Black Gate – Page 527 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

When Fantasy and Theology Collide: Some Thoughts on Satan

Monday, June 19, 2017 Nick Ozment Comments 17 comments

I recently met a woman whose father-in-law had been a federal prison guard at a medical prison that held the “Blind Sheikh” back around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attack. The Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel-Rahman) was an associate of Osama bin Laden and the planner behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — one of the early “masterminds” of Al Qaeda. In other words, a real life counterpart to the nastiest, most nefarious villains in our fictional thriller novels and cinema fare.

She told me that her dad-in-law spoke to the Sheikh a couple times, as could be expected: casual banter will occasionally happen between guards and the imprisoned criminals they are guarding. She said the Sheikh seemed friendly enough to her father-in-law, but she added, “The Sheikh told him that we worship three gods. That was a big issue he had with us, that we worship three gods. So much of it was cultural misunderstanding.”

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of June 2017

Monday, June 19, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The Asylum of Dr. Caligari by James Morrow-small

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog has gradually become one of my most trusted resources. Yeah, they’re trying to sell you books, so maybe they’re a little less discerning than, say, John DeNardo over at Kirkus, or Andrew Liptak at The Verge. But I’ve been consistently impressed with the quantity and quality of their articles. They’ve got a fine staff of enthusiastic writers who really know the industry. If you’re looking for a dedicated group of book nerds to help you cherry-pick the most interesting new releases coming down the genre chute week after week, month after month, then this is the place to be.

Jeff Somers sizes up the June releases with a look at new titles from Yoon Ha Lee, Tad Williams, Timothy Zahn, Tom Holt, Neal Stephenson and Nicole Gallard, Terry Brooks, K.W. Jeter, Karin Tidbeck, Catherynne M. Valente, Seanan McGuire, Jason M. Hough, Richard Kadrey, William C. Dietz, Theodora Goss, and many others. Here’s a look at three of his selections that grabbed my eye.

Cormorant Run by Lilith Saintcrow (June 13, Orbit, 400 pages, $15.99 in paperback)

After the mysterious Event, rifts opened all over, leading to strange places filled with deadly creatures and inexplicable events. “Rifters” have ispecial skills that allow them to explore the rifts and survive — sometimes. Svinga is released from prison on one condition — she must lead a less-than-harmonious team into the “holy grail” of rifts: the Cormorant, the deadliest and possibly most valuable example of the strange phenomena. Her lover died trying to map it, but that extra knowledge gives her the slightest edge — if she can keep the team she’s guiding in one piece while they traverse the most dangerous place in the universe.

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Future Treasures: Dark Sky and Dark Deeds by Mike Brooks

Monday, June 19, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Mike Brooks’s space opera Dark Run, published last year by Saga Press, was one of the most acclaimed SF debuts of 2016. The Keiko and its crew of smugglers, soldiers of fortune, and adventurers travelling Earth’s colony planets successfully took on a job that could pay off a lot of their debts, in a corrupt galaxy where life is cheap and criminals are the best people in it. In the sequel Dark Sky, arriving in hardcover and trade paperback next month, Captain Ichabod Drift and his crew sign on for a new smuggling job that soon goes south when they’re separated and caught up in a dangerous civil war.

When Ichabod Drift and the Keiko crew sign on for a new smuggling job to a mining planet, they don’t realize what they are up against. The miners, badly treated for years by the corporation, are staging a rebellion. Split into two groups, one with the authorities and one with the rebels, Drift and his crew support their respective sides in the conflict. But when they are cut off from each other due to a communication blackout, both halves of the crew don’t realize that they have begun fighting themselves…

Dark Sky (322 pages, $26.99 hardcover/$16.99 trade/$7.99 digital) will be published by Saga Press on July 11, 2017. It will be followed this fall with the third volume, Dark Deeds, in which a ship-wide vacation leads to the second-in-command being taken hostage by a criminal mastermind.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Many Faces of Bob Weinberg

Sunday, June 18, 2017 Tina Jens Comments 2 comments

Robert Weinberg and Tina Jens

In many ways, Bob was like the Tony Randall character in the movie 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. In the movie, Tony Randall is the “owner“ of a mysterious circus that visits a western town. He appears in different guises to teach the townspeople what they each need to know to become better people. Based on a novel by fantasy writer Charles G. Finney, the screenplay was written by one of Bob’s favorite authors, Charles Beaumont. To one townsperson, Dr. Lao is the oracle Apollonius; to another, the music-loving, goat-god Pan; to yet another, Merlin the magician and wizard.

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Monsters, Murder and Magic in Victorian London: Storm and Ash by Elizabeth Cady

Sunday, June 18, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Black Gate blogger Elizabeth Cady (whose last article for us was a review of Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway), has launched a captivating web serial titled Storm and Ash. The Greysons, a powerful and respected British family, is thrown into turmoil at the death of eldest son Edmund’s fiancee. When it’s revealed the cause of her death was necromancy, the family must adapt quickly to a world they never even dreamed existed. (As Elizabeth tells me privately, it’s Buffy meets Sherlock — monsters, murder and magic in Victorian London.) Here’s the full blurb.

Just a few months ago, the Greysons appeared to be an utterly unremarkable family. Wealthy, well-regarded, but by the standards of London society, not extraordinary. Oldest son Edmund had taken over the family’s affairs after the death of their father. Rafe, the troublesome middle child, alternated his wanderings between the far side of the ocean and the underside of London’s streets. Youngest son Stephen was finishing his studies at university and preparing to join Edmund in business, while his twin sister Wilhelmina was planning her official debut into society.

The first blow came when Edmund’s fiancee, Charlotte, died unexpectedly. Grief turned to horror when the true cause of her death was revealed. And while the culprit may have been found, they were left with far more questions than they could have imagined.

Still, necessity is the mother of discovery. They have new allies, new skills, and a newfound faith in each other. Just in time, because the longest night of the year is coming, and the bodies have begun to appear again.

Chapter 6 went live on June 17; new chapters are posted twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. The promo image above is by Jayd Ait-Kaci. Check it out at www.stormandash.com, or dive right into the first chapter here.

Try the Science Fiction Value Packs from Asimov’s and Analog for Just $6.95

Sunday, June 18, 2017 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Get a dozen double issues of Asimov’s and Analog — a $96 value — for just $15.95!

I was checking the subscription rates for Analog Science Fiction last week, as I was prepping an article on the May/June issue, when I stumbled on two curious new entries on the subscription page:

Science Fiction Value Pack-8 — $6.95
Science Fiction Double Issue Value Pack-12 — $15.95

For a limited time Dell Magazines, publishers of Asimov’s and Analog (as well as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine) is selling packs of back issues at steep discounts. You can get an 8 pack (total value nearly $40) for just $6.95 — less than a dollar an issue! — or an even dozen double issues (value $96) for just $15.95. All the stock is brand new.

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Game Informer 290, June 2017: The Top 100 RPGs of All Time

Saturday, June 17, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon here in St. Charles, and I spent much of it on the porch, listening to the rain and reading the latest issue of Game Informer.

I’m told Game Informer is the top-selling video game magazine in the US, and that’s not a big surprise. It’s my favorite of the current crop as well. While I subscribe to other gaming periodicals (PC Gamer, The Official XBox Magazine), they’re each devoted to a single platform. I own several gaming systems, and I like to keep on all of them, and Game Informer delivers. The June issue has the usual assortment of highly readable articles, including multi-platform news, reviews, and previews, plus features on the best indie PC titles, the bankruptcy of accessory maker Mad Catz, Microssoft’s lagging First Party development, and a peek at their upcoming 4K console Scorpio.

But the big draw this issue is a massive 34-page feature on the Top 100 RPGs of All Time. Pieces like this are always controversial of course (where’s SSI’s Eye of the Beholder, or Dungeon Master? Or Oblivion?) But we don’t read these big survey articles to agree with them… or at least, I don’t. I read them for the surprises, to see what games I’ve overlooked, and which ones history has judged kindly. I’m pretty old-school in my RPG-love but, somewhat to my surprise, I found myself nodding along as I made my way through the list.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in May

Saturday, June 17, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Four Thousand Year Old Bread from Ancient Egypt

Sean McLachlan was the top draw at the Black Gate blog last month, with three posts in the Top Ten for May — including the #1 article, a mouth-watering report on 4,000 year-old bread found in a tomb in Ancient Egypt (with pics!) Sean’s adventure-filled report on braving scorpions and impassible tunnels at the Queens’ Pyramids at Giza came in at #7. While he was in Egypt, Sean also interviewed Egyptian Science Fiction writer Mohammad Rabie, and that rounded out the Top 10 for the month.

It’s tough to compete with 4,000 year-old bread, but a few brave souls made the effort. Andrew Zimmerman Jones came closest to glory, with an exclusive scoop on two new Starfinder Starships, which came in at #2 for the month. Next was our advice on creating an instant SF collection (with loot pics from the Windy City Pulp & Paper show), followed by our report on the release of the second issue of Skelos, and Mick Gall’s review of the album Hardwired… to Self Destruct, “Cthulhu in Metallica.”

Coming in at #6 for the month was the update on the Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume II Kickstarter, followed by Doug Ellis’s reminiscence on art and vintage paperback collecting, “Why You Should Go to Conventions.” Closing out the list was our May 21st report on the 2016 Nebula Award winners.

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You Deserve a Great Mummy, So Here’s My Favorite: The Mummy ‘59

Saturday, June 17, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 12 comments

My short take on The Mummy unleashed to theaters last week as the start of Universal’s “Dark Universe” franchise gamble: It’s an embarrassment for everyone involved. Except maybe Sophia Boutella as Princess Ahmanet. She deserves a real mummy film, not a schlock Tom Cruise action picture only interested in selling later movies. The Mummy ‘17 is ugly, confused, stupid, and boring. North American moviegoers decided to watch Wonder Woman again rather than see Universal trash its own legacy: The Mummy opened to a glum $32 million domestically, putting it almost $25 million behind Wonder Woman’s second weekend. However, The Mummy is targeting international revenue (one of the reasons Universal allowed the criminally miscast Tom Cruise into the room), and so far it’s grossed $141 million in foreign markets. The “Dark Universe” will proceed, but under a bleak curse.

Okay, I’m finished with that movie. Healing time. I shall now read from the Scroll of Life, brew tana leaves, and bring back the sleeping Gods of Egypt with what I consider the high point of eighty-five years of movies about the undead of the Nile River Valley: 1959’s The Mummy from Hammer Films Productions.

The Alchemical Feat of The Mummy ‘59

“The Mummy made by Hammer Films is, in my opinion, one of the best films of its kind that British cinema has made.” — Christopher Lee

Because it stands in the shadow of Hammer’s first two Gothic hits, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula/Horror of Dracula (1958), it’s easy to gloss over The Mummy as merely a good Hammer horror film rather than one of the greats. But since it debuted on Blu-ray in the U.S., I’ve come to the realization I prefer The Mummy ‘59 to the famous 1932 Boris Karloff-Karl Freund film. I didn’t believe this was possible: The Mummy ‘32 is on my shortlist of Universal’s best classic monster movies. But watching the Hammer version in a pristine Hi-Def restoration, the vibrancy of its colors and designs rescued from dull DVD transfers, I had to face my emotions honestly and embrace it as My Favorite Mummy.

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A Debut Novel in Stephen King Territory: Ghost Radio by Leopoldo Gout

Friday, June 16, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Ghost Radio was published in hardcover nearly a decade ago, and reprinted in paperback by HarperCollins in 2010. So why am I writing about it now? Well, partly because I just found a copy. But also because I was able to buy it — a brand new copy of a 2010 paperback! — for just $3.19 (including shipping), and you know how I get about book bargains.

I bought it at BookOutlet.com, which has about 85,000 new books in stock at remaindered prices, and shipping is free for order over $35 (They still have copies in stock — as well as over nearly 2,000 other discount novels from HarperCollins). In the last few months I’ve spent a lot of money at BookOutlet, on books by Gene Wolfe, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu, Ian McDonald, Gardner Dozois, Ursula K. Le Guin, David Hartwell, Greg Bear, Robert Jackson Bennett, Tanya Huff, Peter Watts, Guy Gavriel Kay, Stephen King, Charlie Jane Anders, Frederik Pohl, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others. Check out their complete selection of in-stock SF & Fantasy here.

But getting back to Leopoldo Gout… he’s written two novels so far, Ghost Radio and Genius: The Game (2016) — plus a collaboration with James Patterson, Daniel X: Alien Hunter (2008). Ghost Radio was his debut, and it made something of a splash when it appeared — Booklist called it “A deliciously creepy yarn,” and Kirkus praised it as “A first novel that heads with deserved confidence into Stephen King territory.” There’s also a cover blurb by James Patterson, which, really, seemed like the least the guy could do for the writer he collaborated with two months later. The paperback edition is copiously illustrated with b&w drawings by the author and someone known as “The Fates Crew.”

Ghost Radio was published by Harper in February 2010. It is 369 pages, priced at $7.99 (or $3.19 for the remaindered edition). It is still in print.