Black Gate – Page 529 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Goth Chick News: Halloween Fun or Pay-to-Play Sadism – Your Call

Thursday, August 10, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

It is a fact that Black Gate photog Chris Z and I spend just about every free moment of every September, getting pre-opening night looks at all the haunted attractions within a 50-mile radius of Chicago. It is also a fact that doing so makes the two of us the absolute worst people to ever take with you to a haunted attraction in the month of October.

Why?

Because by then our cynicism and snark have reached their annual pinnacle, fueled by countless hours of walking through dimly lit corridors while the great, the good and the truly awful professional haunters (there’s very little in between) take their best shot in exchange for a bit of free press. In other words, we’re the perfect people to utterly torpedo your willing suspension of disbelief.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that we, or more specifically I, long for a bit edgier October experience. It was way back in 2012 that I first discovered Blackout, which at the time was only in NYC but has since created a traveling version that came through Chicago. Either way, Chris Z adamantly declined to join me, saying he could think of far better ways to spend $135 then attending an event requiring him to sign a 30-page injury waiver.

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How to Make Your Academic History Book Approachable to the Educated Lay Reader

Thursday, August 10, 2017 M Harold Page Comments 0 Comment

MartialEthic1 — A good proportion of exponents of German longsword might have bought this.

Greetings academic editors, writers and publishers! I am an educated lay reader of academic history books.

I hear academic publishing is… differently profitable at the moment, so perhaps you want to have a think about how to engage more people like me.

Really there must be a lot of us — people who want to get at the detail, the evidence, the debate, and so find ourselves buying weighty academic tomes.

We’re military history buffs who want to get into not just of equipment and tactics, but logistics and administration and sooner or later get dragged into context. You can’t, for example, be fascinated by Count Belisarius without wanting to know more about Byzantine History. Take a look at Osprey, an entire publisher devoted to satisfying that need !

We’re architectural history hobbyists — people who tick off castles and great houses the way twitchers do rare birds — who want to put flesh on the crumbling bones of some corners of history not covered by reliable mass market books. And we’re local historians trying to make sense of musty documents, mounds in fields, and half forgotten traditions.

We’re also Historical Reenactors looking for very specific information on how things were or might have been. We’re Historical European Martial Artists (yes, HEMA is a thing! Modern people do study Medieval Martial Arts!), looking to contextualise the original martial arts manuals around which our lives revolve.

And we’re writers, looking for inspiration, or just building a storyworld for our characters to inhabit.

Many Black Gate readers must fall into at least one of these categories, and we sometimes get a million hits a month…

I am, of course, all of the above with the exception of “local historian” (since all of western history is my backyard). I’m also a former technical author — conveying technical information to novices used to be my trade — and an author who thinks about writing. So it might be worth your while — O mighty academic editor, writer or publisher! — to hear what I have to say.

Upfront, you don’t need to dumb down or jazz up. The whole point of academic books is that they are academic! Rather you need to stop shooting yourself in the collective feet. Working from the outside in, here’s how…

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Amazing Stories, July 1964: A Retro-Review

Thursday, August 10, 2017 Rich Horton Comments 4 comments

This was the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith — with the next issue she became Cele Lalli, after her marriage.

Ed Emshwiller contributes the cover this time, to my taste not one of his best. Interiors are by Virgil Finlay, George Schelling, and a couple I don’t recognized, identified in the magazine only by their last names: McLane and Blair. Norman Lobsenz’ editorial discusses the effects of space and alien environments on humans, and goes on to wonder how we can justify terraforming planets on which other species live. Ben Bova’s science article, “Operation Shirtsleeve,” then discusses exactly that — how to terraform other planets so that humans can live comfortably there (in “shirtsleeves”).

Robert Silverberg’s book review column, The Spectroscope, first takes on Edgar Rice Burroughs, both on his own (The Cave Girl) and via a slavish imitator (Otis Adelbert Kline, with Prince of Peril). Silverberg’s verdict: “unmitigated trash, subliterate claptrap barely worth the time of children.”

(My verdict, based on a very limited sample (ERB’s first novel, A Princess of Mars aka “Under the Moons of Mars“) is a bit more forgiving — claptrap and trash it may be, but it’s definitely mitigated — at least early in his career Burroughs offered an energetic glee that made him worth reading despite the silliness.)

Next he reviews a couple of collections by major writers — one is an SFWA Grand Master, the other died too young to be named a Grand Master but would certainly have been one eventually, and one of the very best. So: Silverberg finds James Gunn’s Future Imperfect somewhat disappointing next to the best of Gunn’s work; but he finds Sturgeon in Orbit surprisingly better: even though it features uncollected early ’50s stories it manages to surprise with some good stuff, particularly “The Incubi of Parallel X,” a wild piece full of cliches from Planet Stories in 1951 that Sturgeon redeemed with his panache. (I read that story in the Planet Stories issue it appeared in (not in 1951 though!) and I completely agree!)

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How Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk Immediately Became My Favorite War Movie (With Reservations)

Wednesday, August 9, 2017 Sean McLachlan Comments 2 comments

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I went to see Dunkirk here in Oxford with a bit of trepidation. Having grown up on war movies, both American and British, I’ve grown weary of the thinly veiled propaganda and nationalism that most of these movies are. I do like a good war movie, but I always find myself squirming in the seat at some of the politics.

Unfortunately there was quite a bit of that in Dunkirk, and yet it is a brilliant film nonetheless. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Inception, The Dark Knight Trilogy) has made a film that’s not so much about fighting as it is about the reaction of various individuals to violence and the threat of death. Zeta Moore has already reviewed this film for Black Gate, but I wanted to add my two cents.

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Future Treasures: An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors by Curtis Craddock

Wednesday, August 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

There’s plenty of interesting books arriving this month, and one of the imminent new arrivals that has me most intrigued is An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, a debut novel from Curtis Craddock featuring Isabelle Des Zephyrs, the Polymath Princess, and her faithful musketeer Jean-Claude.

Charles Stross calls it “A grand tale of intrigue, adventure, and gaslight fantasy in the tradition of Alexander Dumas,” and David D. Levine (Arabella of Mars) calls it “A thrilling adventure full of palace intrigue, mysterious ancient mechanisms, and aerial sailing ships!” It is the opening volume in a new trilogy, and arrives in hardcover from Tor in three weeks.

In a world of soaring continents and bottomless skies, where a burgeoning new science lifts skyships into the cloud-strewn heights, and ancient blood-borne sorceries cling to a fading glory, Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs is about to be married to a man she has barely heard of, the second son of a dying king in an empire collapsing into civil war.

Born without the sorcery that is her birthright but with a perspicacious intellect, Isabelle believes her marriage will stave off disastrous conflict and bring her opportunity and influence. But the last two women betrothed to this prince were murdered, and a sorcerer-assassin is bent on making Isabelle the third. Aided and defended by her loyal musketeer, Jean-Claude, Isabelle plunges into a great maze of prophecy, intrigue, and betrayal, where everyone wears masks of glamour and lies. Step by dangerous step, she unravels the lies of her enemies and discovers a truth more perilous than any deception.

An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors will be published by Tor Books on August 29, 2017. It is 416 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Thom Tenery, Get more details (including a cool map reveal!) at the author’s website.

See all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming fantasy here.

Fantasia 2017, Day 2: Tilting at Ghosts (Tilt, A Ghost Story, and Museum)

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Tilt Friday, July 14, felt like my first real day at the 2017 Fantasia Festival. After only one film the night before, I had three movies I wanted to see that afternoon and evening. First would come Tilt at the 175-seat J.A de Sève Theatre, a thriller that was drawing attention on the festival circuit for its political subtext. After that, at the 700-seat Hall, would come A Ghost Story, a movie about loss; I thought it looked slightly more interesting than the comedic manga adaptation Teiichi: Battle of the Supreme High because A Ghost Story depicted its ghost in the form of an actor with a sheet over his head. The sheer brazenness was appealing. Besides, after that my last film of the day would be another manga adaptation at the Hall, Museum (Myûjiamu), directed by Keishi Otomo. I’d seen and enjoyed two other adaptations by Otomo before, the third Rurouni Kenshin film two years before and then last year The Top Secret: Murder in Mind. The odds seemed good for Museum, a crime thriller about a cop tracking down a frog-masked serial killer.

But the day opened with Tilt. Directed by Kasra Farahani from a script he wrote with Jason O’Leary, it follows a documentary filmmaker, Joe (Joseph Cross), whose wife Joanne (Alexia Rasmussen) is pregnant. Joanne’s making some money as she trains to become a nurse, but Joe’s having problems putting together his second film, about the economy and the myth of an American “golden age.” Over the course of Tilt — the title, we’re told, of Joe’s well-received first documentary, about control and chaos in pinball — we see Joe slowly lose his grip on reality as he strains to get his film’s material into some kind of shape. He takes to walking aimlessly around nighttime Los Angeles, his sanity deteriorating. Will he find help before he reaches a breaking point?

The movie’s already drawn some attention because contrasting with Joe’s increasingly ragged work on his film, with his rants about the 1950s and American empire, is the concurrent rise in the background of Donald Trump as glimpsed through news reports and the characters’ disbelieving jokes. Given the lead time involved in film production, there’s yet to be a substantial cinematic response to Trump’s election, so the Trumpian motif in Tilt stands out. Still, it’s mainly an element in the film’s atmosphere: media reports, snide jokes, a jump scare involving a Trump mask that I suppose we must consider cinema’s first Trump scare. It weighs heavily only perhaps because of this particular historical moment, and because we’ve not yet gotten to the point of frequently seeing Trump in fiction films. But, as Farahani has pointed out in interviews, Trump’s in the movie only because he seemed to the filmmakers to represent some of the themes they were working with — a kind of white male entitlement and anger. Tilt isn’t a response to the America Trump is making, so much as a look at the emotional texture Trump has seized upon.

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July/August 2017 Analog Now on Sale

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been buying Analog Science Fiction and Fact for over 40 years. Remarkably little has changed in that time. It’s still a digest magazine. It still has interior art by Vincent Di Fate. And I still read “Probability Zero” first.

The July’August issue has a big novella by Martin L. Shoemaker, “Not Far Enough,” featuring the return of Captain Nick Aames, Carver, and Smith, who’ve previously appeared in the pages of Analog in “Murder on the Aldrin Express” (September 2013), “Brigas Nunca Mais” (March 2015), and “Racing to Mars,” (September 2015, winner of the Analog Award for Best Novella of the year). Here’s editor Trevor Qachari on the issue.

We kick off our July/August issue by checking in on Captain Nick Ames and his crew, last seen in “Racing to Mars,” September 2015, by Martin Shoemaker. When a routine mission goes off the rails, it’s more than just a matter of shipboard politics: lives are at stake, and people will die if they go too far, or “Not Far Enough.”

Then we have the kind of fact article that we only pull off all too rarely: H. G. Stratmann gives us a look at the science behind Stanley Schmidt’s story in this very issue, “The Final Nail.”

We also have fiction ranging from “Across the Streaming Sea,” an adventure that perfectly embodies Clarke’s Law, by Rob Chilson; to a story of the bond between a captain and his ship in Brian Trent’s “Galleon”; a follow-up to Maggie Clark’s “Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan,” in “Belly Up”; and an almost-could-have-happened-this-way tale of early space travel, “For All Mankind,” from C. Stuart Hardwick.

There’s also a slew of short pieces from such folks as Andrew Barton, Tom Easton, Tim McDaniel, Robert R. Chase, Ron Collins, Kyle Kirkland, Aubry Kae Andersen, Edward M. Lerner, Eve Warren, Holly Schofield, Uncle River, and Howard V. Hendrix, as well as an awesome array of compelling columns.

Although Trevor says “H. G. Stratmann gives us a look at the science behind Stanley Schmidt’s story in this very issue, ‘The Final Nail,'” don’t look too hard for Stan’s story. It actually appeared last issue.

The cover this issue is by Rado Javor. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Purity of Blood by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 3 comments

I closed out my review of Captain Alatriste last summer by stating I would be reading more of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s series in “short order.” That did not happen. Only now, over a year later, have I plunged back into the grimy, deadly underside of Golden Age Madrid. Even more than its predecessor, Purity of Blood (1997) explores the darkest heart of imperial Spain as she, only 130 years after her emergence as the world’s leading power, is collapsing in on herself; collapsing due to endless war, unsustainable debt, corruption at all levels, and unyielding religious fanaticism. Still, Spain remains a mighty empire; if not feared, still respected in all corners, and her subjects proud:

But at the time of this tale, our monarch was still a young man, and Spain, although already corrupt, and with mortal ulcers eating her heart, maintained her appearance, all her dazzle and politesse. We were still a force to be reckoned with, and would continue to be for some time, until we bled the last soldier and last maravedi dry. Holland despised us; England feared us; the Turk was ever hovering ’round; the France of Richelieu was gritting its teeth; the Holy Father received our grave, black-clad ambassadors with caution; and all Europe trembled at the sight of our tercios — still the best infantry in the world — as if the rat-a-tat-tat of the drums came from the Devil’s own drumsticks. And I, who lived through those years, and those that came later, I swear to Your Mercies that in that century we were still what no country had ever been before.

Purity of Blood picks up shortly after Captain Alatriste, in the year 1623. Like that book, this one is narrated by Íñigo Balboa, the son of one of Alatriste’s slain comrades. Íñigo tells the story from late in life, but during its events he is thirteen.

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Burn the (Black) Witch

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 Jackson Kuhl Comments 4 comments

Finishing up your manuscript for a YA novel? Congratulations! You’re almost ready to become a bona fide published author. The final step: evading the pitchfork-wielding mob!

The Black Witch, a debut young-adult fantasy novel by Laurie Forest, was still seven weeks from its May 1 publication date, but positive buzz was already building, with early reviews calling it “an intoxicating tale of rebellion and star-crossed romance,” “a massive page-turner that leaves readers longing for more,” and “an uncompromising condemnation of prejudice and injustice.”

The hype train was derailed in mid-March, however, by Shauna Sinyard, a bookstore employee and blogger who writes primarily about YA and had a different take: “The Black Witch is the most dangerous, offensive book I have ever read,” she wrote in a nearly 9,000-word review that blasted the novel as an end-to-end mess of unadulterated bigotry…

In a tweet that would be retweeted nearly 500 times, Sinyard asked people to spread the word about The Black Witch by sharing her review — a clarion call for YA Twitter, which regularly identifies and denounces books for being problematic (an all-purpose umbrella term for describing texts that engage improperly with race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and other marginalizations)…

Based almost solely on Sinyard’s opinion, the novel became the object of sustained, aggressive opposition in the weeks leading up its release. Its publisher, Harlequin Teen, was bombarded with angry emails demanding they pull the book. The Black Witch’s Goodreads rating dropped to an abysmal 1.71 thanks to a mass coordinated campaign of one-star reviews, mostly from people who admitted to not having read it…

Positive buzz all but died off, as community members began confronting The Black Witch’s supporters, demanding to know why they insisted on reading a racist book. When Kirkus gave the novel a glowing starred review, dozens of commenters demanded a retraction…

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New Treasures: Devil’s Call by J. Danielle Dorn

Monday, August 7, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I like to mix things up in the New Treasures pipeline, offering titles from a range of different publishers. I’ve featured several novels from Inkshares in just the past few weeks — including teleportation thriller The Punch Escrow, and Quebec horror novel The God in the Shed — so when a new Inkshares novel, J. Danielle Dorn’s debut fantasy Devil’s Call, landed on my desk last week, I figured it was a long shot.

But that was before I read the description. The Bibliosanctum calls it “One of the best novels I’ve read this year,” and James Demonaco, creator of The Purge movie trilogy, calls it “The Revenant with witches.” Devil’s Call leapfrogged several titles that have been waiting patiently in the queue, and I think you’ll thank me.

On a dark night in the summer of 1859, three men enter the home of Dr. Matthew Callahan and shoot him dead in front of his pregnant wife. Unbeknownst to them, Li Lian, his wife, hails from a long line of women gifted in ways that scare most folks ― the witches of the MacPherson clan — and her need for vengeance is as vast and unforgiving as the Great Plains themselves.

Written to the child she carries, Devil’s Call traces Li Lian’s quest, from the Nebraska Territory, to Louisiana, to the frozen Badlands, to bring to justice the monster responsible for shooting her husband in the back. This long-rifled witch will stop at nothing ― and risk everything―in her showdown with evil.

Devil’s Call will be published by Inkshares on August 8, 2017. It is 275 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by David Drummond.

See all our recent New Treasures here.