Black Gate – Page 276 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Frank Schildiner on ‘The Bad Guys of Pulp’

Monday, October 28, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

My buddy Frank Schildiner is a prolific New Pulpster who wrote about Max Allen Collins in the first run of A (Black) Gat in the Hand. I immediately turned back to him and he’s back again for round two with a look at the bad guys of pulp.

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

“Bring on the Bad Guys…Pulp Edition”

“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“There’s something about America’s sweetheart and America’s bad boy. That juxtaposition is what everyone desires.” – Machine Gun Kelly

Bad guy, villain, evildoer, crook, criminal, and gangster. Fiction has a love affair with these characters ranging from low-level sneak thieves to wizards intent on destroying all life on Earth. In many cases, the villain is the driving force behind the tale. Where would fiction be without Lady MacBeth, Grendel’s Mother, Long John Silver, or Count Dracula?

Though the villain is often the impetus, they rarely hold the place of protagonist in novels until recent times. A few famous characters did achieve notoriety, influencing fiction to this day.

The first true villain-centered, serialized fiction was probably Paul Féval’s series Les Habits Noirs. The eleven novels reveal a worldwide criminal conspiracy led by the evil, manipulative, and possibly immortal, Colonel Bozzo-Corona. The Colonel, and his organization the Black Coats, battled the forces of good as well as each other in tales which thrilled readers for thirty-one years.

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Writing is an Evolutionary Act

Sunday, October 27, 2019 James Van Pelt Comments 2 comments

Analog-science-fiction-and-fact-december-2016-small

Covers by Beeple, Gary Freeman and Vincent Di Fate

I had an interesting conversation with a newish writer at MileHiCon last weekend. She said that she’d been submitting to small markets until she was “good enough for the biggies.” She meant Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Tor.com and a couple of others. She said, “I figure you only have two or three chances with those editors before they start tossing your manuscript back because they recognize your name.”

I told her about a panel I attended at WorldCon a while ago where Gardner Dozois and Stanley Schmidt were discussing the same issue. Stanley said he’d been receiving manuscripts from the same author for years without buying one. “But he improved steadily. His last ones were close, and then he quit sending me stuff. I was looking forward to buying one of his pieces.”

Gardner perked up and said, “That sounds familiar. Was it…” and he whispered a name in Stan’s ear. Stan nodded.

“His last story barely missed with me!”

Both editors looked a little sad. “I wonder what happened to him?” Gardner added.

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Intergalactic Wars, Ancient Gods, and Living Ships: New Novellas from Tor.com

Sunday, October 27, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The last Tor.com novella I read was Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney, and it made me want to read a lot more. The prose (as one expects from Cooney) was delightful, but it was also the perfect length for a light-but-also-surprisingly-dark fae fantasy. It had exactly the right number of calories, and now I find myself looking around for something equally tasty and not too filling.

Fortunately the Tor.com back catalog is deep and gorgeous. They started their handsome novella line almost exactly four years ago, in September 2015, and have kept up a semi-weekly (sorta-kinda weekly, sometimes bi-weekly) release schedule ever since. I haven’t counted but there must around 150 by by now.

Tor.com’s editors have produced something for every taste over the past four years. Space opera, weird fantasy, horror, urban fantasy, comedy, military science fiction, dark fantasy, alternate history love stories, and a whole lot more. Like all great editors, they’ve published award-winning fiction from top names (Martha Wells, Nnedi Okorafor, Seanan McGuire) and also mixed it up with some terrific debuts from stellar new talents. Looking over their recent releases, it’s clear the quality and drive at Tor.com has not flagged at all. Here’s a look at some of their most interesting new titles.

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Audio Fiction from Rusty Quill

Saturday, October 26, 2019 Jeff Stehman Comments 0 Comment

My chores haven’t abated in the last year, so I’ve continued burning through podcasts. After a lot of wandering on my part, two offerings from Rusty Quill hooked me on their first episodes and have kept me on the line. One is horror, the other humor.

The Magnus Archives kicks off with the Magnus Institute’s new head archivist, Jonathan Sims, trying to bring some semblance of organization to the Institute’s archive. Going back 200 years, it consists of reports and statements about possible supernatural encounters. In the process of updating the archive, Jonathan discovers that some old statements resist any form of preservation except being read into an audio tape. New statements are also usually collected by audio tape. These recordings provide the framing story for the weekly podcast.

The first episode, “Angler Fish,” was exactly what I hoped and expected from that title, and all I knew going in was that this was horror audio fiction. (And, no, that episode does not take place in the water.) As much as I try to avoid even the appearance of using puns, there’s no better way to say it than I was well and truly hooked.

The worldbuilding and story arcs for this podcast are tight, so to avoid spoiling too much, I’ll only say that outside our reality there are entities associated with our common fears, and they like to push their way into our world.

Each season of 40 episodes has an overall arc. They’re approaching the end of season 4, and there have been five seasons planned from the beginning. (I marathoned the first three seasons before catching up.)

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Vintage Treasures: Matter’s End by Gregory Benford

Saturday, October 26, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Matter’s End (Bantam Spectra, 1995). Cover by Pamela Lee

Gregory Benford began his writing career with the story “Stand-In” in the June 1965 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was nominated for a Nebula Award for his first novel In the Ocean of Night (1976), and won it in 1980 for Timescape. Since then he’s focused chiefly on novels, most famously the six-volume Galactic Center Saga.

But he first built his reputation on short fiction, and he’s returned to it again and again over the course of a 50-year career. His short fiction has been nominated for four Hugo Awards (for two short stories and two novellas), and many Nebula Awards. He’s produced more than half a dozen collections, including In Alien Flesh (1986), Worlds Vast and Various (2000), Immersion and Other Short Novels (2002), and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

His second collection was Matter’s End, published by Bantam Spectra in 1995. It contains 21 stories, including “Stand-In,” the Nebula-nominated title story, an original novelette, “Sleepstory,” and one original short story, “Side Effect.” It came in third for the Locus Award for Best Collection in 1995, and was quickly reprinted in hardcover (by The Easton Press in 1995, and by Gollancz in 1996), and in paperback in the UK by Vista in 1997.

To be truthful, I haven’t followed Benford’s novel career much. But his short fiction is a different story. I found a copy of Matter’s End in a collection I purchased recently, and I’ve very curious about it. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Analog Announces 90th Anniversary Reprint Series

Friday, October 25, 2019 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Analog Science Fiction November-December 2019-small

Analog on running reprints in 2019-small

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November-December 2019, and an excerpt from Trevor Quachri’s editorial

Gabe Dybing, who clearly gets his issues of Analog faster than I do, tipped me off that editor Trevor Quachri has something very interesting planned for the magazine’s upcoming 90th Anniversary year (90! Holy cats). Gabe sent me the above pic of Trevor’s editorial in the November-December issue, on sale this week. For those of you who don’t like to squint, here’s the relevant text.

As many of you may know, 2020 is going to be Astounding/Analog’s 90th anniversary year, and the January/February issue is the 90th anniversary of our very first issue. Something we’ll be doing that requires a little explanation is a series of limited retrospectives over the year: each issue we’re running a reprint from one of our past decades, with an introduction (in the editorial/guest-editorial space) talking about it either as a historical artifact, an overlooked gem, or just a personal favorite — a story that an editor or knowledagable (sic) author found interesting for whatever reason but didn’t have an appropriate venue in which to chat about it.

The goal is to cover the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, the thinking being that most of the material from the ’30s isn’t really reflective of the magazine’s later identity, and anything from 2000 on is too recent. We’re going to try to keep it to one story per decade, though the nature of the project (tracking down the rights to older material particularly) means that’s not entirely set in stone. Some of those decades had a lot of good stories! But we have to save some ideas for the centennial, after all.

This is great news for classic SF fans, and I look forward to seeing what Trevor chooses (and I hope some bright-eyed new readers will discover a few giants of the genre as a result).

But since I’m old, I also have to grouse a little… Trevor can’t find one pulp story from the 1930s worth a look?? In the 1930s, John W. Campbell and Astounding published stellar fiction by the best pulp writers of the era — including “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr, “Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Rey, “Black Destroyer” by A. E. van Vogt, “Life-Line” by Robert A. Heinlein, “Ether Breather” by Theodore Sturgeon, and many, many more. Maybe Trevor is just looking for suggestions. Shout yours out in the Comments.

Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu, Part Eight

Friday, October 25, 2019 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #9 featured a Doug Moench-Mike Vosburg story whose sole purpose was to reinforce (in the fashion of the hit television series, Kung Fu) that martial arts is about discipline and control and not violence. Of course, making this point provides ample opportunity to portray martial arts violence since conflict is inevitable within the confines of action-adventure storytelling.

The story gets underway when Shang-Chi stops a mugger in the park and finds himself challenged by Johnny Chen, the local martial arts champion whose arrogance and insecurities demand he publicly demonstrate his superiority to Shang-Chi. The fact that Mike Vosburg draws Chen to strongly resemble Bruce Lee (who could exhibit an arrogant side both and on and off screen) only adds another level to the story.

The real key here is the young Asian-American boy who also witnessed Shang-Chi’s heroism and whose hero worship of him leads to unhealthy projection and deception. The dangers of idolizing those we admire is the second plot strand that points back to Bruce Lee in this story. Given that this was another of Doug Moench’s scripts concerned with the non-violent philosophy of martial arts being ignored amidst the martial arts craze sweeping the West, his decision to paint the most recognizable face of martial arts as flawed and highlight the shortcomings of fandom was particularly daring.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Friday, October 25, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

The "42 Puzzle" cover — The “42 Puzzle” cover

The Ditmar Awards are named for Australian fan Martin James Ditmar Jenssen. Founded in 1969 as an award to be given by the Australian National Convention, during a discussion about the name for the award, Jenssen offered to pay for the award if it were named the Ditmar. His name was accepted and he wound up paying for the award for more years than he had planned. Ditmar would eventually win the Ditmar Award for best fan artist twice, once in 2002 and again in 2010. Primarily an Australian Award, for most years from 1969 to 1989, an award was presented for International Fiction. The International Fiction Award was one of the Ditmar’s original awards and the first one was won by Thomas M. Disch for Camp Concentration. In 1980, the Ditmar Award for International Fiction was presented to Douglas Adams for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at Swancon 5, held in Perth. The last time the award was presented was in 1989 to Orson Scott Card for the novel Seventh Son. On two occasions, in 1971 and 1984, no award was presented.

I bought my first copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at a small independent bookstore that, amazingly enough, still exists forty years later. When I bought the book, I had already heard the radio series and knew what to expect. Of course, the novel and the radio series are in no way the same thing. Adams was able to flesh things out a little more in the book and could add descriptive passages that weren’t possible in the radio show. In addition, jokes that had been in the radio series were dropped if Adams felt they didn’t quite work.

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Goth Chick News: Beating You to Halloween… Literally

Thursday, October 24, 2019 Sue Granquist Comments 3 comments

Blackout

Every year around the time of my favorite holiday season, reports make the news about “extreme” haunted attractions. This sort of thing is so far beyond your local Jaycee’s haunted house that putting them in the same category is just this side of dangerous.

Why, you ask?

Because around 10 years ago, someone decided jump scares and fake blood was no longer doing the trick when it came to getting one’s heart and adrenaline racing. Actually, the original someone’s were the proprietors of Blackout who launched their sadomasochistic experience in 2009 immediately attracting a very enthusiastic fanbase. For $50 and your signature on a waiver, you embarked on an hour-long odyssey which required a “safe word” in case you had enough of being screamed at, choked, blasted with a fire hose, and having all five of your rational senses otherwise assaulted.

I remain conflicted about what to think of this whole thing, mainly because getting scared — whether at the movies or attending an October event — is generally a safe version of escapism. I mean, the chance of zombies actually chasing you is relatively low in real life.

Relatively.

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Future Treasures: Novice Dragoneer by E.E. Knight

Thursday, October 24, 2019 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

I’m a huge fan of E.E. Knight. For one thing, he hosts the best board game nights I’ve ever seen. His Heroscape sessions, held annually in Chicago after the Windy City Pulp and Paper show for many years, were the stuff of legend. As he noted in one of his epic post-game Action Reports, they featured “Mohicans and British infantry and lizard men battling dinosaurs, giant spiders, dragons, and Atlantean robots in a jungle-choked ruin.” Don’t ask me to describe them, but they were life-changing.

He’s also a damn fine writer. You’re probably familiar with his 11-volume Vampire Earth series, which opened with Way of the Wolf, or his six-volume Age of Fire series. He’s also an occasional blogger here at Black Gate. And I was very proud to publish his Blue Pilgrim tale “The Terror in the Vale,” one of the very best stories in our Black Gate Online Fiction library (and reprint the first, “That of the Pit,” which first appeared in the underrated anthology Lords of Swords).

So naturally I was very excited to hear that he has a new novel arriving next month, the tale of an impoverished girl who enters into a military order of dragonriders. And if the buzz already building around Novice Dragoneer is any indication, it’s the beginning of a major new fantasy series. I asked Eric if he could tell us a little about it, and he graciously shared the following.

I’m very much looking forward to readers, both long-time and new, meeting our novice Ileth. She’s a little bit of each of my three kids spun around my own experiences at that age. I’ve even worked my first job, which I took on at twelve, into the story (although I was dealing with dog poop rather than dragon waste). I’ve been on a bit of a break from writing raising those three, so I’m excited to find out if I have any game left.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

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