Black Gate – Page 552 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol 5

Saturday, May 27, 2017 John R. Fultz Comments 2 comments

This series explores the Savage Sword of Conan collections from Dark Horse reprinting Marvel Comics’ premiere black-and-white fantasy mag launched in the mid-70s. Previous installments: Vol 1 / Vol 2 / Vol 3 / Vol 4

Volume 5 collects issues #49 – 60 (1980 -’81), and it begins with the proverbial bang. Reigning art champs John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga return for a 4-issue adaptation of the L. Sprague DeCamp/Lin Carter novel CONAN THE LIBERATOR. These four issues are gorgeous–the Buscema/DeZuniga team is firing on all cylinders.

Story-wise this adaptation succeeds far better than the previous DeCamp/Carter adaptation, CONAN THE BUCCANEER (collected in Volume 4). Whereas BUCCANEER tended to meander and lack proper pacing, LIBERATOR moves at a brisk pace and gives us more classic Conan time.

LIBERATOR is basically a military fantasy with bit of sorcery thrown in to complicate the saga of Conan’s revolt against a mad tyrant. We have a beautiful spy, a scheming wizard, and a truly insane king who butchers his own subjects in a futile quest for immortality. Here is the story untold by Conan creator Robert E. Howard: The story of exactly how Conan became King of Aquilonia.

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A Grab-Bag of Comic Reviews: Southern Bastards, Jaegir, Deep End

Saturday, May 27, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

My comic reading has jumped all over the place this month, but I’ve been finding lots of good stuff.

Southern Bastards: I picked up Southern Bastards as part of a massive Image Humble Bundle last year. I finally got to Volume 1 this 2014 series by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour.

It was scary amazing.

I know nothing about the deep south, but both Jasons come from there. Their mission is: to write about the place they grew up in in all the ways it is peaceful, primal, timeless, haunted, hateful, spiritual, beautiful and scarred.

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The Story of Your Life: Arrival

Saturday, May 27, 2017 markrigney Comments 2 comments

Having taken in Arrival at my basement Cineplex, I proceeded at once to my local library, to dig up a copy of Ted Chiang’s “The Story Of Your Life,” on which Denis Villeneuve’s film is based. I suspected I would discover that the adaptation took broad liberties with Chiang’s original story, and I was not disappointed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This notion of being ahead of oneself, as you’ll soon discover –– or know already, if you’re familiar with either Arrival or “The Story Of Your Life” –– might be considered a joke. A wry joke, at best. Sad, perhaps. Devastating.

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Peplum Populist: Maciste in Hell (The Witch’s Curse)

Saturday, May 27, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 2 comments

Among the canon of Italian peplum (sword-and-sandal) films made from 1958 to 1965, there are three special horror-fantasia entries. I’ve already written about Mario Bava’s classic Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). In the future I’ll look at the same year’s Goliath and the Vampires, which was co-directed by famed Italian Western director Sergio Corbucci, the man who helmed the original Django (1966).

Today I’m spending my peplum-time with the third dark fantasy, Maciste in Hell (1962), yet another movie featuring Italian homegrown hero Maciste. (Oh, wait. Goliath and the Vampires is also a Maciste film. Damn these U.S. title changes!) Although Maciste in Hell isn’t as fantastic as Hercules in the Haunted World — it’s hard to best Mario Bava when it comes to doing weird horror on the cheap — it’s on the top of the pile as far a sword-and-sandal movies go. And its Amazon VOD presentation is relatively high quality. The picture has the vertical squeeze problem of Perseus the Invincible, but at least you have the entire image and a decent print.

The idea of Maciste journeying to the underworld like Dante or Aeneas wasn’t new: Maciste in Hell (Maciste all’inferno) is also the title of one of the silent Maciste films that were hits in Italy in the 1910s and ‘20s. The two movies don’t have any story connection aside from the hero in an infernal setting, and the silent Maciste is a different character and phenomenon from the 1960s version. But Maciste in Hell ‘62 is also different from other peplum films of its time, and not just in its overt supernatural horror elements. Where Maciste’s standard stomping grounds are the ancient/mythic Mediterranean, here he pops up in seventeenth-century Scotland. Maciste has a reputation for shifting about in time and place: I dealt with him in prehistory in Colossus of the Stone Age, and recently watched him battle Mongols in China in Maciste at the Court of the Great Khan (retitled Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World in the U.S.). Even so, Scotland in the Early Modern Era is pushing against the sword-and-sandal barriers.

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Future Treasures: The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

Friday, May 26, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

There aren’t enough good robot adventure stories out there. At least Nicky Drayden is doing her part… her debut novel The Prey of Gods, featuring robots, genetic engineering, a Zulu heroine, and an ancient and bloodthirstily demigoddess, arrives in trade paperback from Harper next month. Drayden has published more than a dozen short stories in Daily Science Fiction, as well as Shimmer, Space and Time, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and other fine venues. Publishers Weekly calls her novel “A science fantasy set in 2064, [where] newly awakened demigods and artificial intelligences battle for the fate of South Africa… fascinating.”

In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes — the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present challenges:

A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country…

An emerging AI uprising…

And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat (but mostly blood) of every human she encounters.

It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about.

Fun and fantastic, Nicky Drayden takes her brilliance as a short story writer and weaves together an elaborate tale that will capture your heart . . . even as one particular demigoddess threatens to rip it out.

The Prey of Gods will be published by Harper Voyager on June 13, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $10.99 for the digital edition. The dynamite cover is by Brenoch Adams. Read a generous excerpt at Tor.com.

The Late May Fantasy Magazine Rack

Friday, May 26, 2017 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

In his report on Edinburgh’s Monthly Mini-Convention, Event Horizon, M Harold Page alerted me to the existence of the Scottish SF magazine Shoreline of Infinity, which somehow managed to produce 7 issues and still fly below my radar. Not to worry! I’ve added it to the list, making it the 48th genre magazine we track. Whew! That’s a lot of reading every month.

In other news, Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed issue 63 of Swords and Sorcery and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #32 in his April Short Story Roundup. For our vintage digest fans, Rich Horton reviewed the February 1962 issue of Fantastic, and Matthew Wuertz continued his issue-by-issue journey through Galaxy magazine with October 1953, containing the first installment of Isaac Asimov’s classic The Caves of Steel.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our early May Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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Are You Listening?

Friday, May 26, 2017 Violette Malan Comments 2 comments

Halls for BG Anyone who’s read the bio that comes at the end of my posts knows that I’m also V.M. Escalada, and that very shortly, in August in fact, Halls of Law (Book One of The Faraman Prophecy) will be coming out from DAW. That news is exciting enough in itself, but a week ago I learned that the audio rights for both of the Faraman Prophecy books had been picked up by Brilliance Audio.

I was doing my happy dance when I read further down in my publisher’s email and said to myself “Questionnaire?” At first I thought “oh gods, someone else wants a bio.” But on glancing at the questionnaire in question, I realized they wanted to know stuff about my book, not about me.

How refreshing.

Nor did they want the usual one-sentence summing-up of the plot (if I could have written it in one sentence . . . ) No, they wanted to know how the book should be read aloud. By someone else.

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Goth Chick News: Look Behind Pennywise – If You Dare

Thursday, May 25, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

2017 seems to be the year that clowns replace zombies in the dark subconscious of the general collective, thanks entirely to the nightmare-inducing remake of It, due out September 8.

But before Bill Skarsgård donned the red nose, it was Tim Curry looking up at us from the sewers and giving us the screaming heebie-jeebies. As good as the new version may (or may not) end up, we’ll never completely get over the emotional scars left by Curry.

So it is with great anticipation that I tell you Dead Mouse Productions Ltd and Cult Screenings UK Ltd, makers of Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and You’re so cool, Brewster! The Story of Fright Night, are gearing up to produce a fully independent retrospective into the making of the 1990 TV miniseries of Stephen King’s IT. Exploring the series’ cultural impact over the last 28 years, the upcoming documentary Pennywise: The Story of IT, is being directed by Chris Griffiths and is set to “tell a story heard by few and showcase a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage and photos seen by even fewer.”

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best SF and Fantasy Books in May

Thursday, May 25, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’m never going to get through my May reading list. Heck, I’m not even going to finish compiling my May reading list.

But that’s okay, because the good folks at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog made one, and it’s better than mine anyway. In fact, it’s got a whole bunch of great titles — by Timothy Zahn, Robin Hobb, M.R. Carey, Gregory Benford, Robert Jackson Bennett, Jack Campbell, Gini Koch, Faith Hunter, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Isabelle Steiger, Robyn Bennis, and many others — including a bunch of stuff I didn’t even know about.

For those who missed it when we discussed it here earlier, there’s also some long-anticpiated books by several notable Black Gate contributors, including Martha Wells, Ellen Klages, and Foz Meadows.

The B&N article was authored by Jeff Somers. Here’s some of the highlights.

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New Treasures: Olympus Bound by Jordanna Max Brodsky

Thursday, May 25, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Immortals Jordanna Max Brodsky-small

Winter of the Gods Jordanna Max Brodsky-small

I saw Winter of the Gods at the bookstore last month, and was captivated by the striking cover. I didn’t realize it was the second novel in a series until today, when I did a little more homework. The first volume, The Immortals, was released in hardcover by Orbit last year; it’s now available in paperback.

Winter of the Gods, the second volume in the Olympus Bound series about the ancient Greek gods in their new home in Manhattan, arrived in hardcover on Valentine’s Day. The third volume will be titled Olympus Bound; it doesn’t yet have a release date.

Here’s the summary for Book One.

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