Goth Chick News Classics: Ray Bradbury’s The Wish Has a New Meaning This Year

Goth Chick News Classics: Ray Bradbury’s The Wish Has a New Meaning This Year

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The Book

For the last few years, as my last post of the year, I have reposted an article I wrote about Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Wish.” It is a Christmas tale of loss and love and magic which Bradbury penned following the death of his father. When it first appeared in Women’s Day magazine in 1973, my Dad was deep in his own grief having lost his own father, my beloved Grandpa, earlier that year. The story I told in Black Gate was how “The Wish” helped ease my Dad’s grief and led to my lifelong love of all things Bradbury.

That article led to my meeting and becoming friends with Bradbury’s editor Peter Schneider from Hill House Books, who published the only standalone hardcover of “The Wish.” He presented me with one of the numbered copies, signed by Bradbury, which is one of my most prized possessions.

Last December, as I prepared for the holiday festivities, I was suddenly faced with the loss of my own father. He was 94 and his health hadn’t been the greatest for a few months, so maybe his leaving us peacefully in his sleep should not have come as the shock that it did, but the sense of loss was crushing.

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Interview with an AI: High Fantasy

Interview with an AI: High Fantasy

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In the first of an occasional series, I interview the Bing AI about high fantasy.  The AI’s responses have not been edited.

What is high fantasy?

The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings

High fantasy, also known as epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot. High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional (“secondary”) world, rather than the “real” or “primary” world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set on Earth, the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements.

High fantasy stories often feature world-threatening forces, fantastic creatures, historic or unusual technologies, magical elements, and other unearthly elements. The story might also include characters from royalty and be seen through the viewpoint of one hero, an underdog.

Some examples of high fantasy literature include J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea, and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

How does high fantasy differ from sword and sorcery?

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New Treasures: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay

New Treasures: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay

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Generation Ship (Harper Voyager, October 17, 2023). Cover by Jeff Brown

Even with all the resources at our fingertips, it’s impossible to keep up with the steady drumbeat of new arrivals. That’s one of the reasons I’m always on the lookout for good reviewers, and new review sites.

One of my new favorites is WinterIsComing.net, which has pointed me toward some of the fall’s best new SF and fantasy. It’s how I discovered Michael Mammay’s new SF thriller Generation Ship, which they hail as “a sprawling standalone sci-fi epic with a large cast and intricate sociopolitical intrigue.” Now that’s what I’m talking about.

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Seven Things I Think I Think (December, 2023)

Seven Things I Think I Think (December, 2023)

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With the holidays being so busy and such, Ten Things I Think I Think only has seven entries this week. I’m sure it won’t ruin your Christmas. 🙂 So away we go…

THE BLACK COMPANY IS AN ENDURING CLASSIC

I’ve read Glen Cook’s The Black Company, all the way through, at least three times. It’s about a mercenary company that roams far and wide in a dark fantasy world, varying on the scale of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys.’ I don’t do Grimdark, but it’s commonly cited as being a foundation of the genre.

Audible had a HUGE sale the start of December, and I picked up almost the entire series on audiobook, at less than $3.50 a book. That’s a pure steal! I listen to audiobooks during my drives, and during my work day. Even as I type blog posts. My mind is good at multi-attention. I wouldn’t have time to read/re-read all the things I listen to.

I’m on book four, and this remains one of the best fantasy series’ I’ve ever read. I feel that the last two books are kind of disappointing, and I slog through them. We’ll see if that’s the case, listening to them. But overall, this is terrific. The latest book, Port of Shadows, is set during the original trilogy, and I am going to read that later this month. But as a whole, I highly recommend The Black Company. Fletcher Vredenburgh did a superb deep dive into the whole thing, over at Black Gate. I also LOVE Cook’s Garrett, PI series, which I wrote about here. Just a great writer.

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A High-Tech Sandbox: Transhuman Space by David Pulver

A High-Tech Sandbox: Transhuman Space by David Pulver

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Transhuman Space (Steve Jackson Games, March 29, 2018). Illustrated by Christopher Shy

In the 1990s, I made a big decision about tabletop roleplaying gaming: Rather than coming up with my own rules for running games, I ran campaigns using published systems. Some of these used my own original settings; some borrowed settings from published fictional or dramatic works, either as adapted by game publishers or in my own adaptations; and some used published original game worlds. I hardly ever used a setting more than once. But one that I found worth coming back to was David Pulver’s Transhuman Space, a setting for Steve Jackson Games’ game system GURPS.

As its name suggests, Transhuman Space was a science fictional milieu. Tabletop roleplaying has had a lot of these, going back to the classic Traveller, first released in 1977. For a long time, most of them built on the premises of what might be called classic science fiction: The stories of Old Wave authors such as Poul Anderson or Frank Herbert, and of later hard science fiction authors such as Larry Niven, or of the original Star Trek. That is, they were about aliens, robots, supermen, interstellar travel, time travel, parallel worlds, and psionic abilities, singly or in combination.

Transhuman Space does have robots, though they’re quite different from Asimovian robots. But it avoids all those other classic story elements. It has space travel, on an interplanetary (but not interstellar) scale, with human inhabitants from Mercury to the Kuiper Belt — but also with many machines that don’t need life support.

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Vintage Treasures: Clash by Night by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

Vintage Treasures: Clash by Night by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

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Clash by Night (Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1980). Cover by Chris Moore

I’m a big fan of the short fiction of Henry Kuttner, one of the great genre pulp writers, and earlier this year I stumbled on a curiosity: a Hamlyn (UK) paperback collection of Kuttner’s pulp tales which has never been reprinted in the US: Clash by Night.

Clash by Night collects five Kuttner tales from the heyday of the science fiction pulps, 1943-1952. The stories collected here were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder, and Space Science Fiction. They include some of Kuttner’s most acclaimed SF, and some that has been rarely reprinted.

Another thing they all have in common: They were all written with his wife, C.L. Moore, whom the editor didn’t see fit to credit on the cover, for reasons of obvious sexism. It’s small remedy to correct that slight in the title of this article, but I did it anyway.

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Family Secrets, Ancient Curses, and Haunted Rooms: Fantasmagoriana Deluxe, edited by EJ Guignard & LS Klinger

Family Secrets, Ancient Curses, and Haunted Rooms: Fantasmagoriana Deluxe, edited by EJ Guignard & LS Klinger

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Fantasmagoriana Deluxe (Dark Moon Books, November 28, 2023). Cover art by Hellduriel

The history of Fantasmagoriana is rather complicated.

Originally the book was published in German as a ghost story collection, then translated into French in 1812. The first English translation under the title Tales of the Dead by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson appeared in 1813, but Utterson omitted three stories and added one written by herself, “The Storm,” which frankly is an unremarkable, weak imitation of some of the original tales included in the anthology.

The current volume, Fantasmagoriana Deluxe, includes all the stories featured in the two books Fantasmagoriana and Tales of the Dead, some of which were read aloud by Mary Shelley and her friends during the famous party at Villa Diodati (Switzerland) where Lord Byron suggested that the guests try their hand creating some new ghostly fiction. The more famous results of that challenge were Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Vampyre by JW Polidori.

But so much for history. Let’s move to the stories, which are all outstanding.

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Goth Chick News: Could I Really Have Never Interviewed a Medium? Situation Corrected…

Goth Chick News: Could I Really Have Never Interviewed a Medium? Situation Corrected…

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It seems nearly impossible for even me to believe, but in going through twenty-three years of Black Gate archives, I realized I have never interviewed a medium. Guys who made lamps out of old doll heads? Check. The kid who played “Newt” in Aliens? You betcha. A goth boy band? More times than I can count. But someone who communicates with the dead – for real? Never until now.

I wasn’t aware of what now seems like a glaring oversight on my part, until I made the acquaintance of Ms. DeEtte Ranea at the last show of the spooky season, Days of the Dead. Though in my head I was expecting a much older woman of some vague Slavic descent, likely wearing an earring and a headscarf, DeEtte in no way fit my mental image of a medium, and once I got used to that, I realized I had oodles of questions. DeEtte was gracious enough to agree to answer them and I managed to whittle them down to thirteen, which seemed like an appropriate number given the topic.

So, everyone, please meet DeEtte.

DeEtte, please meet everyone.

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So Much More than an Action-Thriller: Victor Frankenstein

So Much More than an Action-Thriller: Victor Frankenstein

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Victor Frankenstein (20th Century Fox, 2015)

I really enjoyed this movie. Victor Frankenstein (2015) is an intelligent, well-written, dramatic horror film, a true actor’s film, and so much more than an action-thriller.

Daniel Radcliffe shows off the acting chops I knew he had, from both pre- and post-Harry Potter. James McAvoy is terrific, and once again, the wonderful Charles Dance shows what he can bring to the table. Jessica Brown Findlay adds heart, charm, beauty and class to this production. This film reminded me of the best of the classic Hammer films, but with a bigger budget and state-of-the art special FX, both practical and CGI.

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