The Mystery of Alan Burt Akers, Author of The Dray Prescot Series

The Mystery of Alan Burt Akers, Author of The Dray Prescot Series

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The first eight Dray Prescot books (DAW Books, 1972-1975).
Covers by Josh Kirby, Tim Kirk, Jack Gaughan, and Richard Hescox

As I started collecting and reading the Dray Prescot series of Sword & Planet novels, I tried to find out more about the author: Alan Burt Akers. The early books, published by DAW books starting in 1973, had no description or details of Akers, although they had ample details on Dray Prescot, who supposedly had recorded his adventures on tapes, which Akers then transcribed.

At the time I was sure Alan Burt Akers was a real person. It was many years before I learned the truth. Akers was a pseudonym for Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005). I don’t know why he chose that particular pseudonym, although I noted that it included all three parts of the name, and I was sure this was an homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline.

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New Treasures: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

New Treasures: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

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Our Share of Night (Hogarth, February 7, 2023)

I first heard of Mariana Enriquez in Adam Nevill’s 2022 Black Gate article, Five Great International Horror Collections, in which he celebrates “a sense of encountering original, innately weird creative visions for the first time” in the work of Luigi Musolino, Anders Fager, Attila Veres, and two collections from Enriquez, Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Here’s the paragraph that grabbed my attention.

Argentinian Mariana Enriquez has been celebrated the world over, and I can see why from the quality of her writing. But I am surprised because her work is weird, not at all mainstream. How often does that kind of success come to a writer of quality weird? Almost never (because how many traditional publishers ever get excited about it?). I am heartened that it is possible. “Adela’s House” from Things We Lost in the Fire became an immediate favourite. Disturbing, sensory, unpredictable stories.

Enriquez’s fourth novel, her first to be translated into English, Our Share of Night, was published in hardcover by Hogarth this year, and I think the time is finally right for me to jump on board this train.

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Feminine Horror Works Better: A Darker Shade of Noir edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Feminine Horror Works Better: A Darker Shade of Noir edited by Joyce Carol Oates

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A Darker Shade of Noir (Akashic Books, August 22, 2023)

Among the plethora of new anthologies of horror stories continuously produced by little-known editors, minor authors and obscure publishers, where very few tales are worth reading, here’s finally an above average anthology. Devoted to so called “body horror” and including only women authors, the volume is edited by Joyce Carol Oates, a well respected, famous writer herself, who certainly demonstrates her good taste in her selection of the stories.

Her insightful and detailed Introduction is a sort of commentary on the material, but for the purposes of this review I’ll focus on the tales that especially impressed me.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Peak ‘90s Wuxia

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Peak ‘90s Wuxia

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Dragon Inn (Hong Kong, 1992)

Wuxia, which roughly translates as “chivalrous martial heroes,” is the term for armed historical martial arts adventures, fantasy tales with a history in China dating back to early medieval times. Wuxia stories were adapted to film in China as early as the 1920s, but they were never a major genre until revived in the ‘60s and ‘70s in Hong Kong cinema by directors King Hu and Chang Cheh. Wuxia movies were eclipsed by the kung fu explosion in the early ‘70s but they never really went away, and when producer-director Tsui Hark had breakout hits with his Chinese Ghost Story and Once Upon a Time in China trilogies, the Hong Kong movie machine responded in emulation.

From 1991 through 1995 an avalanche of crowd-pleasing wuxia movies burst from the Hong Kong studios. A lot of these films were low-budget quickies made to formula, but that formula could be stretched to include a great variety of approaches. The three movies covered here illustrate how eclectic the Wuxia Boom was at its height. In the late ‘90s, wuxia movies returned to occasional and irregular productions, but the eclecticism of the boom years remained a hallmark of the genre, one that continues until today.

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Publishing Requires Patience

Publishing Requires Patience

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Image by Nile from Pixabay

Good… whenever you’re reading this!

As I’m prepping for the release of the serial I’ve written as a freebie to my readers (each chapter will be uploaded on Fridays on my blog once it’s ready to go), I’m struck for the first time in a long time how long a process publishing is. You see, I’ve been away from the scene for a long while now. The pandemic really did a number on me. In less than two years, I lost my job (ah yes, the great furlough), had to move, found a new job, and had to move again. That’s a lot of change in a very short amount of time, and it took me quite a while to adjust and settle.

In that time, I wrote very little. This was not for lack of trying. I wanted to write, but there was nothing coming. I know I’m finally settling in because I was finally able to write again. In the last two years, I managed to finish two manuscripts (the most recent one being the afore-mentioned serial). Both of these manuscripts will have, I hope, a very different publishing journey.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Frank Schildiner on Solomon Kane

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Frank Schildiner on Solomon Kane

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A couple weeks ago, I reposted James Reasoner’s excellent  ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ essay on REH and trail towns in his Westerns. Another Pulp-centric post from that series was from my New Pulp (and Solar Pons) buddy, Frank Schildiner. He wrote about one of my favorite REH characters, Solomon Kane.

There are a lot of Kane fans here at Black Gate. And for a couple years now, I’ve been trying to follow up ‘Discovering Robert E Howard,’ and ‘Hither Came Conan,’ with a multi-contributor series on Kane.

That Del Rey Solomon Kane volume pictured, is an absolutely terrific book, and it’s a shame more of the Kanes weren’t published during his lifetime. Take it away, Frank!

 

Solomon Kane. I can still remember when I first read the name. I was 11 and looking through books and comics at a flea market, my mother one row over looking through the Robin Cook section. I pulled a slim paperback from the pile, the cover showing a cold eyed Puritan staring at me with open condemnation (at least that’s how I interpreted the visual). But then I read the name… SOLOMON KANE. And there wasn’t a prayer on Earth of getting me to let go of this book that day.

And that first short story, “Red Shadows,” changed me forever. I became a fan for all things Robert E. Howard, but especially Solomon Kane. Caught by the enemy he’d chased from Europe into Africa, Kane looked up at this man he’d hounded relentlessly for years, and the following thought summed up why this hero became my favorite.

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A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

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Dark Harvest (Tor Books, September 4, 2007, cover by Jon Foster)
and the film adaptation (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, October 11, 2023)

Paul Finch’s “The Carrion Call” appeared in the eighth issue of the print version of Black Gate, and over the last decade he’s produced over a dozen Terror Tales anthologies (most recently Terror Tales of the West Country, which Mario Guslandi reviewed for us back in January). But he also maintains Walking in the Dark, one of the more entertaining and informative genre blogs, where he discusses horror new and old.

Last month he reviewed Norman Partridge’s modern Halloween classic Dark Harvest, originally published in 2006 — when it received many of the year’s major awards, including the Stoker, International Horror Guild Award, and a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name, and released for a brief theatrical run this month.

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Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

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The Med Series (Ace, May 1983). Cover by James Warhola

For most of its life John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction was the most important SF magazine on the stands. It was the beating heart of the genre in a way that’s tough to comprehend today, in a market that’s grown far beyond print.

Campbell made his mark by discovering, nurturing, and publishing the most important writers of his day. But — quite cleverly, I think — he also cultivated lifetime readers by making Astounding home to exciting and highly readable series, many of which were later successfully packaged as bestselling books. Readers of Astounding knew they were getting an early look at the titles everyone would eventually be talking about.

A study of the major SF series launched in Astounding would fill several volumes, but they include Frank Herbert’s Dune, Asimov’s Foundation and Robot tales, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, H. Beam Piper’s Paratime and Federation/Empire sagas, Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai!, Poul Anderson’s Psychotechnic League, James Schmitz’s Telzey Amberdon and The Hub tales, and countless others.

One of my favorite story cycles from the Campbell era of Astounding was Murray Leinster’s The Med Series, the tales of the intrepid doctors of the Interplanetary Medical Service “roving through the uncharted vastness of deep space.” They were eventually repackaged in a handful of paperbacks that are long out of print, but still fondly remembered by a few of us old timers.

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Three Thousand (plus) Words of Longing: “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” and Three Thousand Years of Longing

Three Thousand (plus) Words of Longing: “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” and Three Thousand Years of Longing

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Three Thousand Years of Longing (United Artists, 2022)

One of the leading fantasy movies of 2022 was Three Thousand Years of Longing, directed by George Miller of Mad Max fame, and starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, who surely need no introduction. That might have been enough recommendation for me, but much more important was the source material, A. S. Byatt’s lovely novella “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” The novella was first published in the Paris Review in 1994, but I first read it in her collection also called The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, from 1998.

One of the enduring questions people tend to ask is — “What was better, the book or the movie?” The real answer is – well, it’s so tempting to say “always the book” but that’s flip and just not always true! (Exhibit A, to be sure, being The Godfather.) Actually, the real answer is “They are different media, doing different things, and they can both be good in different ways.” Banal, maybe? — but still true. So I thought to look at my reactions to Three Thousand Years of Longing, and to “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” Which is better? Does it matter? Are they even directly comparable, or are they two different works of art, pleasing us in different ways?

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A Fantasy City That Feels Alive: The Burnished City by Davinia Evans

A Fantasy City That Feels Alive: The Burnished City by Davinia Evans

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Notorious Sorcerer and Shadow Baron (Orbit, September 13, 2022,
and November 14, 2023). Cover Design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a groundswell of interest like I’ve witnessed for Notorious Sorcerer, Davinia Evans’ debut novel and the opening book in her Burnished City series. It didn’t get a lot of attention when it was released in trade paperback last year, but over the last twelve months I’ve seen a lot of discussion. Everyone is talking about this book.

The Book Nook says it’s “compelling… a remarkable and ambitious debut,” and Every Book a Doorway calls it “Dazzling… badass and honestly wondrous… the story never has a dull page.” Publishers Weekly labels it an “energetic epic… This is a charmer,” and Book Page doesn’t rein in their enthusiasm, saying it “deploys genre tropes with delirious glee and builds a rich and fascinating world.”

All this recent buzz is good timing, since the sequel, Shadow Baron, arrives next month, and that gives me just enough time to finish the first volume and get some hot cocoa ready in time for Book Two.

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