Black Gate – Page 342 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Future Treasures: City of Broken Magic by Mirah Bolender

Monday, November 5, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The wheels of publishing never stop. I returned from the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore last night with a heavy bag of new fantasy releases, weary and content. And before I even had a chance to open the bag and start telling you about any of those books, today’s mail brings more — including Mirah Bolender’s debut novel City of Broken Magic, featuring a bomb squad that defuses magic weapons. Here’s the description.

Five hundred years ago, magi created a weapon they couldn’t control. An infestation that ate magic ― and anything else it came into contact with. Enemies and allies were equally filling.

Only an elite team of non-magical humans, known as sweepers, can defuse and dispose of infestations before they spread. Most die before they finish training.

Laura, a new team member, has stayed alive longer than most. Now, she’s the last ― and only ― sweeper standing between the city and a massive infestation.

City of Broken Magic earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly, no small feat. Here’s a snippet.

Monsters are threatening to take over the city of Amicae. The government has convinced residents that the monsters can’t get in, but Clae and Laura know that isn’t true. They are Sweepers, the only people in the city qualified to fight the monsters and make sure they can’t return — and narrator Laura has only been an apprentice for three months. The duo takes on mobsters, corrupt businessmen, and a deliberately skewed cultural narrative, culminating in a fight to protect their city from its own refusal to accept reality. Amicae’s strict caste system is expertly woven into the fast-paced plot that will keep readers turning pages until the very end. This debut builds a fascinating setting that readers will want to keep coming back to.

City of Broken Magic will be published by Tor Books on November 20, 2018. It is 400 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital format. The cover is by Tony Mauro. Read more at the author’s website.

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: William Patrick Maynard’s ‘Shades of Yellow’

Monday, November 5, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

Because I find it’s easier to get somebody else to do all the heavy lifting, I secured another guest poster for this week! Fellow Black Gater William Patrick Maynard knows more about Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril genre than anybody else I know. And if you see his credentials at the end of the post, you’ll understand why! Today, he takes a pulpy look at the ‘menace from the Far East’ topic. Read on!

“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

Context is a challenge in politically correct times that seek to view the past through the myopic lenses of an eternal present. Over 130 years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created an archetype in fiction with his consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. While Holmes lives on at least in name and reputation, most of his antecedents, contemporaries, and successors in the fantastic fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras are rapidly fading into obscurity.

While forgotten by the public at large, the traits and exploits of many of these same characters have been disseminated into today’s pop culture icons (James Bond, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the glut of superheroes that continue to dominate movie screens). What remains of the past is largely through the efforts of pulp specialty publishers and public domain reprint specialists who keep these classic works in print for a niche market that still reads works from a different, simpler, though not always better, world.

Much of this fantastic fiction sprung directly from colonial viewpoints of the British Empire. Among the xenophobic byproducts of colonialism in popular culture was the Yellow Peril, the paranoid delusion that Chinese immigrants were plotting to conquer the West. There was certainly crime in Chinatown: there is always crime among the economically underprivileged, but what made the Yellow Peril thrive as a sub-genre of the thriller was the creation of a brilliant, amoral Chinese criminal mastermind in the same fashion as Conan Doyle’s Professor Moriarty and Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola.

Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu became the personification of the Yellow Peril. Without the character’s introduction, the sub-genre would never have prevailed. Fu Manchu took the reading public by storm just before the outbreak of the First World War and remained a bestselling franchise up to the Cold War. Rohmer’s insidious fiend was everywhere: magazines (slicks, not pulps), books, newspaper strips, comic books, radio series, films, the theater, and eventually television.

Holmes and Fu Manchu were certainly among the most influential characters in the first half of the last century. Arthur B. Reeve’s American variation on Holmes, the scientific detective Craig Kennedy was likewise pitted against a variation on Fu Manchu, the diabolical Wu Fang in The Exploits of Elaine (1914), The Romance of Elaine (1915), and The Triumph of Elaine (1915). The Elaine triptych were inspired by the phenomenal success of the 1914 serial, The Perils of Pauline.

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Birthday Reviews: Janet Pack’s “A Coin for Charon”

Monday, November 5, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Janet Pack was born on November 5, 1952.

Pack has collaborated with Kevin Stein on several poems and has co-edited anthologies with Margaret Weis, Robin Crew, and Martin H. Greenberg. She has occasionally published as Janet Deaver-Pack.

“A Coin for Charon” was published in Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg’s anthology Sol’s Children in 2002. It has never been reprinted.

Pack’s story demonstrates one of the problems with writing about near future events, although in a slightly atypical way. Pack published the story, set on a space station in orbit around Pluto, in 2002 and in 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons mission to fly through the Plutonian system. When Pack wrote the story, little was known about Pluto and only one moon, Charon, had been discovered. By 2005, two additional moons had been found, Nix and Hydra. By the time New Horizons had reached Pluto and upended what we thought we knew about the planet, two additional moons, Kerberos and Styx, had been discovered. We have also learned that Pluto was not the frozen ball of rock and “methane-ethane-nitrogen-carbon-monoxide frost” that Pack described.

However, the focus of the story is less on Pluto and more on the dysfunctional relationship between two of the scientists on the space station, Velerie Heyer and Konrad Gregorius, whose relationship starts badly and only worsens as they get to know each other and are forced to work together, with the discovery of a magnetic element that Pack describes as forcing the tidal lock between Pluto and Charon, only cementing their enmity.

There are many historical stories about scientific relationships which go wrong and Pack takes the worst of all of those and transplants them to a remote space station with very tight living quarters, sure to exacerbate the problem. Although she mentions the rest of the station’s inhabitants, Heyer and Gregorius are really the only ones shown in any depth, although Heyer also interacts with Tobias Wellett. Without more input from the secondary characters, Heyer’s view of the situation is, of necessity, skewed and the reader is left wondering if the other characters have really kept to themselves as much as Heyer indicates rather than trying to alleviate the tension before the state of affairs could reach the point it does in the story.

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The 2018 World Fantasy Award Winners

Sunday, November 4, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The World Fantasy Convention is always the highlight of my year, and the highlight of the convention is always the presentation of the World Fantasy Awards, among the most prestigious awards our field has to offer.

So it was a little frustrating that I had to leave the awards ceremony so early today to catch my flight. Fortunately, our on-the-spot correspondent Patty Templeton kept me up to date with minute-by-minute texts from the ceremony during my race to the airport. While there was plenty of excitement, the biggest news Patty had to share was that the big award for the evening, BEST NOVEL, was in fact a tie (“Hot dang!” texted Templeton), which hasn’t happened since 2009 when Jeff Ford and Margo Lanagan split the prize.

So without any further ado, here are the winners of the 2018 World Fantasy Awards.

Best Novel (tie)

WINNER: The Changeling, Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
WINNER: Jade City, Fonda Lee (Orbit)
The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager)
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, John Crowley (Saga)
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss (Saga)
Spoonbenders, Daryl Gregory (Knopf)

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November 2018 Locus Magazine Now on Sale

Sunday, November 4, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I made the mistake of flying to Baltimore for the World Fantasy Convention this weekend without packing the current issue of Locus. There’s no better way to get caught up on all the latest industry news, publishing changes, and genre gossip than in the relative peace and quiet of a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet.

So I landed in Baltimore woefully behind on all the news. Even worse, I hadn’t read this month’s reviews by Rich Horton, Liz Bourke, Gary Wolfe, Russell Letson, John Langan and many others. How was I supposed to talk intelligently about all those exciting new writers? I had to stand there glumly and nod at the midnight Beneath Ceaseless Skies party.

I won’t make that mistake again. Whatever you do, don’t be like me. Make sure you have your copy of Locus safely tucked under your arm when you travel (especially to a con.) It will make you wiser, happier, and a better person.

The November issue is packed full of good stuff, and available at most well stocked bookstores. Here’s the description from the website.

The November issue features an interview with Andy Duncan; MacArthur Genius Grant news; British Fantasy, Aurora, Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, Geffen, and Elgin awards winners; a column by Cory Doctorow; photo stories on Galactic Philadelphia, the Neukom Awards ceremony, George R.R. Martin, and Genrepalooza; international reports on Israel and Estonia; obituaries for Pat Lupoff, Anthea Bell, and David J. Willoughby, and reviews of short fiction and books by Paul Di Filippo, Natasha Ngan, Brian Hodge, Tomi Adeyemi, and many others.

Locus magazine is published by twelve times per year by the Locus Foundation. This issue is 68 pages in full color, priced at $7.50 or $5.50 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Francesca Myman. One year (12 issue) subscriptions are $63 for print (US) or $48 (digital). Subscribe here.

Birthday Reviews: Kara Dalkey’s “Bouncing Babies”

Sunday, November 4, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Kara Dalkey was born on November 4, 1953.

Dalkey was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award in 1989 for her novel The Nightingale, a retelling of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in a Japanese setting. Ten years later her novel Heavenward Path was also nominated for the Mythopoeic Award for Children’s Literature. She was also nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award in 2004 for her short story “Lady of the Ice Gardens.”

“Bouncing Babies” was published in the anthology Not of Woman Born, edited by Constance Ash in 1999. The story has never been reprinted.

Although the people who live in the world of “Bouncing Babies” may see it as a utopia in which people don’t have to worry about giving birth unless they want to and the need to work is obviated, it is also a world in which a person’s worth is based solely on their ability to provide reproductive material. Teenage girls are genetically tested and if they prove to fit societal requirements are paid ten million dollars to have their eggs harvested, their genotype then used to determine their ability to fit into society.

Ms. Goodwin has long since had her eggs harvested and is living a life of luxury when she receives a notification to visit the Reprotec Bank. Not having any clue what they want to talk to her about, she goes in and discovers that her eggs are no longer genetically desirable. In fact, a child born from them was returned as defective by its parents. The bank has seized her assets to regain their investments and Goodwin realizes that she has nothing to fall back on.

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The Feminine Mystique: The Big Book of Female Detectives edited by Otto Penzler

Saturday, November 3, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I think that if I were stranded on a desert island, and I could grab the works of a single writer to bring with me before my ship went down, I’d be a fool not to choose Otto Penzler.

Penzler’s brick-sized Big Book anthologies form a pretty darn complete intro to genre fiction. He’s produced more than a dozen over the last decade, publishing roughly one per year since 2007. They include:

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps — 2007
The Vampire Archives — 2009
Agents of Treachery — 2010
The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories — 2010
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! — 2011
The Big Book of Adventure Stories — 2011
The Big Book of Ghost Stories — 2012
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries — 2013
The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries — 2014
The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories — 2015
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper — 2016
The Big Book of Rogues and Villains –- 2017

His latest is a delicious mix of gumshoe gals and debutant detectives. It was published last month by Vintage Crime. Here’s the description.

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Birthday Reviews: Neal Barrett, Jr.’s “A Day at the Fair”

Saturday, November 3, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Neal Barrett, Jr. was born on November 3, 1929 and died on January 12, 2014..

Barrett’s novelette “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Award and his story “Stairs” was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He received a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection for Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories. He has published Tom Swift novels under the house name Victor Appleton. Barrett was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2010.

“‘A Day at the Fair’” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the March 1981 issue, edited by Edward L. Ferman. Ferman included it in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 24^th Series the next year. Barrett has included the story in two of his collections. He reprinted it in Slightly Off Center: Eleven Extraordinarily Exhilarating Tales in 1992 and again in Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories in 2000.

For Toony, the local fair is a high point of the year, bringing together all the various castes who have settled on the planet and giving her a chance to eat a variety of comfort foods. Her trip to the fair in the company of her grandfather, who remembers life on Earth before coming to their planet, her sister Lizbeth Jean, her practically absent mother, and Tyrone, a Noord, who seems to be either a low-functioning alien or a high functioning pet.

While the fair appears to be a way for people to gather, enjoy food, play games, and form a sense of community, there also appears to be a more sinister aspect. Grandpa gets sucked in by a Patchman, a form of spaceman, who tries to sell him on a service that allows him to speak to the dead. When he tries it, he is able to have brief conversations with some friends and his wife, but the actual mechanism for making it work is ignored by Barrett and the characters. The fair also seems to have a form of slave market and Grandpa and Toony find themselves looking at a captured Bug, who claims to be the vice-admiral of an alien species captured in a war the Patchmen are fighting far from the fair’s planet. The fact that people can be bought and sold at the fair puts Toony’s relationship with Tyrone in a very different light and also indicates that the fair may be a cover for the slave trade, which becomes more obvious as Toony and her grandpa are talking to the Bug.

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New Treasures: A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland

Friday, November 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’m at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore this weekend. This is my first trip to the city (Holy cats! Did you know Baltimore was on the Atlantic Ocean?? They should tell people this stuff), and so far I’ve dined at a terrific seafood restaurant, taken in the salt air, and visited what has to be the largest Barnes & Noble on the planet.

I’ve also reconnected with plenty of friends whom I only see at conventions these days, including more than a few Black Gate contributors (quick shout out to Derek Kunsken, Marie Bilodeau, Howard Andrew Jones, Patty Templeton, Doug Ellis, L.E. Modesitt, and Sarah Avery!) and wandered through the beautiful Dealer’s Room, packed to the brim with fantasy books. It may seem strange that even surrounded by a hive of activity like WFC I can still be distracted by new books, but there you are. One of the first to catch my eye was the debut fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland. I think I’ll be taking this one home with me.

A wrongfully imprisoned storyteller spins stories from his jail cell that just might have the power to save him — and take down his jailers too.

Arrested on accusations of witchcraft and treason, Chant finds himself trapped in a cold, filthy jail cell in a foreign land. With only his advocate, the unhelpful and uninterested Consanza, he quickly finds himself cast as a bargaining chip in a brewing battle between the five rulers of this small, backwards, and petty nation.

Or, at least, that’s how he would tell the story.

In truth, Chant has little idea of what is happening outside the walls of his cell, but he must quickly start to unravel the puzzle of his imprisonment before they execute him for his alleged crimes. But Chant is no witch—he is a member of a rare and obscure order of wandering storytellers. With no country to call his home, and no people to claim as his own, all Chant has is his wits and his apprentice, a lad more interested in wooing handsome shepherds than learning the ways of the world.

And yet, he has one great power: his stories in the ears of the rulers determined to prosecute him for betraying a nation he knows next to nothing about. The tales he tells will topple the Queens of Nuryevet and just maybe, save his life.

A Conspiracy of Truths was published by Saga Press on October 23, 2018. It is 464 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

From Beneath the Review Pile: The Same Old Story

Friday, November 2, 2018 Brandon Crilly Comments 2 comments

As they used to say in Monty Python, “and now for something completely different.”

The more I read, the more difficult it is for me to be entranced by a novel or short story. My writer brain is always whirring away in the background, pointing out when an author has done something clever or highlighting specific techniques like Chekhov’s gun. To be honest, it’s sort of a pain in the ass. If a novel isn’t gripping to the point that my writer brain clicks off for a bit – or at least gets quieter – I usually put it down somewhere around the fifty-page mark, if not sooner.

Doing this column makes it tough sometimes, too, because a) I don’t like to review something I didn’t at least enjoy enough to finish, but b) I need to find a book worth reviewing every two weeks. And honestly, two years into this column it’s getting harder, since I keep seeing the same story over and over again.

Let me give you an example, without giving too many specifics (since I don’t want to insult anyone). Recently I started a space opera ARC that I received from a publisher, because the back cover blurb sounded really cool, involving a protagonist who’s vilified by the galaxy he worked to save. Except the novel doesn’t start with that; it goes back to the protagonist’s youth, struggling to find his own way in a typical noble household, feeling stifled and controlled until he escapes and begins to come into his own, etc, etc. Sigh. Where’s my story about the intergalactic savior grappling with whether he should consider himself a hero or a villain? If we started there, I’d be able to forgive yet another far-future imperial setting structured like a hundred other novels I’ve read in the last few years.

Sorry if that sounded a little more heated than I usually get here. It’s just that I keep seeing the same story, and it’s wearying. Sometimes the story pretends to be different through its main characters. Like a post-alien invasion apocalypse where the adults are gone and young people have to survive on their own. Jazz it up with lead characters that are different than your usual fare, whether it’s based on gender identity, race, mental health, physical disability, etc, and maybe you’ve got a hit. Or maybe it’s the same story with the exact same beats and even some of the same tropes, and all the author is trying to do is be clever.

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