Black Gate – Page 946 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Alignment Chaotic AWESOME: 1st Edition Deities and Demigods (Part 1)

Monday, April 14, 2014 Nick Ozment Comments 9 comments

One of the most fun, crazy, and controversial tomes to come out of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was, without a doubt, Deities and Demigods (1980).

More wide-ranging (and less Eurocentric) than Bullfinch’s Mythology and Hamilton’s Mythology combined, here was a smorgasbord of most of the world’s major (and not-so-major) mythologies, presented as a one-stop shop for your player-character to choose a god or otherworldly entity to pledge fealty to and/r worship.

The vitriol of the religious right aside, Deities and Demigods did have its more thoughtful critics. In game terms, the early editions were kinda silly. Even though they assigned crazy-huge hit points and breathtakingly strong armor classes to the gods, said deities still had stats that could be overcome by powerful enough characters. As one critic observed, the book essentially turned the world’s deities into higher-level “monsters” to defeat — “bosses” for your 20^th-level party to challenge. No room here for some metaphysical idea of a being that exists above corporeal, material reality and therefore cannot be “hurt” by a sword with a high-enough bonus modifier.

Later editions of Deities and Demigods (or Legends and Lore, as it was known for a time) ameliorated this “big boss” mentality by introducing the concept that some gods that characters physically encountered were but avatars, “aspects” or physical incarnations of gods who, being immortal and transcendent, could not really be killed.

That’s cool. Still, it is kind of fun — in a juvenile way — to leaf through Deities and Demigods asking such questions as “Who would win in a fight: Zeus or Odin?”

…

Read More Read More

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Lilith by George MacDonald

Monday, April 14, 2014 westkeith Comments 25 comments

Lilith
George MacDonald
Ballantine Books (274 pages, September 1969, $1.25)
Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo

Lilith was the fifth volume in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. The cover is one of the darkest in the series to date. The back cover shows the inside of an attic. I normally post an image of the back cover, but I won’t here. It’s almost a monochrome and it’s dark.

In many ways, Lilith was different from the few that came before it. For starters, it was written from a decidedly Christian worldview and there were passages in it that seemed allegorical to me. Lilith was certainly the most metaphysical of the books I’ve read in the series so far. There were several conversations about identity and how a person can know who they are.

A favorite practice of literature majors everywhere is to try to determine symbolism in works and to dissect them for hidden meanings. The structure of Lilith certainly lends itself to this type of thing and, not being an English major, I’m not going to attempt much of that here.

George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish pastor who retired early to devote himself to literature, although he continued to preach in a lay capacity at times. Much of his output consisted of novels that were set in what for MacDonald was contemporary times, but also contained poetry, collections of sermons, and fairy stories. There are two other volumes by MacDonald in the BAF series: the novel Phantastes and Evenor, a collection of three novellas.

…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: All The World’s A Stage

Monday, April 14, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 8 comments

Speck_PagetSnake — Sidney Paget’s well-known drawing from The Speckled Band

There are two Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that have a gothic feel to them. The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of four novels featuring Holmes and the best-known story of the sixty which Doyle wrote. The other, the ninth short story to feature Holmes, is “The Speckled Band.”

A creepy mansion; exotic animals roaming loose, gypsies, an imposing stepfather, eerie whistles in the night and the mysterious death of a daughter some years before: it has all the trappings. Doyle himself listed it as his favorite story and I’m not going to ruin it here. If you haven’t read “The Speckled Band,” you should go do it right now. Well, after you finish this post.

Doyle wrote several plays, two of which featured Sherlock Holmes. The Crown Diamond was and remains a poor one (as does “The Mazarin Stone,” the Holmes short story it mirrors).

But the other, born of financial necessity, was a big hit.

…

Read More Read More

The Collections of Michael Shea: Polyphemus

Monday, April 14, 2014 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

As much as I respect and admire Michael Shea’s fantasy novels — and many of them are magnificent — I think he did his best work at short length. And I believe his best collection, by a pretty fair margin, is his 1987 Arkham House volume Polyphemus.

I was so impressed with it — really, I was so impressed with a single story, the amazing novella “The Autopsy” — that before I even finished reading the whole volume, I thrust it into the hands of my friend Neil Walsh, the future editor of SF Site. (I never did get it back and eventually had to buy a new copy. But I don’t mind. As the saying goes, never loan books. They should be gifts.)

But I don’t think you should have to take my word for it. Here’s the distinguished Mr. John Hocking, whose taste in fantasy fiction, as we know, is impeccable, with a two-sentence review of “The Autopsy,” as quoted in Mark Rigney’s 2013 article “The Most Terrifying Short Stories Ever?”

Creeped me out as badly as anything I ever read. Most ghastly creature ever put on the page.

Amen to that.

“The Autopsy” has been reprinted over a dozen times, in such places as David G. Hartwell’s monumental horror collection The Dark Descent (1988), The Best of Modern Horror (1989), The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1990), Aliens Among Us (2000), Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s massive anthology The Weird (2012) — and just this month it appeared in the e-book edition of Lightspeed magazine.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Sentinels of Space by Eric Frank Russell / The Ultimate Invader edited by Donald Wollheim

Sunday, April 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

We’re back with our journey through the Ace Double line, this time with one of the earliest volumes in the series: Eric Frank Russell’s SF novel Sentinels of Space, coupled with a Donald Wollheim anthology The Ultimate Invader. It was published in paperback in 1954.

Eric Frank Russell is one of those writers I’m not nearly as well-versed in as I should be. I read his brilliant short story “Dear Devil” in Terry Carr’s YA anthology Creatures From Beyond in the mid-seventies, when I was in Junior High, and that’s all it took for his name to stick with me.

“Dear Devil” — rejected by all the major magazines until Bea Mahaffey pulled it from the slush in 1950, while filling in for the hospitalized Ray Palmer at Other Worlds — established Russell as a major name and it also cemented the 26-year-old Mahaffey’s rep as an editor. She remained as co-editor of Other Worlds when Palmer returned and also edited his magazines Science Stories and Universe Science Fiction in the late 50s.

Russell wasn’t terribly prolific. He wrote only eight novels between 1939 and 1965, plus a posthumous collaboration with Alan Dean Foster, Design for Great-Day (1995), published 17 years after his death. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind that — I’ll have to ask Alan next time I run into him at a convention.

His two most famous works are probably his first novel Sinister Barrier, which so impressed John W. Campbell that he reportedly founded Unknown magazine just to get it into print, and “Allamagoosa’ (Astounding, May 1955), the first short story to win the Hugo Award.

My favorite Eric Frank Russell anecdote occurred while I was selling vintage paperbacks in the Dealer’s room at the 2012 Worldcon here in Chicago (Howard’s detailed report is here.) Jo Walton — who won a Hugo the next day for her novel Among Others — was browsing my books when she suddenly let out a shout of glee.

She explained why in a funny and delightful post a few months later at Tor.com., titled “The Book You Don’t Know You’re Looking For.”

…

Read More Read More

Last Chance to Win a Copy of The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four from Haffner Press

Sunday, April 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

In a moment of weakness earlier this month, I decided to give away a copy of the long-awaited fourth volume of The Collected Edmond Hamilton from Haffner Press. Too late to back out now. How do you win one, you lucky dog? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Edmond Hamilton” and a one-sentence review of your favorite Hamilton novel or short story. And don’t forget to mention what story you’re reviewing.

That’s it. One winner will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

But time is running out — the contest closes April 18. If you need more inspiration. we recently covered several Edmond Hamilton books — including Starwolf and The Best of Edmond Hamilton — and we reprinted his very first story, “The Monster-God of Mamurth” (from the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales) in Black Gate 2.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers — including The Complete John Thunstone by Manly Wade Wellman; Henry Huttner’s Detour to Otherness, Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One, and Thunder in the Void; Leigh Brackett’s Shannach – The Last: Farewell to Mars; and Robert Silverberg’s Tales From Super-Science Fiction — are some of the most collectible books in the genre and you won’t want to miss this one.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks

The Reign of the Robots, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four was published by Haffner Press on December 30, 2013. It is 696 pages, priced at $40 in hardcover. There is no digital edition. Learn more here.

Future Treasures: Dead Man’s Hand edited by John Joseph Adams

Sunday, April 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Well, this is timely.

No sooner do I admit that I’ve been on a recent weird western kick (just two days ago, actually), than I receive an advance proof of what could well be my favorite book of the lot: John Joseph Adams’s splendid new anthology Dead Man’s Hand, which includes a tantalizing assortment of short stories from many of the leading writers in the genre.

How the West Was Weird!

From a kill-or-be-killed gunfight with a vampire to an encounter in a steampunk bordello, the weird western is a dark, gritty tale where the protagonist might be playing poker with a sorcerous deck of cards, or facing an alien on the streets of a dusty frontier town.

Here are twenty-three original tales — stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic—produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Orson Scott Card’s first Alvin Maker story in a decade, and an original adventure by Fred Van Lente, writer of Cowboys & Aliens. Other contributors include Tobias S. Buckell, David Farland, Alan Dean Foster, Jeffrey Ford, Laura Anne Gilman, Rajan Khanna, Mike Resnick, Beth Revis, Fred Van Lente, Walter Jon Williams, Ben H. Winters, Christie Yant, and Charles Yu.

Dead Man’s Hand will be published by Titan Books on May 13. It is 409 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent Future Treasures here.

The H.P. Source: Why I Chose Mythos and Magic to Launch my Publishing House

Saturday, April 12, 2014 Neil Baker Comments 3 comments

Let’s get the unpleasantness out of the way. There’s a new book in town called The Dark Rites of Cthulhu and I strongly suggest you buy it, if not in glorious paperback form, then as a Kindle edition. Hell’s teeth, shell out for a special edition and you could have your very own shoggoth beermat, something you never knew you needed until I just mentioned it.

I opened with this subtle sales pitch not just because I have children to feed, nor that I would really like to publish another book, but because I believe that my editor, Brian M. Sammons, and I have tapped into a rich vein that has been somewhat overlooked in this (some might say) Lovecraft-saturated landscape.

It cannot be denied that the cold climes of R’yleh have never been hotter. Mythos-based novels and anthologies have been materializing with the regularity of jellyish monstrosities drawn to a resonator, the well-received TV drama, True Detective, teased elements from The King in Yellow, which was a huge influence on Lovecraft’s own writings, and now rumors abound that HPL himself will pop up in a planned Houdini biopic.

This led me to a couple of conclusions. One, there would be a built-in audience for my planned book, and two, I would have to make my book stand out from the crowd. This is why, when Brian pitched his ‘dark magic’ angle, I leapt at the chance to pursue it.

A great many of the books in the market at the moment deal with the physical conflict between humans and the Elder Gods, and rightly so. The very nature of cosmic horror lends an epic quality to even the shortest of tales and hugely entertaining anthologies abound that place the Mythos in historic, contemporary, and even futuristic settings.

…

Read More Read More

Delve Into a 3-Part Supermodule With Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave

Saturday, April 12, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I’m still digging into the fabulous Forgotten Realms products I won at the Spring Games Plus Auction, all of which were brand new and criminally cheap – probably because they were written for D&D version 3.5 and are now a little out of date. Not that that bothers me; I mostly play version 1.0 anyway.

I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve sampled so far, including Lost Empires of Faerûn and Underdark, both of which were top-notch. They proved easily adaptable to my current campaign, and Underdark in particular is a truly superb resource. I wish I’d had it years ago. My subterranean adventures would have been vastly richer and more imaginative.

Cormyr has quite a history and was well explored in earlier releases long before this book hit the shelves. It is perhaps the most majestic kingdom of the realms. It first appeared in a handful of short stories in the 1970s by Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood and was described in detail for the first time in TSR’s groundbreaking Forgotten Realms Campaign boxed set in 1987. It has featured in numerous supplements and novels ever since — including Forgotten Realms Adventures (1990), The Forgotten Realms Atlas (1990), The Player’s Guide to the Forgotten Realms Campaign (1993), and especially the 1994 accessory Cormyr by Eric W. Haddock and Paul Jaquays, which detailed the land’s history, royalty, people, and geography in 64 packed pages.

Cormyr has also been the setting for over a dozen Forgotten Reams novels, including The Empires trilogy by David Cook, Troy Denning, and James Lowder (1990 – 1991); The Cormyr Saga by Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, and Troy Denning (1996 – 2000); and two trilogies by Ed Greenwood: The Knights of Myth Drannor (2006 – 2008) and The Sage of Shadowdale (2010 – 2012). If Cormyr were a tourist destination, it would be The Hamptons.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Ghost Hunters by Neil Spring

Friday, April 11, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Ah, I love a good spooky story. And I love 1920s British mysteries. So… a 1920s British mystery/ghost story? What’s not to love?

The Ghost Hunters is Neil Spring’s first novel. I stumbled on it while shopping for discount books at Amazon.com; proof that online browsing can be just as effective as bookstore browsing to discover books from unknown authors. For those of us with poor impulse control, anyway.

Welcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England.

The year is 1926 and Sarah Grey has landed herself an unlikely new job – personal assistant to Harry Price, London’s most infamous ghost hunter. Equal parts brilliant and charming, neurotic and manipulative, Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England’s many ‘false hauntings’, and never has he left a case unsolved, nor a fraud unexposed.

So when Harry and Sarah are invited to Borley Rectory – a house so haunted objects frequently fly through the air unbidden, and locals avoid the grounds for fear of facing the spectral nun that walks there – they’re sure that this case will be just like any other. But when night falls and still no artifice can be found, the ghost hunters are forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real and, if so, they’re about to make its most intimate acquaintance.

The Ghost Hunters was published in the UK by Quercus in October, 2013. It is 522 pages, priced at £7.99, or £5.99 for the digital edition. There is no American edition planned, far as I know. I bought my copy through a UK book dealer on Amazon.com for $8.90, plus $3.99 shipping.