Black Gate – Page 517 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Goth Chick News: C2E2 2017 – More Harley Quinn’s Than You Can Swing A Mallet At

Thursday, May 4, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

The annual cosplay bacchanalia that is the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (or “C2E2” for you cool kids) rolled into our city’s largest convention space on April 21 for three full days of exhibition in every sense of the word.

Now in its 8^th year, preliminary attendance estimates easily top the 100K mark which was illustrated by the fact that the McCormick Center’s 6000 parking spaces were full on Saturday by 11 a.m. and attendees were being bussed from other nearby lots. Of course one must also consider that this year’s C2E2 event was sharing a small amount of their space with The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual Experimental Biology convention which accounted for some of the parking consumption.

Imagine with me if you will, jacketed and bespectacled scientist-types of a certain age, navigating the long pedestrian bridge connecting the garage to the event space alongside Superman, Wonder Woman and various members of the Seven Kingdoms. Now imagine Black Gate photog Chris Z and I under the influence of too little sleep, too much caffeine and more than the normal snark level, trudging along behind them.

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Vintage Treasures: Where Time Winds Blow by Robert Holdstock

Thursday, May 4, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Where Time Winds Blow Holdstock-back-small

Several bloggers at Black Gate have piqued my interest in Robert Holdstock recently. In his November review of his pseudonymous sword & sorcery novel Berserker: Shadow of the Wolf, Fletcher Vredenburgh wrote:

Holdstock’s vision of the Viking age is merciless and dread-filled. The Norse are vicious, murderous bandits, continuously killing and raping their way across Ireland. The Norse themselves live in fear of the gods, no wonder in the face of murderous Berserkers. Haunts and monsters lurk in every shadow, sneaking from behind one tree to another. Men live under curses and the constant fear of sudden violent death. Most often death is unfair and ignoble.

And in his March review of Mythago Wood and Lavondyss, Derek Kunsken wrote:

There are a few novels I will return two over and over… one truly haunting work is Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood and Lavondyss. The novels won the World Fantasy Award in 1985 and the BSFA Award in 1988 respectively… reading Holdstock is to viscerally experience layers of deep, Jungian time. The wood is haunted not by ghosts of the past per se; it is haunted by the ancient memories of ghosts that each person carries within them, all the legends, remembered in story and forgotten.

The running theme through both reviews is that Holdstock is a master of setting, and that seems borne out by my most recent discovery, the Timescape paperback Where Time Winds Blow. It’s a standalone SF novel set on a strange SF planet where reality is fluid, and subject to mysterious winds that scream across the surface. That definitely sounds like my kind of book. Where Time Winds Blow was published by Timescape / Pocket Books in May 1982. It is 262 pages, priced at $2.95. The cover is by Carl Lundgren. I bought the copy above online this week for $2.79.

Defending of Realm

Thursday, May 4, 2017 Jeff Stehman Comments 4 comments

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A dragon, a demon, and an undead walk into a kingdom. Oh, and an orc. Mustn’t forget the orc. These four generals are leading their hordes of minions in a march on Monarch City, and it’s up to the players to stop them. This is the cooperative board game Defenders of the Realm, designed by Richard Launius and published by Eagle Games.

The players have no army of their own to oppose the invaders. Instead they have one to four heroes of the sort you’d expect: paladin, ranger, wizard, sorceress, rogue, etc. The bad guys have several ways to win. The players have one: defeat all the generals, no matter how many of their minions remain on the board.

The mechanics of Defenders bear more than a passing resemblance to the board game Pandemic, but this isn’t a reskinned knock-off, as the fantasy theme is strongly integrated into the game. Miniatures add to the theme, with a unique plastic mini for each hero and general, and hordes of color-coded minions. (Sapphire, the dragon general, has the place of pride in the game, standing nearly two inches tall. However, the amorphous cloaked minions are my favorite.)

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New Treasures: The Choice Series by Paul McAuley

Wednesday, May 3, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Something Coming Through Paul McAuley-small

Paul MaAuley was an early contributor to Black Gate, with a review column titled On the Edge. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), won the Philip K. Dick Award; his 1996 novel Fairyland won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel. His latest is a pair of contemporary SF novels about an enigmatic alien race who make an equally enigmatic gift to mankind… Alastair Reynolds calls the first one, Something Coming Through, “as tight and relentlessly paced as an Elmore Leonard thriller… the freshest take on first contact and interstellar exploration in many years.” Here’s the description for Something Coming Through.

The Jackaroo have given humanity fifteen worlds and the means to reach them. They’re a chance to start over, but they’re also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroo’s previous clients. Miracles that could reverse the damage caused by war, climate change, and rising sea levels. Nightmares that could forever alter humanity — or even destroy it.

Chloe Millar works in London, mapping changes caused by imported scraps of alien technology. When she stumbles across a pair of orphaned kids possessed by an ancient ghost, she must decide whether to help them or to hand them over to the authorities. Authorities who believe that their visions point towards a new kind of danger. And on one of the Jackaroo’s gift-worlds, the murder of a man who has just arrived from Earth leads policeman Vic Gayle to a war between rival gangs over possession of a remote excavation site.

Something is coming through. Something linked to the visions of Chloe’s orphans, and Vic Gayle’s murder investigation. Something that will challenge the limits of the Jackaroo’s benevolence …

Something Coming Through was published by Gollancz on June 21, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $12.99 in paperback and $1.99 for the digital edition. The sequel, Into Everywhere, was published in paperback by Gollancz on June 14, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $19.99 in paperback and $5.99 for the digital edition.

The Queens’ Pyramids at Giza

Wednesday, May 3, 2017 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

The pyramid of Menkaure (2532-2504 BC) and
its three Queens’ Pyramids, looking east

We’ve all seen the pictures. Tucked beside the massive pyramids at Giza are a few little pyramids. They are generally described in one line as the “Queens’ Pyramids” or “satellite pyramids” and not mentioned any further. They seem like such an afterthought to the awe-inspiring pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, not to mention the Sphinx, that they get all but forgotten. But why were these monuments built? And who were they for?

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Why You Should Go to Conventions

Wednesday, May 3, 2017 Doug Ellis Comments 2 comments

The Dray Prescot series, by Alan Burt Akers

Last month, I posted in a couple of Facebook groups a piece of new art that Deb and I had bought. In response to the post, one person asked how to go about acquiring illustration art, and I mentioned that one good venue was going to conventions such as The Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention (shameless plug) or PulpFest for vintage art, or IX or Spectrum Fantastic Art Live for new stuff. And many of the larger comic conventions also have some dealers who specialize in vintage illustration art, or artist attendees doing current work. And several SF/fantasy conventions, such as World Fantasy, Boskone or Worldcon still have good art rooms (and Boskone in particular has strong vintage art components to their art shows), though in most cases SF cons are not what they used to be when it comes to art. In addition to conventions, I also mentioned various auction houses, eBay and dealers, which are more typical day-to-day places to find illustration art, as cons are scattered throughout the year and most of us can’t attend all of them.

Of course, this is only my opinion, and others may have different experiences, particularly when it comes to collecting newer illustration art. Our focus is on older illustration art, and while we do have several pieces that have been created in the past few years, the bulk of our collection is illustration art that’s at least 30 years old, with the majority of it at least 60 years old and some over 100 years old.

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Justin Cronin on Bringing The Passage Trilogy to Television

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Over at DGO, Patty Templeton interviews author Justin Cronin on bringing his bestselling horror trilogy to the small screen. Let’s listen in, shall we?

The Passage is a damn fine book. It’s a doorstopper of a read with deep characters and a full-tilt apocalyptic plot. The first in a completed trilogy, The Passage establishes a near-future world ravaged by a contagious virus that leaves its victims in a vampire-like state. From there, one world dies and another is born…

PT: THE PASSAGE TRILOGY IS COMING TO TV. WHAT EXCITES YOU MOST ABOUT THE PROJECT?

JC: I think TV is so good now. Film is a director’s medium and TV has become a writer’s medium. TV is natural for ensemble storytelling and for telling a big story. Television is also a very good way to bring people to the books. Television is around for a long time, assuming the show is successful enough to stay around. Movies come and go, now. Half the movies I want to see are gone from the theaters before I can see them. Whereas television is one of our great cultural pleasures. Good television is kind of like Dickens used to be. It’s episodic and we can all go down to the pier and await the next chapter of David Copperfield.

Read the complete interview at DGO!

Premiere issue of New Pulp Magazine Broadswords and Blasters, Now Available in Print and Kindle

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 Nick Ozment Comments 4 comments

Editors Matthew X. Gomez and Cameron Mount have launched a new sci-fi/fantasy magazine into the fray, touting it as a “pulp magazine with modern sensibilities.” The debut issue is available on Kindle for $2.99 or in a print edition for $6.99. They have also been posting regular mini-essays called “Pulp Appeal” on their website, spotlighting seminal pulp authors and characters like Conan, John Carter, Elric, and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Here is the back copy from the first issue:

The editors of Broadswords and Blasters are proud to present the first issue in a new line of pulp fiction serial publications. The stories in this issue blew us away when we read them, and the overall response confirms what we’ve always suspected: Action-oriented short fiction is still a hot commodity in the 21^st Century.

In this, our debut issue, you will encounter subterranean horrors, time traveling lovers, two-fisted private investigators, space Mafiosi, and torturers turned political rabble-rousers, and that’s just a sampling of the great cast of characters you’ll meet along the way. Join us in celebrating the art that is pulp fiction. And tell your friends.

Here is the complete Table of Contents.

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Trader to the Stars by Poul Anderson

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 6 comments

I have no idea which Poul Anderson book I picked up first. It might have been The Winter of the World or Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. Whichever it was, I enjoyed it. It was enough to get me grabbing books at random from the big stack of his work my dad had bought. I’ve read a ton of his books, but with nearly seventy novels and sixty short story collections to his name, I still have plenty to go.

I’d venture a guess that Poul Anderson, multiple Hugo- and Nebula-winner, is probably better remembered for his fantasy than for his science fiction. Since his death in 2001, it seems his fantasy writing, the seminal swords & sorcery novel The Broken Sword in particular, has acquired a much greater reputation than his sci-fi.

While he wrote many standalone sci-fi novels, a large number were part of a specific future history. The Technic Civilization covers humanity’s spread across the stars, beginning, chronologically, with the story “The Saturn Game” set in the year 2055 and ending with “Starfog” in 7100. The majority of the stories take place during the second half of the third millennium and feature Falstaffian merchant prince Nicholas van Rijn, his agent David Falkayn, or Imperial secret agent Dominic Flandry.

Anderson’s future history stories are a mix of pulp space opera and hard sci-fi. At the heart of many of the stories is an explicit scientific conundrum that needs to be answered. Each puzzle, though, is couched in adventures with alien barbarians, enemy planets, or galactic empires.

Trader to the Stars (1964) collects three van Rijn adventures, “Hiding Place,” “Territory,” and “The Master Key.” Each features van Rijn working out evolutionary puzzles, usually in the face of some grave danger and always in hopes of making a profit. The first two throw the trader into the middle of danger, while the third lets him, Nero Wolfe-like, get to the bottom of a native uprising from the luxurious surroundings of his penthouse.

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Future Treasures: Shattered Warrior by Sharon Shinn and Molly Knox Ostertag

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Sharon Shinn is one of our favorite writers around these parts. I know, I know, we have a lot of favorite writers. But do we have fond memories of mobbing them at breakfast with the entire Black Gate staff, as we do with Sharon? No, we do not.

Sharon has published more than 25 novels over the past two decades, including the Samaria series, Twelve Houses series, and the Elemental Blessings novels. Her latest project is a graphic novel with award-winning webcomic artist Molly Knox Ostertag (Strong Female Protagonist), titled Shattered Warrior. Set on a world conquered by the alien Derichets, it tells the tale of Colleen Cavenaugh, who toils in a factory for her alien masters, until the day her home is invaded by an unlikely band of human resistance fighters.

Here’s a scan of the inside flap, and a few sample pages to showcase some of Ostertag’s colorful art and character design.

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