Goth Chick News: No to Sociopath Training Films, But Yes to Guerilla Marketing

Goth Chick News: No to Sociopath Training Films, But Yes to Guerilla Marketing

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Nicole Kidman can’t catch a break. The Academy Award-winning actress has become a meme queen with behavior that has made her the unintentional darling of social media. It probably started in 2001 when Kidman was photographed leaving her lawyer’s office after finalizing her divorce from Tom Cruise. There was the famous “seal clap” at the 2017 Oscars which was supposedly her trying to protect her rings, but which just looked downright weird. Then there was her reaction to Will Smith slugging Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. But it was Kidman’s ad for AMC which began running on TV and prior to the theaters’ main feature in September 2021 that has probably garnered the most snark.

The dramatic ode to cinema narrated by Kidman was meant to inspire audiences to return to theaters following Covid. In the ad, Kidman enters and sits alone in an empty AMC theater while delivering a monologue describing the pleasures of the moviegoing experience, such as the “indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim and we go somewhere we’ve never been before.”

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Future Treasures: The Big Book of Cyberpunk edited by Jared Shurin

Future Treasures: The Big Book of Cyberpunk edited by Jared Shurin

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The Big Book of Cyberpunk (Vintage, September 26, 2023). Cover by Ociacia

While you and I have been spending our time talking about old paperbacks, Jared Shurin has been toiling away, making a rep for himself as an anthologist. The two volumes of original fantasy he assembled with Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories and The Outcast Hours, were both nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and his most recent books are two volumes of The Best of British Fantasy from NewCon Press.

His latest effort, on sale next week from Vintage Books, is an entirely different beast. The Big Book of Cyberpunk is a feast of a book, 1136 pages of fiction from the biggest names in science fiction. It belongs on your shelf next to the most monumental and groundbreaking anthologies of the last few years, including Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s Big Book of Science Fiction, The Weird, and Lawrence Ellsworth’s Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure.

I was very pleased to see The Big Book of Cyberpunk is also the first appearance in print of Isabel Fall’s famous Hugo nominee “Helicopter Story” (2020), originally published in Clarkesworld under the title, “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” until that title generated such a furor of rage and resentment that the story was withdrawn after three days and the author entered a psychiatric hospital. Hopefully this will give that story more much-deserved exposure.

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Ancient Castles and All-Night Parties: The Collected Macabre Stories by L.P. Hartley

Ancient Castles and All-Night Parties: The Collected Macabre Stories by L.P. Hartley

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The Collected Macabre Stories
By L.P. Hartley
Tartarus Press (Two volumes in slipcase, £80, 2023)

LP Hartley (1895-1972) was a British novelist (author of The Go-Between just to mention one title) and a prolific author of short stories, some of which have a distinctive dark vein.

Tartarus Press has collected his macabre stories in a new edition consisting of two hardcover volumes sold together in a slipcase, featuring thirty-seven stories.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: John Bullard on REH’s Rough and Ready Clowns of the West – Part II

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: John Bullard on REH’s Rough and Ready Clowns of the West – Part II

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Last week, fellow Robert E Howard Foundation Award-winner John Bullard wrote about Breckenridge Elkins. At the end of his life, it wasn’t Conan and fantasy that REH was earning a living with – it was Westerns with humor. So, here’s Part II, covering more funny Westerns. Next week, another Pulp (and Sherlock  Holmes) buddy, William Patrick Murray, will delve into REH’s Weird Westerns. Read on! 

Rough and Ready Clowns of the West:  Robert E. Howard’s Humorous Western Characters Part II

Last week, we looked at Robert E. Howard’s attempts to break into other pulps besides his humorous boxing tales, and fantasy, and horror stories. His creation in the summer of 1933, of Breckinridge Elkins, a recurring funny Western character series for the Action Stories pulp, became very popular and lucrative. His success with it had Howard try to create more funny Western characters to sell to increase his earnings, just as he had done with his funny boxing characters. He created three characters that were each based off Breckinridge Elkins to varying degrees. He was able to sell all three to the pulps, with two starting on the road to becoming recurring characters that only ended with Howard’s death.

Bearfield Elston, the Psychotic Breckinridge Elkins

There was one rejected Breckinridge Elkins story, “A Elkins Never Surrenders”, that Howard rewrote to star his new character of Bearfield Elston. Under its “newish” title, “A Elston Never Surrenders”, Howard sent it to his agent, Otis Kline. Kline eventually sold it to the Star Western pulp in May, 1936, where it was published in the September 1936 issue under its new title of “The Curly Wolf of Sawtooth”. In comparing the two stories, Howard generally just changed the name of Breckinridge to Bearfield Elston.

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Howard Andrew Jones and Todd McAulty on Exploring the Fine Art of Short Epic Fantasy

Howard Andrew Jones and Todd McAulty on Exploring the Fine Art of Short Epic Fantasy

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Image by Tor.com

It’s been three years since I’ve had the chance to partner with Black Gate‘s first managing editor, the ever-creative Howard Andrew Jones, on a feature article for Tor.com. Back in 2019-2020 we wrote a series of pieces showcasing overlooked fantasy authors and games, including Five Forgotten Swordsmen and Swordswomen of Fantasy, Five Classic Sword-and-Planet Sagas, and Traveller: A Classic Science Fiction Simulator. (I co-wrote those articles as ‘Todd McAulty,’ the byline I use for writing fiction.)

In honor of the publication of Howard’s breakout novel Lord of a Shattered Land, we looked back at some of the greatest fantasy sagas of all time — in particular, those that began as humble series of short stories, before they exploded into novels. They include Karl Edward Wagner’s classic Kane, Michael Moorcock’s groundbreaking Elric, and Stephen King’s bestselling The Dark Tower. Special shout-out to our Black Gate regulars who braved the trip to Tor.com to read and comment, including Rich Horton (ecbatan), Eugene R, NOLAbert, James Enge, and Joe Hoopman. Thanks team!

Check out the complete article at Tor.com, and don’t forget to grab a hardcover copy of Lord of a Shattered Land while they’re still available!

A British Country Mystery in Space: Murder on Usher’s Planet by Atanielle Annyn Noël

A British Country Mystery in Space: Murder on Usher’s Planet by Atanielle Annyn Noël

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Murder on Usher’s Planet (Avon, April 1987). Cover by Jill Bauman

I’m going to be reviewing a few novels, of ‘70s/’80s vintage, that were foisted on me generously given to me by Black Gate’s panjandrum, John O’Neill. For his sins, he gets to publish these reviews here in Black Gate!

I exaggerate – I bought some of these novels of my own volition (though often because John alerted me to their existence with a Black Gate Vintage Treasures article!) and I am sincerely grateful to John for those he did give to me, and those he made me aware of, either by pointing them out at a convention, or by writing about them. The novels I’m looking at now do cluster in the ‘70s and ‘80s – a period James Davis Nicoll likes to call the “Disco Era.” And I think it’s worthwhile to consider books from that period – when I was a teenager or a newly hatched adult – especially the more obscure books. But this does mean a good many of these reviews might not be, er, entirely positive!

The first review to fit this paradigm might be my look at Mick Farren’s The Song of Phaid the Gambler (1981). And now we come to Murder on Usher’s Planet, by Atanielle Annyn Noël, published by Avon in 1987 (just as the Phaid the Gambler books appeared in the US.) This actually was a gift from John – we were wandering through the dealers’ room at the Chicago Pulp and Paper convention a few months ago, and I noticed this book, largely I think because of the author’s unusual name; and John grabbed it (along with a few others for himself, as I recall), and having bought it, pressed it on me – suggesting that if I read it I should review it for Black Gate. And here we are!

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New Treasures: Dead Water by C.A. Fletcher

New Treasures: Dead Water by C.A. Fletcher

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Dead Water (Redhook, June 13, 2023). Cover design by kid-ethic

C. A. Fletcher is a Scottish writer, and the author of the popular post-apocalyptic novel A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. I’m unfamiliar with his work, but I decided to pick up his latest when it was released in paperback in June.

Dead Water is described as ‘Folk Horror,’ which I think means it’s a tale of horrible stuff that happens to people who live in the country. As someone who’s tired of all the terrible stories told about my home town of Chicago, this has immediate appeal to me. It’s the story of a waterborne pathogen that afflicts a remote Scottish Isle, and the dark secrets the rapidly-spreading plague uncovers. The Library Ladies calls it “a creeping, dread-filled story,” and Ancillary Review of Books says that “horror fans will enjoy the misty, desolate atmosphere interspersed with moments of genuine fear… individual scenes are paced to perfection.”

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Goth Chick News: Kicking Off Spooky Season with a Ghost Story

Goth Chick News: Kicking Off Spooky Season with a Ghost Story

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Ghost Story (Pocket Books paperback reprint, September 1, 1989)

When fall finally starts descending on Chicagoland there are a few rituals which are essential to getting me in the mood for Spooky Season. Granted, this time of year isn’t dramatically different from the rest of the year around here, considering. But there are certain things that ramp up the countdown to October 31st.

For example, a more than average quantity of gothic elements appears in the décor, the sweatshirts come out, and the scent of pumpkin candles permeates every room along with the music of Midnight Syndicate. September also finds me revisiting quite a few literary favorites as nothing sets the fall tone better than a good ghost story, and in this case, I mean that literally. Ghost Story by Peter Straub remains to this day, the only novel that scares the snot out of me every time I read it.

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A World of Sand and Sorrow: The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

A World of Sand and Sorrow: The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

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They say there is no water in the City of Lies. They say there are no heroes in the City of Lies. They say there are no friends beyond the City of Lies. But would you believe what they say in the City of Lies?

In the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn thirteen, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be thirteen in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a pact — she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city, and himself.

Tor.com’s greatest service to the SFF world has been the return of the novella. (OK, it’s greatest service has been Murderbot, but since all but one of Murderbot’s adventures have been novellas, I’m going to call them one and the same.) Arguably the true format of SFF since the 1920s, the novella does what the short story cannot, in terms of world-building and plot, while never losing focus — as so many doorstop fantasies do today.

The clever folks at Tor.com saw that and seized on it; and have also been good at bringing interesting new voices to market. With Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi, they’ve done both.

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How Reviews Help Authors

How Reviews Help Authors

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Image by Ted Erski from Pixabay

G’day, Readers!

I’m sure that any reader who follows any writer will have heard the plaintive cries from any one or perhaps all of that author’s social media, pleading for a review. Any review. It doesn’t have to be a good one. Or very involved. For the love of all things good and green in this world, would you please leave a review! You’re probably sick to death of it, actually. Don’t fret, writers are sick to death of asking, as well. Unfortunately, reviews do help, and they’re one of the few things that are actually useful in helping an author out; particularly those of us who are largely unread and struggling to be seen in a very flooded market.

It seems like such a silly thing to be true — that someone’s opinion could matter so much in helping a book and its writer find their place in the world. Surely any other avenue would work, no? Well… perhaps a little, but nothing else has the impact of a review – both individually and as a cumulative effect. Even negative reviews can absolutely help! If ever you’re hesitating to post a review, let me try my best to convince you.

Yes, my motivations are entirely selfish. Shall we?

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