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Belated Movie Reviews #3: Blood of Heroes

Belated Movie Reviews #3: Blood of Heroes

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The Blood of Heroes poster-smallThe 80s were quite a time for movies (word has even reached me that certain millennials have discovered the decade over at Tor.com), and some of my favorites are firmly rooted in that era — and one of my favorites from that decade is the 1989 Rutgur Hauer, Joan Chen, Vincent “REH” D’Onofrio effort The Blood of Heroes (BoH).

BoH stands both above and beside the many other dystopian movies for being a post-apocalyptic sports movie. And here’s the thing — that is ALL it is.

The apocalypse that put the world into such a sorry state? Not discussed — too busy trying to put a dog skull on a stake.

The high-tech dingus that will turn things around? That doesn’t happen in this movie — too busy winning matches in the hinterlands.

The guy-who-knows-the-only-weakness-of-Lord Motherraper? Also does not happen. Gotta win matches in the hinterlands to get into the Red City match.

But surely Joan Chen is going to get revenge on Lord Motherraper for murdering her family when he was roaming the world for steel and they wouldn’t name another target, a military target.

NO! Her family is alive and well, she just wants more out of her life than sustenance farming. And that means being a kwik for a team of juggers, sticking dog skulls on stakes in the hinterlands to win enough matches to play in the Red City and the big leagues!

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Amazing Stories, August 1967: A Retro-Review

Amazing Stories, August 1967: A Retro-Review

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Amazing Stories August 1967-smallI have recently covered a lot of issues of Amazing (and Fantastic) from the Cele Goldsmith/Lalli era, which extended (officially) from December 1958 through June 1965. The two magazines were then sold to Ultimate Publishing, owned by Sol Cohen. Cohen (and managing editor Joseph Ross) immediately instituted a policy of publishing mostly reprints of stories previously published in Amazing/Fantastic, which lasted until Ted White took over in 1969. (White’s issues still featured reprints for a while, but by the time I was buying the magazine (in 1974) the cover would proclaim “All Stories New – No Reprints.”)

Joseph Ross (and Cohen) were briefly succeeded as editor by Harry Harrison and then by Barry Malzberg, both of whom (as I understand) resisted Cohen’s reprint policy. To make things worse, Cohen refused to pay the authors for reprinted stories (technically legal under the terms Amazing had originally bought the stories under). The then new organization SFWA took exception, and threatened a boycott, after which, I believe, Cohen agree to pay at least a nominal fee.

After Amazing and Fantastic stopped publishing reprints (and even before), Ultimate published a variety of dreadful magazines with different titles like Great Science Fiction Stories, and Thrilling Science Fiction, that were all reprint. (Again, all from inventory owned by Ultimate.)

I remember buying one early in my reading career – I thought I had found a brand new SF magazine, and was crushed to realize it was all mostly shoddy reprints. (There was a decent John Campbell story, probably “Uncertainty,” which appeared in the July 1974 Science Fiction Adventure Classics.)

Anyway, I happened to buy one of the Cohen/Ross era Amazings, mainly because it has a rather obscure Jack Vance story that I had not read. And I figured it would be interesting to compare it to Lalli’s Amazing. What is interesting is that, viewed objectively and ignoring the fact that most of the stories are reprints, this is quite a good issue, with at least one very fine story that has been largely forgotten.

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Witch Hunts and True Heroes: Reading Violette Malan’s The Sleeping God

Witch Hunts and True Heroes: Reading Violette Malan’s The Sleeping God

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The Sleeping God Violette Malan-smallThe Odin’s Day Poul Anderson work scheduled for discussion this week is The High Crusade. But, since I find that I have very little to say about it, I’ll focus instead on Violette Malan’s The Sleeping God.

Last week Elizabeth Cady asked Black Gate readers what she should read next. I would never deign to give her an answer. As a reader and a scholar, in general I find that book recommendations more often curse than bless. Here is my simple reasoning for this: There simply is too much to read already. I don’t even want to think about accommodating every well-meaning aunt, mother-in-law (notice the gender bias here? I’ll let it stand: I infrequently receive recommendations from men in the family), neighbor or co-worker who says, “Oh, I see you like to read. Well, you absolutely must read FILL IN THE BLANK.” These recommendations are all the worse (I’m sure many Black Gate readers can testify) when the recommenders are pushing a book on you for no other reason than that they have noticed that you read at all in a culture wherein so many don’t. As such, they often don’t recognize the fine distinctions of what genres or periods in which one might prefer to read.

On many occasions I have thought about and discussed reading through food metaphors. The title of the lengthiest work from food thinker Michael Pollan frames this discussion perfectly. The title is The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In that work, Pollan argues that a modern Homo sapien in what are considered “developed” countries is confronted in the supermarket with a similar complexity of choice that his or her distant ancestor experienced. In a state of nature, the human must choose amongst a variety of foods that grow in the wild. What is nutritious? What will make you sick? What should be sampled in moderation? Now, Pollan argues, the food system has processed these foods into – in some cases – potentially lethal formulations. In the supermarket, Homo sapiens face similar challenges that their ancestors did: What is good for me? What will make me sick? What might cause cancer?

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February Short Story Roundup

February Short Story Roundup

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oie_174947HoPAYr1cHere we are again, people. It’s that time when I let you know what’s going on in genre magazines that might possibly appeal to fans of heroic fantasy. Whatever lack of love swords & sorcery gets from the big publishers, it’s doing quite well at the short story length in the ‘zines.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine Issue 37 kicks off its fourth year of publication with two decent enough stories. The first is “Old Bear and the Grey Bird” by Nathan Elwood. It’s narrated by Old Bear, a non-human native of a land increasingly dominated by human colonists. He’s almost nine feet tall, covered in thick gray fur, and two short horns rise out of his head. His people have retreated into the remote, hidden places of the land and most humans consider them legendary.

Despite his own efforts to escape interaction with humans, Old Bear feels moved to intervene when he comes across a burned and pillaged human settlement. When he spots several raiders about to kill the only survivor, a young girl, the hunter steps in to rescue her. The rest of the story is about him deciding what he should do with her.

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Manning’s Manly Movies: Beast of the Yellow Night

Manning’s Manly Movies: Beast of the Yellow Night

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Beast_of_the_Yellow_NightThis week Nick Ozment and David Manning team up to track down the Beast of the Yellow Night (1971) in another installment of Manning’s Manly Movies…

[MANNING] Look what I’ve got.

[OZ] Another Mill Creek Entertainment 20-movie pack, huh? “Beyond the Grave.” Why? Why do you keep buying these things?

Why? Why not, my friend? Twenty movies for seven bucks on sale at Shopko — think of all the monsters and mayhem and manliness for a measly 35 cents a movie!

Or, looked at from a slightly different angle, you paid seven dollars to squander away approximately thirty hours of your life.

Not alone.

No! You don’t expect me to sit through those crappy movies, do you?

What do you think I’m paying you for?

You don’t pay me anything.

How much of my beer and whisky do you drink?

I have to tranquilize myself for these cinematic torture sessions.

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Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

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Legolas_portrait_-_EmpireMagBut first, I’d like to ask readers a very important question:

Do Tolkien’s Elves have pointy ears?

This came up after my last post, in which I wondered why Anderson and Tolkien (and many other fantasy writers) agree that elves are tall and have pointy ears. After reading this, Frederic S. Durbin contacted me to say,

Does Tolkien ever say that the elves have pointed ears? To my knowledge, he never does. Please correct me if I’m wrong! This is a bone I had to pick a few years back, when some writer somewhere described hobbits as having “hairy toes and pointed ears.” I think this misconception about Tolkien’s elves and hobbits has come from artwork. Artists need to have a way of making magical races look different from humans, so they go for the ears. We need Spock to look different from humans in a cheap and easily-reproducible way from day to day in the studio, so we give him pointed ears. People have been seeing illustrations of pointy-eared elves and hobbits for so long that they’ve begun to believe Tolkien described them that way. I don’t think it’s true. (Again, I’m willing to stand corrected if someone shows me a passage!)

So there you have it, folks! Please help! Is there a passage anywhere in Tolkien’s writings that suggest that Elves (or even Hobbits) have pointy ears?

And now let’s turn our attention to Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet.

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Get in the Dungeon with Munchkin #1

Get in the Dungeon with Munchkin #1

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Munchkin 1 comic-smallEarlier this year Boom! Box comics, publishers of Lumberjanes and Mouse Guard, released Munchkin #1, the first issue of a new ongoing series based on Munchkin.

What the heck is Munchkin, you ask?

Munchkin is one of the most popular fantasy games on the market. Designed by Steve Jackson (creator of Ogre, Melee, and Car Wars), it’s a card game that pokes fun at role playing, and especially gamers who play to win at any cost. In his review last year, Bob Byrne called it “the funnest (Most fun? More fun than any other?) game I play.” Since its release in 2001 Munchkin has become a true phenomenon, winning the 2001 Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game, and accounting for more than 70% Steve Jackson Games sales for much of the past decade. It has been followed by dozens and dozens of expansions, accessories, and spinoffs, including Munchkin Quest, Star Munchkin, Super Munchkin, Munchkin Cthulhu, The Good, The Bad, And The Munchkin, and Munchkin Conan.

As you’d probably expect if you’ve played the game, the comic adaption is clever, highly irreverent, chaotic, frequently very silly, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. The art is universally excellent, and the scripts… well, the scripts are downright goofy. I expected a character-based narrative, something akin to the excellent Skullkickers, but what I got was closer to Bongo’s Simpson comics — an anthology that goes for strictly laughs, rather than attempting to tell any kind of cohesive story.

There are four tales within: “What is a Munckin?”, a 3-page introductory strip which gets the concept across pretty well; “Humans Got No Class,” in which a wizard, dwarf and ranger deep in a dungeon attempt to figure out what a long-haired slacker is doing in their midst; “Ready for Anything,” in which an experienced Munchkin shows a newbie the ropes (with predictable results), and a 1-page gag by John Kovalic. The humor is a little uneven, but fortunately you don’t have to have played the game to appreciate most of it. I definitely look forward to future issues.

Munchkin #1 was written by Tom Siddell, Jim Zub, and John Kovalic, and illustrated by Mike Holmes, Rian Sygh, and John Kovalic. It was published by Boom! Box comics in January 2015. It is 24 pages, priced at $3.99; each issue contains a unique card usable in the game. The cover is by Ian McGinty. For more details, see the Boom! Box website. Check out all our recent comic coverage here.

Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

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oie_9192021nLnODdJxFor those raised in this day of pure unadulterated Robert E. Howard texts, it may interest you to learn that once upon a time a flourishing industry of pastiche publication existed. There were only so many Howard stories to satisfy hordes of swords & sorcery fans, so the powers that were created more. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the masterminds as it were, behind the pastiche industry were either greedy exploiters of Howard’s legacy or passionate fans who saw the need for further Howardian adventures. As a fan myself at the time, I was quite happy to buy and read a lot of them. Most weren’t better than alright but they scratched an itch.

De Camp (who fiddled mercilessly with Howard’s own short stories) and Carter wrote some of the weakest pastiches. For all his involvement with Howard’s fiction, de Camp never seemed to understand its nuance and why it worked. By education he was an engineer, and the need for things to be logical and systematic undermines his fiction. Carter, sadly, just didn’t have the talent to mimic the writer whose work he loved so dearly.

Unknown Swedish author, Bjorn Nyberg wrote The Return of Conan (1957). Decades later famous authors such as Poul Anderson and Andrew Offut tried their hands at the game. Howard Andrew Jones wrote a good piece on the pasticheurs a while back. Eventually a critical mass of fans and academics rose up, rightly so, to decry the inferior copies — and really, most were — of Howard’s creations.

There’s one Conan pastiche novel I remember truly liking: The Road of Kings (1979) by Karl Edward Wagner. It was good; equal parts dark and exciting. You can read Charles Rutledge’s review from a few years back here.

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Adventures In History: George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman

Adventures In History: George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman

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First FlashmanA few months back, I was (ever so gently) castigated for not giving proper credit to the screenwriter of the Michael York / Oliver Reed rendition of The Three Musketeers. That man was George MacDonald Fraser, he who wrote the Flashman books, a series into which I had never delved.

That has now been corrected, and just in time, too: no lesser a light than Ridley Scott (Alien; Blade Runner) is developing a reboot of Flashman with 20th Century Fox. As the fool on the hill once opined, everything old is new.

So let’s set aside fantasy for just a moment and allow for historical action-adventure as a sideline of the vast cultural behemoth that is now Black Gate. Swords, after all, form a big part of heroic fantasy, and in Flashman (first published in 1969, never out of print), swords of many types are on display and put to use. Lances, too. Plus primitive rifles, dueling pistols, and cannons.

The only thing missing? The heroism of our anti-hero, Harry Paget Flashman. He’s a survivor, and an accurate judge of other people’s character and abilities, but beyond that, he’s the very definition of reprehensible. He’s a cad, a coward, and an unrepentant racist; he’s treacherous, larcenous, and vindictive besides. Let’s leave off his appalling treatment of women, at least for now, and accept him for what he’s best at: looking sharp in military regalia. Ah, if only looks could kill…

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Self-published Book Review: Transgressions by Phillip Berrie

Self-published Book Review: Transgressions by Phillip Berrie

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here. I’ve run short on books that I’ve received in the past year, so anything new has a good chance of being reviewed.

TransgressionsTransgressions by Phillip Berrie introduces us to the elderly wizard Wamzut, who has a problem. His body was destroyed in a mysterious attack in the Golden Void, the space between worlds, and the only thing that’s kept him tethered to his world is his psychic refuge. He’s in need of a body, and the only one available is that of a young half-Alfaren woman named Attina, whose soul has vanished. With limited options, Wamzut takes the opportunity afforded him and starts a new life, calling herself Sarina.

The fact that Attina’s body is half-Alfaren is in some ways more important than it being female. While Wamzut tries to adapt to being female, she hides the fact that she is Alfaren using magic. Alfaren, who are sometimes, but rarely, called elves in the book, are not common, and while there doesn’t seem to be a specific prejudice against them, they’re considered an oddity. Attina’s half-Alfaren nature is particularly well suited to magic, though, as she collects particles of it in her skin. It’s implied that this may give Alfaren enhanced physical abilities, but Wamzut is mostly interested in using it as a reservoir of magic. I was disappointed that Attina’s history wasn’t explored further. What was she doing in Ilbarsis, the city where Wamzut has been the court wizard for decades? What estranged her from her Alfaren father? The novel raised those questions, but never pursued them.

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