Black Gate – Page 562 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Occult Detective Quarterly #1 Now Available

Saturday, February 4, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Occult Detective Quarterly 1-contents-small

Back in October, shortly after the launch of the Occult Detective Quarterly Kickstarter, we welcomed co-editor John Linwood Grant to Black Gate to tell us a little about his exciting new project. Here’s what he said, in part.

I was always a Carnacki man, staunch and true. An Edwardian adventurer, willing to admit that I was afraid, but determined to stiffen that lip and see the game through. And as a follower of William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghostfinder, I quickly took to games like Call of Cthulhu when it first came out in the eighties. The dedicated investigator pitted against almost indescribable horrors had an obvious appeal. It turned out to be a shock, because unlike our usual, intriguing fantasy RPG campaigns, in CoC we died a lot. A real lot. We were, generally, doomed.

So when we decided that we would launch a new magazine, Occult Detective Quarterly, we knew what we wanted. Someone even suggested that Doomed Meddler Quarterly would be a good alternative name. We wanted tales of psychic detectives, amateur supernatural sleuths, embittered foes of the Dark, and people who ended up having to investigate malevolent forces against their wills. New Lovecraftian terror was welcome, as was old-fashioned pluck. Stories from Carnacki to Constantine, with terrified innocents thrown in along the way.

The first issue of the magazine is now available, and it’s exceeded my expectations in virtually every way. We are witnessing the birth of a major fantasy magazine.

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The Complete Carpenter: Halloween (1978)

Saturday, February 4, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 11 comments

Uhm, Happy Early Valentine’s Day?

In my analysis of John Carpenter’s career, I’ve now reached his third movie, the low-budget horror smash Halloween. It’s Carpenter’s most financially successful film. It’s his most influential film. And, starting with a famous November 1978 Village Voice article by Tom Allen that helped turn the director into a recognized auteur, his most critically analyzed film. So here I tread, timorously, to add to the massive cultural heap of Halloween.

At least tackling the movie outside of October provides a feeling of freshness. February can’t always be dedicated to marathons of Groundhog Day. (Not that I’m opposed to that either.)

The Story

Do I really need to bother with this part? Okay, here ya’ go:

A psychotic killer (referred to as “The Shape” in the credits) who knifed his sister to death when he was six years old breaks free from a mental institute the day before Halloween. He returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, IL, puts on a white distorted Captain Kirk mask, and stalks and kills babysitters. His psychiatrist (Donald Pleasence) pursues him. One babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) survives the night. Every low-budget horror film then repeats this process over and over again until the last syllable of recorded time. Tales, told by mediocre filmmakers, full of breasts and blood, signifying nothing — except how great the original is.

The Positives

Psst … can I talk to you behind the scenes for a moment?

So, about a year ago I achieved my goal of owning all of John Carpenter’s oeuvre on Blu-ray (or widescreen DVD if there wasn’t yet a Blu-ray, which at this point means only Memoirs of an Invisible Man). Looking at all of them spread out in a mandala on the carpet of my bedroom, with my cat sprawled across Christine, I knew I had to write a movie-by-movie series of articles covering Carpenter’s career. It didn’t seem too ambitious or much of a burden: “Oh no, I have to watch all the movies of one of my favorite directors!”

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Future Treasures: In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle

Friday, February 3, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn and The Folk of the Air, is one of the finest writers we have, and a new Beagle novella is a major event.

In Calabria, the tale of a lonely farmer in Italy’s scenic Calabria who finds himself a worldwide sensation when his farm becomes a haven for a host of unicorns, is a highly-anticipated return to the subject that made him famous. It’s available in trade paperback from Tachyon on Valentines’ Day.

Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy’s scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming and writing poetry. But one chilly morning, as though from a dream, an impossible visitor appears at the farm. When Claudio comes to her aid, an act of kindness throws his world into chaos. Suddenly he must stave off inquisitive onlookers, invasive media, and even more sinister influences.

Lyrical, gripping, and wise, In Calabria confirms Peter S. Beagle’s continuing legacy as one of fantasy’s most legendary authors.

Our previous coverage of Peter Beagle includes:

Future Treasures: Summerlong
The Mystery of Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons
How to Support Peter S. Beagle with The Last Unicorn Blu-ray by Ryan Harvey
The Secret History of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle

In Calabria will be published by Tachyon Publications on February 14, 2017. It is 176 pages, priced at $19.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

My Top Five Sword-Fight Movies

Friday, February 3, 2017 Violette Malan Comments 43 comments

You don’t have to read many of my posts to know that The Princess Bride is pretty well my favorite movie. And though I love the sword fighting scene between Wesley and Iñigo, and the later one between Iñigo and Count Rugen, they are not actually my favorite sword fighting scenes. In both cases, it’s really the dialogue that makes the scenes memorable. So what movies would I rank above The Princess Bride in sword fighting wonderfulness?

Here they are, in the order in which I thought of them.

The Three Musketeers (1973, directed by Richard Lester)

One of the great things about this movie, along with its sequels The Four Musketeers, and The Return of the Musketeers, is that they all feature the same cast. There are good fight scenes in all the films (Oliver Reed is more impressive in the sequels), but it’s the first one I know the best. I particularly like the fantastic opening sequence, where D’Artagnan’s father teaches him the “secret thrust.” Anything between D’Artagnan (Michael York) and Rochefort (Christopher Lee) is well worth watching. There’s also some terrific ensemble fighting, notably the scene between the four leads and the Cardinals’ Guard in the convent courtyard. It should be noted that Christopher Lee was a fencer IRL as well.

The fencing instructor and fight choreographer was Bob Anderson.

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Modular: Who Would Win? John McClane and James Bond versus a Tribe of D&D Goblins

Friday, February 3, 2017 Nick Ozment Comments 6 comments

I came across a fascinating piece by Noah J.D. Chinn in Knights of the Dinner Table issue 142 (August 2008). Chinn’s guest editorial for the “Gamer’s Pulpit” column is an intriguing analysis of how the realism bar for heroes has shifted radically from the days of our youth (us Gen Xers) until now.

The single most interesting fact he presents is a piece of data generated by Mike Hensley charting how many goblins a first level fighter could kill before dying across all iterations of Dungeons & Dragons (at that point there were 6 versions, 5^th Edition not yet having debuted). He ran the combats at least 1,000 times for each fighter in a Javascript simulation program, with the fighter facing the goblins one at a time, producing an average for each version. This is what the data reveals:

OD&D: 2.7 goblins killed

BD&D: 4.1

AD&D1: 4.3

AD&D2: 7.3

D&D 3e: 10.1

D&D 4e: 23.4 Holy Crap!

(It would be interesting to further extrapolate from this data: Does it suggest that a 4e first-level fighter could, one-on-one, take out 4 or 5 OD&D fighters before succumbing? Or that a first-level 4e fighter is roughly equivalent to a third-level fighter in Basic?)

Chinn argues that this hero power inflation cuts across popular culture. He uses the Die Hard movies as an apt illustration:

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Goth Chick News: A Penny for More Dreadfuls

Thursday, February 2, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

You may not be familiar with the term “penny dreadful.” And no one would blame you considering that, until 2014, the term had not been in popular use since the 1890’s.

Back to the 1830s, “penny dreadfuls”were serial stories published weekly on cheap wood-pulp paper aimed at young, working-class men. Each costing one penny, the subject matter of these publications typically focused on the sensationalized and bloody (or “dreadful”) exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. Varney the Vampire, a precursor to Dracula, as well as Sweeny Todd made their first appearances in print as subjects of the penny dreadful.

However in 2014, Showtime launched a very successful series by the same name starring Eva Green, Timothy Dalton and Josh Hartnett. Penny Dreadful featured classic characters from Victorian gothic literature such as the Frankenstein’s monster, the wolfman, Dorian Gray and Dracula as well as a host of new human characters including Vanessa Ives, Sir Malcolm Murray and Ethan Chandler. The series ran for three seasons, coming to what many fans (me included) felt was a highly unsatisfying end in 2016 .

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Presents: Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Conversation with Ryan Harvey

Thursday, February 2, 2017 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Dream Tower Media, the mad geniuses behind The Blue Lamp by Robert Zoltan (which Fletcher Vredenburgh called “marvelous… a full sound production, like a radio show”), have released Episode 2 of their new audio series, the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast. The title is spot on, as this one-hour episode is a thoroughly entertaining and far-ranging discussion of the great Edgar Rice Burroughs, featuring Robert Zoltan and Black Gate‘s own Ryan Harvey.

Like The Blue Lamp, this is no typical podcast, but an imaginatively designed (and frequently hilarious) radio show set in the windswept Dream Tower (with a talking raven). But stellar production aside, the real star of the show is the always-interesting Ryan Harvey, whose deep knowledge and profound enthusiasm for his subject prove infectious. Even if you’re not an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, you will be by the end their discussion. Terrific stuff.

I was also pleased to hear that the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast will be produced on a regular schedule. Robert tells us:

I made a real effort to create something unique and engaging, almost like a MST 3000 feel, that would be an ongoing serial. The third episode in February is going to be Orcs!: A Conversation with Historical Fantasy Author Scott Oden.

Great news! Check out all the episodes of the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast here.

B&N Blog on 96 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in 2017

Thursday, February 2, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog has gradually become one of my favorite places on the web. It’s well written, entertaining, and has a lot of content — virtually all of it focused on books. What’s not to love?

It’s not afraid of tackling big projects either. While lesser blogs may give you a peek at 10 upcoming releases and then head down to the pub, the hard-working crew at the B&N Sci-Fi Blog labor late into the night to compile a monster list of nearly 100 of the best genre books coming your way. How do they do it? Here’s Joel Cunningham with the scoop.

We asked sci-fi and fantasy editors from all the major publishing houses to share with us the books they are most excited to release into the wild in 2017. Let us just say, these editors are very excited — so excited, the list quickly ballooned to nearly 100 books. That’s 100 books that we’re really excited about too, even if the knowledge that we can’t possibly hope to read every one of them makes us lament, again, our pesky mortality.

Grab a fresh cup of coffee or your beverage of choice, and settle in. This is a big one.

Yeah, Joel’s right about that. It took a lot of work with compile this list, and I guarantee you that you’ll find something that will catch your interest. Here’s a handful of titles that I found especially intriguing.

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The Arian Baptistry in Ravenna, Italy

Wednesday, February 1, 2017 Sean McLachlan Comments 4 comments

Ceiling of the Arian Baptistry

Last week I blogged about the fantastic Basilica of San Vitale, in Ravenna, Italy. That’s only one of several fine examples of Late Antique art in the city and only one of eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites there.

Another is the Arian Baptistry, built by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great at the end of the 5th century. Theodoric was an Arian Christian, following a creed that believed that Christ was distinct from, and subordinate to, God the Father. This is because Christ did not always exist but was created by God the Father. More orthodox Christians at the time believed that Christ was both human and divine but was one and equal to God the Father. Theodoric had both types of Christians in his kingdom and to avoid trouble, kept them in separate neighborhoods with separate houses of worship

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Another Magazine Gone: Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Packs it In

Wednesday, February 1, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

There’s a healthy number of genre magazines on the market in 2017… but that doesn’t mean that all (or even most) of them are healthy. The vast majority of independent and small press magazines operate on paper-thin margins, which means that even minor setbacks can put the whole enterprise at risk.

We lost one of the highest-paying short fiction markets in the industry last month, as publisher Warren Lapine announced on January 18th that a combination of financial difficulties and personal setbacks had conspired to doom Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. In his Message From the Publisher he writes:

It’s with deep regret that I announce the closing of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. The January issue will be our final regular issue and the People of Color Take Over issue will be our final issue. I’m really proud of the body of work that we produced at Fantastic. There are a number of reasons that now is the time for me to close the webzine. According to my projection, it’ll take more than five years for Fantastic to become self sustaining, and I simply don’t feel that that is a reasonable time frame.

I had planned to stick it out another year, but my personal life has made that much more difficult. Last month my daughter’s house burned down and she and her family are staying with us while we try to sort everything out with an insurance company that doesn’t want to pay; and this month my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer… For those of you who are owed portions of an electronic subscription. Your subscription will be filled with electronic copies of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Cascadia Subduction Zone. That means you’ll be getting two magazines for every one we owe you.

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination was founded in August 2014, and published 17 issues over the past two and a half years. It took its name from the fondly-remembered digest Fantastic Stories, published from 1952-1980 by Ziff-Davis, and continued the original’s numbering scheme. The modern version was a free webzine that published two new stories every issue, plus reprints, reviews and commentary. It was edited by Warren Lapine and published by Wilder Publications, and available free online, and in a variety of digital formats for $2.99.

We last covered Fantastic Stories of the Imagination with the September-October 2015 issue. The final issue will be the Kickstarter-funded People Of Color Take Over Fantastic Stories, inspired by the hugely-successful People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction special issues of Lightspeed and Nightmare. The last regular issue contains new fiction by Wendy Nikel and Tamoha Sengupta; check it out here.