All this recent talk of Star Fleet Battles and Metagaming’s classic microgames like Ogre and Wizard has me thinking of other great pocket games of my youth.

Now, “great” is a relative term. The elements that make a typical fantasy board game great — things like style, richness of setting, and diversity of play — don’t apply to microgames. The things that make a pocket game great are inventiveness, fast play, and simplicity.

Although a great setting and a little style don’t hurt, either.

Task Force Games was the king of pocket games in the early 1980s. Much of that was by virtue of its one runaway success, Star Fleet Battles, but it had an impressive line of other fantasy and SF titles, including Swordquest (which I discussed last June), Starfire (which eventually inspired a series of science fiction novels from David Weber and Steve White); Intruder, which pits a desperate crew against a lethal alien in deep space (clearly inspired by the movie Alien), Spellbinder, City States of Arklyrell, and over a dozen more (there’s a nice survey here, and a complete list here).

But Valkenburg Castle was the first, and it’s still my favorite. It was almost completely unique in 1980 — a board game that captured the essential gestalt of fantasy role playing, although in a slightly abstracted fashion: penetrating a dark and foreboding stronghold, confronting the unwholesome creatures within, and winning glory through cleverness and force of arms.

The premise of Valkenburg Castle was simple. You play as the young Lord Hobart van Valkenburg, rightful heir, returning at last to the place where his grandfather was murdered and his family first driven into exile. The castle is now monster-infested, home to sinister and powerful beasts who lurk somewhere in its depths.

To win back his ancestral home Lord Hobart must to explore the twisting ruins of a castle he has never before seen, and drive out the dark forces who have made it their home — including the powerful creatures who lair at the deepest dungeons levels.

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Robert Silverberg’s last post at Black Gate was “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?” (which, as I recall, generated a lot of debate, including an intriguing counter-argument by Jerry Pournelle.)

His post seemed like a good excuse to finally get around to reading Lord Valentine’s Castle, the first novel in his Majipoor Cycle. It’s one of the few major fantasy series I haven’t tried, and I’ve long been intrigued by its science fantasy setting. Majipoor is a vast world, much larger than Earth (but much less dense, hence with a comparable gravity), settled by a host of bizarre alien races who co-exist more-or-less peacefully with the shape-changing natives, the Piurivar. It’s is a low-tech planet where agriculture is the main occupation, but numerous artifacts of a space-faring culture dot the landscape, some of them quite mysterious — the perfect stage for some grand adventures.

Lord Valentine’s Castle was highly acclaimed when it first appeared in 1980, garnering a Hugo nomination and winning the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Five more novels followed, including Valentine Pontifex (1983) and Sorcerers of Majipoor (1997), and one collection, Majipoor Chronicles (1982).

In the two decades since that last collection Silverberg has published some major short work set in Majipoor, including:

• “The Seventh Shrine,” a murder mystery from Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy
• “The Book of Changes,” a novella of Majipoor’s early history from Legends II
• “The End of the Line,” a novelette featuring Lord Stiamot from Asimov’s Science Fiction (read an excerpt here)
• “The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn,” from online magazine Subterranean (read the complete story here)
• “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a novelette from Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy
• “Dark Times At The Midnight Market,” from Swords & Dark Magic
• “The Way They Move the Spells at Sippulgur.”

All seven of these tales are collected in Tales of Majipoor, the new collection from Roc that goes on sale this month. I found Lord Valentine’s Castle buried under review notes, still unopened, only a few weeks after I took it down to read it. But that’s okay, because Tales of Majipoor looks like an even better way to take my first steps unto this vast planet.

Tales of Majipoor was published on May 7 by Roc. It is 320 pages in trade paperback, priced at $16 ($9.99 for the digital edition).

There’s a sub-genre known as “quiet horror,” an alternative to the explicit gore or overtly supernatural fare that’s been prevalent in horror since the eighties. Charles Grant’s much-praised Shadows series is one of the best examples you’ll find of this type of writing. There aren’t a lot of writers today who try this type of story and even fewer who succeed. Karen Heard is one of those rarely talented authors who can unsettle a reader without ever explicitly stating what has happened. It’s Dark Inside is her first collection and these six stories are hopefully only the beginning of many more to come.

The collection begins with “The Lighthouse,” a tale of isolation in the wake of some manner of unspecified disaster. “Snap” is set in what may be a not-too-distant future, wherein a photo-journalist is on a quest to find and photograph the last living elephant. “The Picture” is a different type of ghost story, where we learn about the things that can scare a man who is already dead. “Out of Order” surprises the reader by starting as one type of standard horror story before shifting into something very different as the reader is left unsure of not only what the “monster” is, but where exactly it is hiding. “The Promise” was a bit frustrating, as it depends on the protagonist not figuring out what is fairly obvious to the reader, but makes up for it with a wonderful twist ending. The collection wraps up with “Inside,” a story that leaves the reader unsure if the protagonist is beset by a supernatural menace or merely losing her mind, still managing to surprise with an unexpected (yet in retrospect completely logical) solution.

It’s Dark Inside is available in paperback for the low price of $6.50. For those of you on a budget, there’s the even lower-priced e-book edition for only 99 cents. For those of you on an even tighter budget (come on, already), you can preview one of the stories, “The Lighthouse,” on Ms. Heard’s blog, Misheard Fiction. Check it out and then decide if one of the best quiet horror story collections you’ll read this year is worth the cost of half a cup of coffee.

A few weeks back, I purchased a lot of 27 Amazing Stories digests from the mid-60s and early 70s in great condition, for $35 (including shipping) — or about a buck an issue.

This was simultaneously delightful and dismaying. Delightful, of course, to get a fine set of SF magazines for not much more than they cost on the newsstand 45 years ago; dismaying to find that pristine vintage copies of one of the most important SF magazines command such little interest in the market.

Seriously, this doesn’t bode well for the thousands of SF magazines I’ve been gradually accumulating in my basement for the last 35 years. I  consider them treasures, but it seems the number of people who share my interest is shrinking every year. I just hope they don’t all end up getting recycled when I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Well, all collectors can really do is delight in those treasures we find, and share our enthusiasm with those around us. To that end, here I am, talking about a handful of issues of Amazing Stories, starting with the January 1969 issue, at left.

The late sixties was a bumpy time for the Granddaddy of Science Fiction magazines. Perhaps its finest editor, the talented Cele Goldsmith, left when the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen’s Ultimate Publishing Company in March 1965. At the time, Ultimate was simultaneously publishing Great Science Fiction, Science Fiction Classics, and other profitable reprint magazines — profitable chiefly because they didn’t pay for any of the reprints. Cohen wanted to pursue a similar strategy with Amazing.

Cohen hired Joseph Wrzos to edit both Amazing and Fantastic magazines, and indeed for several years Amazing offered almost exclusively reprints — although Wrzos reportedly did get Cohen to cough up funds for one new piece of fiction per issue. Wrzos left in 1967, and Harry Harrison was briefly editor from September 1967 to February 1968, when the talented Barry Malzberg stepped into his shoes.

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C.S. Lewis

Last week, I began my reflections on the art of rating. These thoughts are based on my own 25+ years of reviewing literature and film, as well as on being an avid reader of reviews and follower of particular critics.

To recap, in last week’s post I covered the selection of a ratings scale, which can vary from the most simple “thumbs up/thumbs down” to a more nuanced 10-point scale such as I use (five stars, with half-star increments). I also touched on the implications of being either a stingy or a generous rater.

This week, I’ll delve a bit deeper by considering the importance of establishing one’s viewpoint and communicating that viewpoint (with all its preferences and prejudices) to the reader.

After I see a film, there are two additional pay-offs besides the film-viewing experience itself: 1) (social) discussing the film with friends, family, colleagues who also saw it; and 2) (solitary) paying a visit to rottentomatoes.com, the aggregating site that links to hundreds of reviewers, to find out what amateur and professional critics thought of it. It’s fun to see how one’s own impression compares to the general consensus, and I enjoy those “A-ha!” moments when a critic deftly articulates some emotional or intellectual response the film also evoked in me (or when they wittily trash an aspect of the film that I also abhorred). Doesn’t always happen, even when a critic has assigned to a film the same rating I’ve given it. It goes without saying that we can like the same thing for different reasons; likewise, we can dislike something equally vehemently, but on completely different grounds.

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In which Moses learns the next 10 terrible plagues the Almighty had in store for the Pharaoh of Egypt.

And the Lord, sounding a little giddy, said unto Moses, “For the twelfth plague, I’d send rats.”

And Moses nodded, saying, “Yes, to grow fat on the grain of the Egyptians, to spread disease and gnaw at the foundations of Pharaoh’s kingdom.”

“Oh, not just regular rats. Winged rats. Here, I’ve got some concept drawings.” And the Lord produced his concept sketches of a winged and feathered rat.

“And then, after a week of that, the thirteenth plague… this would have been great. All the cats in Egypt would grow thumbs.”

And there was a silence as Moses tried to envision such an act. And he said unto the Lord, “I don’t get it, Lord. Why is that bad?”

“Because cats hate you. The only thing that prevents them from picking up daggers and stabbing you in your sleep is that they don’t have opposable thumbs.”

And Moses nodded, seeing no point in questioning the Lord’s reasons, for they were mysterious… and kind of crazy.

Michael Penkas has been the website editor for Black Gate since August of 2012. He’s had over a dozen stories published since 2007. While he tends to stay near to those things that go bump in the night, he’s occasionally delved into mystery, science fiction, and the odd humor piece. Long-time readers of Black Gate will know that he has more than a few opinions concerning a certain crazy redhead with a sword.

His acclaimed first collection, Dead Boys, was released this month.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vera Nazarian, Robert Rhodes, Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“The Worst Was Yet to Come” is a complete 2,000-word tale of humorous fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Major award-granting institutions continue to heap accolades on books I haven’t read.

This is a chronic problem. I think the guidelines should be changed to allow voters to select a specific title, “No Award,” or “Wait, wait, I haven’t read any of the nominees yet!”

Until that happy day, we continue to report on tantalizing books and short stories that we haven’t personally enjoyed yet. It’s a curse.

The 2012 Nebula Awards were presented Saturday, May 18, 2013 at SFWA’s 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend San Jose, California. The winners were:

Novel

2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

Novella

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)

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I’ve been a fan of French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim since I first read the marvelous Dungeon (co-created with Joann Sfar) over a decade ago. His comics are bizarre, funny, and fabulously creative.

So I didn’t mind taking a chance on a new Trondheim comic collection: Kaput and Zösky, an 80-page graphic novel collecting over a dozen tales (especially since I found it remaindered on Amazon for $5.58).

Kaput and Zösky are two determined galactic conquerors, traveling from planet to planet in a tiny spaceship, constantly dreaming of ways to bring the next planet to its knees. Their abilities don’t quite match their dreams, however, and most strips end with them hightailing it off-planet, usually escaping death by inches.

The art in Kaput and Zösky is by Eric Cartier, and it was the high point of the comic for me. Cartier’s cartoony aliens are expressive and frequently very funny, and he captures Kaput and Zösky’s goofy schemes brilliantly. I suspect the strips may work better standalone than bundled together, as they got a little repetitive after a while.

Fortunately, the adventures of Kaput and Zösky aren’t limited to the page. Kaput and Zösky: The Ultimate Obliterators, a Nicktoons cartoon broadcast in 2003, captures the charm of Cartier’s artwork, and the Canadian voice cast does an excellent job of bringing the two bloodthirsty aliens to life. A total of 26 half-hour episodes (78 shorts) were produced, many of which have found their way to YouTube. Check out Kaput & Zosky in “The Planet Pax,” a complete 8-minute episode:

Kaput & Zosky – The Planet Pax

Kaput and Zösky was published in April 2008 by First Second. It is 80 pages in color, with text translated from the French by Edward Gauvin.

On April 27, I wrote a Vintage Treasures article about Robert E. Howard’s The People of the Black Circle, one of the first fantasy books I ever owned.

The Comments section quickly became a discussion of REH collecting, with readers swapping photos of their favorite Howard books. Joe H. shared a LibrayThing catalog of his Howard collection, noting the hardest title to find had been Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors. “It took me years to track down a copy,” he said.

Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing that perks up a collector’s ears. Intrigued,  I went on a quest to find my own copy of Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu stories.

I finally succeeded this week, after a two-week search. I settled in with my new copy today. First thing I noticed is that the cover, by Stephen Hickman, depicts a treasured artifact from my own collection: the Hickman-designed Cthulhu statute by Bowen Designs — a prized collectible these days. Now that it’s worth something, maybe my wife will let me bring it up out of the basement.

The other thing I noticed is that this is a sizable collection: 250 pages. While I knew Howard had made some minor contributions to Lovecraft’s famous milieu before his death, I had no idea he’d written so many stories that could be categorized as part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Perhaps editor David Drake has been fairly liberal with his selections. I note that “Pigeons from Hell” is included, and that’s only peripherally a Cthulhu story — but it’s a damn good tale, so I’m not complaining.

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My copy of J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World has an about-the-author section that describes the 1962 book as “a brilliant first novel that won him instant acclaim and had a dramatic effect on the state of science fiction.” Even allowing for the typically excessive claims of PR text, this is inaccurate: Ballard’s first novel was actually The Wind From Nowhere, published in 1961 and written in two weeks. Still, Ballard’s consistently downplayed and even disowned the earlier book, so let’s take him at his word. How does The Drowning World look fifty years on?

It has to be said that it’s one of those science fiction books that would seem at first glance to be strikingly relevant, if not prophetic — dealing with an idea become disturbingly significant in the years since the story’s first publication. In this case, the book’s set in a future sometime in a mid-21st-century suffering from extreme global warming due to a series of solar storms. The sea levels have risen; the world has drowned. The lead character has no memory of any civilisation we recognise, living with a few million other human beings in the polar latitudes. Reading this book on the heels of news that atmospheric carbon dioxide has passed the 400 parts per million threshold, it’s impossible not to feel a sharpening of one’s interest.

But, like much of the best science fiction, the core of the book is not the science but the fiction. Ballard uses his setting — a flooded tropical London claimed by iguanas and marmosets, totally lacking human life but for a visiting scientific and military expedition and one woman who grew up in the drowned city — to explore strange psychological effects of this particular future. It’s a kind of exploration of depth psychology, of dreams and a collective unconscious. Individual ontogeny is affected by global phylogeny; human identity is affected by a return of the climate and fauna of the Mesozoic era. The book becomes more fascinating as it goes on, increasingly moving away from the science of climate change and using the drowning of the world as a mirror for the submerging of rationality. It is, ultimately, truly concerned with apocalypse: not merely the erasure of the old world, but the making of the world into something new.

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