Black Gate – Page 478 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Companion Robots, Grave Robbing, and Monster-haunted Catacombs: July/August 2017 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Sunday, September 10, 2017 Adrian Simmons Comments 3 comments

Cover art by Nicholas Grunas, based off “There was a Crooked Man, He flipped a Crooked House.”

“In a Wide Sky, Hidden” by William Ledbetter. This story gets the issue off to a strong start. MC and his companion robot are crossing the depths of space to unknown worlds looking for the MC’s sister. Not an easy task since humanity has never found a way to beat the light-speed barrier, so people have to have their body destroyed in one place and then sent to a quantum-linked box in another to be rebuilt. The MC had wanted to be an explorer, his sister had wanted to be an artist. He gave up on his dreams because robots do that work now, but she succeeded in hers, at least until she disappeared into one of the hundreds of uninhabited worlds out there and challenged him to find her. I liked this story quite a bit: short and with a great deal of depth and heart. And I don’t just say that because Ledbetter is an editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly either! Nor do I say it because he scored a Nebula last year!

“The Masochists Assistant” by Auston Habershaw. Young wanna-be fop Georges is a famulus to the mage Hugarth Madswom. A famulus is not quite an apprentice, and not quite a servant, more of an intern/helper. Magus Hugarth’s particular area of magical expertise is that of killing himself and then resurrecting himself — which makes him a bit of an odd-man out in the etiquette-heavy world they live in. This is one of those stories that manages to successfully navigate the grisly with the funny and make Georges’ struggles to better his station in life actually mean something.

“The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet” by Robin Furth. Grave-robbing, necromancy, and masturbation make for a powerful combination in this story. It is all a bit much, but like “Masochists Assistant” it is quite well written and moves quite fast. The story suffers, I think, from having a cast of not-likable characters; at the end one can see why, but the larger point of the story would, I think, have made a stronger impact if there had been some redeemable person in the cast.

Column — Books to Look For, by Charles De Lint. De Lint dishes de dirt on books, going into enough detail without giving anything away. Books reviewed: Tillie Madison Vs. Reality (P.L. Winn), In Times Like These, The Chronothon, and The Day After Never (Nathan Van Coops), Goblin Market (Chrstina Rossetti and Omar Rayyan), Silence Fallen (Patricia Briggs), Gods & Goddesses: the Fantasy Illustration Library Volume Two (edited by Malcolm and Michael Phifer), Creaking Staircases: Gothic Tales of Supernatural Suspense (James Coplin).

…

Read More Read More

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

Saturday, September 9, 2017 Brian Murphy Comments 3 comments

Part II of II; read a review of Part I here.

Host Robert Zoltan has returned with his second installment of a look back at the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Zoltan and (Edgar the Raven’s) guest for Part II is Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (Prime Books), reprint editor for Light Speed, and columnist for Locus and Black Gate.

Horton endorses the standard narrative of the start and finish of science fiction’s “golden age,” which begins with editor John Campbell fully assuming the reigns of Astounding Stories around 1938, and ends when the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy began publishing in 1949 and 1950, respectively. These latter two magazines moved the genre in new directions, though not necessarily worse ones: Horton in fact argues that the fiction published in the silver age of the 1950s was often higher in quality, which seems to undercut the Golden Age moniker affixed to the Campellian era. But the golden age had the benefit of the “shock of the new”; it was a time when new ideas sprang from the pages of Astounding Stories with each new issue. It saw the emergence of some of science fiction’s greatest ideas and lasting tropes, if not consistently high execution or literary sophistication.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin

Saturday, September 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Dragonfly was published in 1999 by Arkham House — the last novel the legendary publishing house produced in the 20th Century, and very nearly their last novel, period (they published one subsequent novel, John D. Harvey’s The Cleansing (2002), and about a dozen collections and anthologies, before effectively shutting down in 2010.)

It was an extraordinary coup for a debut novelist to win a contract from the publisher behind the earliest collections of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and numerous other major American fantasists. But Dragonfly was an extraordinary novel. The International Horror Guild nominated it as Best First Novel of the year, and Weird Tales called it “A marked success… makes us marvel that if could be a first novel.” Rambles labeled it “The perfect book for the Halloween season.”

Ace Books reprinted Dragonfly in paperback six years later, with a cover by Merritt Dekle (above). The paperback is becoming harder and harder to find these days, so when I stumbled on a new copy at Half Price Books this summer, I snapped it up immediately.

…

Read More Read More

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 3: A Vintage from Atlantis

Saturday, September 9, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 5 comments

Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. —“Ubbo Sathla”

Clark Ashton Smith was approaching his writing peak and fortunate to have multiple markets open to his best work during the period of the stories in this volume (1931–32). Three magazines were publishing him on the regular: Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Strange Tales. The situation didn’t last; Smith suffered a slowdown when Strange Tales folded at the start of 1933. Without the Clayton Magazine, Smith lost a reliable alternative for whenever editor Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales turned something down for being too outré or sexual. The deepening effects of the Great Depression pinched the surviving magazines and delayed payments. Wonder Stories, like any Gernsback mag, was dilatory enough with payments already. Although we’re approaching the CAS apex in this and Vol. 4, the omens of the end of his fiction-writing days are already clouding the cerulean skies.

Boilerplate recommendation for The Collected Fantasies: If you’re new to Clark Ashton Smith, these Night Shade editions aren’t the best starting point. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies for readers who want to get started with a collection of some of Smith’s key short stories and poems.

Vol. 3 contains stories written over a little more than a year: April 1931 to June 1932. Each is listed with its original date and place of publication, sometimes in a modified form different from the corrected text the editors include here. Unlike previous volumes, every story reached professional magazine publication within a few years of composition, with the exception of “The Double Shadow,” which Smith self-published.

…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less: Allaigna’s Song: Overture by JM Landels

Friday, September 8, 2017 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

Allaigna’s Song: Overture
By JM Landels
Pulp Literature Press (288 pages, $17.99 paperback, $6.49 eBook, July 2017)

I’m a fan of the slow reveal in fiction, particularly if the writer provides just enough detail to intrigue you and increase the tension, but makes you wait to get a clearer picture about what’s going on. That’s part of the reason why Fringe is one of my all-time favorite shows. Building that tension and deciding what information to provide to the reader (or viewer) and when is very tricky; I’ve been told that some of my published stories have pulled it off, but I’ve written other pieces that totally buggered it up. And one thing I’ve never attempted is doing so with parallel narratives in a single work, where the connection isn’t clear at the outset and the tonal change is severe, since I’m always afraid that doing so will throw off my readers.

But in Allaigna’s Song: Overture, Jen Landels manages to avoid all of that, as she tells the story of child Allaigna and parallels it with two other narratives that, over time, are revealed to be the stories of her mother and grandmother. While the core is Allaigna’s discovery of her royal family’s true heritage and her capacity for magic, our real understanding of the world and the Game of Thrones-esque politics involving her family comes from these parallel narratives, since Allaigna is kept out of a lot of discussions and sometimes doesn’t understand or care about what’s really going on. The really neat thing is that when these parallel narratives first appear, there’s no indication about who we’re looking at or where the story has moved to – the first flashback to “Lauresa,” for example, occurs before we learn that Lauresa is Allaigna’s mother’s name – and there’s a shift in tense and narrative structure, which is really experimental and something I’ve never attempted. But Landels pulls it off, constructing a great slow reveal as details come to light.

…

Read More Read More

Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller #3 — Random Adventures, Or How I GM’d With No Prep

Friday, September 8, 2017 M Harold Page Comments 4 comments

Spacers in Ganelon Navy uniforms cram the bar. These guys have a reputation for trashing bars and brawling with strangers. However, this evening, they are beyond well behaved. They keep their hands off the waiting staff, even tip them generously. They are almost painfully polite — “I’m sorry I nearly jostled you! Please accept my apologies, and further apologies on behalf of my ship and indeed my culture…”

This is a problem!

Or at least a problem for the three hard-up traveling companions huddled around a small corner table… let’s call them Travellers... sipping beer from bulbs designed to cope with the 0.15G (these are real!). They have a contract to catch the Ganelon spacers behaving badly so as to compromise that star kingdom’s naval goodwill tour. So far, they are not seeing any bad behaviour.

Somewhat direct in mentality, Charadack, the retired marine sergeant in the group, starts loudly boasting about a battle in which the Imperium forces utterly thrashed those of Ganelon Star Kingdom. Perhaps he can provoke an assault?

After about fifteen minutes, a Ganelon officer carefully navigates the crowded bar and addresses Charadack: “I hear you are talking about your great victory. May I compliment you and the entire Imperium for your chivalry? You are brave and noble fighters, and indeed were exceptionally polite and gracious to the POWs captured as a result of your glorious success…”

At this point, our Travellers are starting to freak out. What is going on?

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

Friday, September 8, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Karin Tidbeck’s first collection Jagannath brought rave reviews from China Mieville, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, and others. Ursula K. Le Guin said, “I have never read anything like Jagannath… These are wonderful stories.”

Karin’s debut novel Amatka is likewise garnering a lot of attention. Weird Fiction Review calls it “Remarkable… weird fiction at its most inventive and self-questioning.” And Jeff VanderMeer says “Karin Tidbeck’s Amatka is a stunning, truly original exploration of the mysteries of reality and what it means to be human… a brilliant short story writer has been revealed as an even more brilliant novelist. One of my favorite reads of the past few years, an instant classic.”

Print copies of Jagannath are now almost impossible to find. Don’t make the same mistake of overlooking Amatka! It arrived in trade paperback from Vintage in June.

Welcome to Amatka…

where everyone has a role, language has strange properties, and nothing — not even the very fabric of reality — can be taken for granted.

Vanja Essre Two is sent to the wintry colony of Amatka on an assignment to collect intelligence for the government. Dissent is not tolerated in Amatka, nor is romantic love, but Vanja nonetheless falls for her housemate Nina, a true believer in the colony’s ways. But when Vanja is drawn into a resistance movement, she must choose between love and a revolution, which promises liberation at the cost of tearing the world as they know it apart.

Amatka was published by Vintage on June 27, 2017. It is 216 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. Read more at the author’s website.

Goth Chick News: Holy Cosplayer Batman! Wizard World Comic Con Lands in Chicago

Thursday, September 7, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

There are enough pop culture fanatics and spandex in the city of Chicago to necessitate multiple comic book conventions along with all the celebrity guests, panels and mountains of merchandise that comes with them. While C2E2 dominates the spring season, the end of the summer is the domain of Wizard World Comic Con, where a dizzying array of cosplayers mingle with thousands of guests at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL.

Founded in 1972 as Nostalgia ’72 by local comic dealer / school teach Nancy Warner and housed in a local Chicago hotel banquet room, this year’s con boasted an estimated 110K attendees over the four-day event at the end of August. Wizard World Chicago is now the third largest such event in overall attendance in the US, behind only the New York Comic Con, and Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Originally showcasing comic books and related popular arts, the convention has expanded over the years to include a larger range of pop culture elements, such as professional wrestling, science fiction/fantasy, film/television, horror, animation, anime, manga, toys, collectible card games, video games, webcomics, and fantasy novels.

…

Read More Read More

In Alone Against the Flames You Face the Horror of Cthulhu the Way the Universe Intended: By Yourself

Thursday, September 7, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I’m a huge fan of solitaire role playing adventures. They’re a great way to exercise your imagination and sample an immersive RPG experience when you can’t find any other players — or just can’t convince them to try out a new game with you.

Of course, the biggest drawback of solo RPGs (aside from the fact that they’re relatively thin on the ground these days) is that most expect you to be fully conversant with the system. That’s why I’m so delighted with Alone Against the Flames, the newest solo adventure for Call of Cthulhu. You don’t need to read the (rather daunting) rulebook before you start playing. Just settle in a comfy chair with some lucky dice, open the book, and follow the instructions. It dumps you right into the story and teaches you the game as you go.

Call of Cthulhu is a horror RPG based on the work of HP Lovecraft, and Alone Against the Flames is a complete tale set in the 1920s in which you are the main character, and your choices determine the outcome. Although it’s designed to walk you through the basics of the game as you go, a copy of the Call of Cthulhu Seventh Edition QuickStart Rules (which you can download for free here) is required to play.

…

Read More Read More

The Poison Apple: A Cosplayer’s Best Friend, Interview with Photographer Bruce Heinsius

Wednesday, September 6, 2017 Elizabeth Crowens Comments 0 Comment

Josephine Chang as Silk

I wanted to preface that when I first met Bruce, we were both working as Still Photographers in Hollywood, and he was on Power Rangers, which has made a comeback with a new feature film after twenty-five years or so.

BH: I worked on the television show the first season shooting everything from action on the set to special shoots for calendars, trading cards, video box covers and magazines.

You and I have been out of touch for a while, but we reconnected on Facebook, because you took photos of someone else I was already friends with, and that’s when I noticed you started taking photos of cosplayers at conventions. Why don’t you share with the readers how you got involved with that?

Back in 2006, I was supposed to be doing a movie shoot. When I showed up, the person who hired me apologized and said he forgot to tell me it was cancelled because everyone was going to a cosplay event instead. So, I tagged along and was surprised how many comic book and animé characters were there. I wasn’t really doing action photos on that first event, but I still tried to create good portraiture while photographing people in costume.

…

Read More Read More

Contents