Black Gate – Page 475 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Complete Carpenter: Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Saturday, February 10, 2018 Ryan Harvey Comments 10 comments

John Carpenter has seen plenty of his films underperform when first released, only to turn into cult icons years later. But Big Trouble in Little China, Carpenter’s ninth feature film, didn’t just underperform. It was the biggest flop of his career up to that point, pulling in $1.1 million against a budget of $25 million. This ended Carpenter’s phase with the big studios and sent him back to the indie world.

Big Trouble in Little China started on the page as a Western set in 1899. It was rewritten for a modern-day setting by script-doctor (and Buckaroo Banzai director) W. D. Richter before Carpenter arrived. Carpenter sparkled up the screenplay with his love of screwball comedy characters and dialogue and took inspiration from Chinese martial arts fantasy movies like Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain. Out of this stew, Carpenter created what he called “an action adventure comedy Kung-Fu ghost story monster movie.” Something for everybody. Kurt Russell promised audiences in a promotional featurette that they’d definitely get their five-bucks’ worth.

But the final product baffled the executives at 20th Century Fox. The studio dumped the promotional marketing into the sewer, contributing to the movie’s massive box-office crash. But, according to the Law of John Carpenter Cult Movies, Big Trouble in Little China gained a second life on cable and video. By the mid-‘90s, when the Hong Kong martial arts fantasy/comedy genre blew up in North America, this ode to Kung Fu, movie serials, Chuck Jones, and clueless macho heroes had become a classic.

The Story

Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is the tough-talking, hoagie-munching truck driver of the Pork Chop Express. He arrives in San Francisco and meets his buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) for beer and pai gow. Jack drives Wang to the airport to pick up his friend’s fiancée, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), who’s arriving from Beijing. But at the airport, a Chinatown street gang kidnaps Miao Yin to sell to a brothel. When Jack and Wang pull into Chinatown to search for her, they land in the middle of a war between the ancient societies the Chang Sing and Wing Kong — as well as an eruption of strange magic that leaves Jack Burton confused for … well, pretty much the rest of the movie.

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Birthday Reviews: John Shirley’s “Occurrence at Owl Street Ridge”

Saturday, February 10, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

John Shirley was born on February 10, 1953. Shirley’s novels include his debut, Transmaniacon, inspired by the Blue Öyster Cult song “Transmaniacon MC,” the Eclipse trilogy, and Crawlers. He has written men’s adventure novels under the pseudonyms D.B. Drumm and John Cutter, as well as several film and comic tie-in novels.

Shirley won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guide Award for his collection Black Butterflies: A Flock on the Dark Side in 1999. That same year, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the World Horror Convention in Altanta. In addition to his career as a writer, Shirley has performed with the band The Screamin’ Geezers and has written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Although John Shirley’s “Occurrence at Owl Street Ridge” was originally written for Strange Attraction, an anthology of stories based on the Dark Carnival sculptures of artist Lisa Snellings (itself inspired by the Dark Carnival writings of Ray Bradbury), the story first saw print in the program book for the 1999 World Horror Convention, held in Atlanta with Snellings as the Artist Guest of Honor and Shirley as the Author Guest of Honor. Shirley also included the story in his 2001 collection Darkness Divided.

The title “Occurrence at Owl Street Ridge” is, of course, a reference to Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Street Bridge,” and Bierce plays a minor role in the story, which is also modeled after Bierce’s tale of the attempted execution and escape of Peyton Farquhar. In this case, Shirley’s main character is Dana, a disaffected woman who has lost her job as an executive assistant because she was caught using her work computer for her hobby as an artist one time too many.

Returning home to share the news with her husband, Reuben, who is only working part time at the brewery, she comes across her four teenage kids, each with their own issues ranging from asthma to potential drug use to weight issues. Rather than getting the support she needs from her homelife, she only sees how miserable her entire family is.

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Larque Press on Genre Magazine Sales in 2017

Friday, February 9, 2018 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Larque Press, publishers of the excellent The Digest Enthusiast magazine, have a look at the Total Paid Distribution for the remaining genre print magazines like Analog, Asimov’s SF, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (all from Dell Magazines), and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

The release of the Jan/Feb issues of Dell’s digest magazines marks the first year of their bi-monthly, double-issue format. The issues also provide the publisher’s statements of ownership, which include the average number of copies for a variety of categories, over a preceding 12-month period, for the print editions. Magazines print more copies than they sell through subscriptions and newsstands. For the big five digests, excess inventory is offered in Value Packs on their websites. A great opportunity for readers to try out recent issues of a title at a fraction of its regular price.

Dell and F&SF sell far more issues via subscriptions than newsstands. For the most part, combining the two gives you the total paid circulation. However, it’s important to note these numbers don’t include digital sales, which are likely on the rise… Except for F&SF, the year-over-year numbers show declines of ~500–1000. Is this due to thicker, less frequent issues, general magazine publishing trends, distribution challenges, or something else? Without numbers on digital edition sales, it’s unclear.

Analog sold an average of 18,957 print copies of each issue last year, while Asimov’s SF sold 13,320. While these numbers are down from last year, what really impresses me is the marvelous operational efficiencies of Dell Magazines, which continues to streamline operations and sell these magazines at a profit year after year, despite decades of declining print readership. With all the publishing ventures that fail each and every week (such as the dismal news today that venerable Mayfair Games, US publisher of Settlers of Catan and Iron Dragon, is shutting down), I’m continually thankful that Dell Magazines has steadfastly weathered the storm. See our recent review of the Asimov’s/Analog Value packs here, and read more details at the Larque Press website.

In 500 Words or Less: Recipearium by Costi Gurgu

Friday, February 9, 2018 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

RecipeArium
By Costi Gurgu
White Cat Publications (312 pages, $15.99 paperback, 2017)

When my Toronto-based colleague Costi Gurgu launched RecipeArium last year, I read the blurbs and early reviews and really had no idea what to expect from it. It sounded either like a novel or a tongue-in-cheek alien cookbook, and I wasn’t able to make it to any of Costi’s events to figure out which it was (even when one was at a conference I help organize). Me and this book were like ships in the night. Or it was avoiding me, to hide its secrets.

Okay, maybe that sounds a little crazy. But now that I’ve finally read RecipeArium… the novel is a little crazy. And it turns out I was sort of right, since it’s a mashup of a novel and a cookbook.

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Birthday Reviews: Laura Frankos’s “A Late Symmer Night’s Battle”

Friday, February 9, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Mitch Foust

Laura Frankos was born on February 9, 1960. She has written the historical mystery novel St. Oswald’s Niche, and The Broadway Musical Quiz Book. Frankos has also written several short stories. She is married to author Harry Turtledove and is the sister to author Steven Frankos.

“A Late Symmer Night’s Battle” appeared in Esther Friesner’s Turn the Other Chick, part of her long-running Chicks in Chainmail series. It has not been reprinted.

As the title indicates, the story was inspired by the works of William Shakespeare. Frankos’s fairies are battlemaidens, currently living in a period of peace following their epic defeat of the reremice. They are working on their armor, training, and engaging in more amorous pursuits when their lands are unexpectedly attacked by bands of kobolds.

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Goth Chick News: Color Me Shocked: Vegas Takes Escape Rooms to a New Level of Terror

Thursday, February 8, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

Escape rooms are definitely the latest thing in entertainment and if you haven’t experienced one yet, there surely are multiple ones in your city to try. What started out as a way for haunted attractions to make money in the off-season has turned into a multi-million-dollar industry with permanent, year-round locations, and elaborate puzzles and sets.

The premise is simple: solve a series of puzzles, either with your group of mates or bunch of complete strangers, in the allocated time in order to “escape” a situation which ranges in dire-ness from low (heist jewels and get out before the police arrive) to high (find a key to get out of a lab before the zombie in the corner chews through its restraints and eats you). Most escape room experiences can be adjusted based on the age group of the participants and can be completely kid / family friendly.

But given the excesses Vegas is famous for, it should come as no surprise that the most extreme escape room I’ve encountered so far is in Sin City.

The Official Saw Escape Experience is now open in Las Vegas.

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Modular: First Time Out With I Love the Corps

Thursday, February 8, 2018 M Harold Page Comments 1 comment

256 ILTC Teens Playing

A house full of teens playing I Love the Corps!

“Cover the back of your necks! It’s going for your necks!”

“Use the black hole gun!”

“I’m out of Hero Points!”

“Kill them! Kill them!”

“Argh!”

Yes the house is full of teens playing a review copy of indy game I Love the Corps, a self-consciously SciFi game which hits the notes of 90s Military SF, with a dose of Aliens, plus video games like Call of Duty and Mass Effect (the referee’s book has a handy appendix of inspirations, including music). The lads range from 12 through to 16, with my son Kurtzhau, 14, in the middle and in the thick of it refereeing an ambitious one-shot he’s crafted involving rebel humans and sinister uploading aliens, epic scale space dreadnoughts, and more twists than a sack-full of broken micro USB cables.

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New Treasures: Semiosis by Sue Burke

Thursday, February 8, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Sue Burke’s short fiction has been published in Interzone, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s SF, Clarkesworld, and many other fine places. Her first novel Semiosis, released this week by Tor, is the tale of a tiny human colony on an alien world of strange ruins and even stranger plants.

It’s already generated a lot of excited buzz from places like SyFy Wire, The Verge, Kirkus, and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. James Patrick Kelly says it’s “A first contact novel like none you’ve ever read… The kind of story for which science fiction was invented,” and Adrian Tchaikovsky calls it “top class SF, intelligent and engaging… I loved every moment of it.”

Here’s Liz Bourke from her feature review at Tor.com.

Semiosis is… an easy read, and a pretty compelling one. The novel opens with a small human colony — fifty-odd people set out, with a store of sperm and ova to avoid the problems of inbreeding — landed and settled, rather precariously, on a planet they have named Pax. They intend to create a utopia, free of the problems that dogged Earth: violence, religious oppression, inequality. But Pax is an older planet than Earth, and its biosphere has had longer to evolve. The colonists discover that some of Pax’s plants are intelligent in their own way. The first generation of colonists become, essentially, the servants of a plant they call the snow vine. Their story is recounted by Octavo, the colony’s botanist, as he investigates the mystery of their new environment and comes to hate and resent their new plant overlords…

Semiosis is a very strong debut, and well worth checking out.

Semiosis was published by Tor Books on February 6, 2018. It is 333 pages, priced at $25.99. The cover was designed by James Stafford-Hill. Read an excerpt here.

See all our latest New Treasures here.

Birthday Reviews: Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Just Right”

Thursday, February 8, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Mary Robinette Kowal was born on February 8, 1969. Originally a puppeteer, she began publishing fiction in 2004, with her first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, arriving in 2010.

In 2008, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writers and has gone on to win the Hugo Award three times, each in a different category. In 2011, she won the Hugo for Best Short Story for “For Want of a Nail.” She won for Best Related work for season seven of Writing Excuses, a podcast she produces in collaboration with Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and Jordan Sanderson, and in 2014 for her novelette “The Lady Astronaut of Mars.” She has served as both Secretary and Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and continues to volunteer for the organization in various roles.

“Just Right” was Mary Robinette Kowal’s first sale, and it appeared in The First Line in Summer 2004.

On the surface it tells the story of a woman who is dealing with the strange eccentricities of her six year old son. Celia’s husband, Lou, usually handles the morning rituals because Celia leaves each day to teach school. With the start of Summer vacation, however, she has suddenly thrown into the morning domestic routine and learns that her son, Mason, likes to do things in very specific, seemingly childish ways. When Celia stop playing along, Mason throws a very atypical temper tantrum.

While “Just Right” seems like a slice of life tale, it really is a very effective short horror story. Celia doesn’t understand what is happening because she is missing a very basic piece of information.

The effectiveness of the story comes from the banality of Celia situation. Anyone with children has experienced the seemingly random meltdowns when a child doesn’t get its way and learns how to handle the child. In this case, Celia is learning that the typical methods of raising her son aren’t always effective, although she is unaware of the cause.

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Write a Short Story a Week Like Ray Bradbury

Wednesday, February 7, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

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Once many years ago, Ray Bradbury decided the best way to become a good short story writer was to write a whole bunch of them. So he committed to writing a short story every week for a year. He also decided the only way to get published was to submit short stories, so he submitted a story once a week for a year too.

It’s a simple formula many beginning writers just don’t get — you got to put in the effort, and you have to send your stuff out there. As Bradbury explained in this speech, practice will help you, and it is impossible to write 52 bad stories in a row.

So let me introduce you to Write1Sub1, an online group where we encourage each other to write and submit a short story every week. They don’t have to be the same short story, because you probably want to let a story sit for a while before going back and editing it with a fresh set of eyes.

Many of us (including yours truly) are more novelists at heart, so if you don’t think you can face a weekly challenge, you can write and submit once a month. When I did this challenge back in 2014, I tried the weekly challenge. I burned out after four months, but got 16 stories written, more short stories than all previous years combined. Many got published in magazines and anthologies and the rest assembled into a collection I indie published. It really does work!

Check us out on our Facebook page. It costs nothing but your time, commitment, and perhaps your immortal soul. Keep on writing!

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