wall. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear raid drills. The Vietnam War. The invasion of Afghanistan. The Olympic game boycotts. Fraught meetings between leaders of the USA and USSR. Numerous proxy wars and insurrections. Eventually, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies crumbled in a series of revolutions — some soft and some hard — and it all seemed then a distant memory.

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A Superior Confection: Robert A. Heinlein’s The Pursuit of the Pankera

A Superior Confection: Robert A. Heinlein’s The Pursuit of the Pankera

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The Pursuit of the Pankera-smallThe Pursuit of the Pankera
By Robert A. Heinlein
Caezik (503 pages, $29.99 hardcover, $9.99 digital, March 2020)
Cover by Scott Grimando

It’s almost impossible to discuss Robert A. Heinlein’s The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel about Parallel Universes without revealing and thus spoiling the plot devices of it and its 1980 prequel/sequel, The Number of the Beast—. Heinlein, first Grand Master of the SFWA, for decades acclaimed as the Dean of sf, no longer pleases everyone. Some readers, especially academic critics, have denounced both books as grossly self-indulgent and even worthless. Others, like the brilliant Marxist professor H. Bruce Franklin (in his important 1980 study Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction) catch the feel of Beast: “a cotton-candy apocalypse — frothy, sweet, airy, mellow, light, festive, whimsical, insubstantial” (199).

That final word is unjust, since many pages are devoted to an investigation of lifeboat rules, and what Algis Budrys termed “protocol,” capable of mutual acceptance by four genius-level libertarians, two of them women, one the daughter of crusty and irritable Professor Jake Burroughs used to having his own way. Oh, plus an increasingly intelligent and willful computer in the younger man’s flying car, uplifted to true personhood during a visit to… The Land of Oz. This jolly and quite necessary absurdity is a side effect of their discovery that the world is built of myth, of fictons, yielding a kind of “pantheistic multiperson solipsism” occasioned by the dreams, terrors and wishes (as it were) of writers and readers. (Regrettably, Heinlein’s term ficton is “corrected” to fiction in Pankera.)

Robert Heinlein, it follows, is the god (or demon) of the universes the four learn how to visit in Jake’s continua craft. Some of these worlds he had written himself (especially the history of near-immortal Lazarus Long and his incestuous mother and clone daughters, or would write later. Others are the creations of other major writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars), L. Frank Baum (Oz), Heinlein’s older friend E.E. “Doc” Smith, whose inaugural space opera sequence tracks the psionic Lenses gained by eugenic human warrior-saints, chess pawns in a cosmic war between aliens billions of years older than humankind.

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