Black Gate – Page 520 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Fantasia 2017, Days 7 to 9: The Laplace’s Demon

Tuesday, September 5, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

The Laplace's Demon After two days off, I returned to Fantasia on June 21 fit, trim, and rested. Randomness defines my festival schedule — it happened that the previous two days had nothing I wanted to see. But that Friday afternoon I was looking forward to one of the most intriguing movies listed in Fantasia’s catalogue: The Laplace’s Demon, directed by Giordano Giulivi.

A team of scientists has worked out how to calculate the complexities of glass shattering. Their mathematics imply a deterministic universe, if the code can be more fully cracked. The movie begins with them on their way to a mysterious island, summoned to the mansion of a reclusive genius. There, in his empty mansion, they find the terrible truth — their host, speaking to them by videotape, is playing a terrible game. He’s gone further than them, pushed the math beyond human sanity. Now the researchers are elements in a vaster experiment: the horrific mechanisms in the isolated house will eliminate them, one by one, if the equations are correct. Can they find a flaw in the math and save themselves? Is there room in the universe for free will?

Watching the film play out I saw science-fiction and mystery and horror blend in a classic plot framework. The movie feels like an artifact from Hollywood’s Golden Age, some previously-unknown Val Lewton piece, a forgotten film by James Whale. It’s shot in a heavily-shadowed black and white, much of it in one elaborately-furnished room filled with dark corners and rich art-nouveau details. Close-ups and odd foreshortening adds to an air of unreality, fostered by an unusually tasteful use of CGI. The characters here are caught in a metafictional plot, which can be predicted but not evaded. Clever, well-crafted, it evokes Halloween frissons of delicate horror, surprising while generating a sense of inevitability, moving to a creaky but effective plot climax that resolves its themes with the bleakness of a death’s-head inevitable grin at a deterministic universe.

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September/October 2017 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

Tuesday, September 5, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Saturday I visited my local Barnes & Noble here in St. Charles, which has an excellent magazine rack, and spent too much money on a big stack of magazines: Retro Gamer, Rue Morgue Library #11: The Weird World of HP Lovecraft, Analog, F&SF, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. The first one I sat down with Asimov’s, and that’s chiefly because of Sam Tomaino enthusiastic review of the issue at SF Revu.

The September/October 2017 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction has a lot of very good stories including one Hugo-worthy. The fiction begins with the novelette “Wind Will Rove” by Sarah Pinsker. -+- Rosie Clay is of the third generation on a generational ship, her grandmother was one of the originals who started on the voyage. Rosie Clay is in her 50s, teaches history, and regularly plays her grandmother’s old fiddle with other traditionalists. One important song is from 1974, called “Wind Will Rise.” One of her students does not want to learn history and wants the past ignored. How can she best deal with this rebellion? A beautiful, poignant tale.

“Universe Box” by Michael Swanwick -+- Another story this month, from one of the best. Howard Pendleton is going to ask his girlfriend, Mimi, to marry him on Valentine’s Day in the most boring, conventional way possible. Mimi anticipates this and is going to dump him. But someone calling himself “Uncle Paulie” arrives at Howard’s door and turns his life inside out. He is a traveler from the stars and has pulled off a tremendous heist. This all starts a wild romp of a story which was loads of fun to read. Swanwick is a devotee of that most original writer R.A. Lafferty and R.A.L. would have got a kick out of this story! This will be on my Hugo Shortlist for Best Novelette next year!

“Dead Men in Central City” by Carrie Vaughan -+- Ricardo must shoot his horse when it breaks two legs and he winds up in the nearby boom mining town of Central City, Colorado. In a bar there, he meets a man who coughs a lot and is dealing faro — one Doctor John Holliday. Ricardo gets a room that shields him from the sun because he is actually a 350-year-old vampire but he only takes as much blood as he needs. Holliday knows what he is but they wind up with some mutual respect for each other. Great little tale!…

September/October, traditionally the “slightly spooky issue” of Asimov’s, contains tales of ghosts, vampires, mysterious spirits, spooky carnivals, and more. It includes fiction by Harry Turtledove, Allen M. Steele, Kit Reed, R. Garcia y Robertson, Sandra McDonald, Suzanne Palmer, Tim McDaniel, William Preston, Dennis E. Staples, and — just like last issue — two tales by James Gunn set in the world of his Transcendental Trilogy.

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A Not So Trimphant Ending to The Atlan Saga: Some Summer Lands by Jane Gaskell

Tuesday, September 5, 2017 Tony Den Comments 8 comments

“The Fourth Book in the Hitch-Hiker Trilogy” proclaimed the cover blurb on the Pan version of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, by Douglas Adams. And many smiled and thought this was very clever and funny. The fourth book in a trilogy wasn’t actually a new idea, even back in the 1984. Now a fifth book in a trilogy is a little more unusual, and indeed when one appeared (Mostly Harmless, in 1992) the updated blurb proclaimed: “The Fifth Book in the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhikers Trilogy”.

What has Douglas Adams got to do with Jane Gaskell?

Well, she did the same thing. She wrote a pretty good trilogy – albeit one which some publishers stretched into four books – and then, by all appearances, decided to tack on another volume some years later. This is of course my opinion, but if you’ll indulge me a bit you will see why I reached that conclusion.

Now there are plenty of authors who have tacked books on to a successful trilogy — and some who have even added a whole follow up series. To be fair to Mr Adams, his additional books were pretty good, though not up to the standard of the original series. To me, they still felt like they were more of an afterthought than a specifically planned and executed conclusion.

Some Summer Lands also does not quite fit. Sadly, that is not the only issue. I cannot in honesty give this book the same recommendation I gave to the other books in the Atlan Saga, which were pretty good, with occasional flashes of brilliance. Some Summer Lands was published in 1977, roughly ten years after The City. My Orbit Futura edition weighed in at 360 pages split into three parts of varying length.

Some Summer Lands is not pretty good. Dismally disjointed, maybe. Rambling, definitely. Misguided, certainly. One of the few positives I had from the experience was that it helped me realize why I had taken on re-reading the series with such trepidation. The first three (or four) books surprised me, as I did not have fond memories of the series when I read it in my youth.

Anyone who has read my earlier reviews may remember me marveling at certain aspects and wondering why I had disliked them as a teenager. Now I know why! It’s this last book which casts a dark shadow.

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Coming Soon: Yuletide Terror

Monday, September 4, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 1 comment

Yuletide Terror As the year begins to burn itself out, as the light of summer gives way to long ghoul-ridden nights, as the cold grows a little more each day like spadefulls of earth slowly burying a coffin, what better time to think ahead to the horrors of Christmas? Not the pedestrian horrors of shopping and family, but the deeper terrors of knifemen and ghosts and dark-souled elves: the traditions of the season. Publisher Spectacular Optical’s planning a celebrate of exactly those kinds of Christmas frights, with their upcoming volume Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television.

They’re currently running an Indiegogo campaign to fund the book, which will boast two dozen essays and interviews looking at Christmas horror films from A Christmas Carol on, as well as more than 200 reviews of seasonal horror movies. The book includes stills, comics-format reviews from Rick Trembles, and illustrations from artist Alisdair Wood. Contributors include Michael Gingold (former editor-in-chief of Fangoria and current Online Editor for Rue Morgue), Andrea Subissati (Rue Morgue‘s Executive Editor), pulp scholar Andrew Nette, and genre mainstay Kim Newman (writer of, among other things, the Anno Dracula series, several Warhammer tie-ins under the name Jack Yeovil, and Now We Are Sick, a collaboration with Neil Gaiman).

Spectacular Optical is a small press that focuses on “collectible film and pop culture books,” owned and directed by Kier-La Janisse, former programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. Their previous books include KID POWER!, about cult kids’ movies, Satanic Panic, about the 1980s fear of satanism in popular culture, and Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin, about the fantasy-horror-underground-exploitation director. Janisse edits Yuletide Terror alongside horror film critic Paul Corupe; you can see an excerpt from the book here. Worth noting that a short film’s being made to accompany the book launch, a tale of terror that looks back to the tradition of classic British Christmas ghost stories. The Indiegogo campaign for Yuletide Terror only runs another 8 days. Horror fans can check it out here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy his first collection of essays, looking at some fantasy novels of the twenty-first century, here. His second collection, looking at some fantasy from the twentieth century, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

Fantasia 2017, Day 6: Twice-Told Tales (Animals, Wu Kong, and House of the Disappeared)

Monday, September 4, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Animals Tuesday, July 18, I set off for Fantasia with another full day before me. I planned to watch three films for which I had three different expectations. First was Animals (Tiere), a German film promising surrealism and artfulness. Then the Chinese big-budget special-effects blockbuster Wu Kong. Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, House of the Disappeared (Si-gan-wi-ui-jip), a Korean horror movie based on a Venezuelan movie called The House at the End of Time (La casa del fin de los tiempos) which I’d seen three years ago during my first year covering Fantasia; I couldn’t help but wonder how that film would translate across cultures.

First was Animals. Directed by Greg Zglinski from a script by Jörg Kalt that was rewritten by Zglinski, it begins by introducing us to Nick (Philipp Hochmair) and Anna (Birgit Minichmayr), a couple whose marriage is under severe strain. Nick’s a chef who may be conducting an affair with an upstairs neighbour. Anna’s a writer trying to start a new novel but facing a creative block. They plan to go off to an isolated cottage in Switzerland, where Nick will try the local cuisine and Anna will focus on her book; in the meanwhile their apartment will be watched by Mischa (Mona Petri, who plays several roles). Strange things happen during the getaway, particularly following an accident on the road when Nick hits a sheep. The movie cuts between the couple and Mischa, as impossible events unfold, challenging time, space, cause, and effect.

The movie’s well-crafted. It has a polished look, with textured lighting and what ought to be a strong sense of atmosphere. And yet I wasn’t convinced. We get a host of strange things happening, from mysterious locked rooms to talking animals to a woman throwing herself out a window and vanishing. And yet none of them cohere. When we get some sense toward the end of the movie why we’re seeing all these strange things, the explanation feels slack. Not only is there no rational logic to what we watch, there’s no emotional logic either.

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Modular: Dungeon Delving Tips – Part II

Monday, September 4, 2017 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

Earlier this year, Modular looked at the first dozen tips for dungeon delving from Creighton Broadhurst of Raging Swan Press. Today, we follow up and tackle thirteen more to get to 25. Good dungeon delving used to be a lot more important than it is today.

While characters seemed to die at a great pace in Gary Gygax’s original campaigns, for most of us who grew up on pen and paper, our characters were not disposable. We tried hard to keep them alive. Necromancer Games (who you surely read about here!) even put out a 3rd Edition D&D supplement, Raise the Dead, containing party quests to bring back that lost character.

In today’s MMO/video game world, death is simply something you undo by reloading the most recent saved game. A character can die dozens of times and we still get to play them over and over again.

But when death is a real threat, that party delving into the dungeons deep needs to employ strategies and tactics to accomplish the goal and get back out alive. Every character mattered (Kinda like, ‘No one left behind’ as a party slogan). So, here are thirteen more tactics to add to the first dozen to help keep your party alive.

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Space Opera Reminiscent of Star Wars and Firefly: Starflight by Melissa Landers

Sunday, September 3, 2017 Elizabeth Galewski Comments 0 Comment

Starflight
Melissa Landers
Disney-Hyperion (368 pages, $17.99 in hardcover, $9.99 digital, February 2, 2016)

Protagonist Solara Brooks will steal your heart from the very first scene of Melissa Landers’ Starflight. Standing at a spaceport departure gate, she hopes to become a passenger’s indentured servant in order to travel to the fringe, the outer limit of human colonization. If she doesn’t get picked, she’ll have to wait a full year before the next ship heads out. Having been evicted from her group home, she’d become homeless.

That fate is looking more and more likely as every other candidate for indenture is scooped up before her, including an elderly man and a boy who won’t stop scratching his privates. Soon, she’s standing at the gate all alone, and almost all the passengers have boarded.

There’s a good reason why no one will hire her, though. She might just be a teen, but she’s already done hard time as a felon. When potential employers ask her to take off her gloves, they can see her knuckles, which are tattooed with conviction codes.

Her last chance arrives when rich boy Doran Spaulding saunters up the gate with his pink-haired girlfriend. Solara and Doran go way back: classmates at the same private academy, he has tormented her ever since she won the award he craved. The last thing Solara wants to do is jump whenever Doran calls. But she doesn’t have any other options. So when Doran offers to hire her as his personal servant, she accepts.

Wearing the master’s bracelet that matches Solara’s servant’s bangle, Doran delights in waking her in the middle of the night to do his bidding. There doesn’t seem to be any end to the indignities he can dream up – until he makes her take off her gloves.

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Celebrate the Optimism of Old-School Science Fiction, With a Twist: The Stars at my Door, edited by George Ilett Anderson and Neil Baker

Sunday, September 3, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Stars at my Door is the latest (and last) original anthology in Neil Baker’s Short Sharp Shocks line. Here’s co-editor George Ilett Anderson, from his excellent intro:

The Stars at my Door harkens back to an age where science fiction was about the limitless possibilities of space and the pioneering spirit burnt bright and clear; a time of inquisitiveness, exploration and endeavor where the impossible seems possible and adventure lies in wait for the intrepid soul but also rewards the foolish and unwary.

I think we have a fantastic selection of stories for your reading pleasure, from tales of exploration to more intimate tales of challenging boundaries with excursions and side trips into space opera and the more practical side of life amongst the stars. I’m certain there will be something to tantalize your taste buds.

Publisher and co-editor Neil Baker adds a brief intro of his own, wrapping up his impressive anthology series.

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Dungeon Delving with Colorful Characters: Krosmaster Quest

Sunday, September 3, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’m fascinated by the explosion in dungeon crawl board games. The best of them capture the sense of adventure and social aspects of tabletop role playing better than I would have thought possible. The ones I’ve tried — like the Pathfinder Adventure card game Rise of the Runelords, HeroQuest, Talisman, and Munchkin Quest — have been a blast. But they barely scratch the surface of what’s happening in this dynamic new genre.

In fact, the subgenre has gotten large enough that it’s starting to innovate in surprising ways. One of them, of course, is with components. I can’t be the only player who’s purchased a $70 board game just to get my hands on the miniatures (Asmodee’s Claustrophobia is the most blatant example — hours after I opened it, all the minis ended up on my D&D table. I’ve never finished a game of Claustrophobia, but the minis have seen countless hours of adventure.)

Krosmaster Quest is my most recent acquisition in the dungeon questing space. It’s derived from the hit Krosmaster Arena, the French player-vs-player card game that (among other things) spawned the Netflix anime series Wakfu. Arena is a turn-based arena combat game with a colorful set of cartoon chibi-style miniatures; Krosmaster Quest allows players to re-purpose those minis in a tactical adventure game for 2 to 6 players.

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It’s So Weird I Can’t Look Away: DC Comics’ Young Animal Imprint

Saturday, September 2, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 1 comment

CCHACE

In 2016, DC launched a new imprint called Young Animal, an offshoot of its Vertigo stuff, led by Gerard Way and editors Jamie Rich and Mark Doyle. Young Animal’s goal is to relaunch some DC characters for mature audiences. I hadn’t been paying attention, but got drawn in by Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye.

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