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Category: Editor’s Blog

The blog posts of Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones and Editor John O’Neill

Vintage Treasures: The Amazing Space Race

Vintage Treasures: The Amazing Space Race

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Amazing Stories January 1969A few weeks back, I purchased a lot of 27 Amazing Stories digests from the mid-60s and early 70s in great condition, for $35 (including shipping) — or about a buck an issue.

This was simultaneously delightful and dismaying. Delightful, of course, to get a fine set of SF magazines for not much more than they cost on the newsstand 45 years ago; dismaying to find that pristine vintage copies of one of the most important SF magazines command such little interest in the market.

Seriously, this doesn’t bode well for the thousands of SF magazines I’ve been gradually accumulating in my basement for the last 35 years. I  consider them treasures, but it seems the number of people who share my interest is shrinking every year. I just hope they don’t all end up getting recycled when I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Well, all collectors can really do is delight in those treasures we find, and share our enthusiasm with those around us. To that end, here I am, talking about a handful of issues of Amazing Stories, starting with the January 1969 issue, at left.

The late sixties was a bumpy time for the Granddaddy of Science Fiction magazines. Perhaps its finest editor, the talented Cele Goldsmith, left when the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen’s Ultimate Publishing Company in March 1965. At the time, Ultimate was simultaneously publishing Great Science Fiction, Science Fiction Classics, and other profitable reprint magazines — profitable chiefly because they didn’t pay for any of the reprints. Cohen wanted to pursue a similar strategy with Amazing.

Cohen hired Joseph Wrzos to edit both Amazing and Fantastic magazines, and indeed for several years Amazing offered almost exclusively reprints — although Wrzos reportedly did get Cohen to cough up funds for one new piece of fiction per issue. Wrzos left in 1967, and Harry Harrison was briefly editor from September 1967 to February 1968, when the talented Barry Malzberg stepped into his shoes.

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2012 Nebula Award Winners Announced

2012 Nebula Award Winners Announced

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After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the FallMajor award-granting institutions continue to heap accolades on books I haven’t read.

This is a chronic problem. I think the guidelines should be changed to allow voters to select a specific title, “No Award,” or “Wait, wait, I haven’t read any of the nominees yet!”

Until that happy day, we continue to report on tantalizing books and short stories that we haven’t personally enjoyed yet. It’s a curse.

The 2012 Nebula Awards were presented Saturday, May 18, 2013 at SFWA’s 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend San Jose, California. The winners were:

Novel

2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

Novella

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)

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Vintage Treasures: Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors

Vintage Treasures: Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors

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Robert E Howard Cthulhu The Mythos and Kindred HorrorsOn April 27, I wrote a Vintage Treasures article about Robert E. Howard’s The People of the Black Circle, one of the first fantasy books I ever owned.

The Comments section quickly became a discussion of REH collecting, with readers swapping photos of their favorite Howard books. Joe H. shared a LibrayThing catalog of his Howard collection, noting the hardest title to find had been Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors. “It took me years to track down a copy,” he said.

Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing that perks up a collector’s ears. Intrigued,  I went on a quest to find my own copy of Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu stories.

I finally succeeded this week, after a two-week search. I settled in with my new copy today. First thing I noticed is that the cover, by Stephen Hickman, depicts a treasured artifact from my own collection: the Hickman-designed Cthulhu statute by Bowen Designs — a prized collectible these days. Now that it’s worth something, maybe my wife will let me bring it up out of the basement.

The other thing I noticed is that this is a sizable collection: 250 pages. While I knew Howard had made some minor contributions to Lovecraft’s famous milieu before his death, I had no idea he’d written so many stories that could be categorized as part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Perhaps editor David Drake has been fairly liberal with his selections. I note that “Pigeons from Hell” is included, and that’s only peripherally a Cthulhu story — but it’s a damn good tale, so I’m not complaining.

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New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

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Dead Boys Michael PenkasI first met Michael Penkas in 2010 at the Top Shelf Open Mic in Palatine, Illinois, a friendly local reading event hosted by C.S.E. Cooney.

The Top Shelf Open Mic has attracted some extraordinary talent over the years. Gene Wolfe read chapters of his upcoming novel The Land Across, Joe Bonnadonna shared early drafts of Waters of Darkness, David C. Smith read from his supernatural thriller Call of Shadows, and of course C.S.E. Cooney regularly entertained us with boundless energy, reading from The Big Ba-Ha, Jack o’ the Hills, and other acclaimed publications.

But I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Michael Penkas has become the unexpected true star of our local reading group. His creepy and electrifying short stories have mesmerized us month after month.

Michael has an uncanny ability to pry open your heart with sparkling prose, humor, and warm and genuine characters… and then drive a cold spike through it with relentless and diabolical twists. All with some of the most compact and economical prose I have ever encountered.

Michael has published over a dozen stories since 2007. While he’s best known for his extremely effective horror and dark fantasy, he’s equally at home with mystery, science fiction, and gonzo humor — as his upcoming story for Black Gate illustrates. “The Worst Was Yet to Come,” a chilling retelling of Moses’s unexpected conversation with God immediately after the Ten Plagues of Egypt, will appear here this Sunday. It’s sure to win him many more fans, or possibly get him strung up — or both.

Michael has just released his first — and long awaited — collection, assembling four of his earliest published stories. It’s a delightful sampling of some of the best work of a fast-rising dark fantasy and horror author.

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Get a Random SF or Fantasy Book Cover from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Get a Random SF or Fantasy Book Cover from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

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Into the Slave NebulaOh, Internet. Will you ever cease to come up with new ways for me to waste time?

So the latest thing I’ve been doing is hitting the Lucky Dip button in the Picture Gallery section of the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It generates a random book cover from their massive archives:

So far, I’ve seen a few hundred vintage hardcovers and paperbacks, from a 1951 Lord Dunsany hardcover I never knew existed (The Last Revolution) to Samuel R. Delaney’s 1977 collection of critical essays on science fiction (The Jewel-Hinged Jaw); from John Brunner’s 1968 Lancer paperback Into the Slave Nebula to the 1954 Gnome Press edition of C. L. Moore’s Northwest of Earth. And many hundreds in between.

It’s a fascinating kaleidoscope (I can’t really call it a tour) of our genre — and a great launching point to ignite your interest. I ended up reading about UK author M. John Harrison after seeing the cover to his 1975 Panther paperback collection The Machine in Shaft Ten and Other Stories. Plus, doing about a dozen Google searches on the words “Slave Nebula.”

Of course, there’s a powerful search function as well, in case you want to leap directly to a specific book or author. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the new online incarnation and third edition of the classic reference book edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, indexes some 54,000 individual titles, with 113,500 internal hyperlinks and over 4,000,000 words. It builds massively on the text of the (already massive) 1995 CD-ROM edition, and is produced in collaboration with British SF publisher Gollancz and the SF Gateway. And it is, as the introduction points out, still a work in progress.

The only thing that’s missing? The back button. I tried to scroll back to some of the earlier samples, but no dice. Looks like the Lucky Dip is powered by a Javascript app of some kind that doesn’t allow you to page back through prior selections — so if you see something interesting, be sure to write it down!

Explore History Through Tiny Cardboard Counters with Against the Odds Magazine

Explore History Through Tiny Cardboard Counters with Against the Odds Magazine

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Against-the-Odds-magazine-35-smallI discovered something fascinating while I was trolling eBay for vintage fantasy board games this morning: Against the Odds, a magazine published out of Southeastern, PA, which includes a complete game in each issue.

Now, it’s true that I get a little giddy around magazines. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have published one for a decade. And I also love games. So magazines that include games? I had to go have a bit of a lie down.

Against the Odds is a quarterly periodical of history and simulation, and it looks remarkably similar to the great gaming magazines published by SPI, Strategy & Tactics and Ares, both of which included a game with each issue. Ares, published between 1980 and 1984, was one of my all-time favorite magazines. In that short span it brought over a dozen highly regarded games into the world, including Barbarian Kings, Star Trader, Nightmare House, The High Crusade (based on the Poul Anderson novel), Citadel of Blood, and many others. All 17 issues are currently available as free PDFs at Archive.org.

Against the Odds doesn’t have the same focus on fantasy and science fiction as Ares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fascinating. The first issue I came across, #35 (December 2011), includes the game Boudicca: The Warrior Queen, featuring an historical clash between the Roman Empire and a loose collection of Celtic tribes on the barbaric island of Britannia in 61 A.D.

She meant “trouble” for the Roman occupation of Britain. After her revolt succeeded in burning three major towns and slaughtering tens of thousands of Roman citizens and allies, the Emperor Nero seriously considered whether this distant land was worth the cost to stay. Governor G.S. Paulinus’ remarkable victory – perhaps at the location later known as “Watling Street” – reaffirmed Roman domination. They would remain in Britain for over 300 more years.

But it might have been different. Can you as the leader of a various cluster of independent Celtic tribes cause enough trouble and loss to make the Romans leave your island? Can you as the commander of scattered Roman troops snuff out the rebellion more effectively than Paulinus? Will London burn or be saved? These are your challenges in ATO issue #35, Boudicca: The Warrior Queen by Richard Berg.

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New Treasures: Federation Commander: Klingon Border

New Treasures: Federation Commander: Klingon Border

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Federation Commander Klingon BorderIn honor of the US release of Star Trek Into Darkness this week, I found some of my favorite Star Trek games in the basement, and hugged them.

Took longer than you might expect. Turns out there are a lot of decent Star Trek titles. Over a dozen board games, for example — starting with West End’s terrific 1985 contributions, the paragraph-based Star Trek The Adventure Game and the more family-friendly The Enterprise Encounter, all the way up to Wizkids’ 2011 deluxe releases, Reiner Knizia’s solitaire/cooperative mission game Star Trek Expeditions and the strategic space exploration/ship-to-ship combat title Star Trek – Fleet Captains. Not to mention last year’s oddball Star Trek Catan from Mayfair Games.

Let’s not neglect the role playing games, starting with FASA’s classic 1983 Star Trek The Role Playing Game and the updated RPG from Last Unicorn Games in 1999. And of course, numerous card, deck-building, and collectible games, like Star Trek HeroClix from WizKids.

That’s not including dozens of computer and video games, starting with SSI’s unlicensed Apple II space-combat title The Warp Factor (1982), to the text-based The Promethean Prophecy (Simon & Schuster, 1984) and the classic adventure games from Interplay like Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992) and Judgment Rites (1993). I could go on, but my fingers are tired already.

But the great-granddaddy of Star Trek games has to be Star Fleet Battles, which began as a 1979 pocket game released in a zip-lock bag by Task Force Games and has grown into one of the largest franchises in table-top gaming, with countless expansions and variants from a small handful of publishers over the last three decades.

The title which got the warmest hug during my basement walkabout, and likely the one I’d grab if I were to be marooned on a lonely asteroid with a group of fellow Star Trek gamers, was Federation Commander: Klingon Border, a Star Fleet Battles mega-game which challenges you to take the helm of a Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser and hold the border during a massive Klingon invasion.

Admit it — that sounds like fun.

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New Treasures: Cyclades

New Treasures: Cyclades

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Cyclades board gameI saw the original release of Clash of the Titans, starring Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith, on opening night in 1981. As just about anyone who’s seen it can tell you, it’s not a very good movie, with a painfully flat performance by Harry Hamlin as Perseus and clumsy attempts to add kid appeal with a nonsensical robot owl.

In the middle of a tale involving Pegasus, three blind witches, Medusa, and the Kraken, Hollywood feels the need to add a robot owl. I mean, come on.

But it didn’t matter. I loved it with a wild passion, and it ignited an intense interest in Ancient Greece in me.

I read everything I could get my hands on, from Homer to Aeschylus, Euripides to Aristophanes. I visited the library and asked to see maps of ancient Athens, circa 500 B.C. And I scrapped our ongoing D&D campaign, set in a generic medieval landscape, and told my bemused players we’d be starting over in Athens, at the height of the Bronze Age.

I discovered the history of the Cyclades, the tight knot of islands off the coast of Greece, that I learned had been packed with tiny civilizations and numerous isolated cultures over the centuries. It was a perfect setting for a fantasy game: a maze of islands thick with myth and mystery, a stone’s throw from the great city states that birthed modern civilization. The D&D campaign that began there carried on for over a decade, and was easily the most successful and rewarding one I’ve ever played.

But I always wondered why I didn’t see the setting used more often. So you can imagine how I felt when the fantasy board game Cyclades was released in 2009. I bought a copy last month, and so far I’ve been very pleased with it.

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Vintage Treasures: The Awful Green Things From Outer Space

Vintage Treasures: The Awful Green Things From Outer Space

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The Awful Green Things From Outer SpaceI keep promising myself I’m going to stop obsessing about games that have been out of print for decades.

Clearly, I’m a man of little character. Let’s not dwell on that. Let’s dwell instead on one of the great mini-games of all time, Tom Wham’s The Awful Green Things From Outer Space.

First, a bit of history to support that claim. The Awful Green Things From Outer Space originally appeared as an insert in Dragon Magazine #28 (published in 1979). That’s pretty great.

Great enough to be reprinted as a full-fledged standalone game by Dungeons and Dragons publisher TSR in 1980, anyway. In 1988, Steve Jackson Games, publishers of GURPS, acquired the rights and revived Awful Green Things as a pocket game, alongside other mini-games like Ogre, GEV, Car Wars, and Illuminati.

Even in august company like that, Awful Green Things stood out for its gonzo humor and original design. I was going to paraphrase the text on the back, but there’s really no way to distill it. Here it is in its entirety:

The crew of the exploration ship Znutar just wanted to cruise around the Galaxy, discovering strange new worlds and playing pool. But then their ship was invaded by the Awful Green Things. And suddenly they were fighting for their lives!

In this wacky two-player game, one person takes the part of the Awful Green Things. Every turn the monsters multiply and grow… especially if they can eat somebody! The other player commands the crew, frantically trying weapon after weapon in hopes of defeating . . . The Awful Green Things from Outer Space!

The pocket edition consisted of a resealable box about the size of a paperback, 137 full-color counters (and a ziplock bag to keep ’em in), 24 pages of rules; and a 12″ x 21″ color map. The game was copiously illustrated by creator Tom Wham and Beverly Hale. My copy doesn’t have a price tag, but I think it was around 8 bucks. You can buy an updated, boxed edition from Steve Jackson Games for $24.99, but the pocket edition is still the one to get if you can find it.

Get Out of the Dungeon with Monsters! Monsters!

Get Out of the Dungeon with Monsters! Monsters!

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monsters-monsters-smallSome 35 years ago, I read an article in The Space Gamer on an unusual little game called Monsters! Monsters!

I’m not even sure I’d played D&D when I first read about Monsters! Monsters! I was introduced to fantasy gaming by Metagaming, and specifically their brilliant mini-games Ogre, Melee, and Wizard, all designed by Steve Jackson.

Orge everyone knows about — if you didn’t play the game at the lunch table in high school when it was first released in 1977, then you’re probably aware of last year’s Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly a million dollars for a massive 14-pound Designer’s Edition.

I doubt every copy of Ogre in the world in 1977 totalled 14 pounds. I think Ogre may have the unique distinction of being the simplest and most spare SF game ever created, and now it’s also the largest.

Anyway, it was Melee and Wizard that first taught me all about role playing. I rolled my first attack dice in a school cafeteria in 1978 (I missed). The rules were simple, the miniatures were made of paper, but the magic was exactly as advertised. I carried those games in my back pocket for years, and my friends and I were die-hard Metagaming fans long before we stepped into our first dungeon.

Metagaming’s house organ was the magazine The Space Gamer, where they advertised upcoming releases, chatted about the industry, and generally talked up their games. It was there I first learned of the wider world of role playing, and where I discovered an odd little game called Monsters! Monsters! that they released in 1976.

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