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SF Signal Interviews Scott Taylor on A Knight In The Silk Purse

SF Signal Interviews Scott Taylor on A Knight In The Silk Purse

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The Black Gate district of the city of TauxSF Signal interviews editor and Black Gate blogger Scott Taylor on the occasion of his sixth Kickstarter project: A Knight in the Silk Purse, the follow-up to his enormously successful shared world anthology, Tales Of The Emerald Serpent.

Nick Sharps: What lesson did you learn from the first anthologies campaign that has carried on to Volume II? Are there plans for future anthologies?

ST: Well, we learned that selling fiction is hard, and selling a anthology is even harder. Still, we were happy to get the backing for our first endeavor, and we knew that if we could just produce that work, people would get what we were doing and that would carry over to further volumes. So far, we’ve been right, and this new Kickstarter has built-in stretch goals that could see to the production of up to six full volumes of this series that would take us to the culmination of the story we all set out to tell.

A Knight In The Silk Purse returns to the Free City of Taux, a fantasy port of cursed stones, dark plots, and a cast of characters who have made a name for themselves in the infamous Black Gate District. It is edited by R. Scott Taylor and includes contributions from Martha Wells, Julie Czerneda, Elaine Cunningham, Todd Lockwood, Lynn Flewelling, Dave Gross, Juliet McKenna, and others. With 23 days to go, it is already more than halfway to its target goal of $10,000 (with stretch goals that go all the way up to $300,000).

Read more about the launch of Tales Of The Emerald Serpent here and read the complete interview with Scott here. You can also read his recent article The Joy and Pain of Kickstarter [and How Backed Projects Still Fail].

You can pledge to support A Knight In The Silk Purse at Kickstarter here.

Law vs. Chaos replaces Good vs. Evil?

Law vs. Chaos replaces Good vs. Evil?

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swords-dark-magic-256Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders dedicate their sword and sorcery anthology Swords and Dark Magic to Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Michael Moorcock as “the great literary swordsmen who made it possible.”  Creating one of the most memorable characters in the genre — the “anti-hero” of Elric of Melniboné — would be enough to earn Moorcock this acknowledgment.  But Strahan and Anders suggest that:

It might be his alteration of the battle of Good versus Evil into that of Law versus Chaos (with disastrous consequences implied if either side ultimately triumphed over the other) that made the most significant contribution to fantasy literature (p. xv).

For those who may be unfamiliar with this distinction, Moorcock’s fantasy universe (or multi-verse) is populated, and seemingly controlled to some extent, by the Lords of Law and the Lords of Chaos. These god-like beings seemingly have mysterious and unfathomable intentions.

But they often appear to desire to exert their Lawful or Chaotic control over mortals and their worlds. As Strahan and Anders note, results are calamitous for any such world and its inhabitants when the scale tips too far towards either Law or Chaos.

No doubt this “alteration” has been significant. Outside the realm of fantasy literature, Moorcock’s Law versus Chaos contrast is most notably seen in the early Dungeons and Dragons rules. Its famous notion of alignment spawned a whole cosmological picture upon which this historically important game was built.  (See Appendix 1 “The Known Planes of Existence” in Deities and Demigods.)

Nevertheless, I disagree with Strahan and Anders’s wording of this LC contrast. They seem to suggest — and they are not the first to do so — that Moorcock’s LC is a replacement of the traditional Good versus Evil dynamic within his famous sword and sorcery tales.

I want to suggest that it is rather an added facet. I’ll look at just one of Moorcock’s famous Elric stories to make this case.

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Iain M. Banks, February 16, 1954 – June 9, 2013

Iain M. Banks, February 16, 1954 – June 9, 2013

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Iain M BanksIain M. Banks, the Scottish novelist who — almost uniquely — created parallel careers as both a bestselling literary author and a top science fiction author, died yesterday at the age of 59, two months after announcing he had terminal gall bladder cancer.

Iain Banks burst onto the literary scene in 1984 with his first novel, The Wasp Factory. It was both a critical and commercial success, listed in 1997 as one of the top 100 books of the 20th century, and it allowed Banks to become a full-time writer.

I heard a great deal about The Wasp Factory when it was first published, but it was his first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas (1987) that really brought him to my attention. It was the first volume of his popular The Culture series, a sequence of ten books set in a far future civilization run by intelligent machines. Consider Phlebas and the volumes that immediately followed — The Player of Games, The State of the Art, and Use of Weapons — were much read and discussed among my small circle of friends in Ottawa.

Banks published science fiction as “Iain M. Banks,” and literary fiction as “Iain Banks.” All told, he wrote a total of 26 novels; his most recent were The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks (Oct 9, 2012) and Stonemouth by Iain Banks, published one day later on Oct 10, 2012.

He won the British Science Fiction Association Award twice, in 1994 for Feersum Endjinn and 1996 for Excession. He was nominated for the Hugo Award in 2005 for The Algebraist.

His last novel, The Quarry by Iain Banks, is scheduled for publication later this month, on June 20.

Oz Reviews The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

Oz Reviews The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

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book of skullsThis novel came out in 1972 under the Signet Science Fiction imprint, which is quite misleading. There is nary a hint of sci-fi in its pages. Rather, The Book of Skulls is a deeply compelling psychological study, a book full of mystery and existential dread.

The story is told by four narrators: Eli, Ned, Oliver, and Timothy, Harvard college students who are the book’s protagonists. Each of the forty-two chapters is prefaced by the name of one of the four, the narrator of that chapter, so we are constantly shifting among the four minds. We get four strongly delineated perspectives as the story unfolds through their cross-country road trip to their ultimate goal: an ancient mystery cult in the Arizona desert that may possess the secret to physical immortality.

Eli, we learn, came across The Book of Skulls during one of his forays into the rare and uncatalogued manuscripts section of the university library. Translating it, he discovered the bizarre claim of the Brotherhood of Skulls, that they can forestall death. Further translation revealed that to become an initiate into their secrets of immortality, four candidates must come, a four-sided Receptacle. But part of the demand of the initiation is that two of the four must die: “The Ninth Mystery is this: that the price of a life must always be a life. Know, O Nobly-Born, that eternities must be balanced by extinctions. As by living we daily die, so then by dying we shall forever live.”

Eli has talked his three roommates into going with him in search of the cult over spring break, and each has his own motives for going along, which are gradually revealed as we get into their heads.

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Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Role-Playing Games of All-Time

Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Role-Playing Games of All-Time

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SFAD Cover-1In my continuing series of ‘Top 10s’, I’m very happy to be doing a subject that incorporates two things I would simply have a hard time living without: fantasy gaming art and the games themselves.  So, considering I’m currently in the middle of running a Kickstarter that not only is looking to produce an absolute load of original fantasy fiction, but also an RPG and art book,  what better time to compose a list of The Top Ten Role-Playing Games of All Time.

Now, I suppose I should mention that I’ve been playing RPGs since I was 10, and without revealing just how old I am, it must be understood there is a measurable amount of time involved there.  Certainly, I’m not the foremost expert on role-playing games, but I’m going to put myself in the upper 10% of gamers and that should give me enough perspective to comprise this list.

Having established that I can’t help but say that going back in time, weighing the impact, reach, and longevity of so many games was an absolute thrill, and so many memories came flooding back with each one.  I was also surprised at how many I’d played (all of them), even if just once during a random gaming session in some long forgotten era of my life.

These games, you see, are like time capsules of memory, and when they come up in conversation with gamers, I think every one of those in the discussion is ripped back through time to the point where they sat at a table, rolled dice, and laughed with friends most likely long out of their lives.  Only games that take place on a table-top make such an intimate miracle happen, their power unmistakable and their reach deeper than most non-gamers would ever understand.

So, without further ado, let’s get into the meat of this list and find out just what games made it in, which ones were snubbed, and how many people can disagree with my choices!

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Two

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Two

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The Death of the Necromancer paperbackBlack Gate is very proud to present Part Two of Martha Wells’s Nebula Award-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, presented complete online for the first time.

Nicholas Valiarde is a man of several parts, or roles. One is that of disenfranchised nobleman, bent on revenge for the execution of his godfather, Edouard Viller, who was falsely accused of the capital offense of necromancy by the scheming Count Montesq. Another is that of the master thief Donatien, legendary criminal of Ile-Rien. These two roles collide when Nicholas encounters ghouls and a sorcerer known as Doctor Octave in the cellars of a duchess’s house while carrying out a robbery.

Sinister forces are at work in Ile-Rien. Citizens have gone missing, corpses have turned up vivisected, bones have washed up in the sewer gates. All the evidence points to a necromancer at work, very probably someone with access to the books of the infamous Constant Macob, believed dead for over 200 years. As he investigates, Nicholas and his misfit friends uncover a plot that leads them into a series of escalating confrontations with the evil creations of Macob, as the necromancer schemes to gather enough power to return to life…

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen fantasy novels, including City of Bones, The Element of Fire, The Cloud Roads, and The Serpent Sea. Her most recent novel is the YA fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, published by Strange Chemistry Books in April. Her previous fiction for us includes “Reflections” in Black Gate 10, “Holy Places” (BG 11), and “Houses of the Dead“ (BG 12). Her most recent article for us was “How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?,” which appeared here March 13. Her web site is www.marthawells.com.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

The Death of the Necromancer was originally published in hardcover by Avon EOS in 1998. The complete, unedited text will be presented here over the next four weeks, beginning last week with the first four chapters here.

Part Two includes Chapters Five through Eight. It is offered at no cost.

Read Part Two of the complete novel here.

Vintage Treasures: The Radio Beasts by Ralph Milne Farley

Vintage Treasures: The Radio Beasts by Ralph Milne Farley

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The Radio Beasts brightLast month I wrote a brief piece on Ralph Milne Farley’s pulp novel An Earth Man on Venus, originally published as The Radio Man in Argosy magazine in 1924.

As part of the research I dug a little into Farley, and discovered his real identity was Roger Sherman Hoar, state senator and assistant Attorney General for the state of Massachusetts.

I also discovered he produced seven (!) sequels over the next three decades: The Radio Beasts (1925), The Radio Planet (1926), The Radio Flyers (1929), The Radio Menace (1930), The Radio Gun-Runners (1930), The Radio War (1932) and The Radio Minds of Mars (1955).

That’s a lot of radio action.

A lot of things have changed since the 1920s. But one aspect of pop culture remains consistent: when a property has seven sequels, someone somewhere made a lot of money.

We can safely assume that by the time The Radio Minds of Mars (great title) appeared in 1955, America had had its fill of radio adventure. But in the intervening years, the Radio novels were a hot property.

The Radio Beasts affirms that. It had multiple editions, beginning with its 1925 four-part serialization in Argosy All-Story Weekly. It was reprinted (in one installment) in Fantastic Novels Magazine in January 1941 — with a Frank R. Paul cover, no less.

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Self-published Book Review: The Brightest Light by Scott J. Robinson

Self-published Book Review: The Brightest Light by Scott J. Robinson

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The Brightest Light Cover

I’m not quite clear why we decided that -punk was a postfix meaning “technology.” It started with cyberpunk, I think, only there punk had its original meaning, namely a social movement with unconventional and defiant attitudes and styles. And then steampunk happened. But the term steampunk derived from cyberpunk rather than its root words, and the focus was on the technology rather than the attitude. Soon steampunk was so broad as to encompass any form of science fiction that took place in 19th century society, or at least a recapitulation of what 19th century science fiction writers thought the future would be, without the benefit of the changes that the early 20th century brought. But soon we were adding punk to the end of pretty much anything, to describe a society based on that technology: magicpunk, for example, or even fishpunk.

This month’s book, The Greatest Light by Scott Robinson, calls itself crystal-punk. As you might guess, it takes place in a world based on crystal technology, where crystal arrays provide the technological underpinning. How does that make it different than ours, you ask? In many ways it doesn’t. Robinson’s world has cars and airplanes, lasers and LCDs (liquid crystal displays), and even computers. But it doesn’t have electricity or radios, and it’s pistols are still of the single shot variety. However, it does have flying islands—skylands—where the whole society lives, having abandoned the ground as uninhabitable years ago. Ultimately, the fact that they use crystals is less important than the fact that the technology is different. This also means that it’s not clear whether this book fits in the science fiction or fantasy category, but I decided not to worry too much about that a while ago.

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New Treasures: Brother Grim by Ron Fortier

New Treasures: Brother Grim by Ron Fortier

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Brother GrimI’ve been hearing a lot about Ron Fortier and his publishing house Airship 27 over the last 12 months.

We’ve reported on a few of his titles here, including Barry Baskerville Solves a Case (which William Patrick Maynard calls “equal parts Encyclopedia Brown, Nate the Great, and Sherlock Holmes”), Joe Bonadonna’s space opera Three Against The Stars, David C. Smith’s occult thriller Call of Shadows, the TV-inspired anthology Tales from the Hanging Monkey, Jim Beard’s occult detective Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker, pulp adventurer Ravenwood: Stepson of Mystery, The Moon Man — whom David C Smith describes as “a Robin Hood-type vigilante who fights crime while disguising himself by wearing a fish bowl over his head. (Yes! A fishbowl!)” — and many others.

I met Ron for the first time at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show here in Chicago in April, and I was astounded at the vast array of terrific pulp adventure titles he had spread out at his table. I purchased a tiny sample to take home and enjoy, including Charles R. Saunders 1930s Harlem boxing and Nazis saga Damballa, the SF anthology Mars McCoy, Space Ranger, and Ron Fortier and Gary Kato’s comic Days of the Dragon.

But I also picked up Ron’s Brother Grim, a collection of six pulp adventure stories featuring an undead avenger. Brother Grim first appeared on the Supernatural Crime website, and was popular enough to branch out into print. It looks like a lot of fun.

Risen from the grave in the aftermath of a brutal murder, former underworld hitman Tony Grimaldi finds himself transformed. Now, with his ebon trenchcoat, gleaming silver automatics and ivory skull mask, Tony stalked the benighted streets and back alleys of Port Nocturne, bringing justice to the downtrodden, and judgement to the wicked!

Brother Grim was published in 2004 by Wildcat Books. It is 156 pages in trade paperback, priced at $15. It is illustrated by Rob Davis, with a cover by Thomas Floyd.

See all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Jean Rabe Resigns as SFWA Bulletin Editor Amidst Controversy Over Sexist Articles

Jean Rabe Resigns as SFWA Bulletin Editor Amidst Controversy Over Sexist Articles

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SFWA Bulletin 200Jean Rabe, editor of the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, has stepped down following a series of controversies in recent issues.

The problems began with the now-infamous issue #200, pictured at right, featuring a Jeff Easley Red Sonja cover. Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg, in their long-running column, wrote about “lady editor” Bea Mahaffey (among others), glossing over her significant accomplishments in the field to focus on her looks. In issue 201, CJ Henderson praised Barbie for maintaining “quiet dignity the way a woman should.” But things really blew up with issue 202, in which Resnick and Malzberg responded to mounting criticism by crying about censorship.

There’s been a great deal written about this in the blogosphere and fan press in the past month (Charlie Jane Anders at io9 has an excellent round-up), but I think Benjamin Rosenbaum put it best in his June 3 open letter “Dear Barry & Mike“:

It takes a certain kind of willful blindness not to get that slathering wolf whistles all over your tribute to women editors of years past might piss off… well, pretty much anyone born after 1960.

It’s not that we don’t know how it was when you guys came up. We know that back in the day, talking loudly about Andre Norton looking good in a bathing suit was supposed to be a gracious compliment about which she should be merrily grateful… We know this. We get it. We can make the imaginative leap to your context.

What upsets me, though, is that you apparently can’t make the imaginative leap to our context. You apparently don’t get that talking about how hot an editor is in a skirt — not in a love letter or a roast or an autobiographical reminiscence, mind you, but… in the central house organ of her writers’ organization — is, for us, kind of disgusting…

And then, honestly guys, the confused ramble about censorship?… That’s just painful. Like, if you say something that sucks, and we tell you it sucks, that’s… censorship? Stalinism?

SFWA President John Scalzi issued an apology to readers of the SFWA Bulletin on June 2.