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Year: 2021

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Hammer Horror Historicals!

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Hammer Horror Historicals!

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Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)

Hammer Films was a London studio founded in 1934, but it didn’t really make much of a mark until the mid-Fifties, when they hit their stride with a revival of the Gothic horror genre. With dependable leads in Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and (later) Oliver Reed, they just about owned the horror category from 1955 through 1965 but were successful enough to branch out into other genres as well, including historical swashbucklers, all with that distinctive Hammer look and feel. Let’s take a look at how they did with outlaw rogues, pirates, cavaliers, and roundheads. Batten down the hatches, it’s Christopher Lee in an eyepatch, swabs!

Sword of Sherwood Forest

Rating: ****
Origin: U.K., 1960
Director: Terence Fisher
Source: Columbia Pictures DVD

For a low-budget movie made by a small studio just establishing its style — the U.K.’s Hammer Films — this is quite good. The marquee draw is Richard Greene as Robin Hood, coming off his four-season star turn in the same role on the popular Adventures of… TV show; at the time, starring in a feature film, even a modest one, carried far more prestige than even a hit television series, so in some ways this movie is the capstone of Greene’s career. However, this is a standalone Robin Hood movie whose story is unconnected with the show, and none of the other TV cast members appear in it — which is a bit of a shame, because their replacements in the corresponding parts aren’t always better. There’s one conspicuous exception: Hammer stalwart Peter Cushing plays the Sheriff of Nottingham, and his cold, blue stare brings a menace to the role never seen in the TV show. Indeed, the tone of this production is two shades darker than that of the series, grimmer and with higher stakes.

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New Treasures: Legends of Eerie-on-sea by Thomas Taylor

New Treasures: Legends of Eerie-on-sea by Thomas Taylor

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Malamander and Gargantis by Thomas Taylor (Walker Books, 2019-21). Cover art by George Ermos

Sometimes it seems all my best book purchases are impulse buys. Last summer, while browsing the shelves at Barnes in Noble, I came across Malamander, the opening novel in a new middle-grade fantasy series by Thomas Taylor titled Legends of Eerie-on-sea. I was sold less than halfway though the book description on the back.

Nobody visits Eerie-on-Sea in the winter. Especially not when darkness falls and the wind howls around Maw Rocks and the wreck of the battleship Leviathan, where even now some swear they have seen the unctuous Malamander creep…

It’s winter in the town of Eerie-on-Sea, where the mist is thick and the salt spray is rattling the windows of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Inside, young Herbert Lemon, Lost and Founder for the hotel, has an unexpected visitor. It seems that Violet Parma, a fearless girl around his age, lost her parents at the hotel when she was a baby, and she’s sure that the nervous Herbert is the only person who can help her find them. The trouble is, Violet is being pursued at that moment by a strange hook-handed man. And the town legend of the Malamander — a part-fish, part-human monster whose egg is said to make dreams come true — is rearing its scaly head. As various townspeople, some good-hearted, some nefarious, reveal themselves to be monster hunters on the sly, can Herbert and Violet elude them and discover what happened to Violet’s kin? This lighthearted, fantastical mystery, featuring black-and-white spot illustrations, kicks off a trilogy of fantasies set in the seaside town.

The sequel, Gargantis, was published in hardcover last year, and will be released in paperback in April. Here’s the complete details.

Malamander (290 pages, $7.99 paperback/$0.99 digital, May 2, 2019) — cover by George Ermos, illustrations by Tom Booth
Gargantis (352 pages, $7.99 paperback/$16.99 digital, April 6, 2021) — cover by George Ermos, illustrations by Tom Booth

The series in published by Walker Books in the US. See all our coverage New Releases here.

Alien Eggs, a Diligent Salesman, and a Robot Psychiatrist: Three Stories by Idris Seabright

Alien Eggs, a Diligent Salesman, and a Robot Psychiatrist: Three Stories by Idris Seabright

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1952. Cover art by Chesley Bonestell

For my next look at older stories which I think are both good, and worth looking at closely, I’m covering three stories by one “Idris Seabright.” “Who she?” you might ask, or even “Who he?,” as the currently most famous Idris in the world is a man. “Idris Seabright” was a pseudonym used by the SF writer Margaret St. Clair for about 20 stories, all in the ‘50s. The “Seabright” name was used almost exclusively for stories published in F&SF – the single exception is one of her most famous stories, “Short in the Chest,” which appeared in Fantastic Universe. (The ISFDB credits a curious Seabright outlier, a story published in Spanish only, very late in St. Clair’s life, in 1991. I feel this must be a translation of an earlier Seabright story though I’m not sure which one. The story is called “La Estrana Tienda,” which means “The Strange Store” or perhaps “The Mysterious Shop.”)

Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) was one of the more noticeable early women writers of SF, but somehow her profile was a bit lower than those of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Andre Norton. I guess I’d say that those writers did just a bit more, and were just a bit better (taken as a whole) than her, but it does seem that she’s not quite as well remembered as perhaps she deserves. One contributing factor is probably, however, that many of her best and most interesting stories were as by “Idris Seabright.” In addition, those of her novels I’ve read were less successful than her short fiction. Her career in SF stretched from 1946 to 1981. Her husband, Eric St. Clair, was also a writer (of children’s books), and the two became Wiccans more or less when the Wiccan movement started.

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Betrayals, Assassins, and the Voices of the Dead: The Reborn Empire by Devin Madson

Betrayals, Assassins, and the Voices of the Dead: The Reborn Empire by Devin Madson

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Cover art by Nico Delort

Orbit Books has impressed me with its editorial acumen over the past half-decade. Last year it acquired Devin Madson’s self published fantasy We Ride the Storm, the tale of a war-torn empire crumbling in the face of a growing number of enemies. Kirkus called it “The first in a bold new series… A slow-building tale of court intrigue that picks up lots of steam on its way to a shocking finish,” saying:

Miko is a princess of Kisia, an empire left in fragments following the recent coup that cost her father his life and saw her stepfather take the Crimson Throne. Rah hails from the loosely associated clans of Levanti — horse riders without kings who resist fighting others’ wars. Cassandra makes her living in sex and murder and moves through the world with another woman’s voice in her head. They do not know one another, but their lives will soon become hopelessly entangled… Although Madson takes her time putting the critical pieces into play, the betrayal that dooms the Kisian nobility to ruin sets off narrative fireworks, exposing the questionable motives of three nations’ leaders in a seemingly unending struggle for dominance.

The sequel, We Lie with Death, arrived in trade paperback earlier this month, and has been well received. Publishers Weekly says “The story moves at breakneck speed… this immersive, action-packed fantasy is sure to please.” Here’s the full details.

We Ride the Storm (Orbit Books, 474 pages, $15.99 in trade paperback/$4.99 digital, June 23, 2020) – cover by Nico Delort
We Lie with Death (Orbit Books, 576 pages, $17.99 in trade paperback/$9.99 digital, January 12, 2021) – cover by Nico Delort

The final volume in The Reborn Empire series, We Cry for Blood, will be released next year. See all our coverage of the best new series fantasy here.

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Days 18 and 19

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Days 18 and 19

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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 reposted days one through fifteen. Here are days eighteen (April 8) and nineteen (April 9). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries. I enjoy channeling Archie more than any other writing which I do.

DAY EIGHTEEN – 2020 Stay at Home

After lunch, I suggested that Fritz prepare some food for Doc Vollmer. I suspected he was volunteering at a local hospital, in addition to treating panicked patients in his practice. I felt a bit guilty, realizing I hadn’t checked on how he was doing at all. Fritz agreed we should feed him. Inviting a doctor over to dinner during a Pandemic was a terrible idea, of course. So Fritz planned a dinner that I could take down and leave on their porch. Helen Gillard had gotten married, and Julia Fellson was now his secretary and assistant. I told Fritz to make enough for both of them. I’m sure she could use a nice meal as well.

I called Julia later and found out that the doctor would be home around nine o’clock, if he didn’t get stuck at the hospital, which was often the case. She said that he was still healthy, but clearly running out of energy. Lately, she had gotten insistent he come home and get some rest, since he began seeing patients at 8 AM there in the brownstone. I thanked her and gave Fritz the update.

About 8:45, I called Vollmer’s office and got Julia. She was just closing up shop. He’d gotten home earlier than usual, but patients had shown up. I told her not to leave and that she was about to get a present on her doorstep. A picnic basket of Fritz’s food, with a bottle of wine and a note, was ready to go. He only lives a half a block away, so I was there in a shake. Julia was watching from the bay window in the front. I waved, showed her the basket, put it on the stoop, and blew her a kiss. She laughed and cried. I couldn’t imagine the daily strain she was under. I started walking back and heard the door open. I turned and she waved and said, “Thank you Archie, you’re a dear. And so are Fritz and Nero Wolfe.”

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God, Darkness, & Wonder: An Interview with Byron Leavitt

God, Darkness, & Wonder: An Interview with Byron Leavitt

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Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction

It is not intuitive to seek beauty in art deemed grotesque/weird, but most authors who produce horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b) driven by strange muses.  These interviews engage contemporary authors & artists on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.” Recent guests on Black Gate have included Darrell Schweitzer, Sebastian Jones,  Charles Gramlich, Anna Smith Spark, & Carol Berg. This one features Byron Leavitt, novelist and game-author for Diemension Games. 

Byron Leavitt is also the author of the bizarre children’s novel The Fish in Jonah’s Puddle (To Say Nothing of the Demon) and the non-fiction book Of Hope and Cancer: One Man’s Story of God, Darkness, and Wonder, as well as the story content for the board game Deep Madness and its accompanying book Shattered Seas (recently reviewed on BlackGate). Byron is currently working on the storybooks for the forthcoming Deep Madness prequel Dawn of Madness, a story-driven horror experience in a board game.

“Darkness. Light. Wonder. Beauty. God. Tentacles. Those who know me best would say that pretty well sums me up.” – Byron Leavitt

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Step into a World of RuneQuest Adventure with The Smoking Ruin and The Pegasus Plateau

Step into a World of RuneQuest Adventure with The Smoking Ruin and The Pegasus Plateau

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Cover art by Andrey Fetisov

Maybe it’s because I’ve only recently started paying close attention, but it seems to me that the RuneQuest RPG has been experiencing something of a renaissance since returning to the fold at Chaosium. Certainly there’s been a flurry of attention-grabbing new releases anyway, including the epic and original Red Cow campaign, the tale of a small clan’s desperate battle for freedom against the oppressive Lunar Empire, a tribe of werewolves, and even darker threats; the Rough Guide to Glamour, a compilation of long out-of-print articles on Lunar magic and colorful personalities; and of course the gorgeous new hardbound rulebooks.

But the drumbeat of new releases has not slowed, and I recently acquired two adventure anthologies that make excellent resources for any RPG fan: The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, a collection of three long ready-to-play adventures, and The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories, containing seven shorter adventure scenarios.

Both are essential purchases for serious RuneQuest players. The first focuses on an area in Dragon Pass known as the South Wilds, and includes the full-length scenario “The Smoking Ruin,” in which the players tread the haunted streets of an ancient city in search of a lost artifact. The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories contains seven fast-run adventures set in ghoul-haunted catacombs, mystic ruins, the deserts of Prax, and the rocky pinnacle of the Pegasus Plateau. Both books are gorgeously designed and well written; here’s a peek at the lovely interiors.

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Vintage Treasures: The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim with Arthur W. Saha

Vintage Treasures: The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim with Arthur W. Saha

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The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF (DAW, 1989). Cover by Jim Burns

Most SF readers are familiar with Gardner Dozois’ legendary Year’s Best Science Fiction series, which ran for three and a half decades from 1984 to 2018, and helped shape modern perceptions of short SF. But it was by no means the first Year’s Best in science fiction, and in the early days, wasn’t even my favorite. No, back in the 80s I preferred the annual anthologies by Terry Carr and, more frequently, Donald A. Wollheim’s Annual World’s Best SF, which ran from 1965 until the late 80s.

I recently bought a copy of The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF, and was surprised to find it had a guest introduction by Isaac Asimov. Flipping it open, I found a sober explanation in his first paragraph.

This is the first time that the introduction to his annual volume has not been written by Don Wollheim. Alas, we are not immune to the ravages of time (not even science fiction personalities are) and Don is hospitalized just as the deadline for the volume approaches, so he has asked me to do the introduction for him.

For all my fabled immodesty, I am forced to admit I am a poor substitute. Don has been a sextuple-threat person in science fiction. Let me list his threats…

The rest of Asimov’s 4-page intro is a detailed and affectionate tribute to Wollheim, and the enormous impact he had on the field. Knowing that Wollheim passed away at the end of the decade, I was strongly suspicious he never emerged from that hospital stay. Asimov wrapped up with the hopeful lines:

Don… is a sweet and gentle fellow who has spent his whole life giving more than he has taken. I hope and trust that next year he will be writing his own introduction again.

Donald Wollheim died on November 2, 1990, at the age of 76. He did in fact emerge from the hospital, produce one more volume, The 1990 Annual World’s Best SF (with his co-editor Art Saha), and he did write the introduction.

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Rogue Blades Presents: All Good Things Must Come to a … Change!

Rogue Blades Presents: All Good Things Must Come to a … Change!

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All good things must come to an end. Sort of. Kind of. But not exactly.

This will be my last Rogue Blades article for Black Gate. This doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere. No. One of my articles will still be here every other Friday. And no, I’m not stepping down as vice president of the Rogue Blades Foundation, a non-profit which focuses on all things heroic, especially heroic literature.

What is changing is that the Rogue Blades Foundation and its for-profit publishing side, Rogue Blades Entertainment, will be coming together on a new Web site, Rogue Blades. The new site will not only feature news about both sides of this publishing venture, but will also present weekly articles from a variety of writers, including myself. So I’ll be penning articles about the heroic over at Rogue Blades.

As for my future here at Black Gate, as mentioned above, I’ll keep writing articles here, but now I’ll have more freedom to write about other topics, many which might be related to heroic literature but not necessarily.

As for what I’ll be writing here, I’ve a number of subjects I’d like to cover. For instance, I’ve long been a fan of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct police procedural novels, and I’m considering a series on each of those books, though at 55 novels and a handful of shorter works, I have to admit that’s a rather daunting task. Other subjects I’d like to tackle are older tabletop role playing games that don’t see as much love as I’d like; Dungeons & Dragons is well covered online and even Star Frontiers has received some recent love here at Black Gate, but I’d like to take a look back at such games as Dragonquest, Lords of Creation, Car Wars and the original Deadlands, plus others as they come to mind. It’s also possible, even likely, I’ll sometimes write about fiction I’m reading or movies or shows I’m watching.

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Goth Chick News Presents: “Tots:” A Wonderfully Uncomfortable Short Story by Peter Schneider

Goth Chick News Presents: “Tots:” A Wonderfully Uncomfortable Short Story by Peter Schneider

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Flights, edited by Al Sarrantonio (Roc, 2004). Cover by Steve Stone

In December I told you about my magical meeting with Peter Schneider, author and owner of boutique publisher Hill House Press. During the course of one of our many conversations since, Peter let me know he had written a short story called “Tots,” which he thought I would like. It had originally appeared in a 2004 collection called Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy edited by horror and science fiction writer Al Sarrantonio. In the introduction for “Tots,” Sarrantonio states that Peter’s sense of humor is reminiscent of National Lampoon. When Peter sent me a copy of original manuscript of “Tots,” I absolutely agreed. I’ll also add that it’s just the right amount of wrong and knew I had to share it with you.

So, reprinted here with Peter’s permission, I am excited to share…

TOTS

By Peter Schneider

It is 2:45 a.m., in the parking lot of one of the massive superstore shopping centers that have sprung up like a series of mushrooms across the country.  But the action at this time of the morning isn’t in the Barnes & Noble or Home Depot–it’s in an isolated corner of the lot, surround on two sides by security fencing and hemmed in on the remaining sides by a variety of vehicles, circled like wagons and facing inward with their headlights shining.  The halogen illumination reveals a ring, roughly twelve feet in diameter, crudely outlined on the pavement with a can of purple spray paint.  Outside the circle perhaps fifty or sixty people, mostly men but including a smattering of well-dressed women, stand and watch.  Money changes hands here–big money.  But their attention right now is on the two combatants standing within the ring, long and deadly sickle-like blades strapped securely to their right arms.  One fighter takes a tentative step in the direction of his foe and raises his hand in preparation to strike.  He’ll have to get in closer, however–his four-year-old arms aren’t long enough to deliver a killing blow from such a distance.

This is the world of totfighting.

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