Hollywood rediscovering an old story and reimagining it for a modern audience is always a reason to get excited, at least at first. Not all of these ventures turn out well, but I especially like when the source material hasn’t been explored previously in film. Such is the case with a play written by J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan.
Barrie penned Mary Rose between August 1919 and April 1920, and it was performed at the Haymarket Theater in London, opening on April 22, 1920. A year later Mary Rose was included in London’s “Best Plays” list. It then moved on to Broadway where it has since been revived several times, as well as in London, and always to rave reviews. A New York Times reviewer called the 2007 revival of Mary Rose an “elegantly plotted ghost story,” which is why I’m exceptionally excited to learn that Hollywood is finally taking up the tale.
Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, DAW 1992, Cover by Maren
In November 1992, Disney released the animated film Aladdin, with Scott Weinger providing the title character’s voice, Linda Larkin portraying his love, Jasmine, and the late and lamented Robin Williams voicing the Genie. About the same time, Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg edited an original anthology designed to take advantage of Disney’s new film. DAW Books published Aladdin: Master of the Lamp in December 1992, containing more than forty original stories by authors ranging from Janet Kagan and George Alex Effinger to Kate Daniel and Mark Aronson.
Atypical of most original anthologies, Aladdin: Master of the Lamp contains two stories each by Jack C. Haldeman II, Anthony R. Lewis, and Barry N. Malzberg. Lewis, who is best known as the Chair of twenty-ninth Worldcon, Noreascon, in 1970, and for the work he has done with NESFA Press, has also written several short stories, including “Fair Exchange,” which opens Resnick’s anthology, and “Slaves of the Magic Lamp,” which appears about half-way through.
Lewis elects to structure his story as a tale within a tale, although it isn’t clear that such a conceit is necessary, aside from playing homage to the version of the Aladdin story told in One Thousand and One Nights. In this case, the narrator is Lady Vashti, a cat/shapeshifter who exists outside the bounds of the physical world.
The Warrior and the Sorceress (Argentina/USA, 1984)
Barbarians don’t get no respect. The fantasy films released in the wake of the unexpected worldwide success of Star Wars (1977) were all over the map, varying widely in approach and quality, but the barbarian lookalikes that followed the first Conan movie (1982) stuck to a formula, in quality plunging straight to the bottom of the barrel and mostly staying there as the barrel bumped along the cheapie exploitation circuit for the next five years or so. It’s as if filmmakers saw the sword-and-sorcery genre as suitable only for low-prestige flicks aimed at an unsophisticated market, a sad situation that wouldn’t really turn around until The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). …
The Tarot Sequence: The Last Sun, The Hanged Man, and The Hourglass Throne
(Pyr, 2018, 2019, and 2022). Covers by Micah Epstein
The last two years were pretty lousy for the world, but fairly good for reading! It was time to read some newer authors, and KD Edwards’ Tarot Sequence had been on my list for quite some time. Urban fantasy with a male protagonist, Tarot, and LGBTQ+ friendly? Published through Pyr — one of the more interesting mainstream publishers? Definitely a must-read for me. Plus, have you seen those gorgeous evocative covers?
I started reading book 1, The Last Sun, in mid-2020. Did I say reading? A more accurate statement would be devouring. Book 2, The Hanged Man swiftly followed, and then I felt bereft. The story clearly wasn’t over, but there wasn’t another book?
I reached out to KD on Twitter to inquire, and he let me know that not only was there a third book on the way — The Hourglass Throne, due out May 17th, 2022 from Pyr — but that there was free extra content (novellas!) available on his website.
I caught up with KD at Worldcon 2021 in DC, and he graciously agreed to answer a few questions.
Frolic on the Amaranthyn (Sable Star Press,4/6/2022). Cover art by Goran Gligović
Frolic on the Amaranthyn will be published by Sable Star Press on April 6th, 2022. It is 130 pages, priced at$7.99 paperback and $2.99 in digital formats (available soon from Amazon,Barnes & Noble, and others). Cover art by Goran Gligović. This post announces the release and previews excerpts.
Chase A. Folmar has been demonstrating his command of Weird Fiction, Sword & Sorcery (S&S), and the English language in various short fiction entries (primarily via Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword & Sorcery& Witchhouse: Amateur Magazine of Cosmic Horror online magazines). This novella, Frolic on the Amaranthyn, seems to be his print debut. If you are not familiar with his previous work, you may misconstrue the contents from the title as being a fantasy romance (which it is not; and, you can check out his stories in Whetstone#1#2#4 or Witchhouse#1). …
So, in 2020, as the Pandemic settled in like an unwanted relative who just came for a week and is still tying up the bathroom, I did a series of posts for the FB Page of the Nero Wolfe fan club, The Wolfe Pack. I speculated on what Stay at Home would be like for Archie, living in the Brownstone with Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Horstmann. I have already re-posted days one through thirty-nine. Here are days forty-five (May 5) and forty-six (May 6). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries.
Day Forty Five – 2020 Stay at Home
“WHAT is this?”
I looked back at Nero Wolfe as I went to my desk. “Your beer. What does it look like?” I had just put the tray on his desk.
“This most certainly is not my beer, Archie. What is this flummery?”
The Worlds of Fritz Leiber (Ace, 1976). Cover by Patrick Woodroffe
Fritz Leiber died 30 years ago, in 1992, but he’s in no real danger of being forgotten. His Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories remain poplar and are still in print, and so are many of his acclaimed novels and collections.
I wish more of his work was readily accessible to modern readers though, like his splendid 1976 collection The Worlds of Fritz Leiber. In his introduction Leiber said “I believe this collection represents me more completely… than any other,” and it’s not hard to see why. It contains both of his 60s-eras Dr. Dragonet adventures (“The Goggles of Dr. Dragonet” and “Far Reach to Cygnus”), a tale in his ambitious Change War time-war series (“When the Change-Winds Blow”), one Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story (“The Bait”), and his Hugo and Nebula-awarding winning “Catch That Zeppelin!”
Given that I absolutely refuse to believe I am older than, say, 27 – it’s even harder to believe that we here at Goth Chick News have been covering Transworld’s Halloween and Attractions show for nineteen glorious years. But as Black Gate photog Chris Z and I once again headed south from Chicago at 5 a.m. toward St. Louis, I can’t help recall that this was the time I used to be headed home from somewhere…
But as we motored through darkened cornfields dodging various small animals and quoting the movie Motel Hell (“It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters!”), it dawned on me how many “firsts” this show represents in my Black Gate career; first trade show covered, first interview and first article in the top 50, though back then I think it was top 20.
Needless to say, not only does the H&A loom large professionally, the people we’ve met along the way mean it has an extra special place in my little black heart.
Time Troopers (Baen, April 5, 2022). Cover by Kieran Yanner
It’s a delight to see a brand new anthology from the dynamic duo of Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio. Their previous collaborations (Space Pioneers, Overruled, and Cosmic Corsairs) were a lot of fun — and they even gave a shout out to the readers of Black Gate in the acknowledgments of Cosmic Corsairs for their help selecting the stories.
Their newest, Time Troopers, contains new and classic tales of Time Travel for military purposes, and it comes packed with stories by Robert A. Heinlein, Keith Laumer, Poul Anderson, A.E. Van Vogt, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, Edmond Hamilton, H. Beam Piper, and many more. It arrives in two weeks from Baen, and looks like another solid addition to the fast-growing Davis-Ruocchio library.
Throughout 2022, I’ll be reviewing short stories. Some of these may be classics, others forgotten. The two things that all will have in common is that they are part of my personal collection and they will be selected through a randomization process. What works and authors I look at will be entirely selected by a roll of the dice.
One of the magazines in my collection is the first issue of Tails of Wonder, dated Spring 1993 and edited by Nicolas Samuels. According to a card tucked into the issue, the magazine was previously called (or meant to be called Sharp Tooth), but a name change occurred prior to publication. The magazine does not seem to have any existence on the internet that was just beginning to appear when it was released and most of the authors who appeared in its pages do not seem to have gone on to publish anything else. I have not been able to tell if there was ever a Tails of Wonder issue #2.
Among the authors who did continue to publish after their appearance in Tails of Wonder was Edo van Belkom, who had already been publishing fiction for three years, under both his own name and the pseudonym Evan Hollander. His contribution to Tails of Wonder is the short story “S.P.S.” He would reprint the story in his 1998 collection Death Drives a Semi.
By 1993, the idea of virtual reality was mainstream enough that the next year the television show Mad About You included an episode in which one of the main characters decided to invest in a virtual reality device. In van Belkom’s story, “S.P.S.” stands for “sensory perception simulators” and are beginning to be marketed to the general public. The story is told from the point of view of the woman whose husband, Marty, has decided to buy one of the units.
Right from the beginning of the story, with the opening line, “My husband died during childbirth,” the reader knows this story isn’t going to have a particularly happy ending. However in the slightly over two pages the story runs, van Belkom manages to accomplish a great deal with both technological extrapolation and character.
