Black Gate – Page 311 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A Time Travel Epic of Grand Scale and Everyday Life: Time’s Children by D.B. Jackson

Sunday, March 3, 2019 Margaret S. McGraw Comments 1 comment

Time’s Children is the first novel in a new series called The Islevale Cycle, by D. B. Jackson, one of my favorite fantasy authors. Jackson excels at fully realized worldbuilding, including nature, culture, history, religion, politics — the grand scale and everyday life. Islevale is no exception: a large collection of islands with a great variety of culture and nature among them, as well as travel by ship on the waters between. Our young hero Tobias has been raised in Trevynisle, trained in practical and magical studies. He is quickly swept into his travel adventure on a merchant sailing ship, and then to various city and wilderness locations throughout Islevale.

The magic of Islevale centers around Travelers: Walkers, who can travel through time; Spanners, who can move instantly between great distances; and Crossers, who can move through solid objects. The magic is a combination of innate talent and the use of special tools to calibrate each destination. Tobias is a Walker, and we learn the intricacies of these magical abilities through his experiences.

Time travel is a challenge for any storyteller, and Jackson builds a solid and realistic framework for the Walkers. The amount they move forward or back in time is added to their physical body. For instance, if Tobias goes back one week in time and then returns the one week day to his original “present,” his body ages two weeks, although his mind and memory would only have aged the amount of time he experienced during the “trip.” Trevynisle’s governing rules prevent Walkers from going more than one year past or future. But Tobias accepts a mission to go fourteen years in the past — he leaves his “present” as a fifteen-year-old boy and arrives in the body of an almost-thirty-year-old man. The characters wrestle with the mechanics and morality of time travel and their actions in the past, present, and future — their choices have real consequences, anticipated or not.

I also particularly enjoyed the elements of daily life that affect the characters and the action. When Tobias is called before the Lord Chancellor of Trevynisle, he comes immediately from sword practice — hot, sweaty, and concerned about appearing in such rough condition. When he rescues infant Sofya, he suddenly has to deal with feeding, changing and caring for a baby — in addition to evading assassins still intent on completing their mission!

Tobias is not our only point of view character — in fact, we see the story from many different perspectives, including the antagonists. I enjoy this kind of storytelling, and Jackson does an amazing job building the richness of the world and presenting each point-of-view character with their own voice. In addition to the broad cast of human characters, there are other intriguing species in Islevale — mostly dangerous to humans. On Trevynisle, Tobias has befriended Droë a mysterious Tirribin who becomes an integral part of the story. Through Droë, we learn of other magical creatures whom the humans only know as “demons,” such as the predatory Belvora, all bound by the oaths and laws of the Distraint. I was pleasantly surprised to see Droë become a more central character, and I hope to see more of her and the other “demons” in the rest of the series.

…

Read More Read More

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: “Can These Bones Lie?” by Ted Reynolds

Sunday, March 3, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

The Analog Award was launched in 1979 for works published in the magazine in the preceding year. The Short Story category was one of the original categories and has been given every year the award has been in existence. It was won the first year by Orson Scott Card for his story “Lifeloop.” In 1980, it was won by Ted Reynolds for his story “Can These Bones Live?” Reynolds was nominated again the following year in the same category for the story “Meeting of Minds.”

Reynolds opens “Can These Bones Live?” with a cliché. His main character awakens and doesn’t know where she is, having to explore the world anew and figure out what is going on. One of her earliest memories is that she has actually died, so she would seem to be in some sort of afterlife. Unfortunately, Reynolds spends too much time working this cliché as his never named viewpoint character continues to move through her uninhabited world, searching for other people, food, or any recognizable landmark. Her sole indication that she is still somewhere on Earth is her ability to recognize the Moon.

Eventually, Reynolds does take his story in a different, and unique direction, although it happens at a leisurely rate and he doesn’t really give the reader a reason to care about his protagonist. Eventually, she falls asleep and begins to commune with the Roanei, an alien race that informs her that humanity has gone extinct and she is the last human. If she requests it, the Roanei can bring humans back from extinction, but if they decide not to, the human race will remain dead.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Witchlands by Susan Dennard

Saturday, March 2, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

In her enthusiastic Black Gate review of Susan Dennard’s Something Strange and Deadly, the opening novel in a dark fantasy trilogy, Zeta Moore wrote:

For readers with dark tastes and a deep-seated love for romance… Dennard has a supreme understanding of how to enhance gothic themes with an addictive steampunk flourish, and captivate her readers with antagonists you come to enjoy more than the protagonists.

Dennard’s latest series is the far more ambitious Witchlands saga, which opened with Truthwitch (2016), which Robin Hobb called:

A cake stuffed full of your favorite fantasy treats: highway robbery, swordplay, deep friendships, treachery, magic, piracy on the high seas, and romance. This book will delight you.

Dennard has followed with a new book every year: Windwitch (2017), the novella Sightwitch (2018), and now Bloodwitch (February 12, 2019), just arrived in hardcover. All four are published by Tor Teen. Here’s the back covers for the first two.

…

Read More Read More

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Nebula Award for Best Short Story: “When it Changed,” by Joanna Russ

Saturday, March 2, 2019 Rich Horton Comments 4 comments

Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And Steven suggested that much as he is covering awards for 1980, I might cover awards for 1973 here in Black Gate.

Joanna Russ (1937-2011) was a playwright, critic, and a very important writer of nonfiction and fiction, that latter primarily SF. She was one of the first prominently “out” Lesbians in the SF field, and perhaps the leading feminist voice in the field during much of her lifetime. She was a favorite writer of mine, especially for short fiction such as her Alyx stories (including “The Second Inquisition”), “Nobody’s Home,” “Souls,” “My Boat,” and many more. She also wrote several strong novels, most famously The Female Man. Her best known and most significant extended critical work might be How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Her writing career was hampered late in her life by a long illness. She won the Hugo Award in 1983 for “Souls,” and the Nebula Award in 1973 for “When It Changed.”

In 1972 I began reading SF from the adult section of the library – that’s why it’s my Golden Age, really! – and one thing I discovered there was the Nebula Award anthologies, published each year and featuring the previous years Nebula winners in short fiction, and a few more nominated stories. I read them all out of the library, and eagerly awaited the appearance, in 1973, of Nebula Award Stories 8, edited by Isaac Asimov. The Nebula winner for short story was “When it Changed,” by Joanna Russ. I read it, and I thought, “So, a planet inhabited by women, and the men show up. I’ve seen that before. What’s the big deal?”

…

Read More Read More

A Mystery in the Ruins of the Future: The Bannerless Saga by Carrie Vaughn

Friday, March 1, 2019 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Bannerless, the opening novel in Carrie Vaughn’s new science fiction saga, was based on the short story of the same name in the John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction The End Has Come (2015). It was one of the most acclaimed books of the year, and won the Philip K. Dick Award for best original science fiction paperback. The sequel, The Wild Dead, arrived in trade paperback from John Joseph Adams Books last summer.

When he selected it as one of the premier titles of July 2017, Andrew Liptak at The Verge wrote:

Carrie Vaughn is best known for her urban fantasy novels, but she’s been shifting gears quite a bit lately. Earlier this year, she published Martians Abroad, a YA space opera, and with Bannerless, she’s looking into what happens after society collapses. In this world, the Coast Road is thriving after the fall of civilization, rebuilding with a culture of households. The population is controlled as people earn the right to bear children, displaying their privilege by hanging banners outside their homes. Enid of Haven is an Investigator, who is called upon to mediate disputes in the community. When a dead body turns up, she begins to investigate, finding cracks in society that makes her question everything she’s been raised to believe. You can read the original short story here.

These are complex, ambitious books with a thoroughly original take on post-apocalyptic society. Here’s the back covers to both.

…

Read More Read More

Steve Harrison Reconsidered

Friday, March 1, 2019 William Patrick Maynard Comments 3 comments

The following article was first published on July 28, 2016 at the now defunct REH: Two-Gun Raconteur blog. Thank you to John O’Neill for consenting to reprint my odd stray article so it is archived at Black Gate, which is home to over 275 of my articles written over the past decade. Thank you to Damon Sasser without whom the original article would not exist. Minor editorial changes have been made to the original text.

It has become fashionable to regard Robert E. Howard’s Steve Harrison as the author’s lone failure. Much is made of what Howard expressed in letters about disliking hardboiled detective stories as both an author and a reader. Emphasis is placed on the fact that very few of the Steve Harrison stories found a market in the author’s lifetime. Critics measure the Steve Harrison tales against Hammett and Chandler and dismiss Howard’s efforts with disdain. All of this ignores how the character first came to prominence in the late 1970s when Berkeley Books collected “Lord of the Dead” and “Names in the Black Book” in Skull-Face.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Get Ready, Here Comes Your Summer Reading List

Thursday, February 28, 2019 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

If you live somewhere that, like Chicago, has been experiencing temperatures incompatible with human life over the past couple months, then thinking about a lounge chair, a book and an umbrella drink wearing anything less than a Tauntaun skin is pretty darn appealing. And with perfect timing, here comes the 2018 Bram Stoker Award nominees hot off the press from the Horror Writers Association (HWA), providing a categorized list of reading material.

Now all you need is the lounge chair, an umbrella drink and a space heater.

Named in honor Dracula’s spiritual Daddy, the Bram Stoker Awards are presented each year for superior achievement in writing in eleven categories. It is also the coolest physical award ever. I mean, Oscar is just a naked gold guy while the Stoker looks like this:

Previous winners include Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R. R. Martin, Joyce Carol Oates, and Neil Gaiman.

The HWA is a nonprofit organization of writers and publishing professionals around the world, dedicated to promoting dark literature and the interests of those who write it. The HWA formed in 1985 with the help of many of the field’s greats, including Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, and Joe R. Lansdale, and in addition to the Stoker, the HWA is the sponsor of the annual StokerCon horror convention which takes place in Grand Rapids, MI.

So grab a pen Black Gaters and get ready to make your list…

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Spin Trilogy by Andrew Bannister

Thursday, February 28, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Last week, in my article about Elizabeth Bear’s upcoming novel Ancestral Night, I included a quote from Publishers Weekly about the current “space opera resurgence.” The most common response to that piece has been, “There’s a space opera resurgence?”

You know, I think there might be. Just in the last few weeks we’ve talked about Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War books, Jesse Mihalik’s Polaris Rising, Lisanne Norman’s Sholan Alliance series, Alastair Reynolds’s Shadow Captain, Zenith by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings, Tom Toner’s The Amaranthine Spectrum trilogy, Marina J. Lostetter’s Noumenon series, K.B. Wagers There Before the Chaos, and a whole lot more. That’s a critical mass of space opera, especially for a site that pretends to mostly cover fantasy books…. so yeah. I kinda think there’s a resurgence.

The latest evidence landed on my desk earlier this week, in the form of a new review copy from Tor. It’s the debut novel from British author Andrew Bannister, the first in a promised trilogy, and it received some enviable attention in the UK when it was first published there three years ago. Here’s the notice from The Guardian, from their May 2016 roundup of the Best Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels.

Space opera lends itself to the depiction of grand dimensions and great duration, but it’s one thing to talk big, quite another to present a vast universe through the eyes of fully rounded characters without the former overshadowing the latter. Many a novice has floundered, their vision ill served by technique. Fortunately, debut novelist Andrew Bannister comes to the genre with his talents fully formed in the ambitious, compulsively readable Creation Machine, the first volume in a trilogy. Fleare Haas, the maverick daughter of the industrialist tyrant Viklun Haas, is imprisoned in a monastery on the moon of Obel, her crime to join rebels opposed to her father’s ruthless regime. Her escape from prison and her headlong race across the galaxy to the Catastrophe Curve is just one of the novel’s many delights. Creation Machine has everything: intriguing far-future societies, exotic extraterrestrial races, artificial galaxies and alien machines dormant for millions of years. Bannister holds it all together with enviable aplomb.

Tor has scheduled the sequel, Iron Gods, for publication in July. It will be followed by Stone Clock. Here’s the back covers for the first two.

…

Read More Read More

Kelly Chiu Gives us 6 Reasons to Devour Ryōko Kui’s Delicious in Dungeon

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Every few years I promise myself I’m going to do a better job keeping up with the latest fantasy manga, but I never really do. But last year I did manage to discover the delightful Delicious in Dungeon, written and illustrated by Ryōko Kui, and I consider that a major win.

Delicious in Dungeon is a Japanese fantasy comedy about a 6-member adventurer party very nearly wiped out in a Total Party Kill deep in a dungeon. In the last moments before she’s swallowed by a dragon, the magic-user Falin uses the last of her strength to teleport her brother Laios and the rest of the party to the surface. Defeated and demoralized, and faced with the loss of most of their coin and equipment, two members quit immediately, but Laios convinces the last two to join him in a desperate sprint back into the dungeon before his sister is digested and beyond the reach even of the most powerful healing magic. Famished and too penniless to provision, Laios concocts a foolhardy plan to eat the monsters they encounter on their way down.

That’s the basic set-up for a extremely imaginative and frequently hilarious dungeon romp featuring three hapless foodies in a gloriously elaborate monster haven. The setting in fact is a huge part of the charm of this series, and it will be warmly familiar to anyone who’s played D&D or a similar early RPG, with its crowded underground markets and well stocked trading outposts scarcely 50 yards from trap-infested monster gardens. The slimes, mushroom men, man-eating plants and other oddball creatures they come up against will also bring back fond memories of the classic dungeon delves of your youth. They’re delightfully wacky, just like the plans our heroes come up with to eat them.

Late last year Kelly Chiu at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog wrote a fine piece on the series, just before the English translation of the sixth volume arrived in stores. Kelly has a sharp sense for what makes the series so appealing to old school gamers and general comic fans alike, and in 6 Reasons to Devour Delicious in Dungeon she hit on many of the things I most enjoy about it. Here’s a few of her most on-target comments.

…

Read More Read More

Mechanical Man, Inc.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 Steve Carper Comments 5 comments

You can’t get your science fiction merit badge without knowing that Isaac Asimov’s robots were made by the fictional U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., founded in 1982, the same year Susan Calvin was born. (Yes, that means she’s a millennial. She joined the firm in 2008, if it comes up in a trivia contest.)

When people see the name of the firm they immediately start to wonder what the difference is between a robot and a mechanical man. Some people. Me, mostly. I’ve never found anybody else asking the question. But I can’t tell you how much it bugs me. If a company has both names it must make both things. Yet nowhere in I, Robot or The Rest of the Robots does Asimov so much as mention a mechanical man or differentiate his robots in any way. Robots by the score but no mechanical men or for that matter mechanical women.

Others did. He probably didn’t know it at the time, but Asimov was scooped. A real world firm had been started in 1938. Its name was Mechanical Man, Inc.

…

Read More Read More