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Space Conquerors!

Space Conquerors!

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Space Conquerors Boy's Life July 1966 panel

Since 1911, boys have looked forward to the monthly appearance of Boy’s Life. I was a scout from 1961 through 1968, when the magazine was as large as Life or Look and almost as fat, a cornucopia of articles, scouting tips, stories, and comics. I saw Arthur C. Clarke’s “Sunjammer” in the March 1964 issue, a full year before the adult sf mags reprinted it. The editors at Boy’s Life stayed consistently more friendly to science fiction than virtually any other mainstream magazine in the 50s and 60s. Robert Heinlein serialized Farmer in the Sky and The Rolling Stones there and he and Asimov had books adapted into comics. For me the big draw were the Time Machine stories about the Polaris Patrol who discovered, what else, a time machine and explored the past and the future. Written by the father son team of Donald Monroe and Keith Monroe under the name of Donald Keith, a hardback version of their serialized Mutiny in the Time Machine might have been the first science fiction book I owned.

So how is it possible that I have zero memory of Space Conquerors!?

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In Which Severian Becomes Human: The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

In Which Severian Becomes Human: The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe

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oie_622120n9dhjJAUSeverian has finally arrived in the fortress town Thrax and taken up his duties as lictor, or “he who binds”, and jailor. More importantly, he serves in his trained capacity as torturer and executioner. It is his latter duties that lead to a rift between Severian and Dorcas. No matter how rationally he makes his case for legal torture and execution, she is more and more disturbed by his work. Eventually she leaves him and takes up residence in a tavern.

His refusal to employ his guild talents for the personal desire of Thrax’s ruler leads him to flee northward — that and the fiery salamander sent to kill him by an agent of his old nemesis, Agia. Severian hopes to return the life-restoring gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, to the traveling sisterhood from which Agia stole it back in the first book, The Shadow of the Torturer. With the revealing of several dire secrets, Dorcas leaves Severian to return to Nessus and uncover the truth of her past.

1980’s The Shadow of the Torturer is a coming-of-age tale of Severian’s passage into young adulthood and out of the safe confines of his guild’s tower. While Severian’s constant withholding of information makes his narration unreliable, the book still flows in a generally normal fashion — Severian has adventures during which he journeys from point A to point B.

1981’s The Claw of the Conciliator reads like little more than a series of someone else’s dreams and nightmares. There are powerful passages, but like dreams, their potency comes not from basic storytelling, but strange imagery and psychologically dislocating events. I’m still not sure how much of Wolfe’s story eluded me, even thinking back on it now, but there are sequences that I will not forget any time soon.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: William Patrick Maynard’s ‘Shades of Yellow’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: William Patrick Maynard’s ‘Shades of Yellow’

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Because I find it’s easier to get somebody else to do all the heavy lifting, I secured another guest poster for this week! Fellow Black Gater William Patrick Maynard knows more about Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril genre than anybody else I know. And if you see his credentials at the end of the post, you’ll understand why! Today, he takes a pulpy look at the ‘menace from the Far East’ topic. Read on!

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” — Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Maynard_WuFangMagEditContext is a challenge in politically correct times that seek to view the past through the myopic lenses of an eternal present. Over 130 years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created an archetype in fiction with his consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. While Holmes lives on at least in name and reputation, most of his antecedents, contemporaries, and successors in the fantastic fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras are rapidly fading into obscurity.

While forgotten by the public at large, the traits and exploits of many of these same characters have been disseminated into today’s pop culture icons (James Bond, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the glut of superheroes that continue to dominate movie screens). What remains of the past is largely through the efforts of pulp specialty publishers and public domain reprint specialists who keep these classic works in print for a niche market that still reads works from a different, simpler, though not always better, world.

Much of this fantastic fiction sprung directly from colonial viewpoints of the British Empire. Among the xenophobic byproducts of colonialism in popular culture was the Yellow Peril, the paranoid delusion that Chinese immigrants were plotting to conquer the West. There was certainly crime in Chinatown: there is always crime among the economically underprivileged, but what made the Yellow Peril thrive as a sub-genre of the thriller was the creation of a brilliant, amoral Chinese criminal mastermind in the same fashion as Conan Doyle’s Professor Moriarty and Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola.

Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu became the personification of the Yellow Peril. Without the character’s introduction, the sub-genre would never have prevailed. Fu Manchu took the reading public by storm just before the outbreak of the First World War and remained a bestselling franchise up to the Cold War. Rohmer’s insidious fiend was everywhere: magazines (slicks, not pulps), books, newspaper strips, comic books, radio series, films, the theater, and eventually television.

Holmes and Fu Manchu were certainly among the most influential characters in the first half of the last century. Arthur B. Reeve’s American variation on Holmes, the scientific detective Craig Kennedy was likewise pitted against a variation on Fu Manchu, the diabolical Wu Fang in The Exploits of Elaine (1914), The Romance of Elaine (1915), and The Triumph of Elaine (1915). The Elaine triptych were inspired by the phenomenal success of the 1914 serial, The Perils of Pauline.

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Birthday Reviews: October Index

Birthday Reviews: October Index

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Cover by David A. Hardy
Cover by David A. Hardy

Cover by Hannes Bok
Cover by Hannes Bok

Cover by John Schoenherr
Cover by John Schoenherr

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index
June index
July index
August index
September index

October 1, Donald A. Wollheim: “Blueprint”
October 2, Edward Wellen: “Barbarossa”
October 3, Ray Nelson: “Time Travel for Pedestrians”
October 4, Gary Couzens: “Half-Life”
October 5, Zoran Živković: “The Whisper”
October 6, David Brin: “Just a Hint”

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part Two)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part Two)

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I reached out to some friends to help me with A (Black) Gat in the Hand, as I certainly can’t cover everything and do it all justice. Our latest guest is author and fellow Black Gater, Joe Bonadonna. Last week, Joe delivered an in-depth look at hardboiled adaptations on the silver screen. So, here’s part two!

Hardboiled Film Noir: From Printed Page to Moving Pictures (Part Two)

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” — Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Bonadonna_CainDoubleEDITEDAnd now, on to Raymond Chandler, one of the two writers who inspired my Heroic Fantasy, the other being Fritz Lieber, another pulp magazine maestro. Considered by many to be a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, Chandler had been an oil company executive who turned to writing after he lost his job during the Great Depression.

To me, his prose is pure poetry, his use of simile and metaphor, his imagery and turn of phrase are top notch. His novel, The Big Sleep, was turned into a motion picture in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe. His Lady in the Lake (1947) became an interesting vehicle for Robert Montgomery (the father of Bewitched’s Elizabeth Montgomery.) Farewell, My Lovely was first filmed as Murder, My Sweet (1944), starring Dick Powell. Chandler’s novel, The High Window, was filmed twice: first as Time to Kill (1942) and again in 1947 as The Brasher Doubloon. Chandler also had a lucrative career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

In 1944 he scripted (along with director Billy Wilder) James M. Cain’s masterpiece, Double Indemnity, wrote an original screenplay called The Blue Dahlia (1946), and co-wrote (along with Whitfield Cook and Czenzi Ormonde) the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), which was based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mister Ripley and Ripley’s Game.

 For me, the 1940s also gave us the last of what I consider to be the truly great gangster films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. High Sierra, released in 1941 and based on the novel by W.R. Burnett, was a departure from the usual gangster epic, in that it portrayed a much more sympathetic criminal, Roy Earle (played by Humphrey Bogart.)

Bogart also played the character of Vincent Parry in Dark Passage (1947), which was written for the screen by David Goodis, who adapted his own novel. Another film, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson, was 1948’s Key Largo, the perfect blend of old-school gangster and the new wave of film noir, and it was a tour de force for Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Claire Trevor.

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“What A Wonderful Smell You’ve Discovered”

“What A Wonderful Smell You’ve Discovered”

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Harold_and_Maude_(1971_film)_posterWe all do it. We all have favourite lines that we quote at appropriate – and inappropriate – times. It happens even when you’re out of the house, and sometimes leads to the person you’re with asking “That’s from a movie, isn’t it?” To which the answer is pretty much always, “yup.”

The movie that gets quoted most around our house is the one I was talking about last time: The Princess Bride. Back when I was working as a temp, I used to say “Murdered by pirates is good” every time I left a particular doctor’s office. (When I passed a certain other person in the corridor, I would whistle the witch’s theme from The Wizard of Oz)

When we’re watching Jeopardy, and the contestant misses something we consider an easy one, we shout “Morons!” at the screen. It’s both an accurate representation of our feelings at that moment, and a reference to our favourite movie. It  relieves our feelings of outrage, and it’s fun.

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Gyro, Bazark, Ruffnik, and Oom-a-Gog

Gyro, Bazark, Ruffnik, and Oom-a-Gog

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Oom-a-Gog on TWA

Through the number of television sets in living rooms rose exponentially from 1948 to 1958, programming lagged behind. At first networks provided their affiliates only enough programs to fill what we now call prime time. The rest of the day was filled in piecemeal over time, early morning shows, late-night chat, afternoon soaps and game shows.

Local stations had little choice. They found ways to fill in non-network time. Budgets were ridiculously small, just sufficient to hire a personable young newcomer willing to work cheap with few other props than a desk and a chair and their ingenuity in filling hours of airtime without a script. Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs made their names with innovative and distinctive locals shows before the networks swooped them up. Thirty-year-old Betty White took over a show called Hollywood on Television in 1952. It broadcast five-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week for four years. (To fill up her copious free time she also starred in the local, later syndicated, sitcom Life with Elizabeth.)

Having no idea of what would work and hours to experiment with, local stations tried every type of show they could think of: cooking, gardening, public affairs, fashion. And then for the afterschool crowd, kiddie shows.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part One)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part One)

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I reached out to some friends to help me with A (Black) Gat in the Hand, as I certainly can’t cover everything and do it all justice. Our latest guest is author and fellow Black Gater, Joe Bonadonna. And Joe delivered an in-depth look at hardboiled adaptations on the silver screen. In fact, he covered so much ground, it’s gonna be a two-parter! So, let’s dig in! 

Hardboiled Film Noir: From Printed Page to Moving Pictures (Part One)

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” — Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Prologue

Bonadonna_HardboiledAnthologyCrime does not discriminate. From city streets and slums to quiet suburbia, from the mansions of the rich to the boardrooms of the powerful, crime is alive and well. It can be found in dance halls, beer halls and gambling halls . . . speakeasies, seedy gin joints, smoke-filled pool halls, dive hotels, and wharf-side saloons. Crime exists everywhere, and writers and filmmakers have been telling stories about crime since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

This article deals mainly with American pulp fiction, novels and films, and a few theatrical plays, too. I’m going to give a little background history on the source material for these films and on some of the writers who penned the original stories upon which they were based.

Long ago, long before television came along, the film industry turned to books, magazine stories, theatrical plays, and radio shows for their source material, as well as original screenplays. Movie moguls bought the rights to numerous best-selling novels, mined the pages of pulp magazines, comic books, and even newspaper comic strips.

Many films made during this period were Saturday matinee serials such as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and The Shadow. Dick Tracy was actually given a series of stand-alone films, and of course we had Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan.

Most of these serials were the “comic book” films about pulp fiction superheroes, caped crusaders, masked avengers, and magical crime fighters. Many others films, however, were turned into “programmers,” as they were sometimes called: B-pictures with low budgets, made by up-and-coming directors, and featuring actors who had not yet attained A-list status.

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Stuffed Fables: If Toy Story Were a Role-Playing Board Game

Stuffed Fables: If Toy Story Were a Role-Playing Board Game

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StuffedFablesDemoYou are a stuffed animal, who has watched over and cared for your child for many years. Tonight is a big night, though, as the parents have bought your child a big girl bed. As the lights go out, your child goes to sleep for the first night without the protection of her crib. Little did you know that this was the night you were preparing for … when dark forces of nightmare would reach out for your child, trying to destroy the hope and joy that you cherish within her.

This is the premise of the board game Stuffed Fables, by Plaid Hat Games. Plaid Hat has created a number of exceptional games, including Summoner War and the zombie survival Dead of Winter franchise. Stuffed Fables is designed by Jerry Hawthorne, who is also responsible for Plaid Hat’s Mice and Mystics franchise games, including the spin-off battle game Tail Feathers. Each of the games is great to play and worth an in-depth review of its own, but for now, let’s get focus back on Stuffed Fables.

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The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe

The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe

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oie_164159RYRk8xECHaving set out to discuss The Claw of the Concilator (1981), the second entry in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, I’m completely unsure of what to write. Oh, I can tell you what happened, even how some things happened, but I’m not sure I can tell you why a lot of things happened. It’s probably due to a lack of context as two books remain in the series, but I’m not totally sure about that. Much of the story is conveyed via weird encounters, dreams, memories, fables, and even the text of a play. It’s challenging to piece the parts together to form a linear narrative, let alone anticipate the tale’s direction, which remains nearly as mysterious at the conclusion as at the start.

At the end of the previous book, The Shadow of the Torturer, Severian and his companions were caught in a violent outburst among the crowd of people at the great gate exiting the city Nessus. Severian is now accompanied by Jonas, a man with “a jointed contrivance of steel” for a right hand. The others he traveled with, Dr. Talos, Baldanders, Jolenta, and Dorcas, were lost to him in the chaos. While intent on reaching Thrax to take up his assignment as the town’s executioner, Severian and Jonas still hope to find the others. Severian makes his way serving as itinerant headsman and torturer in several towns along the road. It is in the mining town of Saltus (its mine is the buried ruins of an ancient city) that we find Severian and Jonas as Claw opens.

After he carries out a pair of executions, Severian is lured into danger by Agia. Previously she had colluded in setting him up to be killed and robbed, resulting in her own brother’s execution. She had also stolen the powerful artifact, the Claw of the Conciliator, and hidden it on Severian. Having discovered it, he has begun to realize it can emit a powerful light, heal wounds, and even raise the dead. With it, he is able to survive and overcome the trap set for him.

Unfortunately it can’t keep him from falling into the hands of the rebel leader, Vodalus. This encounter leads to Severian and Jonas signing on with the rebels and being sent to the House Absolute, the secret palace of the Autarch. There he must deliver a message to another agent of the uprising. They will also find their friends there who have been hired to put on a play. Along the way things get extra weird.

By book’s end, Severian has still not reached Thrax. He has, though, explored the House Absolute, one of the coolest works of fantastical architecture. It is covered with lawns and gardens to keep it from be spied from the sky. Miles and miles of tunnels lie below it, some, perhaps, even reaching all the way back to Nessus. Even more mysterious than the secret passages and rooms that seem de rigueur for any self-respecting palace, is the Second House. Instead of just adding more hidden chambers, the Autarch’s mysterious aide, Father Inrie, added an entire new house within the very structure of the House Absolute.

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