Editor’s Blog – Page 93

First Teaser Trailer Released for Star Trek Into Darkness

Friday, December 7, 2012 John ONeill Comments 15 comments

Hot on the heels of our Monday speculation surrounding the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness, comes word that Paramount has released the first teaser trailer. In terms of creating a spectacle, I think there’s a good chance they’ve succeeded admirably… there are at least three brief scenes that clearly take Star Trek places I’ve never seen before.

True, there’s an awful lot of fisticuffs for a Star Trek film. And a lot of screaming, and what looks like 23th Century kung fu. That’s weird.

But there’s also some terrifically exotic alien landscapes, a huge cast, and what looks like breath-taking urban action. Overall, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

The clip sheds no further light on whether or not Benedict Cumberbatch is indeed playing Gary Mitchell — although he is shown in Star Fleet uniform, so that puts to bed conjecture that he’s playing Khan.

Check it out below.

New Treasures: Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard

Thursday, December 6, 2012 John ONeill Comments 18 comments

As a reader over 40, I have a certain responsibility to gripe about modern fantasy. To point out how things were better in my day, complain how “kids today” just don’t appreciate good writing, and dismiss current trends as crass commercialism. It’s a thankless job, but it’s been handed down to me by countless generations of grumpy old readers, and I take it seriously.

It ain’t easy, either. For one thing, I have to ignore a lot of really excellent work by Jeff VanderMeer, Neil Gaiman, Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, John Fultz, and dozens of others, just to have any kind of credibility at all. And when a trend comes along that I really like, I have to shut the hell up about it. And trust me when I tell you, it’s hard for me to shut the hell up about anything.

For example: when I was a kid, fantasy novels went out of print all the time. If you missed ’em, too bad for you — that was the price you paid for not getting hip to the best writers fast enough. You had to sit around and listen to all your friends talk about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, nodding along and gritting your teeth. (At least, that’s what I imagine it would have been like, if I’d had friends).

Not any more. These days when a popular paperback dies, it just returns months later in a new, improved format, like Gandalf the White. Or the Priceline Negotiator.

Case in point: Aliette de Bodard’s Acatl novels. The first, Servant of the Underworld, published in paperback by Angry Robot in October 2010, was a fascinating murder mystery set in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, where the end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice.

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Star Trek Into Darkness Poster Fuels Gary Mitchell Speculation

Monday, December 3, 2012 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

Just to review, Black Gate is a website with a laser-like focus on the best in new and neglected fantasy. If you want science fiction, there’s plenty of other places for that. Except maybe for Star Trek, because that has William Shatner and we’re big fans.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to point you to the just-released poster for the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness, featuring a trenchcoat-clad badass standing on a mound of rubble that used to be Federation stuff, starting at other Federation stuff he could also knock over. Just to drive home the point, his profile forms part of a crumbling Federation emblem (click the image at right for a bigger version).

That’s one cool poster. It’s also done absolutely nothing to dampen ongoing speculation that the villain this time is none other than Gary Mitchell, Kirk’s friend and helmsman who became all glow-eyed and megalomanical after slamming into the edge of the galaxy at warp 3 in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Neither has the film’s official description:

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

For the record, I think this is a great choice. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was the second pilot and one of the show’s earliest episodes, and frankly one of its best. And if the poster and teaser description are any indication, the action this time won’t take place on a remote planetoid covered in giant styrofoam rocks, but a populated center where the stakes are a lot higher and the explosions a lot bigger. Finally, as reported some time ago, Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as the film’s villain, and I think he’d make a magnificent Gary Mitchell, both as a jovial lieutenant commander and as an all-powerful psychic loonie.

Star Trek Into Darkness is directed by J. J. Abrams, and written by Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci. It is the twelfth feature-length Star Trek film and the sequel to 2009’s Star Trek. It is set for release on May 17, 2013.

The Top 45 Black Gate Posts in October

Saturday, December 1, 2012 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

October was the most active month in the history of the Black Gate blog, breaking every traffic record on the books. The month’s top articles were accessed some 10,000 times each, and our new line of weekly Black Gate Online Fiction kept our webserver working overtime.

The most popular fiction posted at Black Gate in October was:

“The Whoremaster of Pald” by Harry Connolly
“The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel
“The Quintessence of Absence” by Sean McLachlan
“A Phoenix in Darkness” by Donald S. Crankshaw
“The Daughter’s Dowry” by Aaron Bradford Starr

And the top articles of the month were:

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Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition on Sale Tomorrow

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

Over ten years ago, at GenCon 1998, I came across a tiny booth in the Grand Hall manned by a very friendly group of software developers from Edmonton, Alberta. They were promoting an upcoming game called Baldur’s Gate and boy, did it look terrific. Traffic in the booth was slow and they seemed grateful for the company — so much so that when I finally left, they handed me part of their display, a giant mock-up of the retail box. To this day it occupies a place of pride in my office.

When Baldur’s Gate was released in November 1998, it quickly became one of the most acclaimed computer role playing games in history. It put those friendly Edmonton developers, an outfit named BioWare, on the road to stardom, and over the next decade they came to dominate the industry with titles like Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Baldur’s Gate, with its splendid story, characters, and revolutionary (for the time) Infinity game engine, still occupies a special place in the hearts of modern gamers. It was released for Windows 95/98 and doesn’t run well on modern machines — so for most of us, Baldur’s Gate is a distant memory, like those late nights playing Dungeon Master on an Amiga.

All that is about to change. A small start-up named Overhaul Games launched by two ex-Bioware employees, co-founder Trent Oster and lead programmer Cameron Tofer, has spent the last two years working on Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, a complete re-write of the original title for modern platforms. The new version boasts over 400 enhancements — including new high-res cinematics, an enhanced interface, improved multiplayer, core game improvements & bug fixes, higher level cap, over six hours of bonus quests & new adventures, new party members, and much more. It includes both the original game and the 1999 expansion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast.

Best of all, the game has been optimized for modern platforms, including the iPad and Android tablet. I for one can’t wait to sit down on the couch and play Baldur’s Gate on my iPad. You can see more details, including screenshots and a gorgeous trailer, at the Overhaul website.

The PC version of Baldur’s Gate is priced at $19.95; it will be available for download this Wednesday exclusively through the new Beamdog digital distribution platform. iPad and Mac OS editions will be sold through the Mac App Store in November; release date for the Android version is TBA.

Vintage Treasures: The Case of the Marble Monster

Sunday, November 25, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

When you have kids, I think it’s inevitable that you want them to read the books you loved most as a child. You parents out there know what I’m talking about. And be honest. It’s not enough for them to just read ’em, is it? No. You want your kids to love those books, the same way you did.

I’ve had pretty spotty luck, frankly. Couldn’t get any of my children interested in Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, for example. Sometimes I despair for future generations. I had a bit more luck with my teenage boys and the classic SF and fantasy of my own early teens, such as Dune and Lord of Light. (Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy was a complete bust, however).

But in terms of reaching all three of my kids, both boys and my 13-year old daughter? Almost impossible.

Except for a few slender volumes from Scholastic Books, that is. Scholastic Books were some of the great treasures of my childhood, and I loved them with a fierce passion. Norman Bridwell’s How To Care For Your Monster, John Peterson’s The Secret Hide-Out, Bertrand R. Brinley’s The Mad Scientist’s Club, Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price, and especially Lester Del Rey’s The Runaway Robot… these were the books I devoured again and again as a child. And the ones that most shaped my future reading tastes, now that I look back on it.

I’ve been able to interest all of my kids in at least one or two. And as you might expect, they disagree on which one is the best. The only one to receive universal praise is a thin collection of short stories originally published in 1961: I.G. Edmonds’s The Case of the Marble Monster.

The Case of the Marble Monster collects the tales of the legendary Judge Ooka, the 17th-century Japanese samurai in the service of the Tokugawa shogunate. Even if you’ve never heard of Ōoka Tadasuke, you’ve almost certainly heard of his cases, some of the most famous legal decisions in history. They include “The Case of the Stolen Smell,” in which an obnoxious innkeeper accuses a poor student of stealing the smell of his food, and ”The Case of the Bound Statue,” in which Ooka is asked to uncover the thief of a cartload of cloth, and he orders a statue of Jizo (a stone guardian) to be bound and arrested for dereliction of duty. All three of my children are in agreement that The Case of the Marble Monster is a fabulous book, and I can’t argue with their judgment. The tales have been passed down for hundreds of years, and it’s not hard to see why.

The Case of the Marble Monster was published by Scholastic Books in 1961. It was 45 cents in paperback for a slender 112 pages; you can buy copies on e-Bay for roughly ten times that. It’s well worth it.

Dabir and Asim Discover England

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Our Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones posted the news on his blog on Friday, but I thought it was worth repeating here: new British publisher Head of Zeus has picked up The Chronicles of Sword and Sand (known around these parts as the adventures of Dabir and Asim) for British publication.

The first volume, The Desert of Souls, was published here in the US on February 15, 2011, and the exciting sequel, Bones of the Old Ones, is scheduled to arrive in less than three weeks. Head of Zeus will bring both into print overseas for the first time beginning in April of 2013.

The Desert of Souls was called “An Arabian Nights adventure as written by Robert E Howard” by Dave Drake, and Bones of the Old Ones received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. In a recent feature review, SF Signal called the second volume “A damn good tale that not only pays homage to the masters, but sets its own print on the genre.”

Bones of the Old Ones is the best fantasy I’ve read in years. It’s a rollicking adventure that follows Dabir and Asim on a daring quest across the landscape of 8th Century Arabia, packed with ancient secrets, underground lairs, dread pacts, mysterious sorcery, desperate heroism, and moments of laugh-out-loud humor. The cast is much larger than The Desert of Souls, and the stakes are higher, as Dabir and Asim race against time to prevent an ancient sorcerous cabal from plunging the world into eternal winter.

Goodreads is offering signed copies of The Bones of the Old Ones — and copies of The Desert of Souls — to three lucky winners this month; visit Goodreads to enter. The winners will be announced December 19th. And now that The Desert of Souls is available in trade paperback, Amazon.com is selling the hardcover for just 10 bucks — get them while they last.

The Bones of the Old Ones will be released in North America on December 11. We first reported on it back in August.

Kobold Quarterly Magazine Goes Down Fighting

Monday, November 19, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The terrific gaming magazine Kobold Quarterly — which we featured here just two weeks ago — has ceased publication. The final issue is #23, Fall 2012.

Publisher and editor Wolfgang Baur posted this announcement on Friday:

It’s a fact that in every fantasy roleplaying game… a kobold’s life is short. They’re wily and quick, but they have few hit points. Sooner or later they go down — fighting. That day has come for Kobold Quarterly magazine. After five years of publication, Shelly and I are closing the doors on the little fanzine that could.

I always hoped that Kobold Quarterly would someday be my full-time gig, but it was not to be. My sincere thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the magazine, starting with our stalwart subscribers, advertisers, authors, and artists. Thanks also to those who bought only an issue or two; for us, every sale was crucial…

And now, as adventurers do, we will gather in the tavern to hoist mugs of ale and talk about the monsters we slew and the treasures we won. And then we will begin planning and scheming for the next adventure. Kobolds might be easy to knock down individually, you see, but they always come in big numbers. The kobold crew will keep serving you with free articles, the free Courier newsletter, Kobold Press adventures and sourcebooks, and other projects.

Subscribers are being offered the option of a 150% refund in Kobold Store credit, or a 100% refund via PayPal or paper check. Contributors are being assured that even though the magazine is folding, Kobold Press is still going strong, and articles scheduled to appear in future issues may be picked up for other Kobold Press publications such as the Pathfinder New Paths line, Midgard Adventures, and other new releases.

Kobold Press will continue to publish the free Kobold Courier e-newsletter, as well as big commercial releases such as the The New Paths PDFs, Player’s Guides for Midgard, and two top-secret projects in the works for 2013. Read more about the excellent Midgard in Wolfgang’s recent Black Gate post.

While we know that the only constant in the gaming industry is change, the loss of Kobold Quarterly is a real blow to the field. It was an excellent magazine that captured the spirit and excitement of the best of the early gaming magazines, and it will be missed.

Vintage Bits: In Search of the Lost Black Crypt

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Some 20 years ago, shortly after I graduated from the University of Illinois, I bought my first home computer. It was an Amiga 2000, essentially the same as the entry-level Amiga 500 but with a hard drive. The hobby computing industry — which is now dead — was booming in the early 90s, and there were thousands of fun things the dedicated hobbyist could do with a decent home computer. Video editing, BASIC programming, ray trace imaging, indexing Chicken Cacciatore recipes… and if you were cutting edge enough to buy a modem, you could even log into BITNET and post on those electronic bulletin boards everyone was talking about. Crazy.

All of that was very interesting. But I shelled out my $1,500 bucks for one reason, and one reason only: to play games. And that’s exactly what I did.

I played the role playing games I’d been aching to try out in my last year of grad school, while feverishly finishing my Ph.D. thesis: Pool of Radiance, Bard’s Tale, Dragon Wars, many others. I played late into the night, before dragging my weary butt into work at Amoco Oil the next morning. It was an exhausting and emotionally draining lifestyle but, let’s face it, those dungeons weren’t going to clean themselves out. Countless terrified townspeople in tiny electronic villages were counting on me, and I wasn’t going to let them down.

About a year after I bought my Amiga, in March 1992, Electronic Arts published one of the most acclaimed role playing games ever made for that platform: Black Crypt, the first release from Raven Software, future makers of the popular Hexen, Soldier of Fortune, Quake 4, and Call of Duty: Modern Warware 3. Inspired by the legendary game Dungeon Master, another famous Amiga title, Black Crypt was nothing less than a vast trap-filled dungeon crammed with monsters, secret passages, hidden switches, and magical loot. The graphics were gorgeous, and the wonderful sound effects — the distant clanking of trapdoors, odd footsteps, and telltale sounds of the teleporters — immersed players like never before, and made you want to play with the sound cranked up and the lights turned down low.

I played the first few levels and was mesmerized. Then, in November 1992, I got married and moved to Belgium, leaving my beloved Amiga behind. I thought about the game many times in the intervening years, as I returned to the States, got a job at a tiny software company, worked on Internet Explorer 1.0, and was at ground zero of the Internet revolution that transformed the entire country. Some time during those turbulent years, my Amiga was moved to the basement, where it quietly sits today, collecting dust.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been on a quest to find and complete Black Crypt. It’s a quest filled with exactly the kind of twists and turns you’d expect for a man determined to find a long-lost crypt, spoken of only in half-forgotten legend. While critics raved, Black Crypt was released when the Amiga was already in decline, and was never successful enough to be ported to any other platform. It vanished quickly, both from store shelves and collective memory. As I search for the right magical tools that will allow me to open the crypt, I’m well aware that it’s not going to be easy.

But that’s okay. After twenty years, one of the things I’ve learned is that true joy isn’t always in the destination. It’s in the journey.

Our most recent Vintage Bits articles were Sword of Aragon, Lordlings of Yore, and Battletech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception.

The Top 40 Black Gate Posts in September

Wednesday, November 7, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

They told us you can’t fill up the Internet, but in September, we thought we’d give it a shot. And so Scott Taylor wrote about his lifetime love of giant robots, Mark Rigney examined the genre ghetto, and Bradley Beaulieu told us about his surprise date with Amber Benson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and Terry Brooks.

Howard Andrew Jones commented on the World Science Fiction convention and Death and the Book Deal, Sarah Avery told us how to use our proud geek heritage to survive The Scarlet Letter, and Jason Thummel invited you to Self-Publishing 101. And that’s just the top seven articles.

Here the complete list of the Top 40 September blog entries at Black Gate according to you, our readers.

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