Black Gate – Page 391 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume Five edited by Robert Shearman and Michael Kelly

Monday, October 29, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume Five-small

Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume Five-back-small

We’re almost at the end of our 2018 coverage of the annual crop of Year’s Best anthologies, and today’s title has traditionally been one of the highlights — Undertow Publication’s Year’s Best Weird Fiction.

The series is edited by Undertow publisher Michael Kelly, side-by-side with a different guest editor every year. Past editors have included Laird Barron, Kathe Koja, Simon Strantzas, and Helen Marshall. This year it’s Robert Shearman, author of the celebrated collections Remember Why You Fear Me (2012) and They Do the Same Things Different There (2014), and a man who’s shown up in more than his fair share of Year’s Best anthologies himself.

This is a book I highly anticipate every year, but the arrival of this one is bittersweet because it’s also the last. There’s a lot of reasons why a publisher might discontinue a series, but my guess in this case is that Undertow has been growing rapidly — its releases this year include Priya Sharma’s All the Fabulous Beasts, Simon Strantzas’s Nothing Is Everything, and the beautiful hardcover magazine The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism — and the sales for Year’s Best Weird Fiction just don’t justify all the work it takes. It’s sad to see, but these are the kinds of decisions a thriving small press has to make.

In the meantime, we still have this year’s brand new volume to enjoy (and if you haven’t checked out the previous ones, you have a lot more than that). Here’s the complete table of contents for Volume Five, including stories by Brian Evenson, Alison Littlewood, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Marshall, Paul Tremblay, and others — including Chavisa Woods’s Shirley Jackson Award-winning novelette “Take the Way Home That Leads Back To Sullivan Street.”

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part Two)

Monday, October 29, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

I reached out to some friends to help me with A (Black) Gat in the Hand, as I certainly can’t cover everything and do it all justice. Our latest guest is author and fellow Black Gater, Joe Bonadonna. Last week, Joe delivered an in-depth look at hardboiled adaptations on the silver screen. So, here’s part two!

Hardboiled Film Noir: From Printed Page to Moving Pictures (Part Two)

“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

And now, on to Raymond Chandler, one of the two writers who inspired my Heroic Fantasy, the other being Fritz Lieber, another pulp magazine maestro. Considered by many to be a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, Chandler had been an oil company executive who turned to writing after he lost his job during the Great Depression.

To me, his prose is pure poetry, his use of simile and metaphor, his imagery and turn of phrase are top notch. His novel, The Big Sleep, was turned into a motion picture in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe. His Lady in the Lake (1947) became an interesting vehicle for Robert Montgomery (the father of Bewitched’s Elizabeth Montgomery.) Farewell, My Lovely was first filmed as Murder, My Sweet (1944), starring Dick Powell. Chandler’s novel, The High Window, was filmed twice: first as Time to Kill (1942) and again in 1947 as The Brasher Doubloon. Chandler also had a lucrative career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

In 1944 he scripted (along with director Billy Wilder) James M. Cain’s masterpiece, Double Indemnity, wrote an original screenplay called The Blue Dahlia (1946), and co-wrote (along with Whitfield Cook and Czenzi Ormonde) the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), which was based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mister Ripley and Ripley’s Game.

For me, the 1940s also gave us the last of what I consider to be the truly great gangster films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. High Sierra, released in 1941 and based on the novel by W.R. Burnett, was a departure from the usual gangster epic, in that it portrayed a much more sympathetic criminal, Roy Earle (played by Humphrey Bogart.)

Bogart also played the character of Vincent Parry in Dark Passage (1947), which was written for the screen by David Goodis, who adapted his own novel. Another film, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson, was 1948’s Key Largo, the perfect blend of old-school gangster and the new wave of film noir, and it was a tour de force for Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Claire Trevor.

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Birthday Reviews: Fredric Brown’s “It Didn’t Happen”

Monday, October 29, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Fredric Brown was born on October 29, 1906 and died on March 11, 1972.

Although Brown has been nominated for four Retro Hugo Awards (twice in 1996 and twice in 2018), he was deemed deserving of renewed attention and received the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2012. In addition to writing short fiction and science fiction novels, Brown also wrote numerous mysteries and his novel The Fabulous Clipjoint earned him an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel. His story “Arena” was adapted into the Star Trek episode of the same name, and several other stories of his have been adapted for television and film, including a cinematic version of Martians Go Home which should be avoided. Brown occasionally collaborated with Carl Onspaugh, Fritz Leiber, and Judith Merril, although his most frequent collaborator was Mack Reynolds.

Brown first published “It Didn’t Happen” in the October 1963 issue of Playboy. It was reprinted in the Playboy science fiction anthology Transit of Earth in 1971 and in 1973 was included in Fredric Brown’s collection Paradox Lost and Twelve Other Great Science Fiction Stories. The story showed up in subsequent Brown collections The Best of Fredric Brown and From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown, as well as the Wildside Press megapack #33, focusing on Brown. The story has been translated for French and Dutch editions of Paradox Lost and into Italian, by Giuseppe Lippi, for an original Italian collection by Brown called Cosmolinea B-2.

“It Didn’t Happen” is one of those stories which has always stayed with me. It is about Lorenz Kane, who has become convinced that he is the only person in the world. In Kane’s view, everyone else is simply a manifestation of his imagination. Kane’s viewpoint is put to the test when he shoots and kills a stripper who rejects his advances and finds himself in jail awaiting trial. Despite this, he still thinks he is on the right track. As he explains to his attorney, he began to think other people didn’t exist when he accidentally killed a girl on a bicycle and when he reported it to the police, she had completely vanished. He tested his theory by murdering someone, who similarly seemed to have ceased to exist.

Kane relates his theory and his guilt to his attorney, who listens intently, not dismissing any of the craziness Kane brings up. The fact that Brown includes scenes of the attorney apart from Kane indicates that Kane’s theories are incorrect and that he is not the only person who actually exists. Kane’s discovery that killing the stripper has consequences also indicates to Kane that he is wrong, but rather than assume his subconscious is punishing him for murdering her, he simply revises his solipsist theory of existence.

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Handling Wonderful Changes: The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken

Sunday, October 28, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Black Gate has some of the best writers in the business, and we’re always proud when one of our bloggers has a new publication. But we’re doubly pleased when one of our writers produces a debut novel — and especially one as widely acclaimed as The Quantum Magician, by our Saturday blogger Derek Künsken.

The Quantum Magician was published in trade paperback by Solaris earlier this month, and it’s already won rave accolades from writers such as Yoon Ha Lee, and Cixin Liu, who said “Technology changes us — even our bodies — in fundamental ways, and Kunsken handles this wonderfully.” In his Black Gate review Brandon Crilly called it “intricate, compelling and absolutely fascinating,” and in a feature review at Locus British SF writer Adam Roberts wrote:

This debut novel will do well. It is a fat, fun SF heist-thriller, a sort of Ocean’s 2487… We’re in a 25th century in which humanity has spread to the stars, enabled by wormhole gates left over from a long vanished interstellar civilization. Access to these gates is, as you’d expect, tightly controlled, and when a group wants to smuggle a fleet of advanced spaceships across the galaxy without paying the requisite fee, they approach the galaxy’s finest con-man, Belisarius Arjona, for help. Belisarius gets the gang back together one last time to pull off the most audacious heist of his career… Künsken has a wonderfully ingenious imagination.

Derek first appeared in Black Gate in issue 15 with his short story “The Gifts of Li Tzu-Ch’eng.” He has been our regular Saturday evening blogger since 2013, writing some 128 articles for us. The Quantum Magician was published by Solaris on October 2, 2018. It is 475 pages, priced at $11.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Justin Adams.

Interested in keeping up to date on the latest from BG bloggers and staff? We do our best to share news with you here, and you always see the latest from our talented crew by reading posts with the BG Staff tag.

One Alone: First Man

Sunday, October 28, 2018 Thomas Parker Comments 0 Comment

I am a child of the Space Age. Growing up in Southern California in the sixties as the son of an aerospace worker, the sound of sonic booms from planes flying from Air Force bases in the High Desert were as ubiquitous during my childhood as Beatles’ tunes. I played with Mattel’s Major Matt Mason space toys (go on eBay and prepare to be shocked and awed), I snacked on “space food sticks” (really nasty) and drank Tang (more fun if you shook up the jar, unscrewed the lid, and inhaled the fumes than it was as a beverage), and, along with millions of other people, on the evening of July 21, 1969, I sprawled (in my footie pajamas) in front of a cabinet television set that weighed more than some of today’s cars, and watched as Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon. So, being a child of the Space Age, it only follows that my favorite movies are tearjerkers… tearjerkers like The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.

In fact, there is nothing that gets my waterworks started faster than a scene from “1968”, the episode in From the Earth to the Moon that chronicles Apollo 8, the first manned mission to reach and orbit the Moon. When the moment comes when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders see what no human beings in the long history of our race had ever seen before — the Earth, still and bright and silent, rising over the surface of another world… well, I need a tissue right now, just thinking about it.

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Birthday Reviews: Amy Thomson’s “Buddha Nature”

Sunday, October 28, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Amy Thomson was born on October 28, 1958.

Thomson won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author in 1994 on the basis of her debut novel, Virtual Girl. She subsequently published two novels in The Color of Distance series and the stand-alone novel Storyteller, as well as three short stories. She has been nominated for the Prometheus Award for Virtual Girl, the Philip K. Dick Award and Seiun Award for The Color of Distance, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and Endeavour Awards for her novel Storyteller. In the trading card series issued by the Chicago in 2000 Worldcon bid, card number 28 was of Thomson and identified as the “Official Rookie Card.”

“Buddha Nature” was published in the January-February 2013 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact, edited by Stanley Schmidt. The story was Thomson’s first published science fiction in a decade and earned her the Anlab Award for Best Novelette. The story has not been reprinted.

Many authors have explored what it means to be human through the lens of robots in science fiction, most notably, of course, Isaac Asimov. Amy Thomson has also examined the idea that a sufficiently advanced robot can become human through a religious lens in “Buddha Nature.”

The Buddhist monks are surprised when a robot named Raz trundles up to the monastery and asks if it may join the order as a novice. Not entirely sure how to respond, Samsara invites the robot in and introduces it to the abbot, Bodhidharma, who reflects on the question of whether a robot can achieve enlightenment or not and decides that while he feels the robot belongs, it is appropriate to put the question to a vote. Although some of the monks express reservations, none stronger than Henry, Bodhidharma agrees to let the robot into the monastery for a trial period.

Over the course of the story, the monks learn as much from Raz as the robot learns from them. Samsara teaches Raz what it means to have emotions, sympathy, frustration, and other human traits. Although Samsara doesn’t fully understand why Raz needs to learn this, the robot decides it can’t achieve enlightenment without learning what humans must overcome to achieve it. While Raz is learning these things from Samsara, the humans are learning to view the world in a more clinical and detached manner and many of them are learning to accept the non-human, potentially sentient in their midst, although acceptance isn’t universal among the monks.

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Gods, Robots, and Man: The Best of Lester del Rey

Saturday, October 27, 2018 Jason McGregor Comments 8 comments

Lester del Rey was born in Minnesota in 1915 and died in 1993. One of his boldest fictions was claiming that his full name was Ramón Felipe San Juan Mario Silvio Enrico Smith Heathcourt-Brace Sierra y Alvarez-del Rey y de los Verdes, when it was actually Leonard Knapp. However, it was his other fictions, beginning in 1938 for Astounding, and his work as an editor, a reviewer, and in a literary agency, which resulted in his being made a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1991.

While he was active in science fiction until near his death, he never collected anything published after 1964 and published very little of his own fiction at all after 1971, the year he married Judy-Lynn Benjamin. She became an editor at Ballantine Books, later joined by him, and created the Del Rey imprint. In the meantime, it was this publishing house which began the Classics of Science Fiction (“Best of”) series, the eighteenth of which was devoted to Lester del Rey, himself.

In his afterword del Rey says, “I love robots,” and that comes through in the number of stories in The Best of Lester del Rey that feature them. The most famous is “Helen O’Loy,” which was selected for the SFWA’s “Science Fiction Hall of Fame.” In it, Dave is a robot repairman, Phil is an endocrinologist, and Lena is a robot who develops a glitch and is worked on until the two friends decide to equip a new model with emotions. When Phil is called away on business and Helen imprints on some fiction and on Dave, the situation becomes complicated. The quiet twist at the end adds a deep layer of pathos which is a feature of many of del Rey’s stories. This might be read today as a sexist tale about gender, and some casual attitudes expressed in it could be seized on as confirmation, but it’s really a story about the nature of humanity, our emotions, how they might be emulated, and how humans might respond to the “spiritual” (or differently mechanical) despite biology. Published before Heinlein and technically “before the Golden Age,” it is nevertheless written in a direct style which efficiently backgrounds numerous then-futuristic elements to flesh out its foreground, and is effective.

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Derek Strikes the TBR pile and finds Fonda Lee’s Jade City

Saturday, October 27, 2018 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

I think everyone’s to-be-read pile is always in danger of collapsing on them so that rescuers can only find cat-gnawed bones. For that reason, I listen via Audible and don’t have a cat.

But still, my to-be-read pile is huge and growing and I’d been wanting to read Fonda Lee’s Jade City for some time. It just won the Aurora and did quite well with Hugo and Nebula readers. Also how cool does a magical Asian Godfather story sound?

Lee has created the world of Janloon, what felt to me as a kind of magical Hong Kong, set sometime after cars, airplanes and phones, but before cell phones and computers. It’s a world of increasing modernity and one where ancient traditions (magical jade) come into conflict.

The Kaul family and the Ayt family are the two big mafia families that run Janloon through politicians and businesses. The people of Janloon are the only ones who can wear magical jade without having major toxicity/withdrawal/addiction problems. In the hands of a trained green-bone, jade can enhance perception, strength, speed, toughness, etc and the uneasy stalemate between the No Peak Clan (the Kauls) and the Mountain Clan (the Ayts) begins to unravel with the possibility of a drug called SN1 which allows foreigners to use jade.

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October Is Hammer Country: The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

Saturday, October 27, 2018 Ryan Harvey Comments 2 comments

I wanted to close out my Hammer-for-October articles with The Plague of the Zombies, but hesitated because the movie isn’t easily available in North America. The Anchor Bay DVD has been out of production for more than fifteen years and used copies don’t come cheap. Then, just as I was about to scratch it off the calendar and substitute The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll or Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, the news hit — Shout! Factory will release The Plague of the Zombies to Region A Blu-ray in January. For once, I picked up on the Blu-ray release announcement before making a hasty prediction about a movie never showing up in HD and looking like a dope again. So consider this a pre-release celebration.

Anyway … Zombies! Yes, Hammer Film Productions made a zombie film. The Plague of the Zombies was released in 1966 as the second half of a double bill with Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Although the Dracula film brought Christopher Lee back to the role of the count for the first time since Dracula (1958) and was the main selling point of the double feature, The Plague of the Zombies is the more intelligent and gripping film. Dracula: Prince of Darkness is beautiful but plodding, while The Plague of the Zombies is one of the best of Hammer’s mid-‘60s pictures, with a few memorable shock scenes and underlying themes that have encouraged a range of readings.

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Birthday Reviews: Brad Strickland’s “Hero’s Coin”

Saturday, October 27, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Brad Strickland was born on October 27, 1947.

Strickland received a Phoenix Award at DeepSouthCon. In 200, he won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for his novel When Mack Came Back. He has collaborated John Michlig, Thomas E. Fuller, and his wife, Barbara. Strickland has also completed several novels which were originally outlined by John Bellairs prior to his death.

“Hero’s Coin” was written for the 1993 anthology Quest to Riverworld, edited by Philip José Farmer. This was the second volume in which Farmer opened up his Riverworld series to other authors. The story has never been reprinted.

Because all of the stories in Quest to Riverworld took place in Farmer’s established universe, the was no need for Strickland to explain the rather strange setting. Read without the context of the other stories or Farmer’s original work, however, the story suffers from vagueness brought on by its expectation that the reader knows how the world works. Had Strickland included that background, however, it would have seemed repetitive in the story’s original (and only) publication.

Farmer’s world contains a seemingly-infinite river along the banks of which everyone who has ever lived has been reincarnated, their needs provided for by a grail which fills with food. Strickland’s story focuses on Brother Aelfstan, an anonymous Anglo-Saxon monk who worked on a chronicle of his times in both our world and the Riverworld. Aelfstan makes friends with a stranger who was reincarnated near his part of the river and the two eventually set off together.

As the stranger, who Aelfstan calls “Nemo” helps people during their journey, with technological innovations, military decisions, and in other areas, the people they meet assume he must be Robert E. Lee, Archimedes, and other famous people in history. Nemo denies being any of them and questions Aelfstan about what makes a hero, emphatically denying he was any such.

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