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Black Gate Online Fiction: “So Go the Seasons” by Paul Abbamondi

Black Gate Online Fiction: “So Go the Seasons” by Paul Abbamondi

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Paul Abbamondi-smallTo men of greed go the riches. And the seasons.

“Seasons are all amuck,” Uncle Hobnor said. He turned, shielding his eyes as he looked down toward the inner city, its towers standing tall, reddish flags billowing about stone ledges. “Blasted season wrecker.”

“Why does he always keep it Dryburn, Uncle Hob-hob?”

“Why?” He snorted. “I’ll tell you, boy, it’s because of that damned sovereign’s heart.” In the distance, towering high above chipped marble houses, was Lord Banamp’s impervious demesne. “He cares only for this warm weather so his flowers can live forever.”

“I think I’m beginning to forget what snow’s actually like,” Perry said.

“Me too, boy,” his uncle said. “Which is why we’re going to get it back.”

Paul Abbamondi lives in the middle of the Pennsylvanian woods with his wife and two cats, reading, writing, and drawing. His short stories have appeared in Shimmer, Farrago’s Wainscot, Warrior Wisewoman 3, and Kaleidotrope, among other publications, and he enjoys all things weird.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vaughn Heppner, Mark Rigney, Aaron Bradford Starr, Jamie McEwan, Martha Wells, Mary Catelli, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“So Go the Seasons” is a complete 1,300-word short story of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Gen Con 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 1

Gen Con 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 1

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As always, the best four days of gaming did not fail to impress. The number of cool new (or just new to me) games was astounding, so I’ll do a quick run-down of them here and then go into a bit more depth in individual and group reviews over the next couple of weeks. I’m going through these games mostly sequentially of how I experienced them, rather than in any specific order of preference.

Day 1

legacy-gears-of-time-38One of the first games I came across upon entering the Exhibitor’s Hall was Legacy: Gears of Time (Amazon). This game’s from a relatively new company, Floodgate Games, and was funded through a Kickstarter. I first heard of it a few months back, when they Kickstarted the Legacy: Forbidden Machines expansion. Unfortunately, this was right after a little heart-to-heart with my wife about my Kickstarter “issue” … so I had pledged to pretty much stop backing any Kickstarter projects.

Legacy: Gears of Time is a time-travel themed technology-building card game. Basically, you move back in time along a track and establish technologies. Some technologies are “Fundamental,” but others require certain technologies to be established earlier in the timeline for them to work. You can establish a Combustion Engine without Fire or The Wheel in play, but the Combustion Engine won’t actually be successful until those earlier technologies are established. When you establish working technologies, you gain Influence tokens. In order to keep technologies working, you not only have to establish the technologies, but keep them active by using your Influence on them, so that the technology (or its prerequisites) don’t fade out of existence. This Influence mechanic also allows you to basically seize control of a technology established by someone else and get points for controlling that technology.

It’s a fun game. My one immediate issue is that the artwork isn’t the most polished. It has that “Good, but …” artistic feel that I’ve found on several of the Kickstarter board games that I’ve seen. However, the mechanics are rock solid and I’ll be doing a more in-depth review of the game and expansion in the future, since I now own a copy!

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The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades

The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades

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Codex CeltarumI was disappointed I wasn’t able to go to GenCon this week. Although I’ve been enjoying Howard Andrew Jones’s sporadic updates on Facebook, and looking forward to a detailed report when he gets back.

In the meantime, I’ve been consoling myself with memories of my last game convention, Gary Con V in March. I wrote up a detailed report on Gary Con IV last year, but just didn’t have time to do it justice with a full length write-up this year. But I sure enjoyed the few hours I was able to spend there. The highlight for me, as usual, was the Dealer’s Room, which gets bigger and more varied every year.

I was pleased to be able to say hello to Kelsey “Rose” Jones at the Games By Gamers booth, makers of the world’s best dice bags, and tell her how much I enjoyed her work. And buy a new bag for my daughter, who complained that the ones I brought home last year were “covered in skulls and icky stuff, and not pretty. At all.” She was right, and this time I got her a nice bag with a fall color print, which made her extremely happy.

I was also very pleased to finally meet Jeffrey Talanian and Ian Baggley — the writer and artist behind the terrific Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, which I reviewed last December — and buy a copy of the hot-of-the-press first issue of Gygax Magazine. I also met the friendly folks at Faster Monkey Games, and bought a copy of Castle Ravenloft from the Noble Knight Games booth, which was stocked with a wonderful assortment of new and collectible games in great condition — and at great prices.

But my most impressive stop was at Stephen Chenault’s Troll Lord booth, where I was astounded at the wide range of new Castles & Crusades titles. I had a nice talk with Stephen and left feeling very jazzed about the exciting things in store for Old School Renaissance fans.

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Step Into the Traveller Universe with Fate of the Kinunir

Step Into the Traveller Universe with Fate of the Kinunir

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Fate of the KinunirbyIf, like me, you have fond memories of mustering out after a few tours of duty and becoming a ship captain plying the Spinward Marches, guided only by a trio of slim black volumes with the Traveller logo, then you’ll be very pleased to hear that there’s a line of promising tie-in novels headed your way.

The first one, Robert E. Vardeman’s Fate of the Kinunir, was published in multiple e-book formats on August 1. Vardeman is the author of the Cenotaph Road series, as well as the Swords of Raemllyn books and the Demon Crown Trilogy, among many others.

The books are being packaged by Athans & Associates Creative Consulting, under license from Marc Miller’s Far Future Enterprises, who have overseen the Traveller product line for the last decade or so — including the superb First Edition reprints, and the entire 5th Edition line.

Personally, I’m very pleased to see some fiction set in the Traveller universe. I was never a very serious Traveller player; but for that brief period I did play, I had a great deal of fun running my little merchant ship between outlying systems, selling whatever I could find to trade. Traveller was the only role playing game I knew that had a complete little economic mini-game buried in its trading charts, and for years after we played, I still daydreamed about being a merchant in the stars.

According to Athans & Associates, Fate of the Kinunir will be followed by a new book every month for the next year, including novels by Tim Waggoner, Erik Scott de Bie, Martin J. Dougherty, Darrin Drader, and others. The fiction line will be managed by Philip Athans, the founding partner of Athans & Associates, who was the senior managing editor at Wizards of the Coast, overseeing the novel lines for the Dungeons & Dragons settings Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and many others.

Fate of the Kinunir was published by Far Future Enterprises on August 1st. It is 212 pages, priced at $5.99 for the Kindle edition.

[Thanks to John DeNardo at SF Signal for the tip].

The 2013 ENnie Award Winners Announced at Gen Con

The 2013 ENnie Award Winners Announced at Gen Con

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Rise of the Runelords-smallThe Gen Con EN World RPG Awards were announced today.

The ENnies have proven very reliable at showcasing the best in innovation and excellence in role playing design and execution, and a fine predictor of long-term success — last year’s winners included some of the biggest products of the year, including Pelgrane Press’s Ashen Stars, Lords of Waterdeep from Wizards of the Coast, Savage Worlds Deluxe from Pinnacle, and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box from Paizo.

This year, the winner’s circle is just as impressive, and includes Sarah Newton’s Achtung! Cthulhu, Shadows of Esteren from Agate Editions, the NPC Codex from Paizo Publishing, Night’s Black Agents from Pelgrane Press, Dungeon World from Sage Kobold Productions, Night’s Watch from Green Ronin — and the adventure I found most impressive this year, Paizo’s Rise of the Runelords, a massive 420-page compilation of the 6-part Pathfinder adventure.

Here’s the complete list of winners.

Best Adventure

  • Achtung! Cthulhu – Three Kings (Chronicle City/Modiphius Entertainment) *Silver Winner*
  • Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition (Paizo Publishing) *Gold Winner*

Best Aid/Accessory

  • Night’s Watch (Green Ronin) *Gold Winner*
  • The Unspeakable Oath (Arc Dream Publishing) *Silver Winner*

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Vintage Treasures: Adventure on the Final Frontier with Star Explorer

Vintage Treasures: Adventure on the Final Frontier with Star Explorer

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Star Explorer FGU-smallHow do you create a Star Trek game without a Star Trek license?

Turns out it’s not actually that hard — at least not if you follow the example of Star Explorer, the science fiction game of “Adventure on the Final Frontier” published in 1982 by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

Star Explorer was released three years after Star Fleet Battles, Steven V. Cole’s groundbreaking wargame from Task Force Games in 1979, and the same year as the first true Star Trek RPG, Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, published by FASA. Both competing titles were hits, with multiple editions over the next few decades.

In contrast, Star Explorer vanished pretty quickly, with virtually no supporting material at all. Which is a shame, because it had a lot of potential.

Star Explorer is an adventure game of exploration and encounter in deep space. It places you in the role of a starship captain who must command her ship on a variety of dangerous missions. Success depends on your ability to select the right crew for away missions and to tweak your ship design as required.

While it had some role playing aspects, it was really a board game, with a board and everything. Not a board that displayed tantalizing planets and star systems for you to explore, sadly. No, just a green, featureless tactical map used to resolve star combat. But you did get 240 colorful counters you could push around the map and imagine were exploring stuff.

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Meet Rick Steele

Meet Rick Steele

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RickSteele-LostCityofAzgara-250So Vengeance of the Wolf Dick Enosanother season of pulp conventions has come and gone. As in the past, part of the fun of being able to attend conventions and meet people that share your passions and appreciate your work is meeting other authors you might otherwise have never chanced upon. Such was the case with Dick Enos at this year’s PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Enos is the author of the Rick Steele adventure series, published by Mirror Publishing. Enos lists his principal influences as the long-running newspaper adventure strip, Steve Canyon; the Old Time Radio show and Golden Age television series, Sky King; and Mickey Spillane’s venerable hard-boiled detective character, Mike Hammer.

Steele is a hard-living Korean War veteran turned test pilot who can’t seem to avoid adventures. He is aided by his loyal war buddy, Joey Campbell; his love interest, the very capable Dr. Kate Gallagher; and Kate’s polyglot assistant, Thelma McCally. My introduction to these characters was in Enos’s latest novel, The Lost City of Azgara. The book is an old-fashioned jungle adventure set in Africa, involving a Nazi war criminal and occultist who has uncovered a map to a lost city of gold with which he hopes to finance the rise of the Fourth Reich.

 

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New Treasures: Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear

New Treasures: Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear

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Shattered Pillars-smallLast March, Elizabeth Bear visited to tell us a little about her new fantasy novel, Range of Ghosts. And it sure sounded terrific — especially if her inspirations were any indication.

But here’s Bear in her own words:

The influences on this work are myriad, and begin with the beloved books of my childhood: Conan, of course, but also Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s three-volume retelling of the life of Japan’s legendary female samurai Tomoe Gozen, which at one point I read until the covers fell off.

Leiber, but I wanted something with more scope than the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales — something with a sense of empire and history. Tolkien, but not just Tolkien, because while I wanted a heroic aspect — not the straight rejection of heroic narrative that comes with George R.R. Martin and his literary descendents, such as Joe Abercrombie. But I didn’t want an uninterrogated heroic narrative either…

Moorcock is of course an influence, but I didn’t want to write something that dark. Poul Anderson was probably closest to the mark I was aiming at — humane, accepting of the horrors of war, but also capable of acknowledging the potential for greatness of the human spirit — and its indomitable stubbornness, which is my favorite thing about Tolkien. His people just. Keep. Plugging. Away.

Conan, Salmonson, Leiber, Tolkien, Moorock, Poul Anderson… man, there’s no way this book won’t be great.

Of course, if you’re like me, you’re a little gun shy of starting a series until a few books are in print. Which is why I was delighted this spring when Elizabeth Bear’s Shattered Pillars, the second volume in the Eternal Sky series, hit the stands.

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Goth Chick News: Welcome to the 2013 Chicago Comic Con

Goth Chick News: Welcome to the 2013 Chicago Comic Con

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image002Spandex, chainmail, body paint…

Oh my.

Yes, it’s that time of year again and Chicagoans are not immune.

That is to say, when faced with one of the largest venues in the area packed wall to wall with artists, comics, swag of all types and Zachary Quinto , trance-like they will don too-snug lycra and a face mask, then venture forth into public to meet, greet, and pose for pictures.

Wizard World’s Comic Con stormed into the Rosemont Convention Center last week and once again, Black Gate photo Chris Z and I had a front row seats.

“Chicago’s premier pop-culture event” did not disappoint.

Final numbers aren’t in yet, but the Tribune stated that “tens of thousands” of visitors came through during the four-day festivities, spending what can only be estimated at virtually millions of dollars. Which caused Chris and I to speculate on whom precisely would drop $400 on a 4 foot by 6 foot artist’s rendition of Wonder Woman?

Unfortunately, he was decked out in a Green Lantern costume and refused an interview, but that didn’t stop us for meeting a whole gaggle of brilliant and creative individuals which is what makes Comic Con a seminal event in the Black Gate calendar.

So let’s wade in, shall we?

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When Aliens are Delicious: Murray Leinster’s “Proxima Centauri” and the Creepy Side of Pulp SF

When Aliens are Delicious: Murray Leinster’s “Proxima Centauri” and the Creepy Side of Pulp SF

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Astounding Stories March 1935What if the first aliens we encounter were made of chocolate? Crunchy, delicious, bite-sized chocolate. Imagine that during that all-important First Contact, you decided to take an experimental bite — because, one, chocolate aliens, and two, who would blame you? — and discovered they were so delicious they brought on raptures of ecstasy.

This is more or less the premise of Murray Leinster’s rip snortin’, force-ray filled space adventure “Proxima Centauri,” from the March 1935 issue of Astounding Stories. Except that the aliens are actually highly advanced carnivorous plants who have systematically hunted every form of animal life on their home planet to extinction, and the delicious, bite-sized aliens are us.

“Proxima Centauri” has been reprinted a few times, but I’d never read it. It came up in the comments on my June 20th article on The Best of Murray Leinster, the first of the Classics of Science Fiction series I’ve been exploring recently. A reader named Doug said:

The one story of Leinster’s that impressed me the most was “Proxima Centauri.” Even if the main drive of the plot is pure pulp, the way he describes human behavior during the long trip adds a realism that counter balances the more fantastic elements (i.e. Plant Men). It’s aged incredibly well when you consider that it was written “Before the Golden Age” (I read this first in the same-named Asimov edited anthology).

Fletcher Vredenburgh concurred:

I was eleven when my dad bought and read the Leinster collection. When I asked him about it he said he didn’t think I’d like it. Fortunately, that only encouraged me to give it a try. Glad I did. The gloriously pulpy “Proxima Centauri” still creeps me out.

Well, that was enough for me. I dug out my treasured copy of Before the Golden Age and settled in to enjoy a classic tale of space travel and creepy aliens from a pulp master.

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