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Year: 2021

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Of Tudor Scum and Georgian-Gallants; an Interview with Peter McLean

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Of Tudor Scum and Georgian-Gallants; an Interview with Peter McLean

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My guest this month is Peter McLean, a successful short story writer and contemporary fantasy novelist who has cast his authorially eye on more traditional fantasy, with his War for the Rose Throne, series, the first two volumes of which (Priest of Bones and Priest of Lies) are now available, and currently in development for television by Heyday Productions. For those who may not have read them (and if that’s you, go do that now, we’ll wait) here is the bird’s view summary:

Tomas Piety was once a successful crime boss in the rough and tumble city of Ellinburg. Then came the War, which left its scars and also, ironically, his ordinance as a priest of Our Lady – not for any great change of faith, but because the unit needed a new cleric and Tomas could read. War-weary, the cynical priest heads home with Bloody Anne, his sergeant and confidant, to reclaim his streets. But rival gangs have carved up what was his and Ellinburg is collapsing from within. Tomas decides to reclaim what was his, with his new gang: the Pious Men. Unfortunately, there is more than just a few legs to be broken, as Tomas finds himself dragged into political and magical intrigue that extends well beyond the city.

The story is narrated by Tomas himself, and the limited viewpoint is used to great effect. We only see what Tomas sees, and while he is a mostly faithful narrator, there’s no doubt that he isn’t always entirely honest with himself, and there are times the reader is left sighing or shaking his head on Piety’s behalf.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Daimajin Strikes Again!

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Daimajin Strikes Again!

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Daimajin (or Majin the Monster of Terror)

In the menagerie of Japanese postwar film studios, the Toho Company was the 900-pound King Kong, known best for its crime and samurai films, including those of director Akira Kurosawa. Toho hit the international big time in 1954 with Godzilla, King of the Monsters, which, though inspired by King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, really counts as the first of the kaiju, or Japanese-style giant monster movies. Toho followed up in 1956 with Godzilla Raids Again, and expanded the franchise late in that year with Rodan.

Over the next several years Toho doubled down on the monster bet, adding Mothra, King Kong himself, and Ghidorah, and by the early Sixties other Japanese studios started getting in on the act. This included Daiei Films with their kaiju Gamera, who “starred” in seven features from 1965 through 1971. We know Daiei primarily for the Zatoichi series, which capitalized on their skill at churning out fair-to-exceptional historical samurai adventures mainly for the Japanese market. With Gamera, Daiei had a series that sold internationally as well, and they had the idea of mashing up their two most popular genres, kaiju and chambara, into a single series. (They weren’t alone in this idea: see also Toei’s The Magic Serpent.)

Samurai vs. a giant monster! Thus was born the Daimajin trilogy, which we’re taking a look at this week.

Daimajin (or Majin the Monster of Terror)

Rating: ****
Origin: Japan, 1966
Director: Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Source: Mill Creek Blu-ray

By the mid-Sixties, the Daiei studio was having success in two genres, giant monster movies and samurai adventure films. Why not cross the streams?

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New Treasures: 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis

New Treasures: 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis

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I’m hearing a lot of buzz about this book.

I first heard about it in Andrew Liptak’s March newsletter (the “15 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this March” installment), in which he wrote:

I’m a big fan of military fiction, especially stuff that’s close to the horizon when it comes to predicting the future, like P.W. Singer and August Cole’s Ghost Fleet. This new novel comes from Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, and is set nearly a decade from now, chronicling how a world war between the US and China might occur.

I’ve been reading an advance copy of this, and it’s a chilling read, one that looks at the plausible future when it comes to cybersecurity, military hardware, and geopolitics.

Wired devoted an entire issue to an excerpt of the novel, which includes the first six chapters.

Wired in fact calls it “A rippingly good read… even cautionary tales can be exciting, when the future we’re most excited about is the one where they never come true.” Kirkus says it’s “A frightening look at how a major-power showdown might race out of control… This compelling thriller should be required reading for our national leaders.”

2034 is written by two former US military officers, and the publisher describes it as

A chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 — and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration.

2034: A Novel of the Next World War was published by Penguin on March 9, 2021. It is 320 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover, $14.99 digital, and $24.99 in audio formats.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Twilight: 2000‘s Polish Campaign, Part I

Twilight: 2000‘s Polish Campaign, Part I

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Twilight: 2000 takes place in the aftermath of a limited tactical nuclear war during World War III. While the inciting event is over (the use of nuclear weapons), the world is still very much in collapse, so the players are engaged in a game of survival. They are what is left of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, crushed by two Soviet divisions in Poland in the spring of 2000.

The game is one of the few true sandbox games that I have ever encountered. While my Traveller games often had sandbox elements, they were still typically guided by a grand narrative. Twilight: 2000 forgoes even that, for the most part. Casting the players in the roll of trying to make their way in the world. The operating presumption is that they want to return home — aka, the United States. 

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Day 27

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Day 27

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So, last year, as the Pandemic settled in like an unwanted relative who just came for a week and is still tying up the bathroom, I did a series of posts for the FB Page of the Nero Wolfe fan club, The Wolfe Pack. I speculated on what Stay at Home would be like for Archie, living in the Brownstone with Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Hortsmann. I have already re-posted days one through twenty-five. Here is day twenty-six (April 16). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries. You really need to read Day Twenty-Six before this one. Trust me – I wrote it!

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN– 2020 Stay at Home

“Dammit Goodwin, let me in.” Inspector Cramer was standing outside the front room window through which I’d conversed with Doc Vollmer earlier. I had refused to the open the door for him after the body had been removed and the area decontaminated by the professionals.

“No sir. Somebody with the virus died on our stoop. He touched the front door, which I’ll be cleaning later. You examined the scene. Yes, you had gloves on, and that mask, which, by the way, looks terrific on you. But the answer is still ‘No.’”

“I am a police official and this is a crime scene. Open the goddamn door.”

Wolfe had been sitting in a chair, though none of the ones in that room are comfortable for him. He arose and came over to the window, and I moved away.

“Nonsense, Mister Cramer. That man was never in this house. The front stoop is certainly a crime scene; do with it what you will.”

Purley Stebbins had been over near the stoop, talking with a cop in uniform, but he came over.

“Hi, Purley. That’s not proper social distancing.”

Stebbins has a pained ‘You’re not funny expression’ which I think he only uses for me. Like he did right then.

Wolfe went on. “You may ask your questions from there. That man did not come inside, or in any way communicate with Mister Goodwin or I.”

“So, you’re saying you have no idea why a man, stabbed and carrying the virus, desperately wanted to see you before he died?”

Wolfe sighed, though he didn’t really mean it. “Really, Mister Cramer, how many times have we done this before? Perhaps the man was passing by on the sidewalk, was assaulted, and ours was the closest doorbell to ring. Confound it. Even during this lockdown, must you badger me and assume that I am concealing material relevant to a homicide?”

I bet Cramer wished he had a cigar instead of a mask right now. He pulled his mask down and I saw that his face was flushed. “Like I haven’t had good reason in the past, Wolfe.”

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Mad Shadows, Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

Mad Shadows, Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

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Mad Shadows, Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate (Pulp Hero Press, February 26, 2021). Cover artist unknown

Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Dorgo the Dowser’ emerges with new content in Mad Shadows Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate. It is available now in paperback ($17.95 for the 332-page paperback; $2.99 Kindle). Under the recent charge of Pulp Hero Press, the first two books have been reprinted in glorious style (Book One: Mad Shadows by Joe Bonadonna and Book Two: Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent). The release of Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate marks the tenth year anniversary of the first book’s publication. The official book blurb clarifies what to expect in the latest installment:

Dorgo’s Greatest Challenge

During an arduous and dangerous trek through the Scarlet Desert in search of the fabled Well of Tears, Dorgo the Dowser and his companions accidentally uncover an ancient artifact buried for eons beneath the blood-colored sand. After a harrowing, action-packed journey through the desert they find the Well of Tears, the repository of God’s tears, and there encounter the ghosts of the Sisters of the Blue Light, the Guardians of the Well. The nuns tell them about the relic of antiquity they found: it is a thing of cosmic evil — a thing not of their world, a thing which must be destroyed. But the answer to destroying that artifact is a riddle Dorgo and his companions must discover for themselves.

When the Spirit trapped inside the artifact is set free by one of their companions, Dorgo and the others learn that the evil now threatens not only their world, but all the Otherworlds of the multi-dimensional Echoverse. The key to destroying this evil is somehow tied in with the demons seeking to control Echo Gate — the master portal that leads not only to every world in the Echoverse, but through Space and Time, as well. As a great battle erupts on the island of Thavarar, where Echo Gate is located, Dorgo and his companions must unravel the mystery of the thing they found in the desert, and discover the means by which it can be destroyed.

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Vintage Treasures: Invaders of Earth edited by Groff Conklin

Vintage Treasures: Invaders of Earth edited by Groff Conklin

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Invaders of Earth (Tempo, September 1962). Cover artist unknown

Before his untimely death in 2016, Bud Webster was Black Gate‘s poetry editor and one of our finest columnists. He wrote a number of Who? columns on forgotten SF writers for our print issues, and thoughtful pieces on selling books at conventions for our website. In his paean to the science fiction anthologies of his youth, Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies, Bud wrote fondly about the great SF anthologies of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Here’s an excerpt from Above the Rest, the chapter dedicated to editor Groff Conklin.

I kept noticing that the stories I liked best, the ones I’d remember from one week to the next, the ones I thrust on my friends with the words “You GOTTA read THIS one!”, all seemed to come from the Conklin anthologies. So, I began pulling his books off the library shelves before I picked Bleiler’s, or Pohl’s, or the others, and when I found (joy of joys!) a dingy little shop near my school that sold ratty old paperbacks for a dime, Conklin’s were the ones I looked for first.

In a note to me about Conklin, Jack Williamson said, “His anthologies…. were landmarks, and I think they had a good deal to do with a wider acceptance of SF…”

In compiling this beast, I’ve read reviews, looked at web pages, and talked to long-time SF readers, fans and pros over and over. When anthologies are discussed, certain names are always mentioned: Pohl, Merril, Bleiler and Dikty, Healy and McComas…. and their relative merits discussed at length. But when Conklin’s name comes up, they invariably nod and say, “Oh, yeah, anything by Groff Conklin.”

Like Bud, my early exposure to adult science fiction was in SF anthologies I found in school libraries, in my case edited by Terry Carr, Robert Silverberg, and Isaac Asimov. But I discovered Conklin soon enough, and one of my favorites was his 1952 anthology of alien invasion tales, Invaders of Earth.

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L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #4: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #4: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

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I’ve continued reading the Oz series by videoconferencing with my niece a few times a week. We’re having a lot of fun. Not long ago, we finished L. Frank Baum’s fourth entry in the series he really didn’t want to write, but as they say…. “if you back up a dump truck full of money…”

Dorothy is going to rejoin her Uncle Henry in California where he’s visiting his brother. She’s picked up at the train by Jeb and his horse and buggy. On the way to the ranch, a terrible earthquake opens the ground and swallows them up!

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #1 History of Fantasy

Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #1 History of Fantasy

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

I’m the age Proust was when he died, and Lin Carter books are my Madeleine cake.

The covers transport me to the sunny afternoon garage sales of my teens. Picking up one — they’re tiny compared to today’s paperbacks — and riffling the yellowing pages, and I’m thirteen years old, on a hill-walking holiday in Wales, rummaging in a small town charity shop while the rain rattles the dirty glass window. And later, playing Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D was my edition!) in a stuffy teenage bedroom in a Victorian house where the hundred-year-old window slammed down and nearly took off the DM’s leg as he was smoking a roll-up while perched on the ledge…

And like the D&D games of my mid teens, Lin Carter’s books never quite lived up to the potential of the promised exoticism. In our case, we were teenagers with limited life experience. We did very well, as far as it went, and our DMs were patient and I argued too much. Lin Carter, several times married, a Korean war veteran — the Vietnam sequence that kicks off the Callisto books reads very authentically —  cosmopolitan New Yorker, experienced editor, has less excuse.

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Incredible, In More Ways than One: Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man

Incredible, In More Ways than One: Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man

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The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
First Edition: Fawcett Gold Medal, May 1956. Cover art MH.

The Shrinking Man
by Richard Matheson
Fawcett Gold Medal (192 pages, $0.35, Paperback, May 1956)
Cover art MH

I think it safe to say that Richard Matheson is best remembered today for his novels and stories that were adapted into films and TV scripts, including the dozen plus scripts he himself wrote for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone TV series in the late 1950 to early ‘60s. (An ironic exception is Matheson’s first-published short story, “Born of Man and Woman” (1950), which remains in print in the first volume of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.)

Matheson’s first six novels, at least, from I Am Legend (1954) to What Dreams May Come (1978), were all adapted into films. (Among short stories adapted into film was 1971’s “Duel,” which became a TV movie under Steven Spielberg’s direction). The earliest film adaptation came from his second novel, The Shrinking Man (1956), becoming the striking if dubiously plausible 1957 film dubbed, Hollywood-style, The Incredible Shrinking Man. I suspect more people have seen the film than have read Matheson’s novel. Yet while I’m reviewing the book here and not the film (which I last saw decades ago), I will compare the two on a few points, mainly because Matheson himself wrote the screenplay for the film. So the differences between novel and film may be instructive.
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