Black Gate – Page 402 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Birthday Reviews: Gregory Frost’s “Farewell, My Rocketeer”

Sunday, May 13, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 3 comments

Gregory Frost was born on May 13, 1951.

Gregory Frost’s novelette “Madonna of the Maquiladora” was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Frost has also been nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and World Fantasy Award for his novel Fitcher’s Brides. His Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet jointly were nominated for the Tiptree, and “How Meersh the Bedeviler Lost His Toes” was nominated for the Sturgeon. He also received a Bram Stoker nomination for the story “No Others Are Genuine.” Several of his stories have been collected in Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories, published by Golden Gryphon in 2011.

Cliff Secord’s career as the Rocketeer, a 1930s style pulp hero who is a pilot in his daily life, but secretly has access to a jet pack, has been chronicled in a series of comics and one film. In 2014 several authors were invited to add to his legend with prose stories, one of whom, Gregory Frost, contributed “Farewell, My Rocketeer,” a lost treasure story set in the American Southwest. The shared world anthology The Rocketeer Jet-Pack Adventures was edited by Jeff Conner and Tom Waltz. “Farewell, My Rocketeer” story has not been reprinted.

Secord gets involved in the treasure hunt when he lands at a small airstrip and diner which has been taken over by a disparate group of villains who are seeking gold based on an old treasure map. To save himself and the staff of the diner, who have been taken hostage, Secord agrees to pilot the group’s plane to help them find the treasure after their pilot dies, even though he realizes his own usefulness to the villains will end as soon as he lands them back at the diner, theoretically with the gold.

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The May Fantasy Magazine Rack

Saturday, May 12, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Lots of great new fiction in May, including new stories by Mark Lawrence, Nicholas Kaufmann, Kelly Robson, John Shirley, Naomi Novik, Erica L. Satifka, Steven J. Dines, Lynne Jamneck, Katharine Duckett, Michael Washburn, Robert M. Waugh, and many others.

The new kid on the block this month is Vastarien from Grimscribe Press, a 284-page journal “of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas.” The first issue includes contributions from Michael Penkas, S.L. Edwards, Devin Goff, Christopher Ropes, Patricia Allison, Carl Lavoie, and many others. I’m also very pleased to see the latest annual issue of Weird Fiction Review, with a big color section devoted to the great D&D artist Erol Otis, plus new issues of GrimDark and Pulp Literature.

Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in May (links will bring you to magazine websites).

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Tripping on the Void: An Interview with Plaid Klaus of Image’s Void Trip

Saturday, May 12, 2018 Derek Kunsken Comments 1 comment

This May, Image Comics will be collecting the five issues of Void Trip, by Ryan O’Sullivan and Plaid Klaus. I took advantage of the chance to interview Plaid. Here’s the description for Void Trip:

Meet Ana and Gabe — the last two humans left alive in the galaxy. They’re low on fuel, they’re low on food, and they’re low on psychedelic space froot, but they’re still determined to make it to the promised land: hippy-paradise super-planet Euphoria. VOID TRIP is the story of their journey, the friends and enemies they made along the way, and how the universe responded to those who dared to live freely within it. “VOID TRIP aims to answer the question: ‘how can we be free in a universe that will always course-correct to limit us?’” said O’Sullivan. “This isn’t your typical adventure comic, with violence as the solution to every conflict. It’s a road trip story. Its main concern is exploring the human condition. It’s Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson meets Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy. Expect laughter, tears, and existential dread in equal measure.”

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The Complete Carpenter: They Live (1988)

Saturday, May 12, 2018 Ryan Harvey Comments 7 comments

“What’s the threat? We all sell out every day. Might as well be on the winning team.”

The career of John Carpenter spans four decades, but the 1980s was his special golden era. Although his ‘80s films may not have always succeeded at the box office, their run of quality is humbling: Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), and Prince of Darkness (1987). While Christine (1983) and Starman (1984) aren’t in the same tier as that group, they’re good movies audiences still enjoy today.

No other film could have closed out the John Carpenter Decade better than They Live. It’s not only the last movie he made in the ‘80s, it serves as a DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY curtain closer on the entirety of the decade.

The Story

Only four characters in the movie have names, so let’s get the actor attributions out of the way: Nada (Roddy Piper), Frank Armitage (David Keith), Holly Thompson (Meg WATCH TV Foster), and Gilbert (Peter Jason). “Frank Armitage” is also Carpenter’s screenwriter pseudonym, giving the impression that a fictional character in the movie also wrote it. That nicely predicts the meta-horror of In the Mouth of Madness by six years.

Nada is a drifter who’s come to L.A. searching for work. He meets another construction worker, Frank, who introduces him to the shanty town and homeless shelter of Justiceville. There’s something strange going on under the surface of Justiceville, however, and Nada discovers the shelter organizers using a nearby church to develop strange science equipment — and a bunch of sunglasses, for some reason. After a suspiciously timed police raid demolishes Justiceville, Nada escapes and finds himself in possession of the sunglasses. When he puts on a pair, he can see the disturbing truth of the world: ghoulish alien creatures disguised as the rich and powerful actually rule the planet. They’ve peppered all visual media with subliminal messages of submission to mindless consumerism to cow the human population.

But Nada is all out of bubblegum and he ain’t having this. He gets Frank to work with him — after they savagely beat each other in a back alley for five minutes — and then seeks out the underground resistance. However, they’re not only facing alien invaders, but also the human collaborators who have sold out for their slice of ‘80s yuppiedom.

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Birthday Reviews: Barry B. Longyear’s “Collector’s Item”

Saturday, May 12, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Cover by George Angelini

Barry B. Longyear was born on May 12, 1942.

Longyear received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1980, the year he won the Hugo and Nebula Award for his novella “Enemy Mine,” which was turned into a film starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr. That same year his novelette “Homecoming” also appeared on the Hugo ballot, as did his novelette “Savage Planet” the following year. His stories have twice topped the Analog Reader’s Poll and he has been nominated for the Prometheus Award three times and the Sidewise Award once.

“Collector’s Item” was first published by Stanley Schmidt in the April 27, 1981 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. The following year it was translated into German to be reprinted in Analog 2, a German language version of the magazine. Longyear also included the story as the lead off to his collection It Came from Schenectady.

Longyear examines the unenviable task of cleaning out a parent’s belongings after their death. For Jay Hall, who barely knew his father and had little to discuss with him, the natural inclination is to just take everything and sweep it into the garbage. A call with his father’s attorney, however, causes him to look through some of the papers his father has collected over the years. Among those papers are essays written by five of his father’s students in 1955.

The essays were assigned on prosaic topics, “What I Did Last Summer,” “My Favorite Dream,” “Things I Think About.” As Jay begins to read them, however, he finds that these five students all had things in common… notable, references to someone known as the Major. Furthermore, their essays all seemed to indicate that they were being fed knowledge of America’s future involvement in Viet Nam.

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Future Treasures: Shelter: Tales Of The Aftermath by Dave Hutchinson

Friday, May 11, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve heard a lot about Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn series (Europe in Autumn, Europe at Midnight, Europe in Winter, and the upcoming Europe at Dawn, arriving in November). Certainly enough to tempt me to give it a try, anyway.

Although if I really like it, November is a long time to have to wait for that final volume. I dunno… risky.

I think I have a better idea: try out his new standalone novel Shelter, instead. (At least, I think it’s standalone. It’s set in a fractured Europe, much like the Europe in Autumn novels. Someone more well-informed than I will have to tell us whether the books are connected.) If I like it — and based on the description, odds look pretty good — I might be more willing to take a risk on the others.

Shelter arrives in paperback next month from Solaris. Here’s the description.

Rural English Post-Apocalypse survival for a new generation.

The Long Autumn is coming to an end. For almost a century after the coming of The Sisters, the surviving peoples of rainswept England have huddled in small communities and on isolated farms, scavenging the remains of the old society. But now society, of a kind, is starting to rebuild itself. In Kent, a brutal tyranny is starting to look West. In the Cotswolds, something terrible and only vaguely-glimpsed is happening. And in a little corner of Berkshire two families are at war with each other.

After decades of simply trying to survive, the battle to inherit this brutal new world is beginning.

Shelter: Tales Of The Aftermath will be published by Solaris on June 12, 2018. It is 304 pages, priced at $11.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

Why Spoil A Good Thing?

Friday, May 11, 2018 Violette Malan Comments 13 comments

Usual suspects It’s almost impossible for me to avoid movie spoilers. If it isn’t reviews (some of which aren’t very careful) articles on specific or general movie features, actors, genres, etc. then it’s discussions on social media.

And if this wasn’t enough, we live out in the country, a fair distance from any theatres, and often the logistics of movie-going are difficult enough that we just don’t go. For years now, with very few exceptions, we’ve been seeing movies for the first time when they come out on DVD, or more recently, on Netflix*.

Many people must be experiencing delays of some sort in their movie viewing, however, since the phrase “spoiler alert” appears to be almost mandatory in any discussion. At one point, people were even arguing about whether there was ever a time when a movie became “spoiler free” because of age. How old does a movie have to be before you can assume the person you’re addressing has had more than ample chance to see it? I’m always surprised when people haven’t seen Casablanca, or something else of that age and significance, but they are out there.

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Birthday Reviews: Elizabeth Engstrom’s “Seasoned Enthusiast”

Friday, May 11, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Elizabeth Engstrom was born on May 11, 1951. She occasionally writes using the name Liz Cratty as well.

Engstrom’s collection Nightmare Flower was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and she co-edited the anthology Imagination Fully Dilated with Alan M. Clark, which earned them an International Horror Guild Award nomination.

“Seasoned Enthusiast” first appeared 1990 in Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine: Horror, the seventh issue, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Engstrom later reprinted the story in her 1992 collection Nightmare Flower.

The short work “Seasoned Enthusiast” tells two parallel tales, one about a dancer performing in front of an audience, the other the story of a divorced woman who is considering her own self-worth in light of her husband’s new life.

The more interesting story looks at Lillian, whose life has fallen apart after her divorce and she’s living in squalor while her husband and his new wife start their life together in an upscale house, a symbol of the success which eluded the couple while they were married. Unable to separate her life from his, and seeing herself as a failure because she lost him, Lillian drives over to her ex-husband’s house without a firm plan in mind, feeding her obsession with him without any plan of action.

In the other story, a crowd gathers around to watch a woman dance in an apparently primitive setting. As the dance sequences are interwoven with Lillian’s story, it becomes clear that things aren’t quite as they seem. There is an element of danger in the woman’s dance and she has suffered for her craft as she has perfected it.

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Goth Chick News: Welcoming Mother Noose Nursery Crimes With the Mother of all Press Kits

Thursday, May 10, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

One of the many advantages of working for Black Gate magazine — which mostly if not entirely makes up for the unisex bathrooms and the non-stop “birthday” celebrations or whatever the heck is going on upstairs — is getting an early look at upcoming releases before the public. Over the years I’ve gotten some pretty cool collectable things in the mail from this publicist or another, heralding the upcoming movie / book / game / CD. I cherish each and every one of these items, not only for their creativity, but because the artist deemed Black Gate a worthy place to share their upcoming announcement.

It’s like getting a birth notification – only way more interesting.

But this week I received a large FedEx box containing what is undeniably the most incredible book announcement ever to have crossed the threshold of the Black Gate office.

You may (or may not) recall my obsession with the artist Charles Martin Kline, he of the delightfully Gorey-esque picture book the 12 Frights of Christmas, and creator of the award winning short film Frankenfriend. Yes, I’ve basically been stalking Mr. Kline (or “Chas” as I call him) for nearly four years since his first release, Edgar Allen Paws and the Tell-Tale Tail, but you can’t blame me. His macabre sense of humor and attention to detail makes his work pretty unforgettable and him pretty fanciable, in my own obsessive, morbid kind of way.

But even though I keep close tabs on Chas’ latest endeavors, I was definitely not prepared for the official launch kit that accompanied my very own personalized edition of Mother Noose Nursery Crimes.

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The Ties That Bind: Mike McQuay’s The Nexus

Thursday, May 10, 2018 Joe Bonadonna Comments 0 Comment

The Nexus, by Mike McQuay
Spectra Special Edition (Bantam Books, 474 pages, $4.50 in paperback, May 1989)
Cover by Bob Hickson

Amy Kyle, an Autistic girl on the threshold of puberty, has divine powers. She can cure the sick, heal the lame, mend broken bones and make horrible scars disappear. She also has incredible powers of teleportation and telekinesis, and can manipulate reality in such ways as making a horde of food appear out of thin air, the way Christ is said to have done with the loaves and fishes. Thus, the comparisons to Christ and discussions about the nature of God and divinity are at the core of this story. Amy’s mother, Tawny, is a booze-addled, chain-smoking, sometime prostitute and train wreck of a human being who can channel her daughter’s powers. This she does in old-fashioned “revival” type meetings, charging people a modest sum to be healed and cured of their physical limitations and ailments.

Denny Stiller is a nearly washed-up newsman for WCN, a Dallas, Texas cable news network, who lives and breathes for “the story.” He is a self-professed seeker of the Truth who lives a life avoiding most relationships and commitments. Part hero, part rogue, his whole adult life has been devoted to being the ultimate newshound, the ultimate reporter. Frank Hargrave is a Vietnam veteran with a badly scarred and damaged leg. A one-time storm chaser who can barely hang onto his sanity; he’s one of the walking wounded who drinks too much in an effort to numb himself from the nightmares, the cruelty, and the violence of the world. An overly sensitive soul, he leads a troubled life filled with pain and terrible nightmares, but none of this intrudes on his talent for “capturing the moment” on film. The head honchos at WCN would have dumped him long ago, if not for Denny’s support and belief in his friend.

But Denny himself, once the top reporter at WCN, was demoted to covering less-urgent news because of a scathing interview he once conducted with the President of the United States of America. Now he’s trying to redeem himself and work his way back to being king of the news hill.

Molly Hartwell is a producer at WCN, and is also in love with Denny. She stands by him, backs him all the way, and risks her own career in order to help him rise to the top of the heap again. But Denny often mistreats her, uses her, and her love for him is not always reciprocated, not in the way she wants. Their relationship is further complicated when she finds out that she’s pregnant with Denny’s child, something he neither wants nor cares about; although she asks and expects nothing from him in return, he tells her that he is willing to help her out in any way he can.

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