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Year: 2021

James Davis Nicoll on Five Thrilling SF Stories About Patrolling Space

James Davis Nicoll on Five Thrilling SF Stories About Patrolling Space

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Crashing Suns (Ace, 1965), A Matter of Oaths (Questar, 1990), and The Prefect (Ace Books, 2009).
Covers by Ed Valigursky, Martin Andrews, and Chris Moore

What’s better than thrilling stories of patrolling space?? (No need to email an answer; it’s a rhetorical question. And the answer is “nuthin'”).

Mind you, I’d be hard pressed to cite actual examples. Star Trek books maybe? EC Comics Weird Science, naturally. After that, I got nothing.

Fortunately James Nicoll reads a lot more than I do. Over at Tor.com he’s posted a fun little article titled Five Thrilling SF Stories About Patrolling Space, which includes classics like Edmond Hamilton’s Crashing Suns, but also more modern titles I was totally ignorant of. Here’s his take on Helen S. Wright’s sole SF novel A Matter of Oaths:

There are but three powers of note — the Old Empire and the New Empire, both ruled by their respective immortal emperors, as well as the Guild of Webbers that supplies both sides with starship crews — but the simmering conflict between empires, not to mention basic human cussedness, means an endless need for the services of patrolships like Bhattya to deal with raiders and the like. Being short-staffed, Bhattya’s Commander Rallya grudgingly hires Rafe. Rafe’s service record and qualifications are exemplary… enough so that Rallya is forced to overlook the alarming fact that Rafe was previously mind-wiped for reasons unrecorded. It is only once Rafe is a member of the crew that Rallya belatedly becomes aware of a fact that would have been nice to know before Rafe came on board: someone appears to want Rafe dead and to achieve this goal, they are quite willing to sacrifice everyone in Rafe’s vicinity. Including the crew of the Bhattya.

That definitely sounds like something I shouldn’t have overlooked three decades ago. Here’s the back covers for all three books above.

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Future Treasures: Stormbreak, Book 3 of the Seafire Trilogy by Natalie C. Parker (Author)

Future Treasures: Stormbreak, Book 3 of the Seafire Trilogy by Natalie C. Parker (Author)

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The Seafire trilogy (Razorbill, 2018-21). Covers by Billelis and Cliff Nielsen

You know the rule about trilogies at Black Gate. Every time one wraps up, we bake a cake. Stormbreak, the third novel in Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire series, arrives early next month from Razorbill, and the interns are already warming up the oven.

What’s Seafire all about? Pirates!! Girl pirates of the far future, actually, which is intensely cool. My favorite notice comes from Feliza Casano over at Tor.com, who enthusiastically reviewed the first volume:

Caledonia Styx’s ship, the Mors Navis, is one of the only ships that still sails free from the rule of bloodthirsty warlord Aric Athair and his army of Bullets, who brutalize the coastal settlements… it was a Bullet boy claiming to seek a place on the Mors Navis who talked Caledonia into revealing the Mors Navis’s location, resulting in the death of every person in the crew save Caledonia and her best friend, Pisces, who were ashore on a supply run.

Four years later, Caledonia and Pisces have rebuilt the Mors Navis and recruited a new crew entirely made up of women and girls who have lost their own families and homes to Athair’s raids. The women of the Mors Navis are determined to chip away at Athair’s empire, even if that means taking his navy down ship by ship. But when Pisces brings aboard a runaway Bullet who says he wants to defect, the secret Caledonia’s been keeping for four years threatens to come to light…

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Goth Chick News Reviews: The Room VR: A Dark Matter by Fireproof Games

Goth Chick News Reviews: The Room VR: A Dark Matter by Fireproof Games

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A couple years back I did something I have always wanted to do: commission an ultimate gaming computer. As I work in the industry, I only had to ask a couple of my team members if they were interested in building a “sky’s the limit” device. A month and several written checks later, I had a computer I was sure could hack NASA, containing a liquid-cooled, AMD Ryzen 1800x 8-core processor, an MSI AX370 motherboard, an AMD Vega 64 8GB video card, and 11TB of storage. I named it “Winston” and my designers lit it from the inside with a red pulse light that looks like a heartbeat.

When it was delivered, I felt like Victor Frankenstein, screaming “It’s aliiiiiivvvee!”

So, what’s the point? I had my heart set on an HTC Vive virtual reality gaming system and I did not want the word “latency” to ever cross my lips. It took quite an engine to power the first generation Vive, so though I mostly wanted computer bragging rights around the Black Gate offices, I also wanted to turn my home office into my own personal holo-deck. And that’s what I did.

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Riding the Horror Rollercoaster: Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies by John Langan

Riding the Horror Rollercoaster: Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies by John Langan

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Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies-back-small Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies-small

Cover by Matthew Jaffe

Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies
By John Langan
Word Horde (390 pages, $19.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats, August 18, 2020)
Cover by Matthew Jaffe

Word Horde, Ross E. Lockhart’s small press, has produced some of the most interesting horror books of the past few years.

This is the fourth short story collection by horror writer John Langan (following Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, and Sefira and Other Betrayals). He’s also authored two successful novels, House of Windows and The Fisherman.

If you’re already familiar with Langan’s work, you know what to expect from his latest: a medley  of themes, locations, narrative styles, atmospheres, sometimes overwhelming and totally compelling, sometimes downright weird and not always quite satisfactory. Whatever he writes, however, Langan is never banal. You may love the story he’s telling or you may hate it, but it will never leave you indifferent. 

Thus, predictably, some of the featured tales left me spellbound and others just ill-humored. I will point the stories in the former group, and leave the latter to your judgement.

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A Mutant Godling on a Ruined Earth: The Eyes Trilogy by Stuart Gordon

A Mutant Godling on a Ruined Earth: The Eyes Trilogy by Stuart Gordon

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The Eyes Trilogy by Stuart Gordon (DAW, 1973-75). Covers by Tim Kirk, Peter Manesis, and Michael Whelan

DAW Books is one of the most prestigious and successful science fiction imprints in the industry, regularly publishing top-selling authors and titles. Fifty years ago…. well, it wasn’t any of those things. Donald A. Wollheim built his scrappy publishing powerhouse the old fashioned way: by buying the best books he could find on a shoestring budget, slapping whatever cover art he could find on the cover, and moving on rapidly to the next book.

Wollheim gave a lot of brand new authors (and forgotten authors, and washed up authors) a chance — and in many cases, multiple chances. Many, like C.J, Cherryh, John Brunner, Tanith Lee, Mercedes Lackey, and Melanie Rawn, grew with the imprint and gradually became big names. And a great many…. didn’t.

Stuart Gordon is in the latter category. He published a trilogy of science fiction paperbacks in the early 70s, then promptly abandoned SF, moving on to biker books like The Bike from Hell and The Devil’s Rider (both written as Alex R. Stuart). But I used to see One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes on the shelves when I was a wee lad exploring the science fiction racks for the first time, and they always fascinated me.

Part of it was the subject matter: a strangely powerful mutant roaming a blasted post-apocalyptic landscape and…. I dunno? Carrying unconscious women around? I was never clear on the concept, actually. But hey, mutants and blasted mountain peaks! That’s all it took to fascinate me in those days. My needs were simple.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Wholesome Buccaneers (Pt. 1)

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Wholesome Buccaneers (Pt. 1)

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After the grim years of World War II, a large part of the moviegoing public was looking for lighter fare in their entertainment, and Hollywood returned to making swashbucklers, many of them in the happy hues of Technicolor. Pirates were back on the menu, but as America headed into the conformist Fifties, the pirates on its movie screens were more rascals than cutthroats, good-hearted rogues who would plunder some buried treasure and maybe hold a lady for ransom, but for whom keel-hauling and suchlike barbarisms were out of the question. Wholesome buccaneers as family entertainment! Absurd, of course, but fun if it was done with a wink at the viewer.

Anne of the Indies

Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1951
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Source: Amazon Streaming Video

We usually award the title Queen of the Swashbucklers to Maureen O’Hara, but Jean Peters makes a grab for her crown in this fine pirate melodrama. As an orphan girl, Anne (Peters) was raised aboard ship by Edward Teach — Blackbeard himself! — and now commands her own fighting ship, the Sheba Queen, under the name Captain Providence, and she’s a real hellion. Since her brother was hanged as a pirate by the English, she preys on English shipping and kills English sailors without mercy, making the captives walk the plank. But one captured sailor is the strikingly handsome Louis Jourdan playing a Frenchman named (what else?) François, who claims to be a privateer’s navigator who’d been captured by the Royal Navy. Captain Providence frees him, adds him to her crew, and takes him to Nassau to meet Blackbeard — which is where the real trouble starts.

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The Secret World of Greg Ketter

The Secret World of Greg Ketter

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Hit or Myth by Robert Asprin (Starblaze, 1983). Cover by Phil Foglio

Greg Ketter, owner of Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, is one of the best booksellers in the business, and he’s sold me many fine volumes over the years. Greg doesn’t talk about it much, but he’s also friends with many of the most famous writers and artists in the field. This being a creative industry, Greg’s friendships reveal themselves in entertaining ways. In fact, Greg has been Tuckerized more than anyone else I know, and in some surprising ways.

I’ve been enjoying Greg’s tales of Tuckerization on Facebook. What is “Tuckerization?” Here, I’ll let Greg explain it.

Wilson “Bob” Tucker was an early SF fan who also went pro, writing mystery and science fiction stories alike. His first book, mystery novel The Chinese Doll, contained the names of many of his friends as characters. Thus you had been “Tuckerized.” The practice continues today sometimes with people paying great sums of money (usually for charities) to be included as characters in books. The most popular seems to be getting killed off in whatever silly/gruesome/disgusting/crazy way the author can dream up.

Greg’s namesake has appeared in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, Nick Pollata’s Satellite Night Fever, Joe Domenici’s Bringing Back the Dead, and many more. But my favorite story is the time he appeared on the cover of Hit or Myth, the fourth book in Robert Asprin’s popular and long running Myth Adventures series:

I was staying with Phil Foglio for a while when he said he needed a model for the new Robert Asprin Myth book. Sure, why not. So, I became a demon for Hit or Myth. Notice those ripped abs (actually, back then I was a bit closer to that than I am now. Everything has dropped down a ways since then). I helped with some of the atrocious puns scattered about the cover and Phil named the place “K’tier Abu’s Djin Mill” as a nod to his old buddy.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to spot all those visual puns Greg mentions. Just about every one of my friends in Ottawa back in the day read Asprin’s Myth Adventures series, and the books were scattered around our house when I was in University. It’s quite the kick to discover that’s I’ve secretly known the cover model for the demon Aahz all these years. Small world.

New Treasures: The Eleventh Gate by Nancy Kress

New Treasures: The Eleventh Gate by Nancy Kress

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Now here’s an attractive combo: a brand new space opera novel by multiple award-winner Nancy Kress, wrapped up in a gorgeous vision of deep space adventure by Bob Eggleton. You know this book would look damn handsome on your shelf.

I’m not sure how this one managed to slip past me when it was first released in May of last year. (I was probably hiding in my basement from the pandemic.) What’s it all about? Russell Letson at Locus Online fills us in:

The Eleventh Gate… combines elements of space opera with quasi-dystopian political conflict and intrigue among a collection of extrasolar colonies. A century and a half earlier, the discovery of a set of mysterious interstellar gates allowed waves of emigrants to escape an Earth ravaged by ecological collapse and global war: ten gates, eight surprisingly habitable worlds, and three very different sets of refugee-settlers.

Now the Eight Worlds are occupied by their descendants… these societies have gotten along mostly peacefully until the discovery of an eleventh gate sets off a land-rush rivalry that lurches into warfare.

Publisher’s Weekly reviewed the book warmly; here’s an excerpt.

Warring families and philosophies drive this complex science fiction thriller… Refugees from a dying Earth escape via a mysterious stargate leading to the Eight Worlds system. They divide these worlds between three political factions: the totalitarian Peregoy Corporation, the Landry Libertarian Alliance, and the planet Polyglot, a “patchwork of individual nations” and economies. Then a new stargate appears, sparking a race to claim it and whatever world waits on the other side. Ambitious Tara Landry, heir to the Landry Alliance, hatches a hare-brained scheme to prevent the reignited tensions between factions from breaking into war. But when Tara’s plan goes awry, war becomes inevitable… This swift, political story proves a rip-roaring diversion.

The Eleventh Gate was published by Baen Books on May 5, 2020. It is 352 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $8.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Bob Eggleton. Read a generous excerpt at the Baen website.

See all our recent new Treasures here.

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Days 14 and 15

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Days 14 and 15

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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 thirteen. Here are days fourteen (April 4) and fifteen (April 5). 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 FOURTEEN – 2020 Stay at Home (SaH)

Okay – it’s been two weeks and things are starting to get a little…close, around here. I’m the only one of us who spent a lot of time away from the brownstone, so I’m feeling the strain the most. Of course, I’m the one who goes out for ‘essential’ errands, like taking Wolfe’s laundry to the cleaners. And I try to take a walk at least every other day. Fresh air, stretching my legs, and seeing other human beings – properly social distanced – has been the best medicine.

Fritz hasn’t needed help with the food provisions yet, though I’ve offered. And I have enjoyed watching Bogart movies with him. Last night we saw To Have and Have Not. He liked the suspense and the adventure, and I’d say that he was rather smitten with Lauren Bacall. I admired her spunk when she poked fun at Dolores Moran’s flirting with Bogie. Reminded me of a certain blonde I know. I told him the story that the movie came out of a bet. Ernest Hemingway bet Howard Hawks that the director couldn’t make a good movie out of his worst novel. So Hawks changed a few things around, cast Bogart, and made that film. For my money, Hawks won the bet hands down.

Tonight, I think we’ll watch They Drive by Night. I have a sneaking suspicion Fritz will be hooked by Ida Lupino’s courtroom scene.

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Alien Warfare, Gunwrights, and Cyborg Hobos: January/February Print SF Magazines

Alien Warfare, Gunwrights, and Cyborg Hobos: January/February Print SF Magazines

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I haven’t had time to jump into my plaguemobile and navigate all the pandemic roadblocks and decontamination checkpoints to get to Barnes & Noble to pick up the latest print magazines. But according to what I’ve read online, I don’t have any choice… looks like these are can’t-miss issues. Here’s what Michelle Ristuccia at Tangent Online said about the latest issue of Asimov’s SF.

American combat veteran Sylvia Aldstatt is the only person on Earth who can search dead criminal Dimitrios’ memories for crucial intel in “A Rocket for Dimitrios” by Ray Nayler. Racing against the ticking clock of decomposing neural pathways, Sylvia Aldstatt investigates Dimitrios’ claim of a second crashed extraterrestrial ship… Nayler brings readers an adventure that’s as immersive as it is thought-provoking. “A Rocket for Dimitrios,” stands alone as an engaging and accessible novella for all genre readers, but spy novel enthusiasts will recognize the nod to Eric Ambler’s classic 1967 novel, A Coffin for Dimitrios. Readers who want more of Nayler’s fascinating alternative history SF can find Sylvia Aldstatt in “The Disintegration Loops,” published first in Asimov’s Nov/Dec 2019 issue and also now available on Ray Nayler’s website…

Suzanne Palmer brings readers a delightfully comedic who-done-it set on a menagerie of a space station in “Table Etiquette for Diplomatic Personnel, in Seventeen Scenes.” Through Palmer’s strategic humor, readers soon identify the obnoxious Joxto as the main antagonists of newly appointed Station Commander Niagara, though she has yet to meet the infamous aliens herself. She’ll get her chance soon enough… Palmer brings her station and the larger universe to life through the POV’s of several station inhabitants, painting readers a vivid picture through casually dropped space lore, a melting pot of clashing cultures, and truly alien extraterrestrials who resemble sea cucumbers, birds, and overly curious pumas. Running jokes and excellent comedic timing provide an enthralling mix of slap stick and sitcom drama…

The moment after Lieutenant Balázs’ starship bridge is breached and most of its bridge crew incapacitated, “Hunches” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch begins. Reeling from the unexpected attack, Balázs soon realizes he is the only crew member left conscious on the bridge.. Rusch brings us an action-packed story of split-second decisions and willing sacrifice, of heroic acts performed in the absence of sufficient information but with the help of a little luck and a lot of perseverance…

Here’s all the details.

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