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Amazing Stuff Where There’s a Will

Amazing Stuff Where There’s a Will

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Amazing Stories August 2012Here’s some Amazing news. Just think what the Golden Agers who wrote for this magazine back in the 1940s might wonder about an online pulp magazine?

Actually, one of them, Ray Bradbury, considered the Internet a “waste of time.” I guess his problem was he never spent any time on the Internet.

We don’t have any of Shakespeare’s plays that he wrote in his actual hand, but we do have the plays as transcribed by members of his acting troupe. These days, it wouldn’t be profitable to have an Amazing Stories magazine if it weren’t for the Internet. Even Uncle Ray would be down with that, wouldn’t you think?

Apex Magazine 49Speaking of the Bard and online magazines, I had two “minor” fields of study for my English M.A. (if you must know, or care, the major field was Rhetoric), which were science fiction and Shakespeare.

When I say that, some people think there’s a discipline called “Science Fiction and Shakespeare” and maybe there should be, as certainly the Elizabethan fantasist has inspired many a modern one.

Case in point is the latest edition of Apex Magazine, which is a Shakespeare-themed issue featuring the work of Kate Elliott, Kat Howard, Sarah Monette, Merrie Haskell and Patricia Wrede.

Renovating Tegel Manor

Renovating Tegel Manor

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Tegel Manor-smallWhile I was assembling my Judges Guild article on Tuesday, I stumbled on an odd reference to a revised version of one of their earliest (and most famous) products: Tegel Manor. I’d never seen a copy however, and was pretty sure it didn’t exist, so I set it aside to investigate later.

What makes Tegel Manor so famous? I don’t think I could articulate its wonders as well as the talented James Maliszewski, author of the Grognardia blog; here he is:

Tegel Manor is without a doubt one of Bob Bledsaw’s masterpieces. Describing a sprawling 240-room haunted castle, the module is a textbook example of a funhouse dungeon, utterly lacking in anything resembling an ecology and filled with many encounters for which the adjective “whimsical” is charitable at best. The contents and/or inhabitants of each room are random — in some cases literally — meaning that, here you might find nothing more threatening than some giant beetles but next door you might find a Type III demon polymorphed as a kindly old beggar…

With its random encounter charts containing 100 members of the cursed and unfortunately named Rump family (all of whose names start with the letter R) and its goofy encounters (“Four Zombies … bowing to a Giant White Rat … in a pink cape and red plumed hat”), it certainly seems that way. It’s one thing to sidestep naturalism, but Tegel Manor goes above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to “gonzo.”

But the map is a thing of beauty. Nothing — and I mean nothing — has ever beaten it… It’s filled with winding passages, secret doors, mazes, empty rooms, weird features, and more.

James’s complete review is here. Tegel Manor was originally released in 1977, and revised and expanded in later editions. A little digging revealed that Necromancer Games had contracted to do an updated version for the Old School Renaissance market — and even produced the cover at right — but Judges Guild withdrew the rights before it saw the light of day. But that’s a story that deserves a post of its own.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Two

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Two

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$(KGrHqJ,!p!E9dR9SnnCBPebmY)fDQ~~60_35The Bride of Fu ManchuSax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from May 6 to July 8, 1933 under the variant title, Fu Manchu’s Bride. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The US edition retained the original magazine title until the 1960s, when the UK book title was adopted for the paperback edition published by Pyramid Books.

After Alan Sterling recovers consciousness, Sir Denis insists he dine out that evening in Monte Carlo to take his mind off the terrible situation with Dr. Petrie. Complying with his wishes, Alan drives to Monaco and spends some time at a casino trying to apply Petrie’s (really Rohmer’s) complicated system to break the bank, to no avail. While dining that night, he is startled to spy Fleurette at another table dining with a Russian nobleman and Mahdi Bey.

Observing them in public, Sterling convinces himself that Fleurette must be Mahdi Bey’s mistress. This devastates him as he has idealized her as his virginal dream girl since first glimpsing her on the beach at Ste. Claire. Sterling’s reverie is broken when he spies the Chinese agents of Dr. Fu Manchu in the restaurant. He then hears the mysterious sonic trumpet sound once more. He doesn’t understand the connection, but he is now certain that Mahdi Bey is somehow mixed up in the dangerous business and Fleurette with him.

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Goth Chick News: The Vatican Tapes – We’re Nothing If Not Timely

Goth Chick News: The Vatican Tapes – We’re Nothing If Not Timely

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image004Earlier this week, we learned Pope Benedict XVI resigned his post, reportedly due to “advanced age.”

But could the real reason have anything to do with a misplaced video of a botched exorcism?

Okay, probably not. But as a new pope must be found, so too has a new director been recruited for a long-awaited exorcism tale from Lakeshore Entertainment.

Tuesday Lakeshore released a statement indicating Mark Neveldine, one half of the directing duo behind Gamer, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and the two Crank films, will be at the helm of Lakeshore’s possession project, The Vatican Tapes, but without his usual co-director Brian Taylor. James Marsh (Man on a Wire) was in the director’s chair for a while, but dropped out for unknown reasons; advanced age perhaps?

It’s been nearly three years since I’ve heard anything new about the movie, but as far as I can determine the plot line remains the same. The Vatican Tapes follows a series of events depicted on a tape leaked from the Vatican displaying an exorcism that goes horribly wrong. Christopher Borrelli (Con Air, Armageddon) is scripting based on a story envisioned by he and Chris Morgan, but no cast is attached yet and IMDB still lists it as “in development.”

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Weird Things My Students Have Been Told About Writers

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Weird Things My Students Have Been Told About Writers

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The classic flippant answer to “Where do you get your ideas?”

Most of my students and their families have perfectly ordinary misperceptions about how books come into the world. They ask what non-writers ask–where do ideas come from, that kind of thing. They’re not sure whether they expect all writers to be starving or loaded, but they’re pretty sure it’s all one or the other. Writing professionally is something that other people do in some other world, not something mere mortals who stand in their kitchens might do. That’s okay. They’re kind people who care about being literate in the best, most expansive sense. Yay them.

And then, there are the outliers.

Allow me to introduce the Client Mom from Hell.

It was my first freelance tutoring gig. My student was a charming sixth-grader who had somehow talked me into reading Redwall with him. There are people who love Redwall, which is fine, but it’s just not my thing. So my student asked me how I would write about a book I just didn’t like, since he had to do that at school all the time. A good, practical question.

“I try to set aside what I want in a book,” I said, “and to think about what the author was trying to accomplish. He didn’t write this story the way I would have, but he must have had a reason for writing it the way he did.”

The Client Mom from Hell dropped whatever she was doing in the kitchen and blustered into the dining room to interrupt our lesson.

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Tangent Online on “Life on the Sun”: “This One Captured a Piece of my Soul. Brilliant.”

Tangent Online on “Life on the Sun”: “This One Captured a Piece of my Soul. Brilliant.”

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cseLouis West at Tangent Online reviews C.S.E. Cooney’s original fantasy novelette, published here on Sunday, February 10th:

C.S.E. Cooney’s “Life on the Sun” is bold and powerful… While the previous story in this series, “Godmother Lizard,” entranced me, this one captured a piece of my soul. Brilliant.

Kantu, warrior of the Bird People, seeks to rid her desert city, Rok Moris, of the occupiers from the Empire of the Open Palm. When Fa Izikban Azur and his Army of Childless Men march upon Rok Moris, Kantu and her people rise up. But the Fa did not come to liberate, but to reclaim those who belonged to him — Kantu, his daughter, and the Rokka Mama, mother to the Bird People and the Fa’s favorite wife, even after she had killed him…

I don’t know how Cooney weaves so many rich story arcs into a single novelette tapestry. But, on a scale of 1 to 10, I rank this one as a twelve.

“Life on the Sun” is the sequel to C.S.E.’s “Godmother Lizard,” which Tangent Online called “a delightful fantasy tale about an orphan girl… The dialog has a pleasantly oblique edge to it which entranced me from the beginning.” We published “Godmother Lizard” right here on November 11th.

Read Louis West’s review at Tangent Online, and read “Life on the Sun” completely free here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vaughn Heppner, E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Gregory Bierly, Mark Rigney, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

The Last Dinosaur Chomps Your Nostalgia on Warner Archive DVD

The Last Dinosaur Chomps Your Nostalgia on Warner Archive DVD

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Last Dinosaur Warner Archive DVDIt follows that if I write about The Bermuda Depths and its manufacture-on-demand DVD release, I must also write about its sister film, the dinosaur-hunting marvel of a Saturday afternoon dreamland, 1977’s The Last Dinosaur — also available on MOD DVD from Warner Archive. “Richard Boone vs. a T. Rex in a Primeval World.” You don’t need a large marketing team to work on your movie if you have a tagline like that.

The Last Dinosaur is a 1950s giant monster movie filmed in the 1970s and filtered through the visual effects style of 1960s Japanese special effects (tokusatsu) films. If that sentence gives you a frisson of joy, then the movie won’t disappoint. And The Last Dinosaur is a touch better than that description suggests, with a solid script and an excellent main character who can carry the outrageousness of a giant monster movie and make it seem like Moby Dick.

Touring around the ‘net looking for reviews of The Last Dinosaur will mostly unearth “bad movie snark” having a laugh over its economical special effects. You won’t find much of that here: I think The Last Dinosaur is a top-shelf B-budgeted “lost world” film that delivers all it should, occasional chuckles and groans included. Make all the sly comments you want about the “man-in-suit” monster effects — and there are some amusing moments — they still offer far more creativity and fun than most CGI-driven contemporary movies. Compare The Last Dinosaur to anything from SyFy and you’ll see the talent we lost when the Machines won the war.

Shot in Japan at the same time Amicus Productions in the U.K. was making their Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations (The Land That Time Forgot, At the Earth’s Core, The People That Time Forgot), The Last Dinosaur sports a similar style that captures the spirit of ERB within a contemporary setting. It’s the best Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation not actually based on one of his novels; if Burroughs were alive and writing in the 1970s, he might have written something just like this.

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Did Entertainment Weekly Reveal that Benedict Cumberbatch is Playing Khan?

Did Entertainment Weekly Reveal that Benedict Cumberbatch is Playing Khan?

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Entertainment Weekly Star TrekIn a sharp-eyed bit of investigative reporting, Tor.com has reproduced screenshots from the Entertainment Weekly Back Issues store that name the villain in the upcoming J.J. Abrams film Star Trek Into Darkness as Khan.

As we reported back in December, speculation has been rampant around just whom Benedict Cumberbatch will be playing in the new film. IMDB originally listed his character as Gary Mitchell, the Enterprise officer who becomes an all-powerful psychic loonie in one of the show’s earliest and best episodes, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Rumors that he was playing Khan, the genetically-engineered supervillain originally portrayed by Ricardo Montalban in the episode “Space Seed” and the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, eventually led the otherwise tight-lipped Cumberbatch to deny it.

As shown by Tor.com however, screen captures for the February 15 cover-dated issue of Entertainment Weekly allow you to select one of two covers, the “Spock & Kirk” cover, or the “Kirk & Khan” version.

EW hastily deleted the notations, and the latest version of the page gives no such identifiers.

In its current cast list, IMBD now lists Cumberbatch as playing “Khan (rumored),” and Alice Eve as playing Dr. Carol Marcus, Kirk’s ex-flame and baby mama from Star Trek II.

The latest Super Bowl TV trailer for the film has been posted on YouTube. Star Trek Into Darkness is directed by J. J. Abrams, and is set for release on May 17, 2013. As we reported in January, Abrams was also selected as the director for the next Star Wars film.

Meanwhile, there’s no truth to the rumor floating in fan circles that J.J. Abrams will also be tapped as the new pope.

New Treasures: Wilderlands of High Fantasy

New Treasures: Wilderlands of High Fantasy

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Wilderlands of High FantasyIn the very early days of adventure gaming, there were two companies you could count on: TSR, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, and Judges Guild.

Judges Guild was admittedly second tier. While TSR was constantly innovating, with full color cover art and high production values, Judges Guild saw no reason to deviate from the look they established in 1976: rudimentary layout and typesetting, and two-color covers that looked torn from a coloring book.

But they were prolific. My weekly pilgrimages to the gaming store in 1979 rarely yielded a new TSR release — they were few and far between — but Judges Guild never let me down, and I went home satisfied with many a JG product tucked under my arm. At their peak in the early 80s, they employed 42 people and had over 250 products in print, an astounding output.

Judges Guild was founded by Bob Bledsaw and Bill Owen; their first major product (and claim to fame) was the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The ambitious setting for the City State — a massive 18 maps covering nine continents drawn from Bledsaw’s home campaign, ultimately used as the locale for numerous adventure modules — became their next major release: The Wilderlands of High Fantasy, the first licensed D&D product and the first true campaign setting for the game.

Wilderlands was different in other ways, too. Perhaps most importantly it had a true sandbox feel, rather than the tightly-focused adventures of Gygax and Co, in which players were expected to follow a linear path. It encouraged a wide-open style of gaming, focused on exploring vast and wondrous forests and rugged landscapes, rather than dungeon crawls.

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Star Soldiers and Other Free Kindle Books at Amazon.com

Star Soldiers and Other Free Kindle Books at Amazon.com

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Star SoldiersOne of the nice things about my Kindle is the occasional free e-book or two. Sure, you have to hunt for them, and they’re rarely available for long, but that’s all part of the fun. For book lovers it’s much like the thrill of Black Friday sales, without having to get off the couch. Or stampeding over some guy from Hoffman Estates to get to that David Weber novel.

As part of our continuing efforts to bring you great reading without getting off your couch, we’re proud to present you a list of free Kindle titles from Baen Books, including Star Soldiers, an omnibus volume of two classic novels from SFWA Grand Master Andre Norton: Star Guard (1955) and Star Rangers (1953).

Star Soldiers, Andre Norton
Time Traders, Andre Norton
Northworld Trilogy, David Drake
The Tank Lords, David Drake
Seas of Venus, David Drake
The Sea Hag, David Drake
Starliner, David Drake
With the Lightnings, David Drake
A Desert Called Peace, Tom Kratman
On Basilisk Station, David Weber
The Honor of the Queen, David Weber

All are available from Amazon.com.

Just like Black Friday sales, free Kindle books tend to vanish quickly. So if you’re interested, we suggest you act fast.

Thanks to the hard-working John DeNardo at SF Signal for the tip!