Black Gate – Page 338 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: Breach by W.L. Goodwater

Monday, January 28, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Fantasy comes in all shapes and sizes. I enjoy epic fantasy (like The Lord of the Rings), sword & sorcery, horror, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy, weird westerns, and virtually everything in between. But more and more these days I find myself drawn to work that truly strikes out into new territory.

W.L. Goodwater’s debut novel Breach is a great example. It was published late last year by Ace, and is described as the opening novel in a new Cold War fantasy series, in which the Berlin Wall is made entirely of magic. When a breach unexpectedly appears, spies from both sides descend on the city as World War III looms ever closer.

I discovered Breach almost wholly by accident, as I browsed the shelves at B&N a few weeks ago. I knew nothing about it, and the cover didn’t particularly grab me. But the brief blurb on the back cover did, pretty much immediately. As modern fantasy goes, this is about as original as it gets. This is the kind of book that kicks off a whole new sub-genre. Alternate history political thriller fantasy? Cold War apocalypse fantasy? Whatever; I’m on board. Here’s the blurb that grabbed my attention.

AFTER THE WAR, THE WALL BROUGHT AN UNEASY PEACE.

When Soviet magicians conjured an arcane wall to blockade occupied Berlin, the world was outraged but let it stand for the sake of peace. Now, after ten years of fighting with spies instead of spells, the CIA has discovered the unthinkable…

THE WALL IS FAILING.

While refugees and soldiers mass along the border, operatives from East and West converge on the most dangerous city in the world to either stop the crisis, or take advantage of it.

Karen, a young magician with the American Office of Magical Research and Deployment, is sent to investigate the breach in the Wall and determine if it can be fixed. Instead, she discovers that the truth is elusive in this divided city — and that even magic itself has its own agenda.

THE TRUTH OF THE WALL IS ABOUT TO BE REVEALED.

Breach was published by Ace on November 6, 2018. It is 336 pages, priced at $16 in paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Pete Garceau. See all our recent New Treasures here.

Hither Came Conan: Jason M Waltz – “The Tower of the Elephant”

Monday, January 28, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 18 comments

Every Monday morning for Hither Came Conan, a Robert E. Howard expert looks at the merits of one of the original Conan stories from REH. Up this week is Jason M Waltz with “The Tower of the Elephant.”

The Tower of the Elephant is #1!

That’s the chant I heard rising above the darkened canopy shrouding the mighty yews and other overgrown vegetation blocking any chance I might have had to see the Pictish village. The heavy hand upon my shoulder kept me from ever knowing if the wattle huts truly stood there, cavernous doorways gaping wide like entrances to giant earthworm tunnels, shadowed gates to a scarcely known past few dared to poke and muck about in.

Pulled backward until I was off my feet and set hard upon the trunk of a fallen giant, I craned to my left to see my captor. A mane of black hair, shaggy strands barely covering the flash of sullen eyes, twisted away, the hand that had never left my neck squeezed tight, forced my face forward. A downward glance caught a mighty foot and shin of brown skin girthed in high-strapped sandals, before they too were snatched from my sight by that iron grip jerking my head upright. A chuckle sounded low behind me, shook the arm up which it traveled till I shook as well.

“You’ve been asking which of my tales is best; none better to tell you than those who know me best. A man’s story is only as good as his foes tell it, after all. You think these Picts will praise the tales within which I slaughter them? Ha! Those are the tales they tell their whelps over the fires to hone their hatred. Their favorite tales, the ones they retell strangers, are my adventures outside their territories.

“Now my favorites are those times with Bêlit, my queen…” A gigantic sigh echoed, followed by a shake of that mane and a rueful laugh. “Ah, if only I’d met the elephant-man later, there is much I might have asked. But it is he who taught me to open my eyes, he who made me take heart.

“The best of my tales? It must be “The Tower of the Elephant”, all else follows, for I’d not be the man I am without it.”

…

Read More Read More

Dreams More Perfect Than Your Own: J.G. Ballard: The Complete Short Stories, Volumes One & Two

Sunday, January 27, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

In the world of science fiction, J.G. Ballard is a Big Deal.

His early work includes the novels The Wind from Nowhere (1962), The Drowned World (1962), and High-Rise (1975), and the seminal collection Vermilion Sands (1971). Outside science fiction, Ballard is also a Big Deal. His 1984 novel Empire of the Sun, loosely based on his experiences as a child in Shanghai during Japanese occupation, was described by The Guardian as “the best British novel about the Second World War” and filmed by Steven Spielberg in 1987, starring a young Christian Bale. His influence on modern literature has been powerful enough that “Ballardian” has become a common term, defined by the Collins English Dictionary as “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity…” He died in 2009.

Ballard’s short fiction, virtually all of it SF, is some of the most vital and studied science fiction of the 20th Century. His stories “Souvenir” (1965) and “Myths of the Near Future” (1983) were nominated for the Nebula Award, and his collections — including Passport to Eternity (1963), The Terminal Beach (1964), Vermilion Sands (1971) and Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971) — are very highly regarded. In 2006 Harper Perennial published J.G. Ballard: The Complete Short Stories in two thick volumes in the UK; they were reprinted in 2014 by Fourth Estate with an introduction by Adam Thirlwell. There aren’t a lot of writers for whom it pays to read their complete short work; Ballard I think is the exception.

…

Read More Read More

Embers to Ashes: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

Sunday, January 27, 2019 Thomas Parker Comments 3 comments

Maybe it’s just the times we live in, but I increasingly find myself drawn to narratives of defeat: Confederate military memoirs, histories of the Decline and Fall of This and That, accounts of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow or Custer’s Last Stand. I suppose that’s why this summer, forty years after I blew it off when it was assigned in one of my first college classes, I finally got around to reading Earth Abides.

George R. Stewart’s 1949 post-apocalyptic novel is one of the most famous one-offs in the history of science fiction; it won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951, and in all the decades since, the book has rarely been out of print.

Stewart was primarily an English professor and historian and an only occasional novelist. In his first specialty he wrote books on English verse technique and composition; in the latter his most well-known works are a history of the Donner party, Ordeal by Hunger (1936), and a finely detailed, minute-by-minute account of the climax of the battle of Gettysburg, Pickett’s Charge (1959). Storm (1941) and Fire (1948), two novels Stewart wrote before his sole foray into science fiction, show his concern with large, impersonal forces and their effects on the enduring land and the ephemeral creatures that inhabit it. His most famous book takes that scientific detachment and interest in process many steps further, to powerful effect.

Earth Abides tells the story of Isherwood Smith, a young college student who lives in Berkeley, California. When the book begins, Ish is camping in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, doing the fieldwork necessary for his graduate thesis, The Ecology of the Black Creek Area, intended to be an investigation of “the relationships, past and present, of men and plants and animals” in the region. The thesis will never be written, though Ish will spend the rest of his life wrestling with fundamental questions regarding the connections between human beings and the natural world they so briefly occupy.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Never Die by Rob J. Hayes

Saturday, January 26, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Best Fantasy Books.com‘s Top 25 Best Indie Fantasy Books is a very handy list if you’re interested in discovering new fantasy talent. It originally appeared in 2016, and has been updated at least once, in November 2017. Buried deep in the article the (anonymous) author notes that

I found Mark Lawrence’s (you know, author of The Broken Empire series) Great Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest immensely helpful for helping to point me in the direction of some of the stand out picks.

Okay, I didn’t know Mark had a self-publishing contest, but what a cool idea. The SPFBO has apparently been running for several years now, and has showcased several intriguing writers. For example, Rob J. Hayes won in 2017 for Where Loyalties Lie.

What’s so intriguing about Hayes? For one thing, except for one book from Ragnarok Publications, he’s exclusively self published, and his backlist is lengthy and impressive, including the Best Laid Plans series, The Ties that Bind trilogy, It Takes a Thief to Catch a Sunrise (2016) and City of Kings (2018). And next week his newest self-published effort Never Die arrives, the tale of five undead heroes re-animated by an eight-year-old Necromancer to take on an evil emperor. Here’s a snippet from Michael Gruneir’s review at Fantasy Book Review.

…

Read More Read More

Godzilla: 3, Castles: 0 – The History of the Castles Godzilla Wrecked

Saturday, January 26, 2019 Ryan Harvey Comments 1 comment

The city of Washington, DC has taken occasional issue with production companies shooting large-scale action and science-fiction movies in the National Mall. As one government official explained, in regards to a planned shoot for the third Transformers film, “The National Mall is not an area in which Americans come to see high-tech action movies being made.”

What? That’s one of the reasons we have national monuments! This is not a defense of Transformers 3: We Won’t Get It Right Until Bumblebee, but a reminder that one of the core purposes of great landmarks across the globe is so they can be destroyed by aliens, robots, and giant monsters on the big screen.

Giant monsters in particular love wrecking landmarks, or at least getting good spectacle use out of them (such as Kong and the Empire State Building). Watching a titanic creature devastate a familiar cultural object provides a sinister thrill for viewers; it makes the monster that much more intimidating. Your human-sized buildings, no matter their age or importance to national psyche, mean nothing to these beasts.

The Japanese breed of giant monsters, kaijus, have devastated bridges, skyscrapers, dams, baseball stadiums, and almost anything else built in contemporary Japan. But one landmark has a special place in kaiju disrespect for infrastructure and culture: the feudal castle. The first castle Godzilla destroyed was in the second movie of the series, Godzilla Raids Again. This worked so well that the next two movies also had castle destructions that have turned into some of the most famous Godzilla moments.

Most folks outside of Japan are unfamiliar with the history of these castles, let alone know them by name. In my love of cross-disciplinary exercises, I’ve put together a history guide to those first three castles to fall under the force of the Big G, either solo or while beating up another monster. This is one of my personal loves about Godzilla: using the monster as a springboard to other subjects I might not have gotten around to otherwise. Like origami.

…

Read More Read More

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Barry B. Longyear

Saturday, January 26, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Peter Graham is often quoted as saying that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12. I was reminded of this quote last year while reading Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugo Awards (Tor Books) when Rich Horton commented that based on Graham’s statement, for him, the Golden Age of Science Fiction was 1972. It got me thinking about what science fiction (and fantasy) looked like the year I turned twelve and so this year, I’ll be looking at the year 1979 through a lens of the works and people who won science fiction awards in 1980, ostensibly for works that were published in 1979. I’ve also invited Rich to join me on the journey and he’ll be posting articles looking at the 1973 award year.

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer was established by the publishers of Analog magazine in 1973 shortly after Campbell’s death. Eligibility for the award begins with an author’s first professional sale and runs for two calendar years. This stipulation has meant that some major authors who didn’t make a splash at the beginning of their career were not eligible for the award when people began to recognize their names. The award may be given out on the bases of either short fiction or novels.

The John W. Campbell Award are currently administered by the Hugo Award committee on the same ballots and is presented at the Hugo Award ceremony at Worldcon, but it is emphatically not a Hugo, to the extent that some joke the awards name is the John W. Campbell-not-a-Hugo Award.

Prior to the establishment of the award, the Hugos did, on occasion, recognize new authors. In 1953, Philip José Farmer won the Hugo Award for New Author and Robert Silverberg won the award in 1956. The award was attempted in 1959, but the (not-insignificant) authors on the ballot, including Brian W. Aldiss, Paul Ash/Pauline/Ashwell (appearing separately under both bylines), Rosel George Brown, Louis Carbonneau, and Kit Reed, lost out to No Award.

…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less: Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield

Friday, January 25, 2019 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

Alice Payne Arrives
by Kate Heartfield
Tor (176 pages, $15.99 paperback, $3.99 eBook, November 6, 2018)

Has anyone else noticed that time travel fiction still seems to be REALLY popular? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive Whovian, and some of my favorite books and movies involve time travel. But I feel like time travel is everywhere. Tom Sweterlitsch’s The Gone World has gotten a ton of acclaim. Gregory Benford’s Timescape series continued this year with Rewrite, about people using time travel to change events (usually selfishly), and Maria V. Snyder combines far-future SF with time travel investigation in Navigating the Stars. Hells, I reviewed Derek Künsken’s The Quantum Magician and discussed its time travel elements, and I even sold a time travel story of my own in 2018 – twice. My point is that time travel is still hot, somehow, and it doesn’t seem to be cooling down.

The idea of “time travel wars” and competing forces trying to rewrite history isn’t a new concept. I think its popularity now is a symptom of people feeling like the world is spiralling out of control, and that’s definitely a component to Kate Heartfield’s Alice Payne Arrives, the first in what I’m told will be a series of novellas from Tor. In this particular slant on time travel, two rival organizations are fighting to correct the course of history – one with a heavy hand and the other trying to slow them down – resulting in a story that jumps between multiple periods, in a world that’s already different than our own because of repeated time travel. As a history teacher I found this really compelling, especially with focuses on the First World War and earlier 18^th and 19^th century society.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Another Extreme Experience to Quell Our Overstimulated Psyches…

Thursday, January 24, 2019 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

We’re reported on haunted attractions which have patrons basically paying to be tortured, and we’ve seen an amusement park ride which simulates you being buried alive, both of which make us a tad worried about our fellow human beings and their increasing appetite for ‘extreme’ experiences. Apparently, our collective need to have our overloaded senses shocked even further has given rise to escape rooms that require 20-page liability releases and…

Well, and this…

Beginning January 27^th, the annual Goteborg Film Festival in Sweden will be offering up 32 “sarcophagus screenings” of Aniara, a Swedish-language apocalyptic sci-fi film.

What does this entail exactly?

Billed as “The World’s Most Claustrophobic Cinema,” the word “sarcophagus” in this case equals “coffin”. Eight volunteers per screening will be chosen to be shut into specially-made caskets outfitted with screens, speakers and oh yeah, air vents. You can check out the promo reel for this great big bucket of ‘nope’ after the jump below.

…

Read More Read More

A (Belated) First Look At Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game.

Thursday, January 24, 2019 M Harold Page Comments 10 comments

**Bronze Golem by Luigi artikid Castellani**

Cover — **“A rules-light game system modeled on the classic RPG rules of the early 1980’s”**

I just purchased a copy of the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, “a rules-light game system modelled on the classic RPG rules of the early 1980’s”, which is code for an Old School Revival (OSR) game based on the old D&D mechanics that Wizards of the Coast released under open license some twenty(!) or so years ago.

The thing about OSR games is you never quite know whether they are reviving the experience or just the rules of yesteryear’s roleplaying. The two are different because the world has changed.

Sure, the rules generate the experience, but the same way music generates the gig. This isn’t the sound of one hand clapping in the woods. The context matters. Just as Bill Haley and the Comets wouldn’t trigger a cinema (!) riot these days, the uneven rules of yesteryear aren’t going to conjure up the edge-of-seat experience of our youthful roleplaying, because things have changed.

I’m old enough to have played 1st Edition AD&D as a teenager, just at the point when the supplements were stacking up to obscure the original mechanical simplicity. I yearn for the cosy shared world — the Vancian magic, the stock monsters and magical items, the delightful abstraction of character classes — but have no nostalgia for epicycle-heavy non-recursive mechanics — ascending armor class, anybody? — nor the nerdily statted list of polearms, nor the tribble-like burgeoning of scene-stealing new character classes. Luckily, we were fortunate enough to have an adept DM (Hello Andy, Calum!) who could act as a layer between the mechanics and the flaky teens (Sorry, Andy, Calum…). Nor have I any interest in revisiting old controversies — Wot? No thief?

And this is the first way that the world has changed: standards.

…

Read More Read More