There is a saying that you should never meet your heroes. The golden god may have feet of clay, and all that. I don’t agree. Now, I adore my wife. Let me make that plain up front, so there are no misunderstandings. But there is another woman in my life – my goddess of writing, Tanith Lee. Tanith Lee is the reason I’m a writer today. She inspired me in a way that nothing and no one else did or…
This is one section of a serialized novel presented by Black Gate magazine. It is offered at no cost and appears with the permission of Mark Rigney, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2016 by Mark Rigney. This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or current events is purely coincidental. This is Chapter Fourteen. To read Chapter Thirteen, click…
Arthur Wontner was the first great screen Holmes of the sound era, followed by Basil Rathbone. Wontner was 56 when he first donned the deerstalker and looked older. Rathbone was 54 for his last Holmes film, though he came across as younger. I’ve already written a post here at Black Gate (Go ahead: read that before continuing on with this one. You know you want to…) on Ronald Howard’s under-appreciated performance as Holmes in Sheldon Reynolds’ television series, which was…
Lots of great reading for fantasy lovers this month — including some terrific tales at Tor.com, new issues of Fantasy Scroll, Lightspeed, Apex, Clarkesworld, Analog, and many more. For our vintage magazine readers, Rich Horton reviewed the March 1964 Amazing Stories, and Doug Ellis dug deep into his impressive collection to report on the Early Chicago SF Fan Club, and Otto Binder’s 1937 letter on John W. Campbell, and we introduced you to Gideon Marcus’ website Galactic Journey. Check out all…
John W. Campbell (photo by Astounding cover artist Hubert Rogers) Back to Otto Binder letters today. This one, from Binder to his friend, Jack Darrow, dated May 23, 1937, was written just before Binder was cut loose from Otis Adelbert Kline’s literary agency, which happened on June 1 of that year. As a result of his job upheaval, Binder spent some time, unsuccessfully, trying to land a gig as an editor (and a few years later interviewed with Ziff-Davis re:…
Art of the Genre continues to roll out Kickstarter after Kickstarter in their Folio series, this time teaming up with terrain production juggernaut Dwarven Forge to create The Hidden Valoria Campaign. Dwarven Forge architect Stefan Pokorny opens the doors to his personal gaming world of Mythras so that AotG‘s own wordsmith Scott Taylor can have a run at the world capital of Valoria. Stefan has always been a big fan of old fantasy pulp fiction, and along with Scott, the…
The incredibly addictive TVTropes.org website has this to say about the trope : Merriam-Webster defines trope as a ‘figure of speech.’ For creative writer types, tropes are more about conveying a concept to the audience without needing to spell out all the details. Wikipedia uses a lot more words to say basically the same thing. It’s important to understand that this doesn’t make the trope a cliché, but rather a sort of shorthand for writers to convey an image or…
Last week, we talked a lot about Humphrey Bogart as we roamed around The Maltese Falcon. And I had already done a post on Bogie’s only horror-sci fi film, The Return of Doctor X. Today, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite aspects of Bogart’s career. In the annals of Hollywood, never has one actor so torpedoed his own career, while making another actor a star at the same time. Let’s take a look, shall we? George Raft grew…
I first heard of Mark Morris in 1989 with the publication of his first novel Toady (called The Horror Club in its heavily abridged US edition). I tried to scare up a copy through mail-order bookseller Mark V. Ziesing (because that’s the way you ordered books in the late 80s), but it had already become a hot property, and Mark wasn’t able to get one for me. Sudden scarcity and rapid price appreciation was the way of things in genre collecting in the late 80s;…
A. J. Smithers is a respected author of fiction and non-fiction titles with a special dedication to the Clubland fiction of Dornford Yates, John Buchan, and H. C. “Sapper” McNeile. His 1983 novel, Combined Forces was subtitled Being the Latter-Day Adventures of Richard Hannay, “Bulldog” Drummond, and Berry and Co. Clubland literary scholar Richard Usborne praised the book and Smithers’ willingness to expose the dark sides of its characters’ lives. Wold Newtonians sometimes seek out this rare work because of the literary crossover within…