A Far Future Journey Across a Strange Earth: The Song of Phaid the Gambler (Phaid the Gambler/Citizen Phaid) by Mick Farren

A Far Future Journey Across a Strange Earth: The Song of Phaid the Gambler (Phaid the Gambler/Citizen Phaid) by Mick Farren

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The Song of Phaid the Gambler (New English Library, October 1981). Cover by Tim White

Mick Farren (1943-2013) was for a time a sure enough rock star, front man for the Deviants, a sort of proto-punk band in England in the late 1960s. He did a couple solo albums too, then turned to journalism, particularly for the important UK magazine New Musical Express, where he was one of the first to herald the arrival of the official punk movement. And he also began to write fiction, much of it SF — some two dozen novels in all.

The Song of Phaid the Gambler was published in the UK in 1981. It was split in two (sensibly enough, I think, for marketing reasons) for US publication, from Ace in 1986 and 1987 as Phaid the Gambler followed by Citizen Phaid. There are differences between the two versions — I suspect, though I’m not sure, primarily to smooth out the separation into two separate books. I read the US version.

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This is Hanuvar’s Moment: Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land

This is Hanuvar’s Moment: Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land

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Lord of a Shattered Land (Baen Books, August 1, 2023). Cover Art by Dave Seeley

From the beginning, Sword and Sorcery has been an existentialist literature of the outsider. The rogue, the mercenary, the outcast, the criminal: from Conan to Elric, Fafhrd to Corwin of Amber, Jirel of Joiry to Grimnir the Corpse-maker, the S&S protagonist finds themselves at odds with their society, confronted with aggressive meaninglessness and called upon to carve out their own meaning in a chaotic, ever-changing, and often hostile world. This allows them to critique their society, test its values, and even challenge its assumptions. It is an intriguing literary tradition that has been a creative sandbox for several ambitious literary artists.

But this is not how most readers vaguely familiar with the term understand the genre. Sword and Sorcery has a reputation for being puerile and violent male wish-fulfillment fantasy. This stereotype derives from several obscure causes. One major cause might be the 1960s and 70s “Clonan” (Conan + clone) type of Sword and Sorcery, an assembly of several barbarian warriors and their formulaic adventures inspired by the commercial success of the Lancer reprints of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian stories (beginning in 1966 and featuring the famous covers by Frank Frazetta). Though not entirely without entertainment value, this group of works features the adventures of Lin Carter’s “Thongor,” John Jakes’ “Brak the Barbarian,” Gardner F. Fox’s “Kyrik,” and many more.

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New Treasures: Loki’s Ring by Stina Leicht

New Treasures: Loki’s Ring by Stina Leicht

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Loki’s Ring (Saga Press, March 28, 2023). Cover by Tomer Hanuka

Stina Leicht’s previous novels include Persephone Station, And Blue Skies From Pain, and Cold Iron. Loki’s Ring is her first space opera, but I strongly suspect it won’t be her last. Publishers Weekly calls it “Thrilling… a riveting cocktail of high-stakes adventure, philosophical musing, complex family dynamics, and cloak-and-dagger intrigue,” and Locus Online proclaims it “really strong and engaging, sciency and full of adventure.”

Loki’s Tale is the story of Gita Chithra, captain of the Search and Rescue ship The Tempest, who receives a frantic distress call from Ri, the AI she raised like a daughter. Ri is trapped on Loki’s Ring, an alien-constructed world, and when Gita and her crew arrive they discover everyone in the vicinity has fallen victim to a highly contagious biomechanical agent from an illegal mining operation. Things quickly degenerate from there as Gita and her team find themselves up against horrors at every turn.

Mysterious contagions, artificial megastructures, competing corporate entities, shadowy government agencies, spunky AIs, and horrors in the dark of space — this one checks all my boxes. I’ve already cleared the weekend and got my snacks ready.

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Goth Chick News: The FAN EXPO Chicago Was Epic

Goth Chick News: The FAN EXPO Chicago Was Epic

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For the past 13 years, Black Gate photog Chris Z and I have been regulars at the Wizard World Chicago Comic Con, one of the largest conventions we cover each year. However, in August 2021 Wizard World announced they would be selling the convention events business to FAN EXPO HQ, making them the largest comic convention organization across the globe according to Newsarama. Schedule conflicts conspired against us in 2022, but this year we were excited to learn FAN EXPO HQ was extending us press passes so we could finally check out what had changed since the event was sold.

Before I tell you about the awesomeness of this four-day convention, causing widespread FOMO, I’ll let you know that FAN EXPO will be coming to thirteen cities in the US and Canada over the next year, before making its way back to Chicago next August; meaning if you’re in the US there’s likely an upcoming event near you. You can find all those details here.

Now let’s wade in.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Deuces Wild

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Deuces Wild

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The Swordsman II (Hong Kong, 1992)

In our last Cinema of Swords article, we talked about sequels gone wrong, follow-up films to surprise hits that just went off the rails. But sometimes, at the other end of the spectrum, you get sequels done right, movies that take the strengths of the first film in a series and then build and improve on them. As an example of this, I don’t think we can do better than three wuxia films from the early ‘90s, each of which managed to incorporate the good qualities of its predecessor and then exceed them. And it’s no coincidence that all three of these films were produced by that eclectic polymath of Hong Kong cinema, Tsui Hark.

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Reedsy: From the Perspective of an Incorrigible Pantser

Reedsy: From the Perspective of an Incorrigible Pantser

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Good Evenaftermorn, Readers!

Those following along on my own personal blog know that I am waist-deep into a work in progress that I’ve titled The New Haven Incident. It’s a very silly premise – what if a zombie-style plague created hyper-aggressive fairy-types instead of the walking dead? – but I’m loving the characters trapped in this silly hellscape and I’m having an absolute blast writing it. Ordinarily, I don’t really use any tools to write save for a word processor. This time, however, I opted to give one of the many programmes a go to see if it would help my workflow at all. What a better WIP to try it with than something I’m going to offer free on my blog as a serial? So, after a little bit of research, which includes the phrase ‘free’ because I’m a writer and have no money, I settled on Reedsy.com.

Here’s what I think of it thus far.

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A (Black) Gat in Hand – Hammett & Zigzags of Treachery (My Intro)

A (Black) Gat in Hand – Hammett & Zigzags of Treachery (My Intro)

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“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

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I went to Pittsburgh’s Pulp Fest 2023, weekend before last. It was a fun time, with lots of cool chatting. I’ve got some pics and I’ll try to do a post next week. Steeger Books awlays rolls out their Summer releases at Pulp Fest. Volume Two of Rex Sackler (D. L. Champion) is out. I wrote about Sackler here – those stories are SO much fun! And the first Bill Lennox (W. T. Ballard) book is out. Lennox was one of my first essays for this series, and I’m a huge fan.

I’m biased, but I was most excited about the first volume of The Continental Op. I wrote the intro for Zigzags of Treachery, and I’m kicking off the new run with it. If you like it, maybe check out the book. The Continental Op is one of the best private eyes in the genre.

It’s got a terrific cover from Henry C. Murphy. Murphy – who died of cancer at only age 45 – drew the well-known image of Sam Spade used for the first installment of The Maltese Falcon. So, here’s my intro. I’m pretty pleased with it.

Black Mask. Dashiell Hammett. Joseph ‘Cap’ Shaw. Those three names are inextricably linked together as the bedrock of the hardboiled school of mystery fiction. The October 1, 1923, issue of Black Mask included “Arson Plus,” the first story featuring a nameless detective known as The Continental Op.

Earlier that May, Carroll John Daly’s Three Gun Terry Mack had become the first hardboiled dick, and he was followed a month later by Race Williams. The immensely popular Williams was the prototypical gun-slinging Western cowboy who solved every problem with hot lead, but now wearing a suit and transplanted to the urban setting of city streets. Written in heavy-handed, over-the-top prose, Williams relied on guns and massive amounts of testosterone, leaving the city littered with corpses.

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A Fun Hardboiled Ride with Classic Barron Horror: The Wind Began to Howl by Laird Barron

A Fun Hardboiled Ride with Classic Barron Horror: The Wind Began to Howl by Laird Barron

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The Wind Began to Howl (Bad Hand Books, May 16, 2023). Cover by Mayra Fersner

Laird Barron has been one of most exciting authors and one of the freshest voices in horror literature for several years now. His amazing short story collections include The Imago Sequence (2007), Occultation and Other Stories (2010), The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and Other Stories (2013), as well as novels such as The Light Is the Darkness (2012) and the incredibly creepy The Croning (2012). Barron’s output has been prolific and consistently excellent.

However, like many genre writers, I am sure that Barron has sometimes wanted to break out of being “typecast.” And in 2018 that became a possibility when he released his first hardboiled detective novel Blood Standard with major New York publisher Putnam. This was Barron’s first novel about Isaiah Coleridge, an ex-mob enforcer turned private detective.

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New Treasures: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

New Treasures: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

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The Mountain in the Sea (Picador reprint edition, May 30, 2023). Cover by María Jesús Contreras

Ray Nayler has published dozens of short stories in many of the major genre fiction markets. His debut novel The Mountain in the Sea was published in hardcover by MCD last year and nominated for a Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. But I ignored it because it pretty much had the most boring cover for a science fiction novel in 2022, and in my experience that’s often a more reliable sign than major awards.

However, Picador published the trade paperback edition in May of last year. And this version does not have a boring cover. No no no. This version features a giant intelligent octopus, and a bunch of intriguing quotes on the front and back that say things like “Superb” (Bloomberg Businessweek), “Planetary science fiction and a profound new kind of adventure” (Robin Sloan), “A taut exploration of inhuman consciousness” (Publishers Weekly), “A creepy eco-dystopian novel” (Buzzfeed), and “The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence.”

Anytime you mix ‘creepy’ with ‘octopus,’ you have my immediate attention.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1955: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1955: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1955. Cover by Ed Emshwiller

It’s been a while since my last Galaxy review, but the best things come to those who wait. This one is for the January, 1955 issue. The cover is by Ed Emshwiller and is titled “Scene: Milady’s Boudoir.” It’s an eye-catching visual of a futuristic bedroom with devices that could replace services from a salon, and the artwork contains interesting colors and shapes for the furniture and electronics. But I’m not really here to get into the artwork, of course, so let’s move on to the fiction.

“The Tunnel Under the World” by Frederik Pohl — Guy Burckhardt wakes up on June 15th, screaming from a dream. In the dream, he felt an explosion that killed him. He continues through his day as best he can. And the next morning awakes on June 15th again, and once again awakes in terror from a nightmare of dying in an explosion. The horrors of the nightmare are alarming, but the deeper issue is the recurring date.

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