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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Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction 1: Intergalactic Empires edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction 1: Intergalactic Empires edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction 1: Intergalactic Empires
(Signet, December 1983). Cover by Paul Alexander

Last year, while I was researching an article on Asimov’s industry-changing success as a science fiction anthologist, I came across some amazing stats. Here’s the summary:

The Internet Science Fiction database lists nearly 200 anthologies with Asimov’s name on them, averaging around seven per year between 1963 and his death in 1992… the vast majority were produced in partnership with a team of editors, especially Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. In the early days Asimov compiled anthologies the old-fashioned way: by himself. It was the enduring, decades-long success of those books that paved the way for the massive literary-industrial complex to spring up around Asimov in the 80s and 90s.

Ha! That ‘literary-industrial complex’ line still busts me up. But the really interesting thing to come out of all that research was an obsession to track down all ten volumes in Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction, starting with Volume 1, Intergalactic Empires. In the process I also managed to find the last surviving editor of the series, Charles G. Waugh, who proved a fascinating correspondent.

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Cleve Cartmill, The Devil’s in the Details

Cleve Cartmill, The Devil’s in the Details

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Astounding Science Fiction, March 1944, containing “Deadline” by Cleve Cartmill. Cover by William Timmins

Pulp writer Cleve Cartmill (1908 – 1964) is probably best known for writing the story that prompted an FBI visit to John W. Campbell’s office at Astounding. The story in question, “Deadline” (March, 1944), featured a bomb eerily similar to the one being developed by the Manhattan Project at the time. As an educated science fiction audience, Black Gate readers probably do not need that old story re-hashed. Instead, I’ll tell you about three of Cartmill’s fantasy stories published in Unknown, all of which are interesting and worth reading.

Historically, Cartmill is considered a competent but undistinguished pulp writer. In A Requiem for Astounding, Alva Rogers writes — “Cartmill wrote with an easy and colloquial fluidity that made his stories eminently readable.” I agree. But I also think there’s more to him than that. In the three pulp fantasy stories I’ll be reviewing here — “Bit of Tapestry” (1941), “Wheesht!” (1943), and “Hell Hath Fury” (1943) — Cartmill examines some deeper themes including free will and what makes us human. Although he doesn’t always follow through on these ideas, you are asked to think about them.

As a heads up, there will be heavy spoilers in this article.

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Goth Chick News: Traveling the Road of Bones

Goth Chick News: Traveling the Road of Bones

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Road of Bones by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Press, January 25, 2022). Cover artist unknown

I have recently been entertained by a Facebook group called View from My Window. People from around the world post pictures of just that; the view they see outside their windows. The fascinating bit is seeing postings from people in the farthest-flung corners of the globe, including Siberia. I didn’t know much about Siberia before, other than Russian dissidents being banished there, but seeing the pictures made me do a little research. I now know that Siberia is home to 33.7 million people, but that number is a little rough since there is no single precise definition of Siberia’s territorial borders. That population occupies 5 million square miles, so my concept of “sparsely populated” is mostly true. And boy is it cold. The average temperature in January −13 °F (no wind chill factored in) and warmest temps averaging around 50 °F.

So why am I telling you this and what does it have to do with horror?

Because my recent fascination with Siberia coincides nicely with a recent horror release from St. Martin’s Press, titled Road of Bones by Christopher Golden.

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Now Streaming: Sliding Doors

Now Streaming: Sliding Doors

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Sliding Doors
Sliding Doors

Although the 1998 romantic comedy Sliding Doors starring Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, John Lynch, and Jeanne Tripplehorn may not immediately spring to mind as a science fiction film, it is one of the two micro-alternate history films that can be used to really explore the concept of alternate history on the personal level, the other being the 1946 Christmas Classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

Both films focus their attention on how things would have been different if things had worked out differently. In George Bailey’s case, Clarence shows him what Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never been born. Sliding Doors explores two alternatives for Paltrow’s Helen.

The film opens with Helen (Paltrow) heading into her public relations office for a normal day.  When she arrives and learns that she has been fired on trumped up charges, she heads back home.  The film shows her both catching her train and missing the train by moments, setting into motion the branching timelines for Helen’s life.

In the world in which she catches her train, she meets James (Hannah) who tries to jolly her out of her funk. He fails and she returns to her apartment to discover that her boyfriend, Gerry (Lynch) is having an affair with Lydia (Tripplehorn).  Fleeing the apartment, she eventually finds herself staying with her friend Anna (Zara Turner) and bumping into James again in a local restaurant.  Over the next several weeks, she and James become friends, and possibly more, and he encourages her to open her own public relations firm.

In the world in which she misses her train, Helen decides to take a cab home and finds herself on the wrong end of a mugging.  Stopping off at the hospital, by the time she gets him, all evidence of Gerry’s affair is long gone.  While Gerry continues to struggle with his novel, Helen begins working two jobs to try to make ends meet. Gerry continues his affair and also gaslights Helen whenever she begins to question him about things.

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Support Bernie Mireault’s The Jam Non Starter Campaign

Support Bernie Mireault’s The Jam Non Starter Campaign

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I’ve been following Bernie Mireault since his career began in Montreal in the mid-80s with the quirky and hilarious comic MacKenzie Queen, which he wrote and drew. When the chance came to recruit him to draw for Black Gate a decade later I jumped at it, and he soon became one of our most valuable and prolific contributors. His art appeared in virtually every issue — starting with our very first, when he illustrated Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion story “The Dreamthief’s Daughter.”

These days Bernie is best known as the creator of The Jam, aka Gordon Kirby, a normal guy whose unorthodox hobby (patrolling rooftops in costume, on the hunt for evildoers) has unexpected consequences. His adventures have been published by the top publishers in the industry. This year Bernie joined with Nat Gertler’s About Comics imprint to release a brand new Jam comic, The Jam Super-Cool Color-Injected Turbo Adventure From Hell issue 2, financed by an independent cloud-funding effort, The Jam Non Starter Campaign. Here’s what Bernie told me when I asked about it:

The Jam non-starter campaign is meant to be a humorous imitation of a Kickstarter thing except the book is already done and ready to order through the aboutcomics.com portal. Also available is a recent Jam-related graphic novel and by the end of January, a trade paperback collection of the first five issues from the original fourteen issue series. I’m thrilled to be back in print, even on a small scale.

I’m very excited to see The Jam return to print. Check out the promo video above, have a look at the campaign here — and help one of the most creative comic artists in the industry return his legendary creation to print. The world will thank you.

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The New Zu Review

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The New Zu Review

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Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Hong Kong, 1983)

The worldwide success of the Star Wars movies, followed by that of Conan the Barbarian, opened the funding floodgates for fantasy films, not just in Hollywood and Europe, but in Asia as well. Of course, Asian cinema had a tradition of making movies of fables and horror stories dating back to the silent era, but the new, hot trend out of Hollywood was combining such themes with heavy special effects support. Filmmakers in Japan, Hong Kong, and even Indonesia were eager to follow that trend, and though they had solid experience with practical effects and models, building the capacity to add sophisticated animation would take time and investment. But Asian filmmakers had no shortage of wild visual ideas to portray with the new special effects, as we’ll see from the early examples below.

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New Treasures: City of Iron and Dust by J.P. Oakes

New Treasures: City of Iron and Dust by J.P. Oakes

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City of Iron and Dust (Titan Books, July 2021). Cover by Shutterstock/Julia Lloyd

I don’t know much about J.P. Oakes. He lives on Long Island, City of Iron and Dust was his first (and so far only) novel, and he keeps a low profile.

But I know that the moment I read the back of City of Iron and Dust I wanted to buy it. It’s the tale of a goblin princess, the aftermath of a terrible war, an old soldier plotting a revolution, and The Iron City, a “singular dark fantasy creation that breathes with menace and decay.” (Paul Jessup, author of The Silence That Binds.)

Paul Di Filippo calls it “a grim’n’gritty yet often blackly humorous political-coup-cum-caper novel… [a] lusty, brutal, philosophical excursion.” Here’s an excerpt from his entertaining review at Locus Online.

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