Black Gate – Page 350 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Birthday Reviews: Emma Bull’s “A Bird That Whistles”

Thursday, December 13, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Emma Bull was born on December 13, 1954.

Bull’s novel Bone Dance was nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Philip K. Dick Awards. Her novel War for the Oaks was nominated for the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial, the Geffen, the Mythopoeic, and the William L. Crawford – IAFA Fantasy Awards. She received a second Nebula nomination for the story “Silver of Gold,” a second Mythopoeic nomination for The Princess and the Lord of Night and additional World Fantasy nominations for Liavek: The Players of Luck and Territory. She is married to Will Shetterly, with whom she has collaborated on fiction and as an editor. She has also collaborated with Steven Brust, Elizabeth Bear, and Leah Bobet.

“A Bird That Whistles” appeared in the anthology Hidden Turnings, edited by Diana Wynne Jones in 1989. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling selected it for inclusion in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Third Annual Collection. The story was reprinted in the Shetterly/Bull collection Double Feature, published by NESFA in 1994. In 2004 Patrick Nielsen Hayden included the story in his anthology New Magics: An Anthology of Today’s Fantasy. The story also appeared in the 2011 book The Urban Fantasy Anthology, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale. In 1994, Alice Bellagamba translated it into Italian for the anthology Miti fiabe & guerrieri and the story was also translated for the French anthology Traverses in 2002.

John Deacon is a 17 year old banjo player who is starting to appear at open mic nights at Chicago’s Orpheus Coffeeshop. Deacon is not a very strong performer and lacks confidence, yet he is willing to get on stage. At the same time, he has developed a crush on Orpheus waitress Lisa Amundsen. One day, while waiting for his name to be called up, he strikes up a conversation with Willy Silver, a dulcimer player. Silver proves not only to be willing to mentor Deacon and teach him new methods of playing his banjo, but also a rival for Lisa’s affection, although Lisa has never shown more than a friendly inclination toward Deacon and he’s too shy to act on his infatuation.

Set in the 1970s, the story has a background of the unrest against the Vietnam War and comes to head during a march against the war when Deacon is attacked in the Orpheus’ parking lot. Knocked down and bleeding, he is waiting for a continued attack that never comes. Looking up, he finds Silver looking fearsome with red lights in his eyes and his attackers fleeing. After giving Deacon advice, Silver disappears, having protected and nurtured the young musician. In return Deacon gave Silver some questions to think over.

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The Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, Spain

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

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The mosque interior, showing the famous series of double arches.
The column on the left has a Corinthian capital reused from a
Roman building. The one of the right has a Moorish capital.

I am fortunate to live in a country that has preserved remains from a wide variety of civilizations. From Roman cities to medieval castles, Spain’s got it all. One culture that has left an enduring legacy on Spanish architecture, cuisine, and language is that of the Moors. For much of the Middle Ages, large portions of the Iberian Peninsula were ruled by Muslims from North Africa and the Levant, who built one of the country’s most beautiful buildings.

Invading Muslims took Córdoba, then a rather minor Visigothic city in southern Spain, in 711 AD. They destroyed most of it but spared the church, which was then divided and used as a house of worship for both faiths. The city languished until the arrival of Abd al-Rahman I in 756, who took power in Muslim Spain and made Córdoba his capital. In 784 AD he ordered a great mosque to be built on the site of the church. Later Muslim rulers expanded it until 1236, when Córdoba was recaptured by the Christians and the building was converted into La Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption).

The result is an amazing hybrid of various periods of Moorish and Christian architecture.

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New Treasures: An Agent of Utopia by Andy Duncan

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Andy Duncan is one of my favorite modern short story writers, and has been ever since the release of his first collection, the World Fantasy Award-winning Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, 2000). I heard him read from that book at the World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi in 2000, and in 2018 I got to repeat that experience by being in the audience at this year’s convention in Baltimore while Andy read from his brand new collection An Agent of Utopia.

An Agent of Utopia contains a dozen tales, two of them brand new. They include multiple award nominees and winners, including the Locus Award nominee “Senator Bilbo,” which blended the tales of Bilbo Baggins and white supremacist Mississippi senator Theodore G. Bilbo, World Fantasy Award winner “The Pottawatomie Giant,” Hugo nominee “Beluthahatchie,” and no less than three Nebula nominees. Here’s the back cover text.

In the tales gathered in An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories you will meet a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating Zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken ― not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Sir Thomas More, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique twenty-first-century fabulist.

From the Florida folktales of the perennial prison escapee Daddy Mention and the dangerous gator-man Uncle Monday that inspired “Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull” (first published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson) to the imagined story of boxer and historical bit player Jess Willard in World Fantasy Award winner “The Pottawatomie Giant” (first published on SciFiction), or the Ozark UFO contactees in Nebula Award winner “Close Encounters” to Flannery O’Connor’s childhood celebrity in Shirley Jackson Award finalist “Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” (first published in Eclipse) Duncan’s historical juxtapositions come alive on the page as if this Southern storyteller was sitting on a rocking chair stretching the truth out beside you.

Duncan rounds out his explorations of the nooks and crannies of history in two irresistible new stories, “Joe Diabo’s Farewell” ― in which a gang of Native American ironworkers in 1920s New York City go to a show ― and the title story, “An Agent of Utopia” ― where he reveals what really (might have) happened to Thomas More’s head.

And here’s the complete table of contents.

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Birthday Reviews: Josepha Sherman’s “River’s Friend”

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Josepha Sherman was born on December 12, 1946 and died on August 23, 2012.

Sherman’s debut novel The Shining Falcon won the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial Award in 1990. Sherman collaborated with Mercedes Lackey, Laura Anne Gilman, Susan Shwartz,and Mike Resnick. She co-edited the non-fiction folklore collection Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts with Toni Weisskopf.

“River’s Friend” saw print in issue #178 of Dragon under editor Roger E. Moore and fiction editor Barbara G. Young in February 1992. As with so many of the stories which appeared in Dragon, this one was never reprinted.

Sherman sets her story in an alternative Russia during the reign of Vladimir the Great. Souchmant has the unique position at Vladimir’s court of a peasant who has managed, through the prince’s good graces, to become one of the bogatyrs. Souchmant knows that he is part of the nobility only at the sufferance of his lord. He also has a secret that, if found out, would force him from Vladimir’s court. Vladimir is known in this world for his distaste for anything that smells of the supernatural, the Other, and ever since he was a young boy, Souchmant has been in communication with the Other, specifically the spirit of the River Niedpra.

It isn’t his communication with the River Spirit that gets Souchmant in trouble with his lord, but rather his frustration at the lack of understanding the bogatyrs have about the way the common people live. Souchmant erupts complaining that they don’t know how to do anything useful or complete a task without violence. He offers that he can capture a live swan without the use of any weapons or even a net. Once the words are out of his mouth, Vladimir banishes him to complete the task.

Rather than do as he was instructed, Souchmant, with some help from the spirit of the Niedpra, saves the river from having a group of Tatars build a bridge over it, which would also serve to stanch its flow. Having defeated the Tatars with supernatural aid, Souchmant can’t admit what exactly he has done when he reports on the attempted Tatar invasion to Vladimir. Thrown in jail, he is eventually rescued by an unlikely ally.

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The Return of a Fantasy Landmark: The Unfortunate Fursey by Mervyn Wall

Tuesday, December 11, 2018 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

While I was standing in front of the Valancourt Books booth at the World Fantasy Convention (so I could buy a copy of the classic horror novel The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight, as I reported last week), I took the time to look over all their latest releases. Valancourt is one of the great treasures of the genre — their editorial team has excellent taste, and they scour 20th Century paperback backlists to bring long-neglected classics back into print. I’m pretty familiar with 20th Century genre stuff, but they consistently surprise me with their diverse and excellent selections.

I ended up taking home a pile of books, including the one-volume edition of Michael McDowell’s complete Blackwater Saga and Steve Rasnic Tem’s new collection Figures Unseen. But I was hoping for new discoveries, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were plenty of eye-catching titles vying for my attention, but the most interesting — and the ones I ended up taking home with me –was the pair of novels above.

Set in 11th century Ireland, where demonic forces have launched an assault on the monastery of Clonmacnoise, The Unfortunate Fursey was originally published in 1946. The sequel The Return of Fursey followed in 1948. Written by Irish writer Mervyn Wall, they were praised as “landmark book in the history of fantasy,” by Year’s Best SF editor E. F. Bleiler. More recently, Black Gate author Darrell Schweitzer wrote:

The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey are not quaint esoterica for the specialist, folks, they are living masterpieces. They haven’t dated slightly and are as fresh and as powerful as when they were first written.

Both novels were reprinted in handsome trade paperback editions by Valancourt last year, with new introductions by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda.

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Endings and Beginnings: The IX: Prelude to Sorrow by Andrew P. Weston

Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 3 comments

With The IX: Prelude to Sorrow (2018), Andrew P. Weston brings the curtain down on his trilogy that started with The IX (2015) and continued with The IX: Exordium of Tears (2016). Driven to near-extinction by the all-devouring Horde, the humanoid Ardenese turned their fate over to an AI called the Architect. The Architect transported human military personnel from all across the ages in hope of finding people with new ideas about how to fight the Horde. In The IX, men of the fabled Roman IX Legion and their Celtic adversaries, along with 19th century US Cavalry, Plains Indians, a British SBS team, and some terrorists are dragged away from Earth just at the moment they are about to die.

The first book introduced the various soldiers as well as the Horde. Utterly alien monsters, at first the Horde seem to exist solely to devour every living thing in their path. As the story unfolds it becomes clear they are a far more complex enemy than the Ardenese and their new allies realize. The most striking of Weston’s achievements in the book is conveying the strangeness of the Horde.

In the next installment the temporarily victorious humans and Ardenese, warned by the seemingly mystical insights of the leader of the Native American contingent, Stained-With-Blood, launch a massive interstellar attack on the remaining Horde. Filled with massive space battles and planetary-scale destruction, the book is a blast. In the end, despite great losses, it seems the Horde has been finally defeated and the future of a hybrid Ardenese-human civilization has been ensured.

Prelude to Sorrow reveals that the victory thought won was only temporary. In fact, the situation faced in this new book is even worse than that in the beginning of the series. A new enemy, one that threatens not only the Ardenese’s existence but all existence, is revealed.

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Birthday Reviews: M. Rickert’s “The Super Hero Saves the World”

Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

M. (Mary) Rickert was born on December 11, 1959.

In 2007, Rickert won two World Fantasy Awards, for her collection Map of Dreams and for the short story “Journey Into the Kingdom.” She won the 2012 Shirley Jackson Award for “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece.” Map of Dreams also received the William L. Crawford – IAFA Fantasy Award for best first fantasy novel. Rickert has also published using her full name.

Rickert originally published “The Super Hero Saves the World” in the June 2003 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder. She also included it in her first collection, Map of Dreams. It has not otherwise been reprinted.

“The Super Hero Saves the World” is a story of magic realism about a young girl, Marcado, who as a young child managed to survive an attack by a python that killed her mother. Rickert follows the relationships between Marcado and her sister, Elsine, and their relationship with their father, who was with Mercardo when the snake swallowed her, although Marcado was cut from the snake’s belly. Perhaps because of her experience, Marcado grows up distant from the rest of her family and sees the world in a different way.

While Elsine has a life filled with boys and fun, Marcado keeps to herself, focusing on dancing whenever she can, finding a freedom and safety in movement, although she understands that it exasperates both her sister and father, so she avoids it when they are around. Her father especially is distant from Marcado, perhaps blaming her for his wife’s death when his daughter survived the same attack. He not only ignores her dancing, but when a teacher praises a poem Marcado wrote about being a super hero, his only response is annoyance at being called from work for something as minor as his daughter’s creativity.

Marcado eventually comes to an understanding with her sister, as well as coming to terms with the death of her mother and her own strange experience, though she never manages to overcome the barrier between herself and her father. The super hero she sees in herself, with the strange origin story, is working to make her world a better place, giving her peace, and eventually building up a friendship with Elsine and her husband. She must, however, continue to strive to save the world until she makes contact with her father.

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Take a Bite From The Poison Apple: Interviews from Black Gate Magazine by Elizabeth Crowens

Monday, December 10, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Over the past two years, since December 13, 2016, Elizabeth Crowens has become one of the most consistently popular contributors to Black Gate magazine. She’s accomplished this with a surprisingly small number of articles — scarcely a dozen so far, over 24 months.

Each, however, has been a fascinating and in-depth discussion with a prominent individual in the genre. Her interviews have included a cross section of talents, including stunt doubles, TV stage managers, fantasy illustrators, bestselling authors, editors, and even Black Gate contributors. All of her interviews have been popular, and more than a few — such as her dual interview with Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner in June 2017 — have been among the most widely-read pieces we’ve published in the past few years.

Earlier this month Elizabeth released The Poison Apple, Volume One: Interviews from Black Gate Magazine, a collection of her earliest interviews. It includes lengthy discussions with:

Teel James Glenn
Steven Van Patten
Lissanne Lake
Martin Page
Gail Carriger
Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner

The book includes the complete contents of each interview, including all the questions and responses, and even the color images.

ELizabeth tells us that she plans to follow up with Volume Two next year, which includes conversations with Charlaine Harris, Heather Graham Pozzessere, Jennifer Brozek, Nancy Kilpatrick , Nancy Holder and Leslie Klinger.

Get all the details at Elizabeth’s website here, and be sure to sign up for new Newsletter for details on her upcoming projects and special offers. While you’re waiting for the next issue of the newsletter, read all of her recent Poison Apple columns at Black Gate here.

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Deck Pulp #5

Monday, December 10, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

“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)

Hopefully, by now, you’re aware of the Back Deck Pulp series of posts I ran over on Facebook. Since this is the fifth collection of them I’ve run for A (Black) Gat in the Hand! I’ve got enough for one more, and this column will run for four more weeks, so there might be another one. You can read the first four Back Deck Pulp posts by clicking the links at the end of this one.

CM KORNBLUTH

Cyril M. Kornbluth was a science fiction author who died of a heart attack, running to catch a train, at the age of 34. Frederick Pohl cowrote several stories with the author and finished some of Kornbluth’s stories after the latter died, He said that Kornbluth refused to brush his teeth and educated himself by reading the encyclopedia from A to Z. An interesting individual.

It’s Office Desk Pulp! I’m going to have to research C.M. Kornbluth (Apparently, he was known for his science fiction stories). ‘”A Ghoul and His Money” appeared in the September, 1946 Dime Detective. His protagonist, who is the good guy, is completely annoying and I was hoping something non-fatal would happen to him. It’s an interesting take on a hero and I think I’d like to tinker with the concept Fun, short read. Another story from the excellent anthology, Hard-Boiled Detectives.

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Birthday Reviews: Janny Wurts’s “The Snare”

Monday, December 10, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Janny Wurts was born on December 10, 1953 and is married to speculative fiction artist Don Maitz.

Wurts is both an author and artist, publishing her own fiction and novels as well as three novels in collaboration with Raymond E. Feist. Her collection That Way Lies Camelot was nominated for the British Fantasy Award in 1995. She also won three Chesley Awards for her artwork. In 1993, she won in the color art, unpublished category for The Wizard of Owls. She won the hardcover illustration award in 1995 for the cover to her own novel, The Curse of the Mistwraith, and in 1998, she received a special award for her contributions to ASFA. Wurts was guest of honor at the World Horror Con in 1996 in Eugene, Oregon, and a the World Fantasy Con, held in Tempe, Arizona in 2004.

“The Snare” was originally published in Wurts’s 1994 collection That Way Lies Camelot. It has never been reprinted. The story is based on a painting by Don Maitz entitled “The Wizard,” which originally appeared on the cover of the January 1983 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Wurts’s story is one of vengeance. The Wizard Iveldane has been imprisoned by his mentor, the Great Wizard of Trevior, for countless centuries, first bound by air, then water, then earth, and finally by fire. Through the ages, Iveldane has gone through all the emotions possible, wondering what his master was trying to teach him, cursing his master with hatred, and eventually vowing to exact a terrible price from him, which is how the story opens.

Iveldane’s meeting with the Great Wizard, as well as his eventual imprisonment when his master felt his tutelage was over, are shown in flashback. Although the Great Wizard eventually must explain why he did what he did to Iveldane, most of the Great Wizard’s motives are known to the reader long before Iveldane needs to be told. The fact that the Great Wizard does have to tell Iveldane implies that Iveldane was not ready either for his punishment or, ultimately, the role that he takes on after defeating his former master, although it is quite likely that Iveldane will grow into the position once he attains it.

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