Browsed by
Category: Reviews

A Tale of Two Robert E. Howard Biographies

A Tale of Two Robert E. Howard Biographies

Comments 14 comments
Dark Valley Destiny The Life of Robert E. Howard-small Blood & Thunder The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard-small

Not so long ago, in a galaxy really close by (in fact, our galaxy), there was a tale of two biographies of the same writer. This is how the story goes. Or at least, this is what I have gathered.

Once upon a time there was a Jedi-in-training (also known as a sci-fi writer) who, tempted by the Dark Side of the Force, figured out that he could make quite a bit of money in the fantasy genre. Tolkien was selling like gangbusters at the time, so why not? Robert E. Howard (REH), a long dead Golden Age pulp writer, had all of that Conan stuff just lying around begging to be exploited utilized. So off to work the Jedi went.

But, in pursuing this decades-long venture, said sci-fi writer unfortunately and eventually went completely over to the Dark Side — full Sith Lord territory. In time, by his own reckoning, he became the de facto spokesperson for what counted as canonical Conan. And further, as a self-made REH authority, he published his own biography of Howard. The Force was strong with this one.

Fortunately though, so the tale goes, the Force eventually balanced out. A small but growing band of Jedi — fully committed to the Light Side — fought vigorously against this Sith Lord, trying to demonstrate who the true REH actually was. In time, the evil Sith Lord was defeated, and died of natural causes. But the task of undoing his dark damage against REH’s legacy would take years. And eventually a very able Jedi warrior would come along and write a new REH biography that would, among other things, hopefully undo all the damage done by the first bio.

…

Read More Read More

July Short Story Roundup

July Short Story Roundup

Comments 0 Comment

CaptureAs the dog days begin, my mind has been prodded back to swords & sorcery by a few things. The most important one was the the return to the fray of Charles R. Saunders, creator of the heroes Imaro and Doussouye. Just the other day, he announced the start of a new blog, Different Drumming. If you are not familiar with Saunders and his superb body of work, go at once and check out his site.

The next thing, while not exactly S&S, was that I learned the final volume of R. Scott Bakker’s Aspect Emperor series, The Unholy Consult, is about to be published. For all my issues with it, it is one of the few contemporary series that has held my interest past the first book or two.

There have also been some fun discussions among various wags over on Facebook about what a list of good introductory books to the genre would look like. I suspect it won’t be long before I’m lifted entirely from my S&S doldrums and return to reading and reviewing the stuff on a regular basis. Until then, there will still be short story roundups. Like this one.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #65 provides the publication’s usual two new stories. I like both well enough, but neither qualifies as actual S&S. The definition of “what is swords & sorcery?” has been done to death by divers hands and on numerous stages, but suffice to say there should be action and at least a touch of the dark and macabre. This issue’s two stories contain neither of those things.

“Then Will Die Your Pain,” by Tom Crowley, consists of the reflections of Konsler, an aged soldier now serving as the attendant to a knight of unclear pedigree.

Sir Garner isn’t a proper knight, just as I’m not a proper squire. There are no knights where Garner comes from, but everyone in the company calls him Sir. And of course I’m too old to be a squire. The other mercenaries say to me, “You’re gonna die out here, grandpa.” They’re probably right. I just need to finish my job first, and I’m writing this in case I don’t.

…

Read More Read More

Godzilla, So-So Solo-Act: The Return of Godzilla (Godzilla 1985)

Godzilla, So-So Solo-Act: The Return of Godzilla (Godzilla 1985)

Comments 2 comments

return-of-godzilla-international-dvd-coverThe most recent Japanese Godzilla film, 2016’s Shin Godzilla (aka Godzilla: Resurgence), is about to stomp into North America on Blu-ray. Shin Godzilla received an extremely limited one-week run in U.S. theaters in October 2016 — the theater where I watched it ran it once each on Saturday and Sunday morning — so this home video release is the first opportunity most people in Region A will have to see it. (I’ve reached a point where I no longer consider the world in terms of nations but of Blu-ray region coding. “What part of the world are you from?” “Region A.”)

As prep for examining Shin Godzilla, I’m warping back to 1984 and the film in the series with which it has the most in common, i.e. the last time Godzilla went solo, with no other monster in sight: The Return of Godzilla. The home video timing works out well, since The Return of Godzilla only recently had its own digital video debut in North America on a Blu-ray from Kraken Releasing. In fact, the film hasn’t been available here on home video in any format since the late 1990s.

It’s also the first time the original version of the film has been legally available in the United States. When The Return of Godzilla first reached American theaters, it was as a grotesque Dr. Pepper-fueled mutant hybrid called Godzilla 1985. This Americanized version has been heavily slagged for decades for good reasons, but the original isn’t a hidden gem like the Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla. Don’t expect a kaiju epiphany on your first viewing of The Return of Godzilla.

The Reboot of Godzilla

Known in Japan simply as Gojira, The Return of Godzilla was a reboot of the series long before that term for franchise reimagination became popular. It ignited the “Heisei” series of Godzilla films that lasted until 1996 and brought the legendary monster to a second height of fame and quality. Which is strange, since The Return of Godzilla doesn’t look as if it could ignite anything bigger than a tealight candle.

…

Read More Read More

A Page Turner with Cool Characters and a Hyperreal Asian Setting: Want by Cindy Pon

A Page Turner with Cool Characters and a Hyperreal Asian Setting: Want by Cindy Pon

Comments 0 Comment
Cindy Pon Want-small Cindy Pon Want-back-small

In Want (published by Simon Pulse on June 13, 2017), Cindy Pon transports readers to an unsettlingly believable but dystopian futuristic Taipei, where air pollution writhes in the sky and class unrest seethes on the ground. Society is divided into “haves,” the yous (pronounced “yos”), and “have nots,” the meis (pronounced “mays”). Encased in air-conditioned suits that protect the yous from smog, the wealthy lead long lives. Unable to afford these suits, the meis cough and wheeze until they die at the age of 40.

Enter our narrator, bad boy Jason Zhou. An orphaned mei who flips knives in one hand as a nervous habit, he’s already used up half his expected lifespan. Trouble begins for him and his friends when their mother figure, Dr. Nataraj, reports two attempts on her life in the past week. An environmental activist who advocates for legislation to combat global warming, she suspects that big corporations are behind these attacks. After all, these polluters bribe politicians to ignore her pleas all the time.

…

Read More Read More

The Best of Cordwainer Smith, edited by J. J. Pierce

The Best of Cordwainer Smith, edited by J. J. Pierce

Comments 3 comments

Do not read this story; turn the page quickly. The story may upset you. Anyhow, you probably know it already. It is a very disturbing story. Everyone knows it. 

from “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal”

oie_18116595RsWNL8gWhere to begin with Paul Linebarger, aka Cordwainer Smith? Son of a lawyer with ties to the Chinese Revolution of 1911, and godson of Sun Yat-sen, Linebarger, before World War II, was a professor of Eastern Studies at Duke. During the war, he served in the US Army and helped set up the first psychological warfare unit, and became an advisor to Chinese president Chiang Kai-shek. After the war, he was recalled to service to advise the British during the Malayan Emergency, and American forces during the Korean War. Later, he would serve in various intelligence capacities, calling himself “visitor to small wars,” though he avoided Vietnam, thinking it was a bad situation all around. Somehow, between the year 1950 and his death in 1966, he found the time and energy to create one of the most original, complex, and strange science fiction universes.

As part of their “Best of” series, Ballantine published The Best of Cordwainer Smith in 1975, edited by J. J. Pierce. I picked it up in around 1984 at the Forbidden Planet in Manhattan, based on something I’d read recommending the story “Scanners Live in Vain.” Strange as I found it, “Scanners” was nothing compared to the mad, almost hallucinogenic stories that followed it. It contains twelve of of his most important stories, all set in the future history which he called the Instrumentality of Mankind. The Instrumentality is the group of supremely powerful humans who rule over humanity.

Cordwainer Smith (as I’ll call him from now on) first appeared in 1950 with the publication of the story “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950). Its frenetic start warns readers they are in for something strange.

Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg was broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the mirror. Only then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice, even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred to have him write.

“I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch It’s my worry, isn’t it?”

Foremost from this opening is the word cranch. What can it possibly mean and why must Martel do it?

…

Read More Read More

Peplum Populist: Short Takes on Three Streaming Titles

Peplum Populist: Short Takes on Three Streaming Titles

Comments 2 comments

samson-7-miracles-world-US-poster

When I first set out to write articles about Italian peplum (sword-and-sandal) films, my intention was to excavate for worthwhile titles available from the quarry of low-quality streaming options. But my intention started to skid, and now I’m turning into the skid. I’ve already dealt with a quality film you can only get on DVD (Hercules, Samson & Ulysses) and a high-quality streaming film you shouldn’t watch (Colossus of the Stone Age). The more I sort through the archives of sword-and-sandal flicks on Amazon Video, the more limited I find the options for movies in even the most modestly acceptable presentation.

So while I continue to sift through streaming choices and look into DVDs from boutique labels, here are three short takes on films in the Amazon Video library (all free for Prime members) that don’t pass my normal picture quality threshold, but may be interesting to the Black Gate readers who can grit their teeth and struggle through blurred, pan-and-scan transfers.

…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less: Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

In 500 Words or Less: Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

Comments 0 Comment

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie-smallRed Country
By Joe Abercrombie
Orbit (480 pages, $16.00 paperback, $9.99 eBook, October 2013)

One of my earlier reviews here focused on Best Served Cold, the first standalone novel in Joe Abercrombie’s First Law world (but the fourth overall, for anyone playing the home game). You might remember that I was a little disappointed, but I still gave Abercrombie’s second standalone, The Heroes, a chance and was pleasantly surprised. Recently I cracked open the third (and most recent) of these standalone novels, Red Country – and though I was a little nervous at the beginning of the novel, I’ve decided this might be the best First Law of them all.

Since it was stated in a lot of promos for the book, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Red Country presents the return of Logen Ninefingers, the conflicted and half-mad barbarian who was among the First Law trilogy’s stars. Presumed dead, the “Bloody-Nine” is living under an assumed name, though if you’re reading closely enough (and didn’t read the back cover) you’ll figure out in the first chapter who the cowardly “Lamb” really is. This was where I started to get worried, and decided that if Abercrombie was going to play some game at trying to be subtle with Lamb’s true identity, my review here would be very different.

But Abercrombie isn’t that kind of writer. Instead, Logen’s attempts to keep his past and his worse nature at bay becomes a key focus of the book, elegantly constructed in his interactions with the novel’s other characters, as the reader wonders when his loved ones will get the full story. The brief mentions of characters and events in previous books, and the moments when other characters admit that they know exactly who Logen is, are woven in expertly without certain names ever being mentioned.

…

Read More Read More

A Kick-ass Female Perspective on Comics That’s Disturbingly Close to Real-Life: The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente

A Kick-ass Female Perspective on Comics That’s Disturbingly Close to Real-Life: The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente

Comments 4 comments

the-refrigerator-monologues-smallThe Wonder Woman movie has received considerable buzz for depicting an interesting lead female character who actually has a personality, is not dependent on some guy to come to her rescue and truly is the star attraction; it even has a female director. It’s enough to make you forgive the silly and at this point yawn inducing CGI pyrotechnics between good and evil ending that is apparently sacrosanct in these sort of flicks. Look, I enjoyed the movie, but for all its merits it’s still a sad commentary of our times that Wonder Woman is considered somehow ground breaking. Problem is, compared to the latest crop of superhero movies (maybe even movies in general) the bar isn’t set very high.

You want some real kick-ass female perspective on the comic book world that’s disturbingly close to real-life? Check out The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente. This is a series of short stories set in shared alternate comic book universe (with characters such as Grimdark and Kid Mercury and Doctor Nocturne evoking various Marvel and DC Comics personages) linked by a sort of AA session in which deceased women (with one exception who for her own reasons hangs out among the unliving) take turns explaining how they ended up in Deadtown, i.e., thanks to some male superhero or supervillian exploit.

The title of the collection is a take-off of The Vagina Monologues — the Eve Ensler play about sex and body image told from the perspectives of a variety of women representing different ethnic, sexual and class identities — and comic book writer Gail Simone’s observation that comic book women are typically hypersexualized for a male audience and often end up “refrigerated” — killed, disabled, or otherwise rendered marginalized or powerless in order to advance a male character’s storyline. Indeed, in “Happy Birthday, Samantha Dane” the title character literally ends up in a refrigerator. (And, by the way, is just one of many great comic book kind of names that Valente invents for her cast of characters. Also by the way, it’s worth noting that in Wonder Woman a male character dies to advance our heroine’s story — perhaps an intentional inversion of the refrigerator motif?)

…

Read More Read More

Classic SF from One of the Twentieth Century’s Great Masters: The Best of John W. Campbell

Classic SF from One of the Twentieth Century’s Great Masters: The Best of John W. Campbell

Comments 2 comments
The-Best-of-John-W-Campbell-mid The-Best-of-John-W-Campbell-back-small

The Best of John W. Campbell (1976) was the seventh installment in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. Lester Del Rey (1915–1993) is again the editor; he also provides the introduction. H. R. Van Dongen (1920–2010) did the attractive cover art, and it seems in line with the artistic feel set by Dean Ellis, Darrell Sweet, and The Brothers Hildebrandt on the previous volumes. For those books, unless the author was deceased, the afterword was usually written by the author being celebrated. Since Campbell had passed a few years before this publication, his widow (also now deceased) provided an interesting afterword.

John W. Campbell (1910–1971) was more than just one of the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth century. Probably more importantly, as editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later renamed Analog) from 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with being the primary shaper of the Golden Age of science fiction. He tutored such giants in the field as A. E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, and the great Robert A. Heinlein. And everyone from Isaac Asimov to Robert Silverberg credited him with being a major influence on their writing.

As I’ve said before, I’m not generally a big fan of science fiction; I tend to lean more towards horror and fantasy. And thus I know I tend to caricature classic sci-fi as being sometimes tedious and outmoded. But as with some previous writers in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by some of these Golden Age (and later) science fiction writers. Since we’ve covered this volume once before (back in 2013), this time, rather than simply giving an overview of selected stories, I will primarily focus on some recurring themes and give some overall thoughts.

…

Read More Read More

Disasterville U.S.A. :The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

Disasterville U.S.A. :The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

Comments 2 comments

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

Nick Halflinger in The Shockwave Rider

 

oie_1023133dHcFYNm5Cyberpunk appeared as a description of a sub-genre in the early eighties. The word first appeared in print in 1983 as the title of a story by Bruce Bethke and it was quickly adopted to cover the works of near-future science fiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others. The general connection between books like Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash (1992) was the depiction of high technology mixed into a crumbling, corrupt society.

Cyberpunk as a named thing might date to only 1983 or so, but as a movement in science fiction its roots are deeper. For years prior to the appearance of Neuromancer, usually thought of as the first cyberpunk novel, sci-fi authors had been writing about the dangerous effects — on society and individuals — of computers, communications, cybernetics, and related fields. In the UK, J.G.Ballard, and in the US, Philip K. Dick, laid a lot of the groundwork for the genre in books featuring rebels, man-machine interfaces, often lots of psychoactive drugs, and a general dystopian atmosphere. It’s little wonder that Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, should become the basis for the film Blade Runner, easily one of the first cyberpunk movies.

English author John Brunner (discussed at great length here at Black Gate) started his writing career creating fairly standard space opera. In the mid-sixties he began writing stories in more contemporary settings, such as the 1965 novel, The Squares of the City. In it, a traffic engineer is hired to work in the newly-built capital of a South American nation (echoes of Brasilia). While there he becomes a piece, quite literally, in game of chess being played between two of the country’s power brokers.

This move to contemporary and near-future sci-fi culminated in the appearance of Stand on Zanzibar in 1968. Its portrayal of a wildly over-populated Earth, conveyed in the snapshot style of Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy, won Brunner the Hugo award for best novel. It also marks the start of what’s been called his Catastrophe Quartet.

…

Read More Read More