Black Gate – Page 448 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Gary K. Wolfe on Cecelia Holland’s Floating Worlds and Other Classics That Deserve Modern Attention

Sunday, April 29, 2018 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Cecelia Holland Floating Worlds-pocket-small

Cecelia Holland Floating Worlds-pocket-back-small

1977 Pocket Books paperback. Foil cover by Harry Bennett

On Episode 328 of The Coode Street Podcast, my recent audio addiction, Jonathan Strahan asked his co-host Gary K. Wolfe if there was some book of value, “or simply that you loved when you were a younger reader,” that he wished he could bring modern attention to.

If you know Jonathan and Gary, you appreciate that’s precisely the kind of question that could fill an hour-long episode all on its own. But Gary provided what I thought was a remarkably cogent and focused reply, all the more remarkable for its brevity. After noting that “When you get to be my age, a younger reader covers a span of decades,” and paying homage to Andre Norton’s Cat’s Eye and Star Man Son, Gary called out a long-forgotten SF novel from 1976.

One of the classic one-off science fiction novels, I think from maybe 40 some years ago now, was Cecelia Holland’s Floating Worlds, a historical novelist using her historical imagination to construct a pretty powerful solar system space opera. I’ve not re-read that in a long time. I’d like new people to look at that and see if, hey, was I right? Was this as good as I thought it was?

Although Floating Worlds is a neglected classic here in the US — its last paperback printing was in 1979 from Pocket Books — it has a much richer history in the UK, with eight print versions and an e-book edition between 1976 and 2014.

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A Tale of Two Covers: Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor

Sunday, April 29, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Nnedi Okorafor is one of the most exciting novelists at work in the field of fantasy. She’s won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. She writes Black Panther comics for Marvel, and her World Fantasy Award-winning novel Who Fears Death is being developed by George R.R. Martin as an HBO series.

Her latest novel, Akata Warrior, was published by Viking Books for Young Readers last October (above left, cover by Greg Ruth). It was republished in the UK in March by Cassava Republic Press under the title Sunny and the Mysteries of Osisi (above right, design by Anna Morrison). Both books (er, the single book) are (is?) the sequel to 2011’s Akata Witch.

Although the books are being sold to separate markets with different titles and different covers, I was struck at just how similar the cover images are. In fact, both use Greg Ruth’s core image of a woman with a black scarf (albeit flipped), and both make use of overt spider imagery, along with an overlay of curvy white Nsibidi symbols on her skin. Both also use the same quote by Neil Gaiman. Note the differences, however — the British cover has markedly different hair, and a completely different color tone. She’s looking in different directions as well.

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Birthday Reviews: Jack Williamson’s “The Cold Green Eye”

Sunday, April 29, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Cover by Richard Powers

Jack Williamson was born on April 29, 1908 and died on November 11, 2006.

Williamson famously traveled from Arizona to New Mexico in a covered wagon when he was 7 years old. He went on to publish science fiction, beginning when he was twenty. Over the years, he frequently collaborated with Frederik Pohl and occasionally with James Gunn, Edmond Hamilton, and Miles Breuer.

Williamson received the Hugo Award for his autobiography Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction. He won a second Hugo, as well as his only Nebula Award, for his story “The Ultimate Earth.” His novel Terraforming Earth received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Williamson is also the recipient of numerous lifetime achievement awards. He has received them from the Writers and Illustrators of the Future, the Pilgrim Award, the Forry Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He received the Skylark Award from Boskone and the Robert A. Heinlein Award from the Heinlein Society. In 1968, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame and into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1996. In 1976, he was named the second SFWA Grand Master. Worldcon recognized him with the Big Heart Award in 1994.

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Win a Copy of The Annotated Watchmen by DC Comics

Saturday, April 28, 2018 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

I don’t think DC’s 1985 Watchmen needs a whole bunch of introduction (or any). As both a reader and a writer, I’ve read, re-read, analyzed, watched other people analyze, and blogged about the seminal work by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

DC Comics has released a retrospective edition of the story that landed on Time magazine’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In Watchmen: The Annotated Edition, Leslie S. Klinger looks at each of the series’ twelve issues in detail, moving page by page and panel by panel. Klinger drew on critical and scholastic commentary, interviews with Dave Gibbons, and previously unseen original source material.

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Tarzan Swing-By: Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1928–29)

Saturday, April 28, 2018 Ryan Harvey Comments 4 comments

Readers have asked me, but the answer is still no: I can’t tackle the entire Tarzan series the way I did Edgar Rice Burroughs’s other book series, Mars, Venus, and Pellucidar. There are twenty-four Tarzan books, not counting the juveniles, and I’d burn out long before the end if I tried to read them in sequence over a compressed time period.

But since I’m always glad to pick up a Tarzan volume here and there among my other Burroughs readings, I’ll negotiate. I’ll do an occasional Tarzan book “swing-by” to give spotlight time to ERB’s biggest contribution to popular culture. No particular order, just whatever Tarzan adventure grabs me at the moment.

So I’ll start with … let’s see … Book #12, Tarzan and the Lost Empire. Wherein the Lord of the Jungle finds yet another civilization lost in time in the heart of Africa: a remnant of the Roman Empire still living the ancient ways. Tarzan also gets a little monkey sidekick.

Tarzan and the Lost Empire falls into a period of the Tarzan novels that I think of as the “Filmation Era” because of how much the 1970s Filmation animated series Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle reflects it. After the tenth book, Tarzan and the Ant Men, Tarzan was distanced from the Greystoke legacy and his former supporting cast, and now has the companionship of both Nkima the monkey and Jad-bal-ja the golden lion. Jane vanished except for a single reappearance in Tarzan’s Quest (1936). The plots became standalone and repeated certain formulas, such as Tarzan discovering lost civilizations or facing a Tarzan imposter.

The writing quality of these books was still high in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, and Burroughs hadn’t lost his skill at executing pulse-racing action set-pieces. But the plotting was often perfunctory as ERB became a bit fatigued with having to go back to the Tarzan well again and again. The story ideas and the prose popped, but the plots often meandered with overstuffed casts and too much incident that doesn’t go anywhere. Tarzan and the Lost Empire falls prey to these faults. But it also contains one of the most interesting hidden civilizations of the series and a setting that energized Burroughs.

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Birthday Reviews: William Sanders’s “When This World Is All on Fire”

Saturday, April 28, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

William Sanders was born on April 28, 1942 and died on June 29, 2017.

Sanders wrote under his own name as well as the pseudonym Will Sundown. His novels included Journey to Fusang, The Wild Blue and the Gray, The Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan, J., and, under the Sundown name, Pockets of Resistance and The Hellbound Train. Sanders has also written mysteries and the non-fiction Conquest: Hernando de Soto and the Indians, 1539-1543. From 2006 to 2008, he edited the online magazine Helix.

In 1989 Sanders was a nominee for the John W. Campbell, Jr. Award for Best New Writer. He won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for his stories “The Undiscovered” and “Empire.” “The Undiscovered” was also nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His story “Dry Bones” was also nominated for the Nebula and Sturgeon and Sanders was also nominated for the Sturgeon Award for “Jennifer, Just Before Midnight.” In 2008, he and Lawrence Watt-Evans were nominated for the Hugo Award for editing the Semiprozine Helix.

“When This World Is All on Fire” was originally published by Gardner Dozois in Asimov’s Science Fiction in the October-November 2001 issue. Dozois included it in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection and Sanders used it in his two short story collections: Are We Having Fun Yet? American Indian Fantasy Stories and East of the Sun and West of Fort Smith. Grace L. Dillon reprinted the story in Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction.

The world of “When This World Is All on Fire” has been ravaged by climate change, which has caused a rise in sea levels and temperatures making coastal areas and parts of the American south uninhabitable. For the Indians on the reservation in North Carolina, this means having to deal with a constant stream of white squatters who feel they should have access to the Indians’ open lands, a solution that the Indians and their police force disagree with.

Although climate change has caused the refugee problem, the story is more about the interaction between one of the Indian deputies, Davis Blackbear, and a family of squatters he had to chase off the reservation. The encounter should have been brief and Blackbear did his best to de-escalate it, but he found himself enamored by the squatters’ young daughter’s singing voice. When he sees her in a nearby town a couple weeks later, he steps in to stop her from being arrested.

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Future Treasures: The Poppy War by R. F Kuang

Friday, April 27, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog is calling R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War “the Buzziest Fantasy Debut of 2018.”

Last year, Harper Voyager introduced us to two exciting new voices in fantasy, Nicky Drayden (The Prey of Gods) and S.A. Chakraborty (City of Brass), so when David Pomerico, the imprint’s editorial director, R.F. Kuang, whose debut The Poppy War Harper Voyager will publish in May, “an incredible new talent in the speculative fiction industry,” we’ve got reason to trust his judgement (and track record). Certainly the book sounds like just the thing — a richly detailed epic born out of 20th century Chinese history, with an adult sensibility and a narrative hook that gives it the addictive appeal of the best young adult literature.

The official summary for this first-in-a-trilogy novel makes a compelling case… Pomerico, who acquired the book after a heated auction on what turned out to be the author’s 20th birthday, promises it blends military fantasy and a coming-of-age story, combining the author’s “cultural authenticity with personal creativity at a time when both qualities are very much demanded by readers.”

Hey, I’m as big a fan of writing prodigies as the next guy. But is a fat 544-page fantasy written by a teenager really what I’m looking for? Especially one that’s the start of a trilogy?

Well, maybe I’m just a grumpy old man. Certainly there’s been no shortage of praise from people less grumpy than I. Kameron Hurley calls it, “A blistering, powerful epic of war and revenge that will captivate you to the bitter end.” And Publishers Weekly praises it as “An ambitious fantasy reimagining of Asian history populated by martial artists, philosopher-generals, and gods… a strong and dramatic launch to Kuang’s career.”

You can decide for yourself when the book arrives in hardcover from Harper Voyager next week. Here’s the description.

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Is That What You’re Wearing? Or, Books Have A Bigger Budget

Friday, April 27, 2018 Violette Malan Comments 2 comments

Robin Hood One of the most common topics of conversation among those who both read books and watch movies is the difference between the one and the other. Often it’s specific things like “that’s not how I pictured the protagonist” or, “where’d my favourite character go?” Sometimes it’s more general stuff like which medium did the overall job better.

That kind of argument can go on all night, but one thing is not in doubt: No matter how much money is spent on a movie or TV show, books have a bigger budget. Look at the big picture: In a book you can have your characters go anywhere you’d like, live wherever you’d like, and use whatever transportation you’d like and it doesn’t cost you a dime. You don’t have to have the budget to reproduce your ideas on the screen.

And this just as true for every aspect of the smaller picture, though just now I’m going to talk about what your characters are wearing. No outfit is too extravagant, too simple, too colourful or too plain for your reader’s imagination. Your characters can even wear clothing that it is virtually impossible to eat, walk, or sit down in – as some cosplayers have discovered for themselves.

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Birthday Reviews: Frank Belknap Long’s “Willie”

Friday, April 27, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Frank Belknap Long was born on April 27, 1901 and died on January 3, 1994.

In 1976, Long was nominated for three World Fantasy Award for his study Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside, his collection The Early Long, and received his second Lifetime Achievement nomination. He would eventually receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Award in 1978 and form the Bram Stoker Awards in 1988. In 1977, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

“Willie” first appeared in the October 1943 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. It was reprinted in 1979 in Night Fear, a collection of stories by Long. In 1999, August Derleth included it as an example of a time travel story in New Horizons: Yesterday’s Portraits of Tomorrow. It was also reprinted in 2010 in the Centipede Press volume Frank Belknap Long, part of its Masters of the Weird Tale series.

Although the story is called “Willie,” the central character begins by thinking of himself as simply “Twenty-ninth Century Man.” He eventually learns that he is known as Agar, although he also has the identity of Monitor 236, a position of responsibility and dignity. Despite all of these identities, he is never quite clear who he is or how he fits into the primitive society in which he finds himself in. He does know that it is his responsibility to protect the people of the city.

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Goth Chick News: Enjoy This… Whatever the Hell It Is

Thursday, April 26, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

With season two of HBO’s Westworld premiering this week It’s difficult not to consider the magnitude of Sir Anthony Hopkins’s body of work. I mean, after all, before his latest stint as Robert Ford making all our violent dreams come true, he portrayed iconic characters from Captain Bligh, and Don Diego to Richard Nixon. But it was his portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter and that line, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti,” followed by sucking air through his teeth that not only permanently burned Hopkins into my psyche but gave me nightmares for weeks. I mean, that’s the scariest and most disturbing he’s ever been.

Right?

Wrong.

This week the 80-year-old Hopkins decided to treat the Twitter-verse to his most horrifying performance to date. For reasons unknown Hopkins posted the short video below with the caption:

“This is what happens when you’re all work and no play…”

which may or may not have been some sort of Shining reference. However, Jack Torrance would have been under this desk in a fetal position had he seen what you’re about to see. And before you think you’re watching a filter at work, you aren’t. This isn’t Instagram it’s Twitter, and that’s Hopkins’ face doing that.

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