Worthy of His Hire: The Day’s Work by Rudyard Kipling

Worthy of His Hire: The Day’s Work by Rudyard Kipling

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The Day’s Work (Penguin Classics, October 4, 1988)

I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in a house with large built-in bookshelves, occupied by books passed on from my grandmother. Among the ones I read were multiple volumes by Kipling. One of the more memorable was The Day’s Work, which I recently added to my shelves of print fiction and which I’ve just reread: a collection of stories nearly all written during Kipling’s period of residence in Vermont, during the early 1890s.

A long time ago, I ran across a comment by some critic that if you wanted to read a conversation between a god, an animal, and a machine, Kipling would be the perfect choice to write it. The Day’s Work might be taken as evidence to support this; it doesn’t bring the three together, but it has one story with a conversation among gods, “The Bridge-Builders”; two with conversations among horses, “A Walking Delegate” and “The Maltese Cat”; and two with conversations among machines, “The Ship That Found Herself” and “.007,” the latter being about a locomotive newly put into service. Those five stories, out of a total of twelve, give the collection a strong feeling of fantasy, which must have been part of what appealed to me when I was in elementary school.

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The Double-Edged Blade of Social Media

The Double-Edged Blade of Social Media

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

It’s me again. Here to wax lyrical about social media and how it is both a boon and a bane for the creatives of the world. As it is for most everyone, I think. Let’s be honest, as a means of connecting people, finding community and disseminating information with incredible ease and speed, social media is absolutely unparalleled. Of course, on the flip-side, it is a vicious tool for deliberate bullying, polarisation, and the disastrous spread of misinformation. It seems that whatever the effect of social media, be it good or ill, there is something on the other edge that serves as to balance it out… more or less.

For a writer, or any creative, really, it is an incredible tool. It is also a terrible burden. Does the good outweigh the bad, or at least is the balance a net null? It seems that if we have any hope of being successful, we cannot escape social media (however much we may detest the need of it). But is that actually true? Is it really worth it for us to be there?

Let’s take a look at the positive and pitfalls of using social media as a creative.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rex Stout’s ‘The Mother of Invention’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rex Stout’s ‘The Mother of Invention’

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“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)

If you read more than just this Pulp series of mine each summer, you know that I am a gargantuan Nero Wolfe fan. It’s my favorite mystery series, and I have written a lot of fiction and non-fiction about Wolfe, and Archie Goodwin.

Rex Stout wrote several novels and many short stories, before the first Wolfe novel dropped in 1934. Of course, there was no looking back after Fer de Lance.

He placed “A Professional Recall” in the December, 1912 issue of The Black Cat magazine. “Pamfret and Peace” followed the next month. There would be three more over the next few years.

The Black Cat was founded by Herman Umbstaetter in 1895. He had gained and lost a fortune before managing to fund his own magazine in Baltimore. It was not a Pulp, and was about the size of the Dime Novels of the day (about 6” x 9”). Umbstaetter encouraged new writers, and paid based on the quality of the story, not by the word. His wife did the early covers.

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Goth Chick News – It’s Never Too Early to Talk About Halloween

Goth Chick News – It’s Never Too Early to Talk About Halloween

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Let me start by saying yes, I know it’s only June, aka ‘summer’…

But here in the subterranean office of Goth Chick News we literally only hit pause on Halloween for the last two weeks of December, and then grudgingly. Aside from that we are either thinking about, planning for, or attending Halloween activities and we are definitely not alone.

For example, we were crushed this year to miss out on our annual February sabbatical to the Halloween and Attractions Show industry convention in St. Louis, which is the normal kickoff event of the Goth Chick year. Our incredible friends at Transworld who run that event also hold another event closer to home, and this is where Black Gate photog Chris Z and I spent last Saturday.

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The Wit and Wisdom of Connie Willis

The Wit and Wisdom of Connie Willis

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Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2011, containing “All About Emily,” and the Subterranean
Press hardcover edition (January 31, 2012). Covers by Duncan Long and J.K. Potter

Far too often, the best among us are roundly ignored. This can hardly be said of Connie Willis, who has collected an astonishing array of Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards, yet her name somehow doesn’t seem to ring from the battlements. Perhaps I’m simply attending to the wrong battlements, but when I hear discussions of the great women of science fiction, I tend to catch the names LeGuin, L’Engle, Butler, and, now, Jemisin. Willis seems to come up less frequently.

Better yet, let’s just leave gender entirely out of the equation.

Willis’s name deserves to come up front and center in any discussion of top-tier sci-fi, first and foremost because she is very funny.

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A to Z Reviews: “The Adventure of You,” by Paul La Farge

A to Z Reviews: “The Adventure of You,” by Paul La Farge

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A to Z ReviewsPaul LaFarge wrote five novels before his death in January 2023 from cancer. His essays and fiction appeared in a variety of magazines. Only a small portion of his work was within the genre, but the story “The Adventure of You,” which appeared in Gordon van Gelder’s original anthology Welcome to Dystopia in 2019 is one of those genre stories.

In an unspecified time and place in the future, John Arnold Arnold is working as a debris removal specialist for a company. The story is told through a memo from the company’s HR department, ostensibly to help Arnold’s mental health, but it quickly becomes clear that the program being offered is more for the company’s benefit than Arnold’s. The memos offer an explanation of the situation in the company town for the reader while providing indoctrination for the workers.

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Lord of a Shattered Land and The Doom of Odin: Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden Deliver High-octane, Euro-Mediterranean Adventure

Lord of a Shattered Land and The Doom of Odin: Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden Deliver High-octane, Euro-Mediterranean Adventure

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I just finished two Euro-Mediterranean-inspired fantasy novels, and, by chance, both feature dragons on their beautiful covers. This post showcases both. Scott Oden’s The Doom of Oden wraps up a trilogy (Grimnir Series) and Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land begins a five-book series (Hanuvar Chronicles). Each offers anti-Roman myths/legends, Oden’s Grimnir overtly calls out Rome (and then introduces loads of Nordic fantasy) and HAJ’s Hanuvar’s primary antagonist is the Dervan Empire (obviously inspired by the Roman Empire). In the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, who roamed the Euro-Mediterranean continue of Hyboria, these both continue a tradition with a unique flair. These series are not to be missed!

Both are veteran authors with respect for history and historical fiction (HAJ is known for his Harold Lamb series editing and Oden for his bibliography that includes The White Lion, The Lion of Cairo, Men of Bronze, and Memnon). Here they write sagas about veteran protagonists. Don’t expect coming-of-age stories or epic fantasy, five-character parties either. These provide the classic Sword & Sorcery approach: the protagonists may have sidekicks, but they operate primarily on their own, and they are already equipped with experience/skills/power from page one. So the pace is fast and focused.

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Unabashed Pulp: Dire Planet by Joel Jenkins

Unabashed Pulp: Dire Planet by Joel Jenkins

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The first three novels in the Dire Planet series (Pulp Work Press, 2009).
Covers by Mats Minnhagen, Noel Tuazon, and Michael Dean Jackson

Joel Jenkins has written 9 books in his Dire Planet series, and a tenth is planned, which Joel suggests may end the series. The published books are:

Dire Planet
Exiles of the Dire Planet
Into the Dire Planet
Strange Gods of the Dire Planet
Lost Tribes of the Dire Planet
Abominations of the Dire Planet
Immortals of the Dire Planet
Forbidden Cities of the Dire Planet
Final Outpost of the Dire Planet

Garvey Dire is representing the West in a space race with China to establish the first manned base on Mars. Garvey’s ship crashes though, and as he lies dying, he is visited by an image of a green skinned woman swordslinger and ends up being transported 50,000 years into Mars’s past. From there Garvey’s adventures follow the pattern established by ERB in his Barsoom books, although with many fresh details and inventive twists.

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New Treasures: Ragged Maps by Ian R. MacLeod

New Treasures: Ragged Maps by Ian R. MacLeod

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Ragged Maps (Subterranean Press,
September 15, 2023). Cover by Dominic Harman

Ian R. MacLeod’s novels include The Light Ages (2003) and sequel The House of Storms (2005), but his greatest acclaim has come from his short fiction. He’s produced no less than seven short story collections since 1996, including Voyages by Starlight (1996), Frost on Glass (2015), and the World Fantasy Award nominee Breathmoss and Other Exhalations (2004).

His latest collection, Ragged Maps, was released by Subterranean Press in a hardcover limited edition last year, and I finally got the chance to curl up with it this week. In contains fifteen stories, including an original novella and the Sturgeon Award nominee “The Visitor from Taured.” In his Locus Online review Paul Di Filippo called MacLeod’s prose “Just gorgeous… elegant, complex, mysterious, empathetic, melancholy, mystical, and, somehow, quintessentially British… he’s a peer and heir to Aldiss, Peake, Ballard, Priest, and Moorcock.”

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A Weird & Wonderful Treasure Trove: New Gaming Releases

A Weird & Wonderful Treasure Trove: New Gaming Releases

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Legacy of the Green Flame (Pacesetter Games)

Fellow RPG enthusiasts, if I may, I would like to direct your attention to a few fine new projects that recently funded on Kickstarter.

Legacy of the Green Flame (Pacesetter Games)

Legacy of the Green Flame (solo play for 5e and “classic”): It was the oldest trick in the book. A man on a dark road asked for directions and you let your guard down. You awake in a nearby inn with a bruised skull and ego. All your possessions are gone, but your courage endures. Helped by the kindly and concerned innkeeper, you are equipped and the chase is on. The bandits fled into the forest, but you will have your vengeance. (Series of linked adventures; this was the first description).

The project successfully funded on Kickstarter in less than an hour, and wrapped up September 21. According to the April 8 Progress Report, they are close to ordering books for retail delivery. Keep an eye out for this one.

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