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Year: 2021

Future Treasures: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

Future Treasures: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

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A Dead Jinn in Cairo (Tor.com, 2016), The Haunting of Tram Car 015 (Tor.com, 2019),
and A Master of Djinn (Tor.com, 2021). Cover art by Kevin Hong (left) and Stephan Martiniere (right two)

I get a lot of email from Black Gate readers. Stuff like, “Hey John, I’m boarding a five hour flight to LA , what should I put on my Kindle?” Seriously? Come on, people. I have a life. I don’t have time to drop everything to be your personal librarian.

Ha-ha-ha-ha. I know, right? Like I have a life, outside of being your personal librarian. So let’s get to this. Got five hours? Here’s what you do: You download P. Djèlí Clark’s novelette “A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” (originally published at Tor.com), and his Locus, Nebula, and Hugo-nominated novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015, set in the same alternate fantasy Cairo.

And then when you land, you can pre-order the next book in the series, Clark’s debut novel A Master of Djinn, on sale from Tor.com on Tuesday. Here’s the details.

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A Gothic Story: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

A Gothic Story: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

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The history of the novel in the West is long, complex, and complicated. Suffice it to say, by the middle of the 18th century the novel was a popular form of entertainment no longer confined to aristocratic readers. The romances of the Middle Ages and Renaissance had been largely supplanted by more realistic tales, but with the advent of Gothic literature, romantic fiction rose again in popularity, proceeding directly from Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto.

Gothic fiction is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as “European Romantic pseudomedieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror.” The deliberate admixture of realistic and fantastic elements in Otranto was a huge success. While Gothic fiction’s popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, it has never receded completely. Horror fiction, as well as certain strains of romance and thriller writing, all trace their roots to this era.

Walpole was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, the first real prime minister of England. His time at Cambridge led to skepticism of certain aspects of Christianity, a strong dislike for superstition, and, in turn, the Catholic Church. Walpole was elected to Parliament multiple times from assorted rotten boroughs (electoral districts that had lost most of their populations but still sent an MP to the House of Commons — and which he never visited) and his father secured several adequately remunerative sinecures for him over the years. A Whig, Walpole opposed efforts he saw as supportive of making the monarchy more powerful. On the death of his nephew in 1791, at the age of 74, he became the 4th and final Earl of Orford.

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Goth Chick News: Finally, We Get to Personally Make Vampires Cool Again

Goth Chick News: Finally, We Get to Personally Make Vampires Cool Again

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As you know, I’ve been beyond irritated at the trend of changing vampires from life-sucking creatures of the night, into angsty, emotionally tortured emo kids. It started with the Twilight book series of course, which then became excruciating films. But it didn’t stop there. Instead, we were treated to Twilight spawn such as The Vampire Diaries, The Vampire Academy and Fallen, to name but a very few. Vampires lost interest in Victorian costuming, or even leather-clad rock star chic, and instead started looking like L.L Bean models. They agonized over their attachments to their food source rather than eating with erotic abandon like the blood-thirsty creatures of the night that they were.

They went to high school.

wtf.

So, this week’s news could not have come at a better time.

Thanks to Stunlock Studios, we can all finally put this right by becoming the undead bad-asses they were meant to be. The talent behind Battlerite have just announced a new role-playing game entitled V Rising, which allows players to be vampires out to build an empire.

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New Treasures: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

New Treasures: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

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Rivers Solomon’s debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts was one of the breakout books of 2017, listed as a best book of the year in The Guardian, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and others, a finalist for the Locus, Lambda, Tiptree, and John W. Campbell Awards. Faer latest novel Sorrowland was published this week, and Bookpage calls it “terrifying… a truly powerful piece of storytelling.” Here’s the publisher’s description.

Vern — seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised — flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future — outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

Sorrowland was published by MCD on May 4, 2021. It is 368 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover, $13.99 in digital formats, and $50.99 in audio formats.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Life Beyond Us Kickstarter closes May 12!

Life Beyond Us Kickstarter closes May 12!

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Hey there, Black Gate people! Breaking from my usual pattern of reviews and interviews to let you know about an awesome anthology being Kickstarted right now: Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays. Award-winning Canadian publisher Laksa Media has partnered with the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) and the European Science Foundation to bring this to life, and they are so close to being funded. The Kickstarter closes May 12th, so there’s only a few days left to get in on this project and help it succeed!

Editors Julie Nováková, Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law are at the helm of this one. The ToC for this anthology combines authors and essayists from a variety of scientific fields, and people at the top of the science fiction game: Eugen Bacon, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Tobias S. Buckell, Eric Choi, Julie E. Czerneda, Tessa Fisher, Simone Heller, Valentin Ivanov, Mary Robinette Kowal, Geoffrey A. Landis, Rich Larson, Lucie Lukačovičová, Premee Mohamed, G. David Nordley, Malka Older, Deji Bryce Olukotun, Tomáš Petrásek, Arula Ratnakar, DA Xiaolin Spires, Bogi Takács, and Peter Watts.

It feels like the past year has seen a ton of excellent anthologies on Kickstarter, and not all of them have made it, unfortunately. Besides the ToC, I love the motivation behind the anthology and the backer rewards being offered. If you can, please consider backing the Kickstarter or signal boosting it to your friends!

Here’s some more info, direct from the editors.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Mighty Colossi and Hydrae

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Mighty Colossi and Hydrae

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The Colossus of Rhodes (Warner Bros, 1961)

It was a time of giants on the movie screen. In Japan, inspired by King Kong (1933) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1954), the kaiju, led by Godzilla, were wreaking swaths of destruction across the modern world. But by 1958, Ray Harryhausen, who’d animated The Beast, was looking backward to the ancient world, where the giants of myth had their origins, and other filmmakers in America and Europe were following the same path. Hissing hydras raised their many heads in tales of Jason and Sindbad, while Sergio Leone recreated the Colossus of Rhodes, and though he didn’t bring it to life, it was as much mechanism as statue. To see what it would be like if the colossus walked, we are indebted, once again, to Ray Harryhausen.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Rating: ****
Origin: Italy/Spain/France, 1961
Director: Sergio Leone
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

This is Sergio Leone’s first film as a director, and it’s mostly excellent. After working as assistant director on sword-and-sandal epics such as Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959), Leone finally got to show what he could do as lead on this picture, which is probably the best-looking Italian historical epic of the peplum era. It has its drawbacks, though, particularly its questionable choice of lead in American cowboy star Rory Calhoun, who combines the glowering good looks of a Robert Mitchum with the leering insouciance of Dean Martin. An ancient Greek hero he ain’t. And, frankly, seven screenwriters is too many, even if one of them is Leone himself.

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If I May Take A Moment of Your Time

If I May Take A Moment of Your Time

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100

A failed literary outline.

Hello, Friend! Are you a writer who struggles with Scene Development Instability, sometimes called SDI? I know, it can be hard to talk about in public, but let me reassure you, Friend, that SDI can be treated!

Great, tell me more! Read on from 400.
I’m not actually a Writer! Read on from 300.
I only write short stories, so I’m immune to SDI. Read on from 200.

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Deadly Archeology on Alien Planets: “It Opens the Sky” by Theodore Sturgeon

Deadly Archeology on Alien Planets: “It Opens the Sky” by Theodore Sturgeon

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Venture Science Fiction, November 1957. Cover by Emsh

In this series of essays I have been taking a close look at stories I find interesting, trying to figure out how they work. So far the stories (and one poem) I have discussed are pieces I find particularly good – and this is hardly surprising, as surely it’s better to know how and what good stories do than weak stories. But this time I’m taking a look at a story I enjoy, but that I also think deeply flawed. Why? Partly because it’s by Theodore Sturgeon, one of my very favorite writers. But also this story seems very Sturgeonesque – so I hope that I can understand better what Sturgeon tries to do in his most characteristic stories, and why sometimes even while he does what he wants to do the story qua story doesn’t wholly work.

My favorite Sturgeon stories are “The Man Who Lost the Sea,” “A Saucer of Loneliness,” and “And Now the News …”. There are other very good and very well-known stories by him: “Baby is Three,” “Mr. Costello, Hero,” “Bulkhead,” “Affair with a Green Monkey,” “And My Fear is Great …”. And there are early stories that seem less truly characteristic of the mature writer, though they are still well-regarded: the SF Hall of Fame story “Microcosmic God,” horror stories like “It” and “Bianca’s Hands,” the possessed bulldozer piece “Killdozer.” I love a late ‘40s sense of wonder thing, “The Sky Was Full of Ships,” but that too is not core Sturgeon. But there are a few stories from his peak period, the 1950s, that have the emotional punch, and the moments of utter beauty, of the best of his work, but that for one reason or another don’t stick the landing. “The Golden Helix” is one. “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff” is another – a novella that for half its length bids fair to be as good as anything he ever wrote, but which can’t quite find its way to a satisfactory resolution. And there is “It Opens the Sky,” the story I mean to treat here, which has pages of sheer loveliness, passages of great power, and a message that is Sturgeon at his most tender and optimistic. It is a story that brings me to tears, and yet frustrates me.

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Stories of Isolation and Lonely Death: The Dead Astronaut by Playboy Science Fiction

Stories of Isolation and Lonely Death: The Dead Astronaut by Playboy Science Fiction

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The Dead Astronaut (Playboy Press, 1971). Cover by Pompeo Posar

Last summer I came across an intriguing aside on the SF anthology The Dead Astronaut by Playboy Press (1971). I can’t remember the name of the blogger who had re-cracked it, but the person noted that with everyone locked down and socially distanced, these decades-old stories of isolation and lonely death, mostly written between Sputnik and the Apollo landing, felt newly relevant. I agree.

While I admit I don’t have the knowledge base of some of the vintage SF reviewers here, I did like the stories enough highlight the collection and offer a quick review in case others wanted to experience the unintentional “prophetic” element of science fiction, as the editorial introduction labels it.

The collection’s introduction is signed simply “The Editors” but according to The Science Fiction Encyclopedia Ray Russell (1924-1999) edited it, offering a tidbit about each author and a story note or two in his brief introduction.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Appaloosa – Hardboiled Western

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Appaloosa – Hardboiled Western

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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 enjoy a good Western on the screen. Tombstone is my favorite, with Rio Bravo not too far behind. And I usually watch at least a little if it’s got Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea in it. So you know that Ride the High Country, with its breathtaking cinematography, is in the mix. And be it Maverick or Support Your Local Sheriff, I love seeing James Garner in a cowboy hat. I wrote about one of my favorite TV shows, Hell on Wheels.

But I’ve not read too many Westerns. Looking over the two-thousandish books on my shelves, I only see Steven Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series – which is in the Sherlock Holmes section, of course. And a fine collection of short stories by my second-favorite author, Robert E. Howard. And neither would be there solely based on their genre. I do have a few more Westerns in ebook format, which I’ve transitioned to over the past decade.

I’ve meant to write about T. T. Flynn’s Westerns. Flynn authored the Bail Bond Dodd stories, about a fairly tough, but not really hardboiled, bail bondsman, for Dime Detective. But I was smart enough to get Duane Spurlock to contribute a piece to A (Black) Gat in the Hand, which you can read here. Regular readers of that series (assuming there are any) know that Norbert Davis is on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore, second only to ‘Dash.’ So it’s not surprising I wrote an essay on his story “A Gunsmoke Case for Major Cain.” Another Davis Western post is likely somewhere down the dusty trail.

This past weekend, I decided to revisit a Western movie from 2008 which I had seen once before; but the plot details were fuzzy. So, kinda familiar, kinda new. What I did remember was that I thought it was pretty good. And a second view drove that home like a sod buster splitting a fence rail (okay, okay, no more of that. Too much, anyways).

A friend of mine with a long list of IMDB credits has said several times that Hollywood just doesn’t like big budget Westerns. And it’s true that we do get one of them occasionally, but they’re never billed as summer blockbusters. And heaven for-fend a franchise develop! Of course, television is more friendly to the genre.

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