Search Results for: tale covers

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords – The Barbarian Boom (Part 1)

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Hawk the Slayer (1980) The Eighties Barbarian Boom didn’t start with Conan the Barbarian (1982), though its long pre-release hype train certainly primed the pump. In truth, the market was ripe for such films, and by mid-1981, a number of other sword-and-sorcery movies were in production or pre-production. The genre had been bubbling its way up in other mass media throughout the Seventies, Dungeons & Dragons co-designer Gary Gygax had come to Hollywood talking it up, and the largely heroic…

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New Treasures: Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter

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Activation Degradation (Harper Voyager, September 2021) Marina J. Lostetter is the author of the acclaimed Noumenon space opera series, and the fantasy novel The Helm of Midnight, released just this past April. She doesn’t appear interested in just soaking up the glory of those accomplishments, however — her next novel (and her second this year) arrived in September. Activation Degradation features a spunky robot hero in a fast-paced tale of alien invasion in high orbit over Jupiter, one with plenty…

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Robert E Howard: The Poet And The Ladies Of The Night

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Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (Arkham House, 1976) and Dark Valley Destiny (Bluejay Books, 1983) Covers by Tim Kirk and Kevin Eugene Johnson Robert E. Howard and prostitutes is a complicated and fascinating subject. Not only is there a question of whether he visited the ladies of the night, there was also the issue of whether he was a virgin. In his REH biography, Dark Valley Destiny (1983) L. Sprague de Camp wrote, Some of Robert…

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Vintage Treasures: High Tension by Dean Ing

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High Tension (Ace Books, 1982). Cover by Walter Velez Dean Ing was a staple in James Baen’s paperback magazines of the late seventies, Destinies (eleven volumes from Ace Books, 1978-1981) and the copycat series Baen kicked off after he left Ace to found Baen Books, Far Frontiers (seven issues, 1985-86). I also saw Ing’s name semi-regularly in Analog and OMNI around the same time. He produced four collections: Anasazi (1980), a set of three connected tales of first contact with…

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Deep in Wildest Britain: Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

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I had the sense of recognition…here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn’t know it… English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams on discovering English folklore and folk music The late Robert Holdstock prefaced his 1984 novel, Mythago Wood with that quote, and that’s sort of how I feel about the book myself. Holdstock dug deeply into the idea of myth, how it might arise from a culture, and how, in turn, it might affect individuals. I have…

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Goth Chick News: Days of the Dead – Season Greetings from Our Family to Yours

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That time of year has once again rolled around. “The Season” is officially over. Black Gate photog Chris Z has thrown a tarp over the Hummer and sent his kilt to the dry cleaners. We’ve emptied the final airplane-sized bottles of Fireball, and filed our last expense report with BG’s financial fun police. Because on the weekend before Thanksgiving we attended the final convention of our annual show circuit, Days of the Dead. It certainly doesn’t feel like nearly ten…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords – 1981: The Old Order Changeth

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Excalibur (Warner Bros, 1981) 1981 was a watershed year in fantasy films. The success of Star Wars had made it possible to fund and produce large-scale SF and fantasy movies, but it also heralded a change in the way such movies were made, placing high-quality (and thus expensive) special effects front and center. Prior to Star Wars, special effects in fantasy films were almost invariably low-budget and cheesy, reflecting movie producers’ almost invariable belief that such films appealed only to…

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New Treasures: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 edited by Veronica Roth and John Joseph Adams

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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 (Mariner Books, October 2021). Cover uncredited John Joseph Adams was my editor on my first novel, The Robots of Gotham, so naturally I assume he is the leading editor in the field (you should too.) For the past seven years he has been editing The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy with a strong line-up of annual co-editors, including Karen Joy Fowler, N.K. Jemisin, and Carmen Maria Machado. This year Veronica Roth…

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Vintage Treasures: Other Days, Other Eyes by Bob Shaw

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Other Days, Other Eyes (Ace, 1972). Cover by J. H. Breslow Bob Shaw was a prolific science fiction writer from Northern Ireland who wrote over two dozen novels, including The Orbitsville trilogy, about the discovery of an intact Dyson sphere orbiting a far star, Medusa’s Children (1977), Who Goes Here? (1977), and perhaps his most popular book, the Hugo-nominated The Ragged Astronauts (1986), the tale of a technologically advanced civilization that builds spaceships out of wood. It wasn’t something you…

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Intelligent Lizards, Asteroid Mining, and Hardboiled Noir: November/December 2021 Print SF Magazines

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November/December 2021 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Maurizio Manzieri, Shutterstock, and Maurizio Manzieri (again) The November/December print magazines have an impressive list of contributors, including Jack McDevitt, Nalo Hopkinson, Robert Reed, Eleanor Arnason, David Gerrold, Megan Lindholm, Bill Pronzini & Barry N. Malzberg, Jack Skillingstead, Sandra McDonald, Sheila Finch, R. Garcia y Robertson, Ray Nayler, Gregory Feeley, Shane Tourtellotte, Alice Towey, and many others. Sam…

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