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Year: 2021

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – March, 1932

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – March, 1932

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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)

I decided to kick off this year’s A (Black) Gat in the Hand run with a look at a stellar issue of Black Mask. And the March 1, 1932 one was a knockout. Note the catch phrase on the cover was “Detective, Western, Stories of Action.” Just two issues prior, in January, the cover illustration featured a cowboy wielding a pair of six shooters. Even with non-Western stories from Erle Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, and Stewart Stirling. The shift towards hardboiled had been made, but the Mask was still appealing to other pulp genres. Competitor Dime Detective had only started up the month before.

But man, the March issue delivered hardboiled like a tommy gun, backed up with a pineapple through the window. No, not the kind of pineapple they use in Psych (great show!). I will argue that it was one of the best Black Masks ever. Considering that there is no Hammett story, it’s a bold claim.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 edited by Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 (Del Rey, July 1979)

Terry Carr died 34 years ago, in 1987. A whole generation of fans has arrived since his death, discovered science fiction, argued over the Star War sequels, and settled comfortably into middle age to raise contentious young SF fans of their own.

So fans today could be forgiven for not understanding how thoroughly Carr dominated the field during his lifetime. Before he died in 2018, Gardner Dozois was seen as the preeminent editor and taste-maker in 21st Century science fiction, winning the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor a record-shattering 15 times, and editing 35 volumes of the perennially popular The Year’s Best Science Fiction. But in 1979, the year Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 appeared, that crown belonged to Carr, and he had no less than four books — including three Year’s Best — place ahead of Dozois’ own Year’s Best installment in the annual Locus Poll for Best Anthology.

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After Every Deep Breath, the Long Exhale: A Quiet Afternoon 2, edited by Liane Tsui and Grace Seybold

After Every Deep Breath, the Long Exhale: A Quiet Afternoon 2, edited by Liane Tsui and Grace Seybold

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One of my favorite anthologies from last year was A Quiet Afternoon, edited by the Canadian duo of Liane Tsui and Grace Seybold and published by Grace & Victory Publications. So I was very pleased to see an ambitious follow-up arrive this month, packed with 27 stories by Stewart C. Baker, Gabrielle Bleu, L. Chan, Jessica Cho, and many others.

What’s it all about then? Here’s Laura DeHaan, from her introduction.

We are tried and overstimulated and wrung out. The real world is presenting us with more than enough actual life-or-death struggles that we frequently feel powerless to affect. We don’t need to read more of that in our escapist literature. Instead, we take comfort in stories featuring manageable goals and which celebrate small victories.

There are, of course, bittersweet tales as well: broken hearts, lost recipes, forgotten words. Even so, there are triumphs, That which is broken can be fixed, the lost found, the forgotten remembered. After every small deep breath is the long exhale.

In, out.

An anthology dedicated to low-stakes speculative fiction is welcome and oh-so timely. Filled with tales of talking cats, home-cooked meals, robots, cryptids, weather magic, haunted houses, aliens, and knitting, A Quiet Afternoon 2 is waiting with a warm cup of tea to comfort and entertain you.

Here’s the publisher’s description and the complete contributor list.

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #3: Tricks of the Trade and Reflections

Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #3: Tricks of the Trade and Reflections

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  • Cover of Imaginary Worlds
    Cover of Imaginary Worlds
Imaginary Worlds (Ballantine Books, June 1973). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo.

I’m doing a deep dive into Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds (first article), and I’ve finally gotten to his last chapter in which he gives advice to writers:

When a writer first begins evolving in his imagination and his notebooks, the raw materials that he intends to shape into an imaginary world, he should think through the problem through to its logical ramifications.

Because…

…despite the convictions of occultists and the religiosi of the several faiths, in the actual world magic simply does not work… and an invented world, therefore, that includes the super natural element must be–has to be–very different from his own. Any writer…. should think through all its implications.

If you’ve just tuned in, Lin Carter was a Fantasy author and editor who flourished roughly from the 50s to the 70s. He was a far better editor than author, however his stories are reliable comfort reads, and compensate for lack of depth with fast pacing and unconstrained imagination. No surprise, then, that his thoughts  on Fantasy worlds are worth reading. He gives them in X entertaining secions.

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In 500 Words or Less: Three Seeking Stars by Avi Silver

In 500 Words or Less: Three Seeking Stars by Avi Silver

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Three Seeking Stars (The Sãoni Cycle #2)
By Avi Silver
Molewhale Press (368 pages, $15.99 paperback/$3.99 eBook, July 13, 2021)
Cover and interior illustrations by Haley Rose Szereszewski

I’ve said it before, and I’ll likely say it again (before this column dies the hero of Black Gate or lives long enough to become its villain): I love a novel that’s about conflict resolution through words.

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New Treasures: The Black Coast by Mike Brooks

New Treasures: The Black Coast by Mike Brooks

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Mike Brooks’ Dark Run space opera trilogy was published in 2016/17, and was warmly received. Kirkus Reviews called it an “old-fashioned space Western… an entertaining page-turner,” and Andrew Liptak at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog said it “deserves to be this year’s break out. A space opera in the rollicking tradition of Timothy Zahn [and] John Scalzi…”

For the past few years Brooks has been playing around in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, writing novels like Rites of Passage and Brutal Kunnin’. This spring he re-invented himself again, this time as an epic fantasy novelist, kicking off The God-King Chronicles series with the novel The Black Coast. It was named an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best SFF in February, and Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review. Here’s a snippet from their enthusiastic review.

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Goth Chick News: Blood Red Skies Brings Us a New Take on Vampires

Goth Chick News: Blood Red Skies Brings Us a New Take on Vampires

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Honestly, I wasn’t sure this was possible.

I mean there are literally hundreds of vampire movies, so to come up with a unique way to portray them is really something to be excited about. And I am.

The last time anyone came close to this was when John Ajvide Lindqvist first penned his novel, then the screenplay of Let the Right One In back in 2008. The movie was Swedish with English subtitles, which somehow made it seem bleaker than it otherwise would have been. Though a couple years later an English version was filmed, it wasn’t as dark nor as artful as the original. I won’t spoil it for you here, but if you haven’t seen the story of a child vampire and her human companion, you won’t be sorry.

This week a trailer dropped for a new German-language Netflix movie. Netflix has ten foreign language films scheduled for 2021, which is a huge change from just a few years ago, when most major movie studios wouldn’t have considered releasing a non-English-language feature in the United States.

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The Grindstone

The Grindstone

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January 1st

The view out one’s own window is often inspiring!

Dear Diary,
All of the prep work I did at the end of last year has paid off handsomely! My plan for today is to jump right into my new project, to which I have given the working title of Hedgerow. This will put me in the mindset of a gardener, tending to delicate sprouts, always mindful of the bounty to come. Hello, Hedgerow!

Also, the house next door has finally been occupied. After all the investigators and forensics teams, I feared that blackout curtains would become a permanent decorative feature in my writing room to hide me from the endless rounds of reporters. Thankfully, things quieted down soon enough, which was good, since I had no idea what any of them was talking about!

Spirit Animal: A featherless baby bird!

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Cheh’s on Second

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Cheh’s on Second

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One-Armed Swordsman (Hong King, 1967)

Though visionary director King Hu established the elements of the modern wuxia, or Chinese historical swordplay film, it was fellow Hong Kong director Chang Cheh who really took the ball and ran with it. He followed hard on Hu’s Come Drink with Me and Dragon Inn with his own wuxia action movies and quickly became one of Asia’s top-grossing directors, with a style that drew on Hu but also Japan’s Akira Kurosawa, America’s Sam Peckinpah, and Italy’s Sergio Leone. After about a dozen swordplay films, he turned to unarmed martial arts, helping to define the burgeoning kung fu film genre. All told, he made over ninety films for Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers studio and was a major influence on later directors such as John Woo, Robert Rodriguez, and Zhang Yimou. Let’s take a look at his first three wuxia films, each of which builds on the stylistic advances of the previous.

One-Armed Swordsman

Rating: ****
Origin: Hong Kong, 1967
Director: Chang Cheh
Source: 88 Films Blu-ray

King Hu reinvented the modern wuxia film in 1966 with Come Drink with Me, then left the Shaw Brothers film factory for Taiwan. But the Shaw Brothers had another top-notch action director in Chang Cheh who began his own series of historical martial arts movies with One-Armed Swordsman, which broke new ground with its dynamic and colorful swordplay and was an even bigger hit in Asia than Come Drink with Me.

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The Return of a Small Joy

The Return of a Small Joy

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Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

When I was a young(er) person, I was a voracious reader. I blew through books all the time. Once, during a school reading challenge, I read so many books that I ran out of books to read, and ended up doubling up on some titles. I read so many books, my teachers didn’t believe me. They thought I made up the lot. Reading so much, and loving every minute I got to dive into another world; that I got to escape my reality for a little bit is in no small part of why I’m a writer now.

But I will admit, that I’ve been struggling to read of late. A combination of a time-consuming job, several side-hustles, and the added stress of a global pandemic, and all the stupidity of (some) folks regarding it, losing a long-time flatmate and having to move…. It’s all added up. The result was that I could barely pick myself up, let alone a book.

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