Black Gate – Page 480 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Trials of Solomon Parker by Eric Scott Fischl

Sunday, December 17, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Trials of Solomon Parker doesn’t look it, but it’s part of a series. A loose series maybe, but still a series. The first novel, Dr Potter’s Medicine Show, was published by Angry Robot back in March. At least you don’t have to wait long between installments.

John Shirley called the first novel “A powerful alchemical elixir concocted of post Civil War historical fiction, dark fantasy, and Felliniesque flavoring.” And the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog labeled it a “gritty, down-and-dirty debut.” In her feature review at Tor.com, Arianne Thompson described it as:

An Enthusiastic Carnival of Horrors… even though Dr. Potter rightly belongs on the “horror/occult” side of the Weird Western spectrum, it cleaves apart from the sensational grimdark vogue that so heavily tints our view of the past. Fischl’s command of his characters’ world is grotesque, vivid, joyful, and sublime — an uncommon realism that honors the human side of history, and a reminder that a carnival of horrors is still a carnival, after all, with miracles and spectacles awaiting anyone brave enough to venture into the sideshow tent.

The B&N Sci-Fi Blog says “compelling and broken characters, and damn good storytelling elevates The Trials of Solomon Parker to whole new level of weird western. Two excellent books in a calendar year – Fischl is definitely a writer to watch.”

The Trials of Solomon Parker was published by Angry Robot on October 3, 2017. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Steven Meyer-Rassow.

The December Fantasy Magazine Rack

Saturday, December 16, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The latest crop of magazines includes brand new fiction by BG blogger and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editor Adrian Simmons, plus Natalia Theodoridou, Lettie Prell, Cassandra Khaw, Mari Ness, Stephen Case, Nin Harris, and many more. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in early December (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine — editor Tom Dullemond selects stories by Adrian Simmons, David Versace, Jennifer Hykes, Josh Pearce, DA Xiaolin Spires, Freya Marske, Rae White, and others
Apex Magazine — new stories from Daniela Tomova and Katharine E.K. Duckett, plus a reprint by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and a podcast
Clarkesworld — issue #135 has new fiction from Natalia Theodoridou, Lettie Prell, Josh Pearce, Eleanna Castroianni, and Cassandra Khaw, plus reprints by Ken Macleod and Ian Mcdonald
Lightspeed — the December issue has original fiction by Rachael K. Jones, Cadwell Turnbull, A. Merc Rustad and Mari Ness, plus reprints by Charlie Jane Anders, Robert Reed, Tim Pratt and Sonya Taaffe
Beneath Ceaseless Skies — issue #240 has short stories by Stephen Case and M. Bennardo, plus a reprint by Andrea Stewart
The Dark — stories by MP Johnson and Nin Harris, plus reprints by Robert Levy and Robert Shearman
Forever Magazine — issue #35 of this SF reprint magazine has a novella by Ken Liu (The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary) plus a novelette by Eleanor Arnason, and a story by Peter Watts.
Pulp Literature — issue 17, Winter 2018, has a Christmas ghost story by JJ Lee, a Frankenstein tale for the new world by AJ Odasso, plus Misha Handman, Spencer Stevens, Anat Rabkin, Soramimi Hanarajimi, and Susan Pieters, and the winners of the 2017 Hummingbird Prize for Flash Fiction

Click any of the thumbnail images above for bigger images. Our late November Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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Wings, Wind, and World-Wreckers: The Best of Edmond Hamilton

Saturday, December 16, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 5 comments

James McGlothin has been providing excellent continuing coverage on Black Gate of Del Rey’s famous “The Best Of…” anthologies that shaped many SF readers in the 1970s. He was kind enough to allow me to take a pile of notes I’d assembled for Del Rey’s The Best of Edmond Hamilton (1976) and do an entry in the series. I also sought the blessing of our editor John O’Neill because Edmond Hamilton is his favorite pulp author and I wanted to feel sure I wasn’t intruding too far into another’s territory. Both James and John are welcome to trash Edgar Rice Burroughs and Godzilla as much as they want after this.

I’ll admit to having absorbed less Edmond Hamilton than I should. I’ve read some of his short fiction, but only one of his novels, The Star Kings (1947), a science-fiction variant on The Prisoner of Zenda that’s about as thrilling as Golden Age space opera gets. (Because John O’Neill will ask, I read the original magazine version of The Star Kings, not the later book revision with the sequel-friendly ending.) I’m more familiar with the work of Hamilton’s wife, Leigh Brackett, one of the great science-fiction writers and one of my favorite authors of all time. Their marriage didn’t lead to frequent collaborations, as the marriage of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner did. I’m glad Hamilton and Brackett maintained separate writer identities, and the feeling became sharper after reading this selection of what Brackett thought was her husband’s finest short fiction.

I’ve read many of the Del Rey “Best Of…” volumes, but few that I’ve enjoyed as consistently as this one. It’s not only because Hamilton was a superb writer — all the authors in the series were first-rank SF masters — but because of two specific factors.

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Alfred Bester on “My One Demented Meeting with the Great John W. Campbell, Jr.”

Saturday, December 16, 2017 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I’m a long-time student of science fiction history, and I enjoy reading it whenever I can. On the train yesterday I read “My Affair with Science Fiction,” a delightful bit of memoir by the great Alfred Bester, author of The Demolished Man and The Stars Our Destination. It contains one of the most revealing tidbits on John W. Campbell I’ve ever read.

I wrote a few stories for Astounding, and out of that came my one demented meeting with the great John W. Campbell, Jr. I needn’t preface this account with the reminder that I worshipped Campbell from afar… I sent off another story to Campbell, one which no show would let me tackle. The title was “Oddy and Id” and the concept was Freudian… Campbell telephoned me a week later to say that he liked the story but wanted to discuss a few changes with me. Would I come to his office?….

Campbell arose from his desk and shook hands. I’m a fairly big guy but he looked enormous to me, about the size of a defensive tackle. He was dour and seemed preoccupied by matters of great moment. “You don’t know it,” Campbell said, “you can’t have any way of knowing it, but Freud is finished…”

“Oh come now, Mr. Campbell. Surely you’re joking.”

“I have never been more serious in my life. Freud has been destroyed by one of the greatest discoveries of our time. Dianetics… Come and have lunch.”

We sat down at a small table while he continued to discourse on dianetics, the greatest salvation of the future when the world would at last be cleared of its emotional wounds. Suddenly he stood up and towered over me. “You can drive your memory back to the womb,” he said. “You can do it if you release every block, clear yourself and remember. Try it.”

“Now?”

“Now. Think. Think back. Clear yourself. Remember! You can remember when your mother tried to abort you with a button hook. You’ve never stopped hating her for it.”

Around me there were cries of “BLT down, hold the mayo. Eighty-six on the English. Combo rye, relish. Coffee shake, pick up.” And here was this grim tackle standing over me, practicing dianetics without a license. The scene was so lunatic that I began to tremble with suppressed laughter. I prayed. “Help me out of this, please. Don’t let me laugh in his face. Show me a way out.” God showed me.

“My Affair with Science Fiction” originally appeared in Harry Harrison’s 1974 anthology Nova 4, three years after Campbell died. It’s been reprinted a handful of times, including in Hell’s Cartographers (1975), and Bester’s collection Starlight (1976). The Stars My Destination is included in the Library of America’s gorgeous boxed set American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, and you can read “My Affair with Science Fiction” online at the Library of America here. It’s long but well worth the read.

Fantasia 2017, Day 18, Part 2: Invasions Past, Present, and Yet To Come (Mumon, Bushwick, and S.U.M.1)

Friday, December 15, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Mumon I ran up the steps in the Hall Building, hurrying from the basement where I’d just seen Geek Girls in the D.B. Clarke Theatre to reach the big Hall Auditorium in time to catch my second film of the day. The doors of the auditorium were still open, and I raced in and found a seat just as the movie began. It was called Mumon: The Land of Stealth (Shinobi no kuni), and I settled in knowing I had two more movies to see afterward. Mumon was a period film about ninjas fighting an invasion, and following that would come Bushwick, about residents of a Brooklyn neighbourhood fighting an invasion, then S.U.M.1, a German movie about people in a dystopian future fighting a (possible) invasion. A theme appeared to be emerging. (Two notes: one, Bushwick is now on Netflix in Canada and the US, so for those looking for a quick take on the film I’ll say that it’s a good enough movie I wish it were better; two, S.U.M.1 has now been given an expanded title, Alien Invasion: S.U.M.1.)

Mumon: The Land of Stealth was directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura (whose previous film The Inerasable I quite liked) and written by Ryou Wada based on Wada’s novel Shinobi no Kuni. It’s the sixteenth century, and Nobunaga Oda is trying to unify feudal Japan. Standing in the way is the Iga Province, home to the Iga ninjas who will kill anyone for hire. Most prominent among them is one Mumon (Satoshi Ohno), who is as lazy as he is skilled. But his amoral actions lead to a revenge-driven betrayal, setting up a battle between Oda’s forces and the ninjas of Iga. But who is one to cheer for in a battle of soldiers and contract killers?

There are some weighty elements to Mumon, posing questions about morality and loyalty and community spirit. Ninjas kill people for money, and being purely mercenary, the ninjas of Iga don’t immediately come together to make any kind of effective resistance to Oda. Mumon’s no exception, except perhaps insofar as his drive for financial reward comes about in part to keep his beloved wife Okuni (Satomi Ishihara, Hange in the live-action Attack On Titan films) in the style to which she is accustomed. The overall challenge, then, is for Mumon to grow as a person and rally his people as a community to fight off their invaders. That sounds like a fairly lightweight, if not simple, theme; but the movie goes some unexpected places.

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Wordsmiths: Reasons and Examples Why Julie E. Czerneda is Genuinely Awesome

Friday, December 15, 2017 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

One of the cool things about being a columnist here at Black Gate is it gives me the opportunity to signal boost writers who I think deserve more attention, on top of providing my two cents on people who are already widely known. This week I decided to do a little of both, and in a slightly different format than usual, with a Very Special and Hopefully Surprising Shout-Out to acclaimed author and one-of-a-kind person Julie E. Czerneda.

Yes, Julie, this post is about you.

I met Julie a couple years ago in my role as a programming coordinator for Can*Con in Ottawa. At this year’s conference she launched her final Clan Chronicles novel, To Guard Against the Dark, and very graciously surprised us by offering a bunch of free copies to the con-com – because she’s awesome. On the last day of the con, I wanted to see if Julie could sign my copy but I was busy running around, so I said to the other programming coordinator, “If you see Julie, can you tell her I’m looking for her?” And then quickly amended that to, “If you see Julie, tell her I’m hunting her like wild game.” Cuz maybe it would make her laugh.

About an hour later, I was chatting with a couple editors in the dealer’s room when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I ignored it, then saw it again, like something disappearing behind the doorway out into the hall. Sure enough, it was Julie, peeking out from behind the door and then darting past it. I excused myself from my conversation and went out into the hallway, only to see Julie haul ass toward the nearest exit, forcing me to actually chase her – like wild game!

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Vintage Treasures: Farewell Fantastic Venus! edited by Brian W. Aldiss with Harry Harrison

Friday, December 15, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

One of the things I love about pulp SF is its romanticized view of our solar system. The ancient canals and lost cities of Mars, the steaming dinosaur-ridden swamps of Venus. I can still remember the bitter disappointment I felt when I first learned that science had proven Venus completely inhospitable to life. It felt like the solar system had been robbed of its greatest potential for extra-planetary adventure.

Many SF writers felt very much the same way. Two recent anthologies from Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin, Old Mars and Old Venus, have done a splendid job re-capturing some of that old pulp magic with a generous sampling of modern tales set in retro-versions of both planets.

But they weren’t the first books to celebrate a cherished (and now obsolete) vision of our solar system. That honor probably goes to Farewell Fantastic Venus!, a 1968 anthology released shortly after the first probes reached Venus, and the hard truth was revealed. The book contains classic Venusian fiction by Arthur C. Clarke and John & Dorothy de Courcy, and two novellas by Poul Anderson, including a Psychotechnic League tale. There’s also a rich sampling of novel excerpts by Olaf Stapledon, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. S. Lewis, and others. All that plus science articles by Frank R. Paul, Carl Sagan, Sir Bernard Lovell, Willy Ley, and others.

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Goth Chick News: Jurassic World 2 Gets More Teeth

Thursday, December 14, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 4 comments

As much as I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for love of the Jurassic Park franchise, at some point you’d think someone in that universe would just up and decide that resurrecting dinosaurs is simply a bad idea all around. And now that we’ve all gotten a look at the trailer for Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom I have some news to indicate the perpetual voice of reason when it comes to dinos, may be making an appearance to do just that.

It’s been known for a while now that Jurassic World 2 would bring back Jeff Goldblum to reprise his fan favorite role of Dr. Ian Malcolm, and Goldblum is seen prominently in the trailer.

But wait, there’s more…

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Could Hitler Have Built the Bomb? Find Out in Against the Odds #50

Thursday, December 14, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Against the Odds magazine is a throwback to the great era of tabletop gaming, when magazines like Strategy & Tactics and the much-missed Ares contained complete games in each issue. Issues are expensive ($35, more than the cost of a hardcover book), but for gaming fans it’s well worth the price. The latest issue, #50, contains Building the Bomb, a chilling card game that simulates the Nazi efforts to build the first atomic bomb.

In late 1941 with senior officials across Germany becoming increasingly aware that Operation Barbarossa would fail somewhere short of Moscow… many worriedly began looking for an “out.” Some, like Ernst Udet, head of Luftwaffe Development, and Walter Borbet, a leading industrialist, shot themselves over the shock of the failure. Others, like General Fromm, in charge of the Army Weapons Office, turned their attention to an extraordinary proposal by Germany’s leading physicists to unlock the secrets of the atom and provide limitless power, and a possible war winning explosive device, the atomic bomb.

Building the Bomb is a card game for 2 to 5 players. Each player represents a faction inside German government, military or industrial circles, seeking to engage one of the Reich’s prestigious research institutes to start work on a nuclear program.

Acting through the Director of each center, players will need to size matters up, recruit other scientists, acquire scarce resources, (plus spy on their rivals, this is the Third Reich remember) and certainly go all out if they hope to develop atomic weapons…

Building the Bomb includes 108 colorful playing cards, 40 die-cut counters, and a 10-page rulebook. Playing time is 1 to 2 hours. It was designed by Steven Cunliffe and developed by Lembit Tohver, with graphic design by Mark Mahaffey.

Against the Odds: Journal of History and Simulation is edited by Andy Nunez and published by LPS, Inc. It appears four times per year, yearly subscriptions are $80 in the US. Individual issues are priced at $39.95; issue 50 is around 56 pages. Order copies or get more details at the website. We last covered Against the Odds with Issue #35, which contained the game Boudicca: The Warrior Queen.

See our late November Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

Fantasia 2017, Day 18, Part 1: Geek Girls

Wednesday, December 13, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Geek Girls Sunday, July 30, was going to be a big day. I had four movies I hoped to see, some of them scheduled so tightly I wasn’t sure I could get to all of them in time despite the convenient proximity of the Fantasia theatres one to another. Still, I at least knew I’d start my day in the D.B. Clarke Theatre, where I would see Geek Girls, a documentary by Gina Hara.

The film’s narrated by Hara herself, a Montrealer of Hungarian birth. We see her reflecting in voiceover on her status as a self-identified geek, and hear interviews with a number of women in geekish fields who talk about their lives and their experiences as women in geek spaces and geek communities. The interviews aren’t presented as give-and-take conversations, Hara instead absenting herself from the film and allowing her interviewees’ words to shape the piece. We hear from a scientist, a game designer, from cosplayers and bloggers and manga makers, from gamers professional and otherwise. Hara’s film becomes about her own search for a place, and for an understanding of what it means to be a geek. We’re told that there’s no word for “geek” in Hungarian, but even in North America, what does it mean for her as a woman to be a geek?

Hara avoids any journalistic reliance on facts and figures, making her film much more of a personal memoir. This is a series of discussions and reflections, not infodumps; even Hara’s interviewees are each introduced, cleverly, with the camera showing a physical sign with their name on it rather than by using subtitles. The interviews are edited so that the film progresses through a rough series of themes, examining the issues of women in geek-related fields. Overall the focus here is on the sense of community among women (especially); that is, the film’s more about the value of fandom rather than an investigation of what pulls one in to being a fan.

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