Black Gate – Page 425 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Future Treasures: The Body Party by Jeff Noon

Thursday, March 8, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Jeff Noon, author of the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Vurt (1993), returned after too long an absence with A Man of Shadow last year, which Warren Ellis called “superb… one of our few true visionaries,” and Adrian Tchaikovsky said was “A disturbing and bizarre journey by one of the great masters of weird fiction.” The sequel, The Body Party, arrives next month from Angry Robot, continuing the tale of a P.I. in an weird and inverted city.

Jeff Noon returns with a staggering hallucinogenic sequel to A Man of Shadows, taking hapless investigator John Nyquist into a city where reality is contaminated by the imagination of its citizens

In a city dissolving into an infected sprawl of ideas, where words come to life and reality is contaminated by stories, John Nyquist wakes up in a room with a dead body… The dead man’s impossible whispers plunge him into a murder investigation like no other. Clues point him deeper into an unfolding story infesting its participants as reality blurs between place and genre.

Only one man can hope to put it all back together into some kind of order, enough that lives can be saved… That man is Nyquist, and he is lost.

The Body Party will be published by Angry Robot on April 3, 2018. It is 384 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover design is by Amazing15. Read Part One here.

STRANGE! WEIRD! EERIE! The Odd, Unusual, and Uncanny Biography of Lionel Fanthorpe

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 5 comments

Some writers agonize over every line. Some are prolific like Andre Norton. Others are hyperprolific like Isaac Asimov.

But Lionel Fanthorpe stands alone. He isn’t the most prolific author out there, having written “only” about 200 books, but he had the distinction of having written 168 books in less than a decade. Many he wrote in a week. Some he wrote over a three-day weekend.

This fervid output was the result of his association with Badger Books, a cheap-as-they-come UK publisher that emphasized quantity over quality. The publisher would commission the cover art first (or steal it from some old American paperback), send it to the author, and have them write a 45,000 word novel, usually with a deadline of one week.

Fanthorpe wrote 168 books for Badger between 1961 and 1967, dictating his tales into a reel-to-reel recorder and sending the tapes into the publisher’s typist. Often he’d stay up late into the night, covering his head with a blanket so he could concentrate. The results were overwritten, padded, and compellingly bad.

The only biography of Lionel Fanthorpe, Down the Badger Hole by Debbie Cross, has long been out of print but has now been revised, expanded, and released as a free ebook on the TAFF website.

And what a book it is! Cross gives us generous helpings of Fanthorpe’s prose, including masterful examples of padding through repetition.

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Modular: Dead Suns Adventure Path for Starfinder

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 0 Comment

Last fall, the game publisher Paizo began releasing their line of Starfinder products, taking their Pathfinder setting into a distant science fantasy RPG setting. In addition to the main Starfinder Core Rulebook (Amazon, Paizo), they also began releasing the Dead Suns Adventure Path. With four of the six Dead Suns books now out, it’s about time to look back on what they’ve released to see what all the series has got to offer for fans looking for material.

Paizo’s Pathfinder Adventure Path books have long been a staple of the company’s product line. It provides a broad campaign of adventures across six 92-page books, each released on a monthly schedule. In addition to the adventure, each book contained setting, culture, and religious information, a Bestiary supplement, and original fiction.

Dead Suns continues that tradition in their Starfinder campaign setting, with the only significant difference in format being that these books are released on a bi-monthly schedule, so it takes a year to release the full Adventure Path as opposed to the two Adventure Path schedule for Pathfinder. Starfinder is on a less aggressive production schedule than Pathfinder, without associated Player Companion or Campaign Setting resources released monthly, so the Adventure Path provide supplements to the two hardcover Starfinder supplements slated for release each year. (The Alien Archive was released in the fall, and the Pact Worlds setting book is slated for release this month.)

As the first Starfinder Adventure Path, Dead Suns is a planet-hopping quest through the Pact Worlds, as the players get their own starship and begin following the clues across planets, running afoul of massive corporations, space monsters, undead starships and necrotech, and the troublesome Cult of the Devourer, as they uncover the secret behind a lost superweapon.

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Modular: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Announced – Never Say Never

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 8 comments

Yesterday, Paizo announced an upcoming playtest for a 2^nd Edition of Pathfinder. Wow.

For years, Paizo officials have said that there would never be a second edition. I suspect that all evidence of those statements have been scoured from the Internet. A quick search didn’t find any. There might have been qualifiers along the way, such as ‘unless the demand is too great’ or some such. But I remember the message as ‘We won’t do a 2^nd Edition.” With the inference, ‘Making you buy all of your stuff over again.’

I thought that they might be adhering to that pledge when they put out Starfinder, a science fiction RPG. That seemed like a smart approach if they couldn’t update the original Pathfinder.

But I believe that events conspired against them. The best thing that ever happened to Pathfinder was 4^th Edition D&D (granted – it was the impetus for Pathfinder). The worst thing that ever happened to Pathfinder was 5^th Edition D&D.

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The Wild Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Steve Carper Comments 1 comment

Those who complain that today’s movie obsession with sequels and spinoffs is different from yesterday’s Hollywood should be strapped into a chair and forced to watch Dr. Goldfoot and His Bikini Machine. If you don’t remember this epic, Vincent Price at his feyest played Dr. Goldfoot, modeled after Bond supervillains Dr. No and Goldfinger. “My aim is diabolically simple. I am going to control the world. I have invented the ultimate in ultimate weapons, the one weapon that can positively destroy man: woman.”

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Birthday Reviews: Paul Preuss’s “Rhea’s Time”

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Wayne D. Barlowe

Paul Preuss was born on March 7, 1942. Mostly a novelist, he has published the Venus Prime series and stand-alone novels Human Error, The Gates of Heaven, and Core. His short fiction output is more scarce, consisting of three short stories and a published excerpt from his novel Starfire. His novel Secret Passages was a nominee for the 1998 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

“Rhea’s Time” originally appeared in The Ultimate Dinosaur, edited by Robert Silverberg and Byron Priess, which was heavily illustrated by Wayne D. Barlowe and included a mixture of science fiction and factual articles about dinosaurs. The story has not been reprinted outside The Ultimate Dinosaur, but the anthology has seen two editions following its first publication.

Although originally published in a collection about dinosaurs, there are no saurians in “Rhea’s Time.” Preuss relates, with almost clinical precision, the story of a woman who has been in a coma for nearly a year, since shortly after a skiing accident. He tells the story from the point of view of Doctor Rowan, who has inherited her case after her original doctor gave up on her.

Despite his patient being completely unresponsive, Roan discovers that she actually is moving, albeit extremely slowly. Rowan begins employing unorthodox methods to establish contact with the woman, who he calls “Rhea.” Talking about her career as a biostratigrapher with her husband, Rowan is eventually able to come up with a rather intriguing explanation for what she’s going through.

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Doubling Down, or Just How Bad Are Ace Doubles, Anyway?

Tuesday, March 6, 2018 Thomas Parker Comments 13 comments

Ace Double D-31: The World of Null-A (cover by Stanley Meltzoff)
paired with Universe Maker (cover by Paul Orban)

Just so you know where I stand, let’s get this out of the way right off the bat — I love Ace Doubles (and if you don’t know what an Ace Double is, are you ever in the wrong place. You should immediately go to Slate or HelloGiggles or Shia LaBeouf.com or somewhere, anywhere else or risk irreversible contamination. You’ve been warned.) I’ve loved them ever since the first time I laid eyes on one, in the thrift store that was around the corner from my middle school. The day I pulled the dual volume of A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A and Universe Maker (D-31) off the dusty shelf, I fell and fell hard; my lunch money never had a chance. I have a lot of reasons for loving these books, some of which have nothing to do with the quality of the writing found between their gaudy covers, and a good thing too, but we’ll get to that. First, though, the looooove.

To begin with, I love them for those aforementioned gaudy covers, and why not? For twenty years, from 1953 to 1973, from D-31 to 93900 (mastering the Doubles numbering system is an arcane science in itself, especially the legendarily convoluted final five-digit series), artists like Ed Emshwiller, Kelly Freas, George Barr, Jack Gaughan, Gray Morrow, Ed Valigursky and many others poured forth a stream of wonderful images that amount to a romp in a candy shop of pulp science fiction props: mutants, ray guns, futuristic metropolises, bug eyed monsters, alien armadas, hostile planets, a-bomb shattered landscapes, femmes in danger, dangerous femmes, space stations, super-submarines, time machines, jut-jawed heroes in bubble-helmeted spacesuits, robots, domed cities… and, of course, spaceships, spaceships, spaceships! What, I ask you, is there not to love about that?

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New Treasures: The Song of All by Tina LeCount Myers

Tuesday, March 6, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I can’t keep up with all the new SF and fantasy released every month, no matter how I try. Fortunately I’m not alone — I’m part of the Black Gate community, and there’s no more knowledgable or connected brotherhood (and sisterhood!) in the field.

Last month David B. Coe, author of “Night of Two Moons” in Black Gate 4, tipped me off to an exceptional debut fantasy novel, The Song of All by Tina LeCount Myers. Dave called it “A compulsively readable tale, steeped in mythology, suffused with magic, and beautifully realized. Highly recommended.” That’s good enough for me.

A former warrior caught between gods and priests must fight for the survival of his family in this dark epic fantasy debut, set in a harsh arctic world inspired by Scandinavian indigenous cultures.

On the forbidding fringes of the tundra, where years are marked by seasons of snow, humans war with immortals in the name of their shared gods. Irjan, a human warrior, is ruthless and lethal, a legend among the Brethren of Hunters. But even legends grow tired and disillusioned.

Scarred and weary of bloodshed, Irjan turns his back on his oath and his calling to hide away and live a peaceful life as a farmer, husband, and father. But his past is not so easily left behind. When an ambitious village priest conspires with the vengeful comrades Irjan has forsaken, the fragile peace in the Northlands of Davvieana is at stake.

His bloody past revealed, Irjan’s present unravels as he faces an ultimatum: return to hunt the immortals or lose his child. But with his son’s life hanging in the balance, as Irjan follows the tracks through the dark and desolate snow-covered forests, it is not death he searches for, but life.

The Song of All was published by Night Shade Books on February 20, 2018. It is 452 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $14.99 for the trade paperback and digital editions. The cover artist is uncredited. It is the first volume of the series Legacy of the Heavens. Read an excerpt here.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Mythic Landscape: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

Tuesday, March 6, 2018 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 5 comments

Halfway through my recent reread of Alan Garner’s 1960 debut novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, it became clear to me that the true protagonist was the land, not the ostensible ones, sister and brother Susan and Colin.

Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, England, is the name of both a village and a great sandstone cliff “six hundred feet high and three mile long.” For Garner there’s a connection between land and myth, artistically at least, that is deep. His depiction of a land of rolling plains littered with farms and woods, riddled with thousands of years’-worth of mines makes it easy to see the svart-alfar, the “maggot-breed of Ymir,” boiling out of the earth. There’s something deeper than that, though; something that reaches beyond mere physical for Garner. It’s as if the land itself bred those stories and they are intertwined with it intimately and inextricably. Just walking the woods and rises around Alderley Edge, they can be felt pushing themselves up from the earth and traveling along on the backs of breezes.

Before the story proper begins, Garner recounts a true legend of Alderley Edge — that of a farmer from the village of Mobberly and the strange white-bearded man he meets on the way to market. The farmer hopes to sell his white mare at market in Macclesfield and when he agrees to sell it to the bearded man instead, he is shown a secret cave protected by an iron gate and filled with treasures. Inside sleep 140 knights, each, save one, with a perfect white mare by his side. The wizard, for that is what he is, tells the farmer why the knights are there:

“Here they lie in enchanted sleep,” said the wizard, “until a day will come — and come it will — when England shall be in direst peril, and England’s mothers weep. Then out from the hill these must ride and, in a battle thrice lost, thrice won, upon the plain, drive the enemy into the sea.”

In payment, the wizard tells the farmer to take whatever gold and gems he can fit into his pockets. He does, with unexpected and dire consequences for the future.

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Birthday Reviews: William F. Nolan’s “Starblood”

Tuesday, March 6, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

William F. Nolan was born on March 6, 1928. He is best known for his novel Logan’s Run, which was turned into an Academy Award winning (and Hugo nominated) movie, as well as a television series that ran for one season. Nolan also wrote three sequels to the original novel, the most recent of which, Logan’s Mission, appeared in 2017.

Nolan has received the Bram Stoker Award for his non-fiction book Nolan on Bradbury: Sixty Years of Writing about the Master of Science Fiction, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award. He has received a Living Legend Award from the International Horror Guild, a Grandmaster Award from the World Horror Convention, a Special Convention Award from the World Fantasy Awards, and in 2006 he was named an Author Emeritus by SFWA.

“Starblood” first appeared in the anthology Infinity Four, edited by Robert Hoskins in 1972. It was also picked up by Forrest J. Ackerman and Pat LoBrutto for Perry Rhodan #102: Spoor of the Ants. Nolan has also included the story in several of his own collections, including Alien Horizons, Wonderworlds, Things Beyond Midnight, Dark Universe Stories: 1951-2001, Nightworlds, and Wild Galaxy.

The majority of “Starblood” presents the lives of six individuals in six short chapters. In each case, the main character dies suddenly and violently, through assassination, accident, or murder. In the course of these vignettes, Nolan does not attempt to tie them together in any way. He does offer a few lines of dialogue at both the beginning and the end of the story which offers a frame that explains what is happening, although it is not entirely satisfying.

Bobby is an infant whose crying annoys his parents so much his mother drops him from an air car without remorse. Tris is a woman who joined a cult in which she was sexually assaulted; when the cult throws her out and won’t allow her back in, she begs them to kill her. Morgan is killed in an ambush at night while he is fleeing his pursuers. David is a child who gets hit by a random car. Bax is killed at dinner by his dining companion and Lynda’s father, a paid assassin, accepts a hit on his own daughter.

Nolan’s world is bleak and unsympathetic, although he does toss out some interesting ideas about the future, notably the bookstore David is brought to (although given the selection of books recommended to the eleven year old, it is no surprise that he doesn’t like books). The closing frame offers a small link for the different stories, but it does nothing to alleviate the darkness of those stories.

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