What I’ve Been Listening To: September 2024

What I’ve Been Listening To: September 2024

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And it’s time for you to find out what I’ve been listening to. I know you’ve been anxiously waiting since last month. Now, if you read last two blog posts. Which I’m SURE you did….you know I watched 26 Marvel movies. While that was fun (and ridiculously indulgent), it did cut a bit into my listening (and reading). But I still managed to get in some of both. So, awaaaay we go.

THE DESERT OF SOULS – Howard Andrew Jones

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve seen me talking about my Black Gate buddy Howard Andrew Jones, who recently revealed he’s battling a fast-acting brain cancer. I’ll write more about that topic, but I decided it was time to get back to some of his work.

A couple years ago, he wrote an epic fantasy, The Ring Sworn trilogy. He switched publishers, and the third book of his latest trilogy, The Chronicles of Hanuvar, is due out October 1. It seems destined to go down as one of the best in modern sword and sorcery.

I really like his Arabian fantasy stories featuring Dabir and Asim. I’m re-reading the short story collection, The Waters of Eternity (an absolute steal in digital). But on a trip to visit him a few weeks ago, I decided to re-listen to the first novel, Desert of Souls.

Robert E. Howard is about the only Adventure stuff I read. I never got into H. Rider Haggard, and I’m familiar with Ali Baba and Aladdin (no, not from Disney). But these sword and sorcery mysteries are good reads.

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Tarzan and Beyond: Philip Jose Farmer, Part II

Tarzan and Beyond: Philip Jose Farmer, Part II

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Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Playboy
Paperbacks, August 1981 and July 1981). Covers: uncredited, Ken Barr

Read the first half of this article, The World of Tiers and Beyond: Philip Jose Farmer, Part I.

Continuing our examination of Farmer’s pastiches, Farmer soon gave up the Grandrith and Caliban names and went full on with the characters in two fictional biographies called Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973), both from Playboy’s Science Fiction line.

The cover for Tarzan Alive is very cool but is uncredited. Ken Barr seems to have done the Doc Savage cover and it’s also very cool. I liked both of these books pretty well. The Tarzan book rambles a bit. The Doc Savage is better than many of the original Doc Savage novels. It references quite a few. These books are true to the characters and have none of the bizarre sexual exploits described in A Feast Unknown.

These books also suggest that Tarzan, Doc Savage, and such other fictional characters as Sherlock Holmes are all related to each other and are the product of inherited mutations caused by a meteor that struck England in 1795 called either the Wold Cottage or the Wold Newton Meteor.

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How Billy Graham’s Conan Art Got Him Fired from Fantastic Magazine

How Billy Graham’s Conan Art Got Him Fired from Fantastic Magazine

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Fantastic magazine, edited by Ted White. August 1972. Cover by Jeff Jones

I read Rich Horton’s Retro Review of the August 1972 issue of Fantastic magazine here at Black Gate, and I remember being excited by what I presumed was the first appearance of Conan in Fantastic, and then realizing just how awful the novelette was, which was made even more disappointing by the fact that this cover was the first time the great Jeff Jones, already known for terrific depictions of Howard’s Solomon Kane, tackled Conan.

Even in 1968, when I read Conan the Adventurer at the age of ten, I noticed that all the best Conan stories were by Howard, but it took me into my early teens to realize just how bad the non-Howard ones were. Yes, De Camp was a much better writer than Carter, but his work lacked the passion and pulp poetry necessary for the character, and something like “Beyond the Black River” (which my penpal Fritz Leiber thought was the best Conan story, along with “People of the Black Circle,” which Fritz liked for its sympathetic villain and capable proto-Indian heroine), was completely outside De Camp’s wheelhouse.

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A to Z Reviews: “Side Effects,” by Julian Saari

A to Z Reviews: “Side Effects,” by Julian Saari

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A to Z Reviews

Julian Saari offers up a fish tale of a bar story in “Side Effects.” This  short piece is the only work he has listed on the Internet Science Fiction Database and it appeared in the August 1991 issue of Analog, alongside a Pern story by Anne McCaffrey and the second part of the serialization of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar, impressive company.

Given the nature of the short story, it is appropriate that Saari sets it in a bar, called Timonescu’s.  Even more appropriately, Timonescu’s is part of a fishing lodge, where one would expect the clientele to tell tall tales about the sizes of their catches, or more likely the ones that got away. To this end, the bar’s owner, Ion Timonescu approaches the story he is told be a stranger with a certain amount of skepticism.

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Neverwhens: In His Sunken House of… Doggerland… Dead Cthulhu Waits Dreaming

Neverwhens: In His Sunken House of… Doggerland… Dead Cthulhu Waits Dreaming

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Yeah…Doggerland.

For those not in the know, during the last Ice Age Earth’s seas were about 300 feet lower, revealing a vast amount of land. While no true Atlantis or Mu have been found, examples include a broad plain — and now sunken lakebed — connecting Australia to New Guinea, the Sunda Shelf — a massive sub-continent that unites most of Southeast Asia in a single landmass that includes places as far flung as Java and the Philippines, and Doggerland.

This last was a remnant of an even earlier land mass that had covered the Irish, Baltic and North Seas during the last glaciation, and where we now see the English Channel and the regions of the North Sea that separate the British Isles from Denmark and southern Norway there was land of marshlands and forests, filled with the last remnants of European megafauna such as lions, sabertooths, giant elk, and mammoths. Doggerland was slowly inundated by rising waters, transforming into an archipelago of islands, before being finally subsumed in the late Mesolithic era, likely by a tsunami event.

This lost land provides the setting for The Shadow Over Doggerland, a rather interesting collection of Mythos fiction spear-headed by prolific horror author Tim Medees and published by Nordc Press that asks what actually happened to the people of Doggerland? Was there some great ancient evil bent on destroying the world dreaming below the surface waiting to emerge?

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The Mad Wizards at Planet X Games

The Mad Wizards at Planet X Games

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Rayguns & Robuts, issue 1 (Planet X Games, August 2022). Cover by Ed Bickford

“…system-agnostic universe filled with galactic space rangers and square-jawed heroes zipping across the phlogiston, with a jet pack strapped to their back and a raygun in hand…”

Back in 2022 I received the first issue of Rayguns & Robuts, by Planet X Games. This sci-fi zine is loaded with incredible content and art, and the design esthetic is second to none.

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A Decadal Review of 1989 Science Fiction Magazines: Wrap-up

A Decadal Review of 1989 Science Fiction Magazines: Wrap-up

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I reviewed five science fiction magazines from mid-2021 to early 2024. Here are my overall notes and rankings.

Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 30, 2022

Edited by Gardner Dozois
Cover by Wayne Barlowe
Ranking 1st out of 5

Megan Lindholm’s (AKA Robin Hobbs) “A Touch of Lavender” and Walter Jon William’s “No Spot of Ground” really elevate this issue.

Allen Steele’s “Ride to Live, Live to Ride” was solid, and two trying-to-get-in-on-the-‘cyberpunk’-wave stories, Robert Silverberg’s “Chiprunner” and Orson Scott Card’s “Dogwalker” had a certain off-base-but-appealing vibe. 

Ronald Anthony Cross’ “The Front Page” was the only story I didn’t really like, and it was short enough that it didn’t bother me.

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Five More Things I Think: Marvel Edition

Five More Things I Think: Marvel Edition

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Last week I did a Ten Things I Think I Think on the deep dive I did with seventeen Marvel movies. I watched nine more to finish off this really fun movie watch, so here are Five More Things I Think – Marvel Edition. Twenty-six movies, and Ultron was the only on I didn’t care for. That’s pretty good.

Shang Chi
Avengers Ultron
Ant Man 1
Avengers Civil War
Dr. Strange 1
Thor 3 (Ragnarok)
Spider Man: Homecoming (1)
Spider Man: Far From Home (2)
Ant Man 2 (& Wasp)

1) LOVE THE HUMOR IN THOR

I enjoy the Ant Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy movies in large part, because of the humor. Except for the second Thor movie, that totally applies to the God of Thunder’s Marvel appearances.

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Biggus Footus, Part II

Biggus Footus, Part II

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Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (New Breed Entertainment, 2011), Sasquatch
(North American Film Enterprises, 1976), and Bigfoot (Syfy, 2012)

This is Part II of my new watch project. All Bigfoot (or similar) movies, no Yetis allowed. They must be films I haven’t seen before. All free to stream. Read Part I here.

Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes – 2012 – Tubi

In tents? Very nearly.

Any good? I’m not a fan of found footage movies, and of the scores produced over the years I can probably count the films I’ve enjoyed on one hand. This one isn’t too bad, but it falls foul of the ‘film everything’ trope, when just dropping the camera and running might have resulted in a higher survival rate. The ‘squatch fodder in this film is a production crew out to expose Bigfoot as an elaborate hoax, but realizing a little bit too late that there might be some truth to it all.

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Some Remarks on an Unremarkable Space Opera: Galactic Gambit by Roy C. Dudley

Some Remarks on an Unremarkable Space Opera: Galactic Gambit by Roy C. Dudley

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Galactic Gambit (Lenox Hill Press, September 1971). Cover by Herbstman

In my recent looks at less-remembered novels of the ’70s and ’80s I’ve covered some obscurish works by well-remembered writers (Phyllis Eisenstein, L. Sprague de Camp) and some obscurish works by less well known but hardly unknown writers (Gerard Klein, Mick Farren), and even some quite little known writers (Atanielle Annyn Noel).

But this time I’m trying for something truly obscure — a hardcover from 1971 that is the only novel by its writer, from a publishing company that offered microscopic advances ($300) and sold only to libraries. The only semblance of a review of this novel I could find is in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia (of course!) and it reads in full: “US printing technician and author of Galactic Gambit (1971), an unremarkable Space Opera.”

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