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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask — Spring, 2017

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask — Spring, 2017

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BlackMask_Spring2017“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

In the Fall of 2016, Altus Press revived the legendary Black Mask magazine, reprinting stories from the old pulps with a mix of new hardboiled tales; including a cover story from my talented friend Paul Bishop. Altus also relaunched two other classic pulps: Argosy (which only lasted one issue) and Famous Fantastic Mysteries (just two issues). However, the fifth issue of Black Mask will be out this Fall (with an essay from yours truly).

Today in A (Black) Gat in the Hand, we’re going to look at each of the entries in the second issue of the new Black Mask, from the Spring of 2017. And this issue starts big!

Carroll John Daly’s “Murder for a Stuffed Shirt” is a previously unpublished tale!

Carroll John Daly was the biggest star at Black Mask in the twenties and thirties. Putting Race Williams on the cover guaranteed increased sales. When he fell out of favor at Black Mask, Daly took Williams to Dime Detective, where he also created Vee Brown (I have a tough time buying into Brown, a hardboiled special DA operative and also a wealthy composer of hit sentimental songs. I wrote about Daly’s creation of the hardboiled genre with “Three Gun Terry Mack” here.

But this issue of Black Mask contains a never-before-seen Daly story, uncovered by his grandson. It feels very much like a pre-hardboiled piece and not one person is shot! It’s different than any other Daly story I’ve read and I liked it.

“Mr. Detective is Annoyed” by William Robert Cox originally appeared in the March, 1938 issue of Captain Satan. Cox had over 130 stories published in the pulps under his own name, plus more using various pseudonyms. He wrote eighty novels, many westerns and was the creator of Cemetery Jones and the Maverick Kid.

The story is one of four to feature Donny Jordine, who doesn’t like to sit around and wait for the machinery of justice to creak along. He makes things happen on his own. “Mr Detective is Annoyed” isn’t a bad story, but it didn’t leave me wanting more Jordine.

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Birthday Reviews: Jack Wodhams’s “Freeway”

Birthday Reviews: Jack Wodhams’s “Freeway”

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Cover by Rowena Morrill
Cover by Rowena Morrill

Jack Wodhams was born on September 3, 1931 he died on August 3, 2017.

Wodhams has been nominated for the Ditmar Award eight times, twice for short fiction and six times for novels, however he has not won the award.

The story “Freeway” has only been published once, when Elinor Mavor printed it in the November 1981 issue of Amazing Stories Combined with Fantastic.

The narrator in “Freeway” learns that he has an amazing power when he is driving in his native Australia and finds himself daydreaming about England. As he drives he suddenly realizes that he and his car have inexplicable transported to England, and he is driving along British highways towards London. He immediately heads to Fleet Street to tell his story to the newspapers, selling the Daily Express exclusive rights. Unfortunately for him, while he counted on the money, he didn’t count on the scrutiny he would be placed under. When the newspaper decided to recreate his time from his arrival in England, he allows himself to daydream and suddenly is driving through France.

As the narrator moves from country to country, Wodhams shows different reactions to his abilities, which are never explained or even fully tested. In France he is treated like someone who may be insane until he takes his captors with him when he transports to San Francisco, sure of his ability even if he doesn’t understand why. In the US, he finds himself on a publicity tour culminating in a planned attempt to transfer himself, resulting in both himself and the television van tailing him appearing back in Sydney. Life isn’t just easy and he finds himself in physical danger when a murderer decides he would be a ticket away from the police.

For the most part, Wodhams plays the story as a lighthearted jaunt, as his narrator goes from place to place, trying to regain his anonymity, and accidentally bringing others with him, despite his best intentions. There is an underlying humor to the story, although no overt jokes. In fact, from the vantage of 2018, perhaps the most unintentionally funny line in the story, in reference to America is “They’d even heard of Rupert Murdoch,” four years before Murdoch would acquire US citizenship and Twentieth Century Fox.

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Future Treasures: Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by Irene Gallo

Future Treasures: Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by Irene Gallo

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Worlds Seen in Passing Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction-smallTor.com is one of the finest genre websites on the planet. Originally created to promote Tor Books, it has taken on a very substantial life of its own, with news, art, commentary, thoughtful re-reads of many of my favorite novels (and more than a few that I’ve overlooked)… and especially fiction. It’s become widely renowned for its top-notch fiction, from many of the biggest names in the genre.

How did it all start? Tor.com publisher Irene Gallo tells all in the Preface to Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, a feast of a book collecting 40 of the best stories published at the site over the years.

Tor.com celebrated its tenth anniversary on July 20, 2018 — the forty-ninth anniversary of the first manned moon landing. It started out innocently enough. In 2006, our publisher, Fritz Foy, while attending the Tor Books holiday party, pulled Patrick and Theresa Nielsen Hayden and me aside and said he wanted to create “a river of conversation, art, and fiction” within the SF/F community — an online magazine that crossed the borders between publishers and media.

It took us a couple years to get off the ground. During that time, whenever we felt lost in the process, we’d come back to the word “genuine.” We wanted to build a place that treated science fiction and fantasy (and related subjects) with gravitas and humor, a place to have fun without shying away from weightier, more thoughtful subjects. In short, we wanted to build a place where we wanted to hang out…

We knew from the start that fiction was always going to be at the heart of Tor.com. As publishers it made sense, but also… the entire site is dedicated to storytelling. Of course we wanted fiction to be our focal point. We have since published hundreds of original stories, along with art, reprints, comics, and poems — all of which are a source of pride for us, as well as bringing enjoyment to our readers.

This is a very substantial volume — 567 pages! — and it’s packed with fiction from the best writers in the industry, including Kathleen Ann Goonan, Jeff VanderMeer, Leigh Bardugo, Lavie Tidhar, A.M. Dellamonica, Dale Bailey, Tina Connolly, Max Gladstone, Alyssa Wong, Genevieve Valentine, Kij Johnson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rachel Swirsky, Ken Liu, Ruthanna Emrys, Isabel Yap, Helen Marshall, Pat Murphy, Kameron Hurley, Yoon Ha Lee, N. K. Jemisin, Carrie Vaughn, Charlie Jane Anders, and many, many others.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

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Birthday Reviews: Steve Perry’s “A Few Minutes in the Plantation Bar and Grill Outside Woodville, Mississippi”

Birthday Reviews: Steve Perry’s “A Few Minutes in the Plantation Bar and Grill Outside Woodville, Mississippi”

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Cover by Kiosea39-Dreamstine
Cover by Kiosea39-Dreamstine

Steve Perry was born on August 31, 1947.

He has written novels in his Matador series and several stand-alone novels as well as the novelizations of Titan A.E. and Men in Black. He has also written books set in the Star Wars and Aliens universes and has collaborated with J. Michael Reaves, Gary A. Braunbeck, Dal Perry, Larry Segriff, and S.D. Perry, his daughter. Steve Perry is not the same Steve Perry who wrote for Thundercats.

Perry’s “A Few Minutes in the Plantation Bar and Grill Outside Woodville” was published in January 2018 in the first issue of the revamped Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, edited by Dean Wesley Smith. Only published earlier this year, the story has not, of course, been reprinted elsewhere.

Deals with the Devil stories are common in science fiction and fantasy to the extent that in 1994, Mike Resnick, Loren D. Estleman, and Martin H. Greenberg edited an anthology entitled Deals with the Devil. One of the things they all seem to have in common is an urbane Lucifer who is trying to trick someone into selling their soul, often without knowing it, in return for dreams coming true. Sometimes people accept the offer, other times, they don’t. Perry’s “A Few Minutes in the Plantation Bar and Grill Outside Woodville” follows the standard offer model.

This is Perry’s fourth story in his “A Few Minutes” series of stories, three of which appeared in Pulphouse (The off-one out appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). This story has the Devil approach an aging blues guitarist who is playing in small rooms around the south. He makes his standard offers, but each are rejected. The musician is old and points out that George Harrison left money behind when he died, his career is successful enough for him and at more than seventy he doesn’t have a lot of time left. The Devil becomes more and more insistent in his offers, but is ultimately rejected when Perry provides an interesting twist to the standard story.

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Birthday Reviews: Judith Moffett’s “Chickasaw Slave”

Birthday Reviews: Judith Moffett’s “Chickasaw Slave”

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Cover by Broeck Steadman
Cover by Broeck Steadman

Judith Moffett was born on August 30, 1942.

Moffett’s story “Surviving” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 1987. The following year, she won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer. She has been nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award and the Hugo Award one time each and has been nominated for the Nebula Award three times. In addition to writing science fiction, Moffett has also published poetry.

Although written for the anthology Alternate Presidents, “Chickasaw Slave” was first published in the September 1991 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Gardner Dozois. The story appeared in Alternate Presidents, edited by Mike Resnick, the following February. It has not been reprinted since.

“Chickasaw Slave” is set in a world in which Andrew Jackson was not nominated to run for President in 1928. The nomination and Presidency instead went to then-first term Congressman Davy Crockett. In this timeline, the Civil War erupted more than a decade earlier and in 1852, on the eve of the final battle of the war that led to Confederate independence, Levi Colbert, wrote a letter to his fiancée in case he died in which he told a story of his own interaction with President Crockett years earlier.

Because Crockett is sharing information about his own family with his fiancée, it gives Moffett the perfect chance to provide the reader with some of the information needed about this alternative timeline. Unfortunately, a lot of the information given by Levi to Rachel concerns issues that she would have known about, making the first half of the story a datadump, although at the same time, nowhere does Moffett explain how Crockett’s election caused an earlier Civil War, information that is not particularly relevant to her story.

Her story does detail how a thirteen year old Levi helped a similarly aged slave, Watty, escape. Watty, who, like Levi, was part Chicaksaw, was treated as a member of the family and there was absolutely no thought of him as a slave until Levi’s father accidentally lost Watty in a card game to another citizen. Given permission to go fishing on their last day together, Levi decides the two should plead Watty’s case to President Crockett, who is visiting his Tennessee home nearby.

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Birthday Reviews: Jack Vance’s “Liane the Wayfarer”

Birthday Reviews: Jack Vance’s “Liane the Wayfarer”

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Cover by Paul Callé
Cover by Paul Callé

Jack Vance was born on August 28, 1916 and died on May 23, 2013.

Jack Vance won his first Hugo Award in 1963 for the novella “The Dragon Masters.” He won his second in 1967 for the novelette “The Last Castle,” which also earned him a Nebula Award. In 2010 he won a Hugo for Best Related Work for his autobiography This Is Me, Jack Vance (Or, More Properly, This is “I”). His novel Lyonesse: Maduoc won the 1990 World Fantasy Award. In 1975 his novelette “The Seventeen Virgins” won the Jupiter Award and in 1977, a translation of The Dragon Masters won the Seiun Award. He also won the Emperor Norton Award in 2005 for Lurulu. Vane received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and was the Guest of Honor at MagiCon, the 50th Worldcon, in Orlando, Florida in 1992. In 1997 he was named a Grand Master by the SFWA and received the Forry Award from LASFS. The next year he received a Lifetime Achievement Prix Utopia. Vance was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2001.

“Liane the Wayfarer” was first published as “The Loom of Darkness” in the December 1950 issue of Worlds Beyond, edited by Damon Knight. The same year it appeared in a small press run of Vance’s collection The Dying Earth. In 1976 Lin Carter selected the story for his anthology Realms of Wizardry. Vance included it in his 1979 collection Green Magic. It was reprinted in A Treasury of Modern Fantasy, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Terry Carr (also known as Masters of Fantasy). Tom Shippey used the story in The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories. Silverberg used it in The Fantasy Hall of Fame and Vance included it in Tales of the Dying Earth. When Martin H. Greenberg invited authors to select a work they enjoyed reading for his anthology My Favorite Fantasy Story, George R.R. Martin selected “Liane the Wayfarer.” It showed up again in the Vance collection Mazirian the Magician. Eric Flint, David Drake, and Jim Baen used it in their anthology The World Turned Upside Down. The story appeared up again in The Jack Vance Treasury and was read on the Drabblecast #282. Paula Guran used it in her 2017 anthology Swords Against Darkness. The story has been translated into German three times, Italian and Dutch twice each, and once into Esperanto.

The title character in “Liane the Wayfarer” is a sociopath, willing to kill anyone on a whim or the vaguest belief that they might do him harm at some point in the future. He revels in the good fortune of finding a magical diadem while burying his latest victim and learns that the crown will render him invisible. When he finds out that there is a beautiful witch living in a nearby clearing, he goes to find her with the intent of making her his true love.

Liane’ misogyny is struck down, however, by the witch, Lith, who refuses to even consider Liane’s protestations of love or ownership of her affections. She informs him that unless he can perform a service for her, she would not be his. Not seeing this trap, Liane agrees to retrieve a portion of tapestry for her from Chun the Unavoidable.

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September/October 2018 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

September/October 2018 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

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Asimov's Science Fiction September October 2018-smallI think the annual “slightly spooky” issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, traditionally their September/October issue, is my favorite every year. And this year’s does not disappoint, with an endless graveyard, witches, secret cities, sinister aliens, and a vampire novella by Greg Egan!

This issue contains fiction by Carrie Vaughn, Suzanne Palmer, Sheila Finch, Leah Cypess, Robert Reed, and many others. Here’s editor Sheila Williams’ description.

Our annual slightly spooky September/October 2018 issue is rising out of the gloaming. It’s filled with chills and thrills! In our terrifying cover story, “3-adica,” you’ll find vampires and other evil monsters as well as all the math you might expect from Greg Egan. There are many secrets to decode in this frightening novella. Don’t miss it!

You’ll rendezvous with more alarming creatures in Carrie Vaughn’s tale of “The Huntsman and the Beast”; discover what it’s like to be under the control of a rigid democracy with alien influences in Robert Reed’s “Denali”; walk through an endless graveyard with Sheila Finch to meet some eerie “Survivors”; see the lighter side of humanity’s eventual doom in Suzanne Palmer’s “R.U.R.-8?”; and observe true bravery in Doug C. Souza’s “Callisto Stakes.” In her first Asimov’s tale, Stephanie Feldman reveals why it’s a good idea to beware “The Witch of Osborne Park”; new author Erin Roberts paints a perfect picture of horror in “The Grays of Cestus V”; Rick Wilber’s taut new novella about Moe Berg divulges the location of “The Secret City”; David Erik Nelson encounters excruciating horror “In the Sharing Place”; Leah Cypess tells a haunting tale about why Revenge is “Best Served Slow”; and in her unsettling first story for Asimov’s Jean Marie Ward invites us to jump into “The Wrong Refrigerator.”

“I Invent the Compact Disc in 1961,” says Robert Silverberg in his Reflections column, and he’s delighted to have done so; James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net considers the “X O”; Norman Spinrad’s On Books goes “Outside the Envelope” to review works by Jeff Noon, Michael Houellebecq, and Boualem Sansal; plus we’ll have an array of poetry and other features you’re sure to enjoy.

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Birthday Reviews: Nick Pollotta’s “The Collar”

Birthday Reviews: Nick Pollotta’s “The Collar”

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Cover by David Monette
Cover by David Monette

Nick Pollotta was born on August 26, 1954 and died on April 13, 2013.

Although Pollotta published the novel Illegal Aliens with Phil Foglio and his own Bureau 13 novels, the vast majority of Pollotta’s work appeared using the house names James Axler and Don Pendleton for Gold Eagle Books’s line of adventure novels. He also wrote the Satellite Night News series using the pen name Jack Hopkins. He also wrote That Darn Squid God in collaboration with James Clay.

Pollotta published “The Collar” in the Summer 2002 issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, edited by Edward J. McFadden. Fantastic was a continuation of the magazine Pirate Writings, which had changed its name in 2000. The story has not been reprinted.

“The Collar” is the story of a professional hitman who has been hired to kill an old man. Although he generally doesn’t care who he kills as long as he gets paid, when he sees that the old man, who lives alone, has an enormous arsenal of weapons as well as religious artifacts, his curiosity is piqued. An interview/interrogation of the bagman sent to pay him by his unseen employer makes him even more suspicious and he realizes that he was hired by a vampire to kill a vampire hunter.

Pollotta is known for his humorous science fiction stories, and when his hit man goes to confront the vampire only to realize that the supernatural creature is not a vampire, but a full-fledged demon, Pollotta could have had plenty of room for humor. However, he chose to take a more serious tack with the story, following the competent hitman’s confrontation with the demon and the aftermath.

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Sign up to Support Heroic Fantasy Quarterly through Patreon!

Sign up to Support Heroic Fantasy Quarterly through Patreon!

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HFQ Patreon-small

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is one of the most reliable outlets for top quality adventure fantasy on the market. In his review of Volume One of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Fletcher Vredenburgh wrote:

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is… the most consistent forum for the best in contemporary swords & sorcery. Some may think I’m laying it on a little thick, but The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly: Volume 1, 2009-2011, a distillation of the mag’s first three years, should prove that I’m not.

HFQ‘s reputation doesn’t just rest on quality. They’ve published four issues a year like clockwork for nearly a decade — and all of it available free online. Fans have been asking for a way to support the magazine for years, and the editors have finally created a Patreon where those who love quality fantasy can make meaningful contributions. Here’s HFQ editor and Black Gate blogger Adrian Simmons:

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has brought new voices in sword and sorcery, adventure fiction, and historical fiction to the people since 2009. On our shoestring budget we have hit our goal of publishing three stories and two poems every three months AND started working in artwork, AND starting working in audio; and with more funds we could do much more.

Even just a few dollars a month can have a huge impact. Make a much-needed contribution to HFQ here, to help ensure one of the best modern fantasy magazine can continue for years to come. And check out their latest issue here.

Birthday Reviews: James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Please Don’t Play with the Time Machine”

Birthday Reviews: James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Please Don’t Play with the Time Machine”

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Cover by Mark Zug
Cover by Mark Zug

Alice B. Sheldon was born on August 24, 1915 and died on May 19, 1987.  She published science fiction under the pen name James Tiptree, Jr. and when speculation began that Tiptree might be a woman, Robert Silverberg famously stated that such a theory was absurd, since he found “something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing.” Shortly after Sheldon’s mother’s death, the truth came out about her identity, which she had hidden in part because of her position in academia. Sheldon also used the pen names Alice Hastings Bradley, Major Alice Davey, Alli B. Sheldon, and Raccona Sheldon, the last being her most famous pseudonym aside from Tiptree.

Tiptree won the Nebula Award in 1974 for the short story “Love Is the Plan, the Plan is Death” and won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” the same year.  Both stories were nominated for both awards. In 1977, “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” won both awards in the Novella category as well as the Jupiter Award. In 1978, “The Screwfly Solution” won the Nebula for Best Novelette, but lost the Hugo Award. Her 1987 collection The Tales of the Quintana Roo earned Tiptree a World Fantasy Award. Tiptree has won the Seiun Award four times, for “The Only Neat Thing You Do,” “Out of the Everywhere,” Brightness Falls from the Air, and “Backward, Turn Backward.” She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012. In 1991, Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler created the James Tiptree Jr. Award for speculative fiction that explores or expands the understanding of gender.

Although initially written in the 1950s, well before Tiptree began writing for publication, “Please Don’t Play with the Time Machine” wasn’t published until 1998, when Kim Mohan purchased it to appear in the Fall issue of Amazing Stories, although it had previously sold in 1971 to a project that never saw print.  The story was reprinted with the variant title “Please Don’t Play with the Time Machine, or, I Screwed 15,924 Back Issues of Astounding for the F.B.I.” in Meet Me at Infinity. The story was also translated for the German James Tiptree collection Doktor Ain.

Despite the title of “Please Don’t Play with the Time Machine, or, I Screwed 15,924 Back Issues of Astounding for the F.B.I.,” the story is not specifically a time travel story, but rather a send up of bad writing in science fiction, made more effective, given its 1950s writing date, by the fact that numerous works of the type it is skewering were still being published in 1998 when the story eventually saw print.  The story within a story tells of spaceship Captain Herring, who, believing he was alone on his ship, finds a strange stowaway in a sequence which is reminiscent of Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations,” which was published shortly before Tiptree wrote this story.

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