Black Gate – Page 377 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Birthday Reviews: Jayge Carr’s “The Lady or the Tiger”

Saturday, July 28, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Jayge Carr was born Margery Ruth Morgenstern Krueger on July 28, 1940 and died on December 20, 2006.

In addition to her writing career, Carr worked as a nuclear physicist for NASA. Following her death from cancer, her remains were launched into orbit by Celestis.

“The Lady or the Tiger” was published by Charles C. Ryan in the Fall 1993 issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction after the magazine switched formats from a tabloid to a quarto format (standard magazine). The story has not been reprinted.

A missed stop of a city bus puts Alia in danger of being gang raped by a bunch of teenagers. When one of the teenagers momentarily objects, she is rescued by the timely arrival of the police, who take her savior into custody even as the other boys flee. In turn, Alia takes the boy under her wing and applies the Pygmalion treatment to him. However, as is quickly revealed, Alia is not what she appears and the situation is much more complex than anyone could guess.

All of Alia’s actions regarding Benny, as well as her responses to Rod O’Rourke, the police officer who first helped her and later wooed her, seem to be governed by a pair of aliens who are testing the humans. It eventually becomes evident that Alia is one of the aliens, trying to figure out if humans can subvert their own violent tendencies.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland

Friday, July 27, 2018 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’ve been buying up back issues of Science Fiction Eye, one of the better SF review zines of the 90s. SF Eye had a marvelous stable of hot young writers, including Bruce Sterling, Richard Kadrey, Paul Di Filippo, Pat Murphy, Gary Westfahl, Tony Daniel, Charles Platt, John Shirley, Jack Womack, Elizabeth Hand, Mark Laidlaw, and many others. I thought I’d enjoy revisiting the cutting edge genre journalism I found so thought provoking two decades ago, but what I really find entertaining this time around is the high quality reviews. Especially coverage of now-forgotten books like Colin Greenland”s Take Back Plenty (1990) the opening novel of his gonzo space opera trilogy featuring Tabitha Jute. Here’s a snippet of Sherry Coldsmith’s excellent review, from the Winter ’91 issue, which I bought on eBay last month for $7.50.

Take Back Plenty is a raid on the traditional space opera, a coup at the galactic palace. Its author has poked through the rubble of pulp SF, looking for the genre’s mermaids and Marie Celestes. Greenland’s pickings include a fecund Venus that chokes with unconquerable jungles, and an arid Mars scarred by canals. More modern tropes are also put to use: cyberjacks, talking corpses, titanic tin-can inhabitants that circle the Earth. Greenland has chucked away anything that requires scientific veracity and kept anything that possess mythic dazzle.

The protagonists are as fascinating as the background. Tabitha Jute is the owner-operator of a space vehicle, the sentient and personable Alice Liddell. These two soul sisters of the Sol system get into love and trouble in a world that Is a surreally logical as the one the bedeviled Lewis Carroll’s Alice.

Take Back Plenty won both the British Science Fiction and Clarke awards for Best Novel; it was followed by two sequels, Seasons of Plenty (1995) and Mother of Plenty (1998). Greenland’s last two books, Spiritfeather (2000) and Finding Helen (2003) appeared only in the UK. You can read Coldsmith’s complete review of Take Back Plenty (and the tail end of the enthusiastic notice of Crichton’s Jurassic Park) here — page 1 and page 2. See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

In 500 Words or Less: An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff

Friday, July 27, 2018 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

An Ancient Peace (Peacekeeper #1)
By Tanya Huff
DAW Books (432 pages, $7.99 paperback, $1.99 eBook, October 2016)

I love seeing characters in new contexts. An author creating a character who’s rounded and nuanced and thrilling to read about is something really special – characters like Harry Dresden, Millie Roper, Sira di’Sarc, or Logen Ninefingers. When an author can take that character, spin the world around them and let them thrive in an entirely changed environment – that’s something else entirely, and it’s phenomenal to see done well. Like moving Morgan to Fear the Walking Dead or Worf to Deep Space Nine.

And that’s exactly what Tanya Huff has done with Torin Kerr, formerly the star of the Confederation novels and now one of the central characters to the recently-concluded Peacekeeper trilogy. I’m a little behind the game in that I’ve only just read the first novel, An Ancient Peace, but damn if it wasn’t even more exciting and compelling than the previous Torin adventures I’ve read. In any long-running series, there are bound to be books that stand out and others that comparatively don’t measure up (much as I love The Dresden Files, not all fifteen are actual magic) but so far Huff consistently makes each novel even better than the last.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Gary Gygax’s “At Midnight Blackcat Comes”

Friday, July 27, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 8 comments

Gary Gygax was born Ernest Gary Gygax on July 28, 1938. He died on March 4, 2008. Although Gygax tried his hand writing fiction, he was best known as one of the creators of Dungeons and Dragons.

Gygax was inducted into the Origins Award Hall of Fame in 1980. In addition to Dungeons and Dragons (and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) and various modules and accessories, Gygax also had a hand in creating the role playing games Boot Hill, Cyborg Commando, Dangerous Journeys, and Lejendary Adventure.

Gygax wrote “At Moonset Blackcat Comes” as an introduction to the character Gord the Rogue, about whom he had already written the novel Saga of the Old City, which would be published later. The story appeared first in the 100^th issue of Dragon, edited by Kim Mohan. Accompanying the story were the rules to the game Dragonchess, described in the story. Although Gygax published a series of five Gord the Rogue novels, plus the short story collection Night Arrant, “At Moonset Blackcat Comes” was not included in the collection and has not been reprinted elsewhere.

The story introduces the main character and his barbarian companion while also trying to give the reader a feel for the way the City of Greyhawk, alluded to in many of Gygax’s AD&D articles and modules, is set up. Rather than exploring the city, however, Gygax quickly separates Gord from his companion and the city, setting the action, such as it is, in a sporting house, with Chert the barbarian going off to find female companionship while Gord settles in with Rexfelis to learn to play a chess alternative.

While Gygax is clearly trying to make Gord a likable character who is extremely competent and sure of himself, he comes across as arrogant, placing his own amusement and desires above those, like Chert, with whom he has surrounded himself. Although Gord is on guard against being taken in the game of Dragonchess, it is clear that Rexfelis had been playing Gord throughout the evening with the eventual end of using Gord to rob Rigello the arch-mage, a task Gord readily accepts.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Before She Sleeps by Bina Shah

Thursday, July 26, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The hit Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale has brought a whole new generation of readers to Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel — and spawned a growing subgenre.

One of the more interesting to me is Pakistani author Bina Shah’s upcoming Before She Sleeps, which Kirkus Reviews calls “a novel that is in explicit conversation with The Handmaid’s Tale… an overdue enlargement of the cultural conversation that Atwood’s novel continues to provoke.” The book has received considerable pre-publication buzz, and Publishers Weekly calls it “A haunting dystopian thriller.” Here’s the description.

In modern, beautiful Green City, the capital of South West Asia, gender selection, war and disease have brought the ratio of men to women to alarmingly low levels. The government uses terror and technology to control its people, and women must take multiple husbands to have children as quickly as possible.

Yet there are women who resist, women who live in an underground collective and refuse to be part of the system. Secretly protected by the highest echelons of power, they emerge only at night, to provide to the rich and elite of Green City a type of commodity that nobody can buy: intimacy without sex. As it turns out, not even the most influential men can shield them from discovery and the dangers of ruthless punishment.

This dystopian novel from one of Pakistan’s most talented writers is a modern-day parable, The Handmaid’s Tale about women’s lives in repressive Muslim countries everywhere. It takes the patriarchal practices of female seclusion and veiling, gender selection, and control over women’s bodies, amplifies and distorts them in a truly terrifying way to imagine a world of post-religious authoritarianism.

Bina Shah has written two collections and three previous novels, including A Season for Martyrs and the international bestseller Slum Child.

Before She Sleeps will be published by Delphinium on August 7, 2018. It is 256 pages, priced at $25 in hardcover and $17.99 for the digital version.

Birthday Reviews: Lawrence Watt-Evans’s “The Man for the Job”

Thursday, July 26, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 14 comments

Lawrence Watt-Evans was born on July 26, 1954.

Watt-Evans’s short story “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo Awards in 1988 and won the Hugo Award. Watt-Evans was nominated for a second Hugo Award for best semi-prozine, as the co-editor, along with William Sanders, of Helix SF in 2008. Watt-Evans has published under the names Nathan Archer and Walter Vance Awsten. He has collaborated with Brenda Clough, Kurt Busiek, Christina Briley, Julie Evans, Esther Friesner, and Carl Parlagreco~~, and Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch~~.

“The Man for the Job” was published in the December 2000 issue of Realms of Fantasy, edited by Shawna McCarthy. The story ~~has not been reprinted~~ has also appeared in The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy MegaPack.

Watt-Evans takes on several fantasy standard tropes in “The Man for the Job.” The story opens with five siblings meeting with a wizard to get help in ridding themselves of an evil dragon. The group includes four brothers and their sister, who is insistent that they include her since her livelihood is at stake as well as theirs. The wizard, Gallopius, talks about magic items with them, noting that in days of yore, wizards hid magic items in strange, exotic, and stupid places where the wizards wouldn’t be able to retrieve them when needed. While Gallopius can lay hands on all his own enchanted items, they will need to complete a quest to find the Helmet of Balanced Justice to defeat the dragon.

The quest also subverts the typical quest story. The helmet is located relatively near to Gallopius’s home, and was hidden three hundred years earlier, protected by three guardians. Although Gallipius is able to tell them the nature of the guardians, they are not ready for the state they are in. Watt-Evans takes the idea of a centuries old protection to its logical conclusion, as all three guardians have failed to withstand the ravages of time and they manage to retrieve the helmet with some ease.

…

Read More Read More

The 2018 World Fantasy Awards Ballot

Wednesday, July 25, 2018 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Mapping the Interior Stephen Graham Jones-small

The 2018 World Fantasy Awards Ballot, containing a whole bunch of books I haven’t read yet, has just been announced. The ballot is compiled by the voting attendees of the World Fantasy Convention, all of whom clearly read a lot more than I do. Where do they find the time? Don’t they have blog posts to write, like normal people?

At least I have my membership for the convention, so I’ll be there to watch all the excitement unfold. It’s still a few months away, so I a little time to get caught up. Wish we luck.

As has been tradition since 1998, the coveted Life Achievement Award is being given to two recipients. This year they are Canadian author Charles de Lint and DAW Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth (Betsy) Wollheim. Both are fine selections, richly deserving of this recognition.

The winners in every other category will be selected by a panel of judges. Here’s the complete list of nominees, with links to our previous coverage.

Life Achievement

Charles de Lint
Elizabeth Wollheim

…

Read More Read More

The Last Video Store in my Neighborhood Closed and it’s Partially My Fault

Wednesday, July 25, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

20180611_175922

It’s a sad day for Madrid, especially for the barrio of Malasaña. The last video store in the neighborhood has closed. After 14 years of swimming against the tide, Ficciones closed a month ago today. I haven’t been able to rent a video since.

Sadly, I might not have rented one even if it had remained open. I liked Ficciones, don’t get me wrong, but with all the oldies available for free on YouTube and Archive.org, plus all those wonderful series on Netflix, a local video store was more of a nice idea than a regular shopping experience.

And it’s only now that I’m realizing how much I and everyone else screwed up.

…

Read More Read More

Conjure Puberty: The Sword and The Sorcerer (1982)

Wednesday, July 25, 2018 John Searle Comments 18 comments

The Sword and The Sorcerer (1982)
Dir. Albert Pyun
Starring: Lee Horsely, Kathleen Beller, Simon McCorkindale, et al.

In case it needs to be said — spoilers.

Okay. Let’s go…

The Sword and the Sorcerer is the cinematic equivalent of the first homebrew table-top gaming campaign run by a 13 year old.

I know this because I turned 13 in 1982. I also know this because I likely ran my first homebrew table-top game that year. The step from 12 to 13 seems like nothing to an adult; we forget the power these thresholds hold for children. At 12 you are a child. At 13 you are a teenager. There is, I believe, a biblical injunction that calls for us to put away childish things as we leave childhood — but that never really worked for me.

When he was interviewed before his tragic death, the late, great herpetologist/artist/song stylist/adventurer and man of mystery Dean Ripa was asked to explain happiness. I’m paraphrasing, but his answer was something like “Everything I loved doing at 10 years old, I just kept doing.”

I can get behind that thought. What I loved as child I have kept. What you love is an act of self-creation. What you love reveals part of who you are — at least I believe that. Among the things that I loved enough to bring forward were books. Specifically, fantasy books — and more specifically — sword and sorcery books. Another thing I brought forward was a love of table-top gaming. Both of these things were so central to my childhood that I have carried them with me for the four decades since in one way or another. So as you might imagine, in 1982 I was completely stoked for the release of one movie over all others.

That movie was not The Sword and the Sorcerer.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Brian M. Stableford’s “The Growth of the House of Usher”

Wednesday, July 25, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Brian M. Stableford was born on July 25, 1948.

Stableford received the British SF Association Award for his short story “The House of Mourning.” His anthology Tales of the Wandering Jew won the Readercon Award for Best Anthology and his novel The Empire of Fear won the Lord Ruthven Award. He has also won several scholarship awards, including the Eaton Award for his book Scientific Romance in Britain: 1890-1950, the Pilgrim Lifetime Achievement Award from the Science Fiction Research Associastion, the IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award, and the SF&F Translation Award. Stableford has published under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Francis Amery and Brian Craig.

“The Growth of the House of Usher,” the first of Stableford’s loosely connected tales of the Biotech Revolution, first appeared in the Summer 1988 issue of Interzone, issue #24, edited by Simon Ounsley and David Pringle. Gardner Dozois recognized it in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection the following year. It was also reprinted in David Memmott’s fanzine Ice River, issue 4 in June of 1989. John Clute, Pringle, and Ounsley selected the story for Interzone: The 4^th Anthology. Stableford included it in two of his collections of stories about the Biotech Revolution with the similar titles Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution and Sexual Chemistry and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution.

Stableford acknowledges early in the story that the title of “The Growth of the House of Usher” is a call back to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In Stableford’s story, set in the 23^rd century, Rowland Usher has secluded himself away from his fellow man, living in a massive house of his own design in the delta of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. He has summed an own college friend to see the house and to let him know that Usher has chosen his friend to be his executor, for Usher suffers, as his father and sister suffered before him, from a deadly disease.

Despite being a science fiction story, focusing on using biotech to create buildings and improving biotech for even greater things, the story clearly belongs to the Gothic tradition, although while a lot of Gothic fiction is wary of technology (see Frankenstein), Stableford’s story embraces the possibilities. This is most obvious in the description of the massive home Usher has built, made of replicating biomatter which will continue to grow and improve long after he, and his friend, are dead. At the same time, even if technology and science can’t save Usher’s life, he still views it favorably, seeing the sacrifice of his own life to the disease as a means of helping science learn what ravaged his family in the hopes of preventing it in the future should it reappear.

…

Read More Read More