Vintage Treasures: The Dominions of Irth Trilogy by Adam Lee (A. A. Attanasio)

Vintage Treasures: The Dominions of Irth Trilogy by Adam Lee (A. A. Attanasio)

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The Dominions of Irth Trilogy by Adam Lee (Avon Eos, 1998-2000). Covers uncredited

The first science fiction website I ever launched was the SF Site, way back in 1995. I partnered with Rodger Turner, Neil Walsh, and Wayne MacLaurin to start Canada’s first big SF book blog, and it was a big success, with plenty of early traffic and award nominations. Best of all, we were soon on a first-name basis with the publicity departments at most of the big publishing houses. That’s how I met Andy Heidel at Avon, who helped me understand their big relaunch as they morphed from Avon Nova into Avon Eos in 1998 — including why they jettisoned cover art in favor of purely design-focused covers (“We’re trying to be the next big thing,” Andy explained).

I loved Avon Eos, and their dedication to quality SF and exciting new authors, but I didn’t love those covers. Frankly, I think readers didn’t know what to make of all the abstract shapes and colors, and especially the lack of identifiable heroes or storytelling elements, and they stayed away in droves. Eos eventually reverted to traditional covers, but I don’t think it ever recovered, and it is no longer a functioning imprint.

I think that misfire hurt most of Avon’s authors in the late 90s. Including “Adam Lee,” the pseudonym A. A. Attanasio adopted to publish his critically acclaimed Dominions of Irth trilogy in the US. The series appeared with a series of generic cover designs, and pretty much sank like a stone. “Adam Lee” died a lonely death, and Attanasio returned to publishing under his own name.

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Living in the Labyrinth: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi

Living in the Labyrinth: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi

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Piranesi (Bloomsbury paperback reprint, September 28, 2021)

I stopped apologizing about preferring old books over new ones a long time ago. One of the best things about reading, after all, is that it’s a kingdom over which you are an absolute sovereign. You alone can confer the Order of the Garter; only you can shout, “Off with their heads!”

Nevertheless, while consistency is required of lesser beings, it need not be considered by monarchs, and so I decreed that the first book I read in 2022 would be Susanna Clarke’s fantasy Piranesi, which was published a little over a year ago, in September 2020. In this I was merely keeping a promise I made a few years ago here on Black Gate when I rhapsodized about Clarke’s previous novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I said then that when Clarke finished her next book, I would line up to read it the day it was published. I think I came reasonably close; that I missed it by fifteen months I can always blame on COVID. Why the hell not?

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New Treasures: The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

New Treasures: The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

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The Vanished Birds (Del Rey, January 26, 2021)

January is that time of year when I browse BEST OF THE YEAR lists, wondering what I missed (it’s usually a lot). One title that shows up repeatedly is Simon Jimenez’s debut novel The Vanished Birds, which I picked up in paperback last January, and which promptly vanished into the towering to-be-read stack next to my big green chair. I need a filing system that’s more like a library, and less like a geological rock formation.

Anyway. While I didn’t make time to read the book, I didn’t fail to notice all the breathless notices. Kirkus Reviews, which called it “The best of what science fiction can be,” listed it as one of the Best Debut Fiction and Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the year; Martin Cahill at Tor.com proclaimed it “brilliant,” and Paul Di Filippo at Locus called it “not only the best debut novel I’ve read in ages, but simply one of the best SF novels in recent memory.” Here’s a slice from Martin’s enthusiastic review.

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Goth Chick News: The Scary Games I Can’t Wait to Play in 2022

Goth Chick News: The Scary Games I Can’t Wait to Play in 2022

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I realize that persons of a certain age have literally been witness to dramatic (and drastic) evolutions. Consider the term “gamer.” Webster’s online dictionary defines this term as, “a person who plays video games or participates in role-playing games.” However, until the early 1990’s the definition stated only, “a person who plays or participates in role-playing games.” Literally, the term “gamer” immerged along with Gary Gygax and Dungeons and Dragons in the 1970’s, but now encompasses previously unimaginable experiences like VR.

Given the current Webster’s definition, I myself am a gamer and have been for… well… awhile, though there are younger gamers who might scoff at my saying so. However, when one has amassed enough expendable income to commission the building of a water-cooled supercomputer called “Winston” whose primary function is to run the mother of all VR gaming systems, I’m pretty comfortable with the label. And though I would likely be brutalized in the Warcraft waiting room, I have a significant talent in a certain type of gaming environment, most of which involve… wait for it… horror storylines.

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Random Reviews: “The Yeast Men” by David H. Keller

Random Reviews: “The Yeast Men” by David H. Keller

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Amazing Stories, April 1928
Amazing Stories, April 1928, cover by Frank R. Paul

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.

“The Yeast Men,” which originally appeared in the April 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, was the second science fiction story published by David H. Keller, M.D., as his byline often read. He had actually been publishing as early as 1895, with the story “Aunt Martha” in Bath Weekly, under one of many pseudonyms that he used. He is believed to have been the first psychiatrist to write science fiction.

When Hugo Gernsback launched Science Wonder Stories in 1929, he listed Keller as the magazine’s Associate Science Editor. Keller also served as the editor of Gernsback’s Sexology magazine from 1934 to 1938.  Keller lived from 1880 to 1966. He served in the US Medical Corps during World War II. A fan of H.P. Lovecraft, Keller was able to provide August Derleth with a sizable loan to keep Arkham House from going bankrupt during a period when there were cashflow issues.

“The Yeast Men” is set in 1930 in the fictitious European countries of Eupenia and Moronia. Premier Plautz of Eupenia is planning ahead for the next war with Moronia with the plan of utterly destroying the neighboring country, much as Cato the Elder ended every speech by calling for the destruction of Carthage, Plautz ends each speech calling for the destruction of Moronia.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Barbarian Boom, Part 3

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Barbarian Boom, Part 3

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Conan the Destroyer (Universal Pictures, 1984)

Filmmakers jump on a hot new genre with alacrity if it looks like it can be reduced to an easily replicated formula. That was certainly the case with Eighties sword-and-sorcery films, which were happily adopted as a replacement for the dying genre of Westerns. Producers of formulaic genre and exploitation movies, such as the notorious Roger Corman, practically started an assembly line to produce quickie barbarian pictures. Following the heroic fantasy formula probably reached its qualitative peak with 1984’s Conan the Destroyer, which has a story by Marvel comics writers who had already worked out every variation of standard sword and sorcery plots and characters, so they knew what worked best. Following that film, the best fantasy movies of the later Eighties would be those that broke formula to a greater or lesser extent.

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Celebrate Derek Künsken’s First Trilogy, The Quantum Evolution

Celebrate Derek Künsken’s First Trilogy, The Quantum Evolution

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The Quantum Evolution trilogy by Derek Künsken (Solaris; 2018, 2019, and 2021). Covers by Justin Adams

You lot know that every time one of our authors publishes a novel, we celebrate with dinner at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters in downtown Chicago. And you’re also aware that every time an author completes a trilogy, we bake a cake. So what do we do when a Black Gate author completes a trilogy, as our own Derek Künsken just did with the release of The Quantum War, the third novel in The Quantum Evolution?

Why, it’s cake for dinner, of course. In fact, it’s cake and bubbly for everyone! Have a drink on us to join in the celebration*!

(*Conditions apply. Must be 21 years old. Offer not valid outside the continental United States. Or anywhere that serves bubbly.)

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Neutron Stars, Dead Brains, and an AI in a Prison Colony: January/February 2022 Print SF Magazines

Neutron Stars, Dead Brains, and an AI in a Prison Colony: January/February 2022 Print SF Magazines

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January/February 2022 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Dominic Harman, Eldar Zakirov, and Kent Bash

There’s a good mix of covers for this month’s crop of print magazines. All except F&F, an ugly piece which prominently features a man smoking. I haven’t seen SF heroes smoking on covers for a very long time; seeing it now, in 2022, is a major disappointment. I have absolutely no interest in that at Black Gate; this is the first time we’ve showcased a cover with smoking in well over a decade (and probably longer). Don’t expect to see it again.

Other than that blemish, the January/February print magazines have the usual mix of intriguing contributors, including Michael Swanwick, Tom Purdom, A.A. Attanasio, Ian Creasey, Nick Wolven, Tony Ballantyne, Adam-Troy Castro, Stephen L. Burns, Eugie Foster, Bogi Takács, M. L. Clark, Karen Heuler, and many others.

Victoria Silverwolf at Tangent Online has been doing a fine job discussing Asimov’s and Analog for the past half-decade. Here’s her thoughts on the latest Asimov’s.

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I Know That Actor (follow me on FB!)

I Know That Actor (follow me on FB!)

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If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I enjoy posting in an ongoing series I call I Know that Actor. It started a year or two ago, as I was re-watching Columbo periodically. I love that show – and one of my favorite things about it is the wide-ranging guest stars. I’d see Robert Stack in this episode. And then, Leonard Nimoy in the next. Hey, that’s Jose Ferrer! And isn’t that Jane Greer? Man, Martin Sheen was young in that one! And I would snap a screen shot on my phone, or find a pic on the internet, from that episode.

I’d say a bit about them: mostly other roles I liked them in. Columbo was a Who’s Who of stars. And various FB friends would leave comments – often some other show or movie that person had been in. The posts and the discussion are always positive, and information is shared. I like adding something that isn’t negative to FB.

I watch/re-watch a lot of shows with guest stars, which feeds this game: Monk, Psych, Suits, House, Leverage, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Royal Pains (USA shows shared a lot of folks), Star Trek: Discovery -I’ve probably done a couple hundred posts.

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Pushing Us Away from Gender-Based Assumptions: “Winter’s King” by Ursula K. Le Guin

Pushing Us Away from Gender-Based Assumptions: “Winter’s King” by Ursula K. Le Guin

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The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (Harper & Row, 1975). Cover by Patricia Voehl

After a bit of a hiatus, I’m returning to my series of essays about stories I find particularly interesting – often because of how good they are, but sometimes for other reasons. My goal is to examine them closely, and to try to understand – at least a bit – why they work, or why they don’t, or at least why they are interesting.

Ursula Le Guin is a favorite writer of mine. That’s hardly a challenging stance to take! I love many of her novels: The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed of course, and the Earthsea books, but also her last novel, Lavinia, and the YA novels that preceded it, collectively called Annals of the Western Shore; and her first completed novel (published much later): Malafrena. And too I love her short fiction, above all I’d say “Nine Lives” and “The Stars Below”. Another short story – or novelette – that has long been a particular favorite of mine is “Winter’s King.”

I first read “Winter’s King” in her collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (a collection I chose long ago as the best single author collection of SF of all time (not counting “Best of” collections, or “Collected Stories”).) (Since that time I’d allow Stories of Your Life, and Others, by Ted Chiang, as another contender.) But, intriguingly, Le Guin’s introduction to that story in her collection mentions that it is revised from its original version in one important way: the gender of the characters from the primary planet of that story, Winter, is represented as female in the new version, but in the original version they were depicted as both male and female.

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