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Skyfall: In Which a Pulp Hero Meets the 21st Century

Skyfall: In Which a Pulp Hero Meets the 21st Century

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Skyfall_wallpaper1 Let me offend as many readers as possible right at the start by stating that Daniel Craig is the best James Bond the screen has yet known. The man is equal parts chiseled granite and lithe predator; he has charm, but he withholds it whenever possible, forcing us to catch it on the sly, as if we’re at a peepshow. Nobody in movies today looks better in a suit.

Yes, Sean Connery was great, but the role of Bond requires a greater world-weariness than Connery, at least in his nineteen-sixties roles, could bring. Roger Moore brought out 007’s upper-crust prep school tastes, but he was never believably dangerous; he actually needed Q’s endless gimmicks to survive, as Craig surely does not. The various Bond inhabitors since have filled the shoes without fleshing out the man. Only Craig does justice to the flinty, ruthless public servant that Ian Fleming originally envisioned, without reducing the character to a dusty fifties history text: Cold War Tactics 101, With Style. Daniel Craig makes 007 both contemporary and relevant.

Skyfall (2013) opens with a shot of an approaching figure, out-of-focus, stalking down a dim corridor. When the figure gets close enough, the image locks on at last: it’s Bond, of course, weapon in hand, but the initial blurriness is central to the film. Skyfall presents James Bond between epochs, uncertain of his exact identity and purpose. Is he still a tool of the Cold War establishment, of traditional spy vs. spy operations, or does the world now require him to be something new? To be (as he is in the extraordinary credits sequence) reborn?

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt

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The Blue StarThe Blue Star
Fletcher Pratt
Ballantine Books (242 pages, May 1969, $0.95)
Cover art by Ron Walotsky

Lin Carter chose Fletcher Pratt’s novel The Blue Star to be the inaugural title in Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series. I’ve found nothing that explicitly says why this novel rather than another, but a remark in his introduction provides a clue.

Prior to this publication, The Blue Star had only been published in an omnibus edition along with Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and James Blish’s There Shall be no Darkness in 1952. This was 17 years prior to Ballantine reprinting it and two years before The Lord of the Rings was first published. Carter wrote, “I am pleased to have been instrumental in getting this remarkable novel back into print again.”

The novel tells the story of Rodvard Bergelin, who is a clerk in the genealogical offices of the Empire in the capital city of Netznegon. Not given an actual name, the Empire is in decay. Ruled by a Queen whose only heir has been exiled, political intrigue abounds. Rodvard is a member of a revolutionary group known as the Sons of the New Day. They have Bolshevik overtones, but when they eventually gain power, things resemble the French Revolution.

The other protagonist is a young woman who is a witch, Lalette Asterhax. In Pratt’s world, magic is real, but only witches can use it. The only exception is through a gem known as a Blue Star. Not all witches have one, but Lalette does. The power to be a witch is hereditary, passed from mother to daughter. A witch gains her powers when she loses her virginity.

The Sons of the New Day order Rodvard to seduce Lalette. Neither is really interested in the other. Rodvard is taken with a voluptuous young noblewoman who has started hanging around his office. Lalette, on the other hand, is being pursued by an old nobleman, Count Cleudi. In order to get away from him and out from under her mother’s thumb, Lalette reluctantly yields to Rodvard’s advances.

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Voices in Fantasy Literature, Part 1

Voices in Fantasy Literature, Part 1

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Apex Magazine March 2013-smallI have gone through phases of reading adventure fantasy, planetary romance, smoke and sorcery and epic fantasy. These sub-genres pack serious power.

Adventure fantasy is an adrenaline hit. Planetary romances like A Princess of Mars are shots of heroic wish fulfillment. And smoke and sorcery wallow in the grit of a spaghetti western.

I also go through phases where I’m looking for the emotional power and the subtle voice and character work of more literary fantasy. I recently read three pieces of short fantasy that hit me hard for different reasons. All are available online for free.

The first was “If You Were My Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky, Apex Magazine, March, 2013. Swirsky’s whimsical voice captivates the reader with a sing-song charm, but subversively so. The very brief story rolls faster and faster down a hill, on its way to a powerful cliff.

Here’s a sample to give you a taste of its romantic, earnest strangeness:

If you were a T-Rex, then I would become a zookeeper so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats. I’d watch the gore shining on your teeth. I’d make my bed on the floor of your cage, in the moist dirt, cushioned by leaves. When you couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.

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The Series Series: Seven Forges by James A. Moore

The Series Series: Seven Forges by James A. Moore

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Seven Forges-smallThis is your book. The books I’ve reviewed in the Series Series so far have had many virtues, and some of them have been exactly my sort of thing, but in most cases, I’ve had to include a caveat about how they might not be your sort of thing. This time I can say, if you’re a regular reader at Black Gate, the book I’m reviewing is exactly your bucket of grog.

James A. Moore dedicates Seven Forges in part “to the memory of Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard for the inspiration.” That dedication sets the bar high, and caused me a bit of readerly apprehension, because so many writers have imitated badly those two greats of the sword and sorcery tradition. Moore is far more than an imitator, though. He does some fresh, counterintuitive things with the genre conventions. More than once, he startled me into saying out loud, “I didn’t see that coming.”

The weirdest thing about this first volume of what will clearly be a series about a total war on a cosmic scale — complete with an entire national pantheon consisting only of war gods — is that most of the book consists of a troubled but earnest effort at establishing peace. Our hero Merros Dulver leads an expedition from a stable empire that hasn’t faced a truly threatening enemy in over a thousand years into the Blasted Lands, where the last batch of now-mythic enemies used to live. The Fellein Empire once mastered sorceries so reminiscent of nuclear weapons, I briefly wondered whether Seven Forges might be far-future science fiction in disguise.

But the people who live on the far side of the Blasted Lands would be right at home in Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria. Conan might have seen in them a civilization he could love — if civilization is the right word for the Sa’ba Taalor. In a hidden valley surrounded by volcanic mountains that are also sort of gods, which are also sort of the ruins of the seven cities destroyed in the distant past, the Sa’ba Taalor have spent the past thousand years in the pursuit of perfect individual excellence in all the arts of war. Their gods saved them from the cataclysm, and ever since, the Sa’ba Taalor have repaid their gods with perfect obedience of divine law, and, for that matter, divine whim. These gods give prophecies, speak directly into the minds of their worshippers, perform geological miracles, and do other, stranger things that remain intriguing mysteries at the novel’s end. Above all, the seven gods of the Seven Forges require constant readiness for ass-kicking.

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November Short Story Roundup

November Short Story Roundup

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oie_852046AW469KF6The Autumn or November issue, or simply Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #18, finally showed up, so let me start this month’s roundup by digging right into Mssrs. Simmons’, Farney’s, and Ledbetter’s magazine.

Of the various fantasy magazines I read, HFQ is my favorite. Not only is it dedicated entirely to the subject matter of its title, its contents are consistently of the best quality. That means they find the stories that don’t settle for the usual and too-often-repeated S&S fixtures and are capable of stirring up the genre’s thick and tired blood.

In its pages I’ve read about chess with King Oberon, a desperate flight from a ghostly lion, and vast necromantic battles. I’ve found writers like Seamus Bayne and Michael R. Fletcher, who make me stop what I’m doing and read their stories. They also get great artists to create terrific banner art for them. This month’s image, “Song of Battlefield”, is by Norimichi Tanka.

One of the strongest appeals of S&S is its ability to sweep us out of our lives into more heroic places: somewhere life isn’t divided into hours spent in gray cubicles or cars stuck in traffic. The reality of such worlds would be much more grim and the rewards fleeting.

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Star Trek: Nemesis, One Generation’s Final Frontier

Star Trek: Nemesis, One Generation’s Final Frontier

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NemesisposterLet it be known that I missed the release of Star Trek: Nemesis because, in 2002, I was busy shepherding the next generation of science fiction fans into this wondrous, weary world. Eleven years later, I finally have the time to rectify that deficiency.

If the initial appeal of Star Trek (the TV series) was interstellar adventure coupled with wear-it-on-your-sleeve humanism, the long term attraction has proven to be much like that of visiting extended family, the kind of affable clan where reunions are always a treat.  Even if the vehicle in question is a stinker (Star Trek: The Motion Picture et al), a certain pleasure remains simply in spending a few hours in the company of trusted, far-flung friends.

Sure enough, good company is the chief pleasure of the Next Generation’s final outing. Nemesis proves to be a convoluted, shadowy film that trots out any number of sci-fi standbys (baddies in stiff vinyl costumes, fearsome ships much larger than the Enterprise, and diplomatic missions fraught with duplicity and danger), but it’s not by any means a disaster. Gone are the bright scarlet and black uniforms of old; now that the crew has aged a bit, a more somber black-and-heather-blue attire holds sway. Perhaps this is metaphorical? More than a few of our old friends do seem to be feeling the miles. Two exceptions: newlyweds Deanna Troi and Will Riker both look better than ever. Actors Mirina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes are lucky people; age has brought out a rugged sturdiness to their familiar faces.

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Self-Published Book Review: Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto by John M. Whalen

Self-Published Book Review: Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto by John M. Whalen

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Vampire_SiegeI have a soft spot for Weird Westerns. (I know, last month I said I have a soft spot for dwarves. Well, they’re both true. If anyone ever writes a Weird Western with a dwarf protagonist, I’ll be all over it.) This wasn’t always the case, but a couple of years ago I had an idea for a story that turned out to be a Weird Western, and I developed an appreciation for the genre in the process of writing it. (Not that I’ve yet managed to sell that story, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I didn’t want to review  Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto last month, partly because I had just reviewed a vampire book the month before, and to be honest, I’m not much of a fan of vampires. At least in this book, the vampires were unabashedly bad guys, drinking the blood of the living and engaging in all sorts of debauchery. The main character of the book is Mordecai Slate, a professional vampire hunter in the Old West. Apparently, vampires were more of a problem back then than I realized. Mordecai has been hired to capture, rather than kill, a vampire, and to bring him back to be staked by Don Pedro to avenge his daughter. It’s an unusual mission for Mordecai, but the pay is very good, so he takes it.

Capturing the vampire, Kord Manion, proves easy enough, but soon Kord’s brother Dax and his gang are on Mordecai’s tail. He plans to set up an ambush for the six of them, but he runs into some trouble on the way, rescuing a girl from some outlaws, and gets himself shot. He needs to visit the doctor at the small town of Rio Verde, renamed Rio Muerto since the river dried up, and that doesn’t give him enough time to recover before Dax and his gang are at the town’s doorstep and he needs to convince the suspicious townsfolk to help him before the place is destroyed.

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Two Perspectives are Better Than One: A Review of A Short History of Fantasy

Two Perspectives are Better Than One: A Review of A Short History of Fantasy

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A Short History of FantasyI recently reviewed L. Sprague de Camp’s 1976 Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers and Lin Carter’s 1973 Imaginary Worlds. As good as both were, I lamented that there didn’t seem to be a history of fantasy past the mid 1970s.

But thankfully, I was wrong. Enter Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James’s wonderful 2009 A Short History of Fantasy.

Besides treating all of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and even the first decade of the 21st century, this volume has other merits that de Camp and Carter’s lack. In sum, it is a more comprehensive and well-rounded approach to the subject. I’ll spend a little time highlighting why and then give some brief critical comments.

First, this book deals with more than just literature, per se. Mendlesohn and James also talk about movies, games, and even children’s lit in each period –- and most of the chapters tackle a single decade. I think this is insightful, in that it condenses all the possible influences that may have gone into fantasy.

For example, given that many fans will agree that Tolkien’s The Hobbit and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were gateway drugs, so to speak, to their love of the genre, it makes sense to think more about other children’s fantasy and their connection to the field. For instance, Mendlesohn and James address in some detail such writers as J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman. I think more should probably be written about the influence of children’s books upon fantasy.

Another huge advantage over de Camp and Carter is author perspective. There are two authors here; neither is American and one is a woman. It should be obvious that, usually, two perspectives are better than one; a second perspective can bring attention to things that a single author may miss. Thus, there’s a better chance that more diverse fiction will be covered and less minutia (there are drawbacks to this as well that I’ll get to later).

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The Whole Northern Thing: Hrolf Kraki’s Saga by Poul Anderson

The Whole Northern Thing: Hrolf Kraki’s Saga by Poul Anderson

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oie_Ballantine Edition

Doom: Old English dom “law, judgment, condemnation,” from Proto-Germanic *domaz (cf. Old Saxon and Old Frisian dom, Old Norse domr

For a crime committed by King Frodhi the Peace-Good against the giantesses Fenja and Menja, a great doom is laid on the royal family of Denmark, the Skjöldungs.

How that doom works its murderous effects on the Skjöldungs is the core of Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (1973), Poul Anderson’s gripping retelling of the sagas (read the original here) of the ancient Danish king, Hrolf. The book brings together the extant stories of the Skjöldungs (which, almost as an aside, include the tale of Beowulf) and welds them into a coherent novel of great potency.

According to legend, Hrolf was the greatest king of Denmark and the most outstanding member of the semi-divine Skjöldung family. With his canny intelligence, he thwarted most of his kingdom’s enemies and built up its wealth. His great nobility drew the North’s mightiest warriors to his court.

Whether real or mythical, Hrolf and his reign are remembered in Denmark as fondly as Arthur’s in Britain. And like Arthur, all Hrolf’s great works were destroyed and chaos ruled in his wake.

From a people whose myths foretold the annihilation of the gods themselves in the end times of Ragnarok, the bleakness that runs through so many of their stories isn’t surprising. Perhaps it’s traceable to the violence of the Great Migratory period when the Germanic people spread out from their ancient homelands in Scandinavia and northern Germany and came into conflict with the Roman Empire and Celtic tribes in Gaul and Britain. Maybe it was just the cold and diminished winter sunlight in Norway and Sweden that bred their melancholy. Whatever the causes, doom in its modern sense runs through almost every chapter of Hrolf Kraki’s Saga.

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Satellite, December 1956: A Retro-Review

Satellite, December 1956: A Retro-Review

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Satellite Science Fiction December 1956-smallThis is one of a great many ’50s digests. It began publication in October 1956 as a bimonthly, and became a monthly in 1959 for its last four issues (the last was May). 18 issues total. (Apparently the June and July issues were assembled at least to some degree.)

The publisher was Leo Margulies, and the editor for the first two issues was Sam Merwin, who had done good work with Startling Stories/Thrilling Wonder Stories.

According to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Margulies took over after that– although the ISFDB credits Cylvia Kleinmann for a number of the later issues. I tend to trust the SFE here, especially with Malcolm Edwards and Mike Ashley responsible for the entry.

That said, Kleinmann (Margulies’ wife) was also for a time editor of Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine (also published by Margulies) so very possibly she was the editor, or perhaps it was a collaborative effort, and, as Todd Mason notes, Margulies had a long history of fronting anthology projects (under his name) that were actually edited by others.

Frank Belknap Long edited the final four 1959 issues, which were letter-sized instead of digest.

For most of its run, Satellite featured “A Complete Novel in Each Issue” (according to the SFE, to compete with paperback novels). Based on the TOCs I’ve seen, these really were reasonable-length novels for the day – in the range of 40,000 words.

The December 1956 issue, the magazine’s second, has a promising TOC – stories by the likes of Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Gordon Dickson, Algis Budrys, and Michael Shaara among others. Indeed, the first few issues of the magazine were pretty promising, though it never really became a top market.

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