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I Invoke the Voidal! Oblivion Hand by Adrian Cole

I Invoke the Voidal! Oblivion Hand by Adrian Cole

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oie_24224952K95LzfUEStripped of all his memories for some great transgression against the Dark Gods, the mysterious one called the Voidal, or Fatecaster, endlessly traverses the dimensions of the omniverse. Always he brings vengeance via his Oblivion Hand, an additional punishment of the Dark Gods. And furthermore, any who aid or befriend him are made to suffer.

Oblivion Hand (Wildside Press 2001) is a fix-up of eight early stories by Adrian Cole about his dark wanderer, the Voidal. Cole’s amnesiac protagonist was introduced in a chapbook titled “The Coming of the Voidal” (in this book reworked and retitled “Well Met in Hell.”) Five more tales appeared in a variety of small magazines and anthologies between 1977 and 1980, including Fantasy Crossroads and the Gerald Page-edited Heroic Fantasy. Two more, “The Lair of the Spydron” and “Urge and Demiurge,” were scheduled to be in Phantasy Digest and Weird Adventures respectively, but both magazines shut down before the stories could be published. They appear for the first time in Oblivion Hand.

In a review I did of the first two stories, “Well Met in Hell” and “The Lair of the Spydron,” I was harsh and almost disdainful. Still, there was something about them that I remember liking. Reading Lin Carter’s Kellory the Warlock last week (and whoever thought a writer most people agree was generally mediocre could attract so many comments a quarter of a century after his death?), elements of it reminded me of Cole’s book. Both authors were intent on creating a setting that wasn’t just another watered down mimeograph of Middle-earth; they wanted something stranger. Carter succeeded, but Cole did immeasurably better.

Cole’s omniverse is an endless collection of interesting settings: universe-sized dimensions; monster-infested pocket worlds; a realm filled not with planets but islands that float in space. Countless arrays of gods rule over these various worlds. Terrible beings like the Spydron create and work their will on hidden places they carve out for themselves. Powerful sorcerers raise themselves up above the gods in other worlds.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Short-Lived Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Short-Lived Holmes

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HouseofCardsNetflix’s House of Cards redefined what can be achieved by a web series. Everything about it, from casting to story to visuals, screams “quality.” The fact that it was intended to run for only a single season yet has already been renewed for a third testifies to the success that the show has had. It’s tough to maintain viewership when there’s almost nobody to root for, but they’ve done it.

But I wonder how many people realize that it is a remake of a 1990 British miniseries (apparently lust for power transcends decades. And centuries…)? Ian Richardson plays the Kevin Spacey role. Francis Urquhart has a disarming smile that makes him seem more warm than Spacey’s Frank Underwood. Don’t be fooled!

HouseofCardsRichardsonThe original House of Cards has a few Holmes ties. Female lead Susannah Harker appeared opposite Charlton Heston in the TV version of Crucifer of Blood, a modified version of The Sign of the Four.

She was also the client in Jeremy Brett’s version of The Adventure of the Dying Detective. Also, Colin Jeavons was Brett’s Inspector Lestrade. But it is Richardson’s brief tenure as Sherlock Holmes that we will look at now.

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Politics and Fantasy Make Strange Bedfellows

Politics and Fantasy Make Strange Bedfellows

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strange bedfellowsIn January, both M. Harold Page and I wrote posts about politics in fantasy literature. While we came at the topic from different points, I think we narrowed in on the same conclusion. I quote from Page’s post:

Of all the genres, Fantasy must be the worst possible channel for the politically minded author. They simply can’t be heard over that clash of steel and the roar of dragons…

Really enjoyed and appreciated his post. And I do take his point – escapism is great fun and entertaining. But ultimately escape and make believe can only go so far, and at other times and places we will have other needs, other reasons to want to read. Something that touches us inside.

The reason I’m coming back to this topic, perhaps more convinced than I was before of this serious liability in fantasy, is that I’ve just read Strange Bedfellows: An Anthology of Political Science Fiction. I’d mentioned the anthology in my post as something I was looking forward to reading.

Now that I have, maybe I’m having one of those stumbling-upon-a-watch-in-the-heath moments, because, for the life of me, I can’t see how fantasy could have done even a fraction of what this anthology seems to have accomplished effortlessly. A few examples will make this clear.

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The Series Series: Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk

The Series Series: Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk

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Blood and Iron Jon Sprunk-smallOf all the wild re-envisionings of the Crusades I’ve seen lately, Jon Sprunk’s Blood and Iron may be the wildest. His alternate-universe Europeans are recognizably European, but the opposing culture they face is that of a Babylonian Empire that never fell. And why has this Babylon-by-another-name persisted for thousands of years, so powerful that only its own internal strife can shake it? Because its royals actually have the supernatural powers and demi-god ancestry that the ruling class of our world’s Fertile Crescent claimed.

The Crusades seem to be having a moment in fantasy literature. This is the third novel I’ve covered this year that reimagines them. David Hair’s novel Mage’s Blood separated east and west with a sea so storm-ridden it could only be crossed every twelve years by means of a giant magic bridge, and the twelfth year coming was sure to unleash war. The alternate history in M. Harold Page’s Marshal Versus the Assassins was much more familiar — basically our own, with the addition of a few conspiracies and with unambiguously real miracles.

Jon Sprunk’s book takes the prize for strange worldbuilding. The Akeshian Empire is approximately what the Akkadian Empire might have looked like, had each of its major cities lasted as long and urbanized as complexly as Rome did. When monotheism comes to Akeshia, it arrives as a local heresy run amok, rather than as a foreign faith attracting converts. Akeshia’s gods are not kind gods; its semi-divine ruling caste are not nice people. However, when our hero comes to understand them from something closer to their own perspective, he finds much to admire and many people worth trying to save from the civil war that is beginning to take shape around him.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 6

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 6

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Firefly cast-smallHey there! I’m back this week with part 6 of my examination of the Firefly series. So far, we’ve covered the pilot in Part 1, episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked”) in Part 2, “Shindig” and “Safe “ in Part 3, “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Jaynestown” in Part 4, and “Out of Gas” and “Ariel” in Part 5.

We’re into the second half of the season, where I really feel the show finds its stride.

First up, War Stories!

War Stories (Episode 10)

It starts with Simon and Shepherd Book (who was absent last episode during the hospital heist) discussing River’s condition. Simon thinks he’s closing in on what the Alliance did to her. River is struggling, though, because the treatments aren’t working all the time.

The crew is feeling good after their last job, though Wash gets irritated with Zoe for not backing his plan to cut out the middlemen when selling their loot. Instead, she takes the captain’s side in the discussion, and Wash feels Mal and Zoe are too close. Meanwhile, Inara’s attractive female client arrives on the ship. Jayne sees them and announces that he’ll be in his bunk. Classic Jayne!

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His Name is Vengeance: Kellory the Warlock by Lin Carter

His Name is Vengeance: Kellory the Warlock by Lin Carter

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BKTG22855Poor Lin Carter: perhaps the greatest champion heroic fantasy ever had, an editor with few equals, one of the most knowledgeable fan boys in the world, but a poor writer. I think he would have liked his stories and novels to be remembered more fondly than they are. I believe Kellory the Warlock proves he had the potential to have been a better writer.

Carter remains despised among the Robert E. Howard scholars for his involvement in Sprague de Camp’s Conan projects. As recently as 2008, Morgan Holmes over at the Robert E. Howard United Press Association was giving him grief for his sins against good prose in general and REH in particular.

It’s easy to be rough on Lin Carter’s writing. For my very first review on Swords & Sorcery: A Blog, I really lit into Carter’s debut novel, Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. It’s derived entirely from Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, which should mean good, pulpy fun, but instead it’s awful with no redeeming qualities. The plot isn’t built well enough to merit being called ramshackle, the characters are thin and bloodless because they’re cut out of cardboard, and the writing is lumpy and turgid. Even the cover stinks.

But his bad prose is overshadowed by the importance of his editing. His most prestigious work was the creation of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (being reviewed one volume at a time here on Black Gate by Keith West). It resurrected many of the forebears of genre fantasy fiction (e.g. James Branch Cabell, H. Rider Hagard) and introduced several new authors to the public (Katherine Kurtz, Joy Chant).

The series also included several books, one being Imaginary Worlds, about the history and evolution of fantasy (though it’s been pointed out by no less a literary figure than Peter Beagle that Carter’s research was poor and his attributions incorrect). Nevertheless, these works represent one of the earliest efforts to provide a critical study of the genre.

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Review of Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones

Review of Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones

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Pathfinder Tales Stalking the Beast-smallLike many fantasy fans of my generation and the generation before (Gen X and Baby Boom respectively), I was ushered into the genre by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and C.S. Lewis. There were others, of course, but those were the big three. Narnia gave me my first taste of a secondary world populated by mythical creatures, witches and wizards, and talking beasts. Burroughs inched me toward a more Americanized “sword and sorcery” via the “sword-and-planet” Barsoom novels. Howard’s gritty, fabled world of a certain barbaric Cimmerian delivered the full-on S&S.

Branching out from Narnia, I found my way to the towering, epic high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. And moving on from Howard I stumbled into the dangerous alleyways of Lankhmar in Fritz Leiber’s world of Nehwon.

Not surprisingly, when I got wind of a game that allowed you to invent your own characters and take them on adventures in such worlds via some cool dice, maps, rulebooks, and a little bit of imagination, I was all over it. By the sixth grade I was a devout Dungeons & Dragons player, and Tolkien was my favorite author. Both statements remain true.

So perhaps it’s a bit surprising, given this profile, that I never delved into any of the D&D novelizations — the Dragonlance Chronicles and their ilk. (I did read some of the D&D Endless Quest books, which were in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure, lured by their solo-gaming appeal — a craving that was better met by the Lone Wolf and Fighting Fantasy game books.)

My reading of Howard Andrew Jones’s new novel Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast may be a test case on whether it stands on its own merits because, first, I’ve just never been much into tie-in novels. (Somewhere along the line I read a Star Wars novel, and in junior high I went on a Doctor Who kick. There were also a couple movie novelizations in the mix — inevitably written by Alan Dean Foster. But when it comes to full disclosure on that point, there’s just not much to disclose.)

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Misrule

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Misrule

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LeeQuestion – What do Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, James Bond, Fu Manchu, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, John Belushi and Sherlock Holmes all have in common?

Answer – Lee. Christopher Lee (one of his autobiographies was titled Lord of Misrule)

In May, talented British actor Christopher Lee turns 92 years old. Thanks to his performance as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he is as popular today as he ever has been. And proving he knows how to get in on a winning franchise, he was Count Dooku in the second Star Wars trilogy. Which chronologically was the… oh, never mind.

But Lee first made his name in the horror flicks produced by Hammer Films in Great Britain in the late fifties and sixties. Lee played the monster (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy), while friend Peter Cushing was the protagonist.

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Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

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Beyond the Veil Janet Morris-smallI continue with my review of the 5-star, Author’s Cut editions of Janet Morris’s classic of Homeric Heroic Fantasy, the Beyond Sanctuary Trilogy, of which Beyond the Veil is the second book. Once again, she does not disappoint in this stirring novel of political and religious intrigue, dark magic, gods and men, witches and mages, and the price of love and war.

This is a pivotal book in the trilogy, where foreshadowing and story threads begin to weave in and out to form a tapestry, telling a tale of friends who become foes, enemies who become allies, and what fate lies in store for certain demigods and mortals.

Now, after the battle to win Wizardwall that took place in book one, Beyond Sanctuary, Tempus, Niko, and the Sacred Band are caught between the local rebels and the empire of Mygdonia’s blackest magic. Once again, “War is coming, sending ahead its customary harbingers: fear and falsity and fools.”

It begins with the murder of a courier on his way to meet with Tempus, and the arrival of a young woman named Kama, of the 3rd Commandoes, (a unit of special rangers originally formed by Tempus) who seeks audience with Tempus, who is also known as Riddler. Her mission is to take 11-year old Shamshi, the young wizard-boy, back home to Mygdonia.

Shamshi, once a pawn in the game played by the late sorcerer Datan in the previous novel, is still under the spell of Roxane the witch, but is now being held as a guest-hostage by Tempus and the Sacred Band. Though he may be a child in the eyes of men, Shamshi is already plotting against Tempus and Niko.

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Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

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Francesca Forrest's Pen Pal
Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

This past month, I’ve not been playing much in the way of interactive fiction and my webcomics have fallen behind schedule–in part because I’ve been reading some great prose books. One of the most recent is the novel Pen Pal by Francesca Forrest, a self-published novel that began its life on livejournal and grew up into a full-fledged, completely remarkable fantasy. For those who have been looking for something different than fantasyland fare, this is definitely a novel you should check out.

As the story opens, young Em, a girl from the floating community of Mermaid’s Hands just off the Gulf Coast of the United States, is reaching for the larger world. She loves her community and trusts in the Seafather, the god worshipped by her small village of intertwined boats on the mudflats, but she wants to see more of the world. With the help of a friend, she tosses a message in a bottle into the sea, willing the Seafather to take it somewhere interesting, to someone who will write her back.

Whether through fate or the intervention of two very different gods, the letter ends up in the hands of Kaya, a political prisoner in the country of W–, near Indonesia, whose prison is a faux-temple suspended over Ruby Lake, a lava lake in the center of a volcano. Kaya is from the mountains, making her a minority in her own small country, and her people’s traditional religion, worship of the Lady of Ruby Lake, has been forbidden. Through writing to Em, she begins to examine how she became a political prisoner–she who had once embraced the lowland culture, attended college in America, and sought to advance in life. But her plan to hold a festival for the Lady, just as a cultural celebration, nothing to offend the government, crashes around her ears and sends her hanging perilously above the lava, in solitary confinement, but for letters from her mother and Em and a strangely intelligent crow companion.

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