Operatic Evil: The 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Operatic Evil: The 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

 

We are now well into autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (according to John Keats) and what’s more, we are well into October, the month of shrieks and gore, according to Prime and Hulu and Netflix and the other streamers, all of which are offering up full slates of horror movies in preparation for the bacchanalia of fright, candy, and cosplay on the 31st. (The Roku collection is called “Stream & Scream”, naturally.)

The horror movie — thanks in large part to those aforementioned streaming services — has apparently never been in better health, at least if we’re measuring nothing more than quantity. Quality is of course an up-and-down, hit-and-miss attribute in any era, but the never-ceasing torrent of “content” (hate that word) simultaneously issuing from so many different “platforms” (another ugly expression) may make it harder than ever to discern the diamonds among the detritus.

But that’s what Black Gate is for, right? We’re here to lift the burden from your tired shoulders and make life easy for you! Therefore, may I suggest for your Halloween season viewing… drumroll, please… a creaky, black-and-white warhorse that’s damn near a hundred years old?

No, I’m not kidding. I am here to seriously assert that the best horror movie you can watch right now is not some newly-minted fright-fest flung fresh from the gaping maw of the Entertainment-Industrial Complex, but the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

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A to Z Reviews: Wheel of Dreams, by Salinda Tyson

A to Z Reviews: Wheel of Dreams, by Salinda Tyson

A to Z Reviews

From 1992 through 1999, Del Rey books published a series of 27 novels under the “Del Rey Discovery” imprint. These books weren’t always first novels (at least three of them were actually the second books in their respective series), but they were all novels by relatively newly published authors, ranging from Nicola Griffith, Mary Rosenbaum, and L. Warren Douglas to Michelle Shirey Crean, Don DeBrandt, and Kevin Teixera. The 24th novel published under the imprint was Salinda Tyson’s fantasy Wheel of Dreams, which appears to have been her only novel, although she began published short stories in the 2010s. Wheel of Dreams, the 40th entry in the A to Z Review series, is also the first novel I’ll be discussing.

Wheel of Dreams opens with Kiera’s father hosting several travelers on an evening that culminates in Keira being sold to one of the travelers, a soldier named Roshannon, to be his wife. This is just the first indication of the level of misogyny which plagues the world in which Keira and Roshannon live. The morning after her forced wedding, Keira flees from Roshannon before he awakes, stealing his clothes so she can travel as a man. Keira’s goal is the city of Cartheon, where her dead mother had told her about when she was growing up.

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Goth Chick News: Scared Sh**less – Now I’ve Seen Everything

Goth Chick News: Scared Sh**less – Now I’ve Seen Everything

This last weekend Black Gate Photog Chris Z, Mrs. Black Gate Photog and I spent an evening doing my favorite Spooky Season activity – visiting a new haunted attraction.

During our pregame dinner we regaled Mrs. BGP with stories of our thrilling BG adventures like driving five hours in a blizzard to cover the Haunted Attractions Association show, doing Fireball shots from the trunk of the car before covering Cedar Point Amusement Park’s Halloweekend, and being freaked out by meeting a low-talking Norman Bates-y guy who made lamps out of old doll heads.

It was no wonder the people at the next table with the kids asked to be moved.

One of the topics was all the truly disturbing B-movie horror films we’ve come across, specifically the ones Chris Z. tried to coerce me into writing about. All the BG staff have heard the lecture from Big Cheese John O. about how we’re family-friendly and no, you can’t cover something called Zombeavers, and what the heck were you thinking trying to post about Zombie Strippers, etc., etc.

Actually, I’m probably the only one who has heard that lecture.

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Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines


September-October 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog
Science Fiction & Fact, and the Summer issue of The Magazine of Fantasy
& Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, NASA, and Mondolithic Studios

The big news this month is the arrival of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, after a nearly 8-month hiatus. In the pages of the new issue, publisher Gordon van Gelder reports that “Ongoing production problems have led us to skip the Spring issue and to switch to a quarterly schedule.” The new issue is cover-dated Summer 2024.

It’s a huge relief to have F&SF back on schedule — and the new issue looks terrific, with new fiction from Albert Chu, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Esther Friesner, Deborah L. Davitt, Phoenix Alexander, and lots more. The September-October issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog don’t disappoint either, with new stories from Naomi Kritzer, James Patrick Kelley, Robert Reed, Alice Towey, Stephanie Feldman, Anita Vijayakumar, Robert R. Chase, Susan Shwartz, Ray Nayler, Adam-Troy Castro, Wil McCarthy, Mar Vincent, Kedrick Brown, Tony Ballantyne, James Van Pelt, Mark W. Teidemann, and lots more.

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Publishing: A Quick Overview

Publishing: A Quick Overview

Image by Jose Antonio Alba from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

I have taken a protracted break from social media for the past fortnight, which has been both a boon and a source of deep frustration for many reasons I will not rant about here. But while it has been an overall win for my mental health, it does mean that I’m very out of the loop when it comes to writerly news, and any gossip and drama happening in that world. Which leaves me with few options for today’s post. Which means, today I’d like to address all the aspiring writers of the readership.

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All My Robert E. Howard Essays (October 2024)

All My Robert E. Howard Essays (October 2024)

I am the in-house mystery guy (that’s how I hoodwinked John O’Neill into giving me a weekly column). Ten years later, he’s still trying to configure the Firewall to keep me from getting up my Monday morning post! I organized the Discovering Robert E. Howard, and Hither Came Conan series’ here at Black Gate. And contributed, of course. That’s the advantage of being in charge of them!

Robert E. Howard is my second-favorite writer (trailing only the terrific John D. MacDonald), and I’ve written over two dozen essays related to him here at Black Gate. With more to come, of course. I posted my second Kirby O’Donnell post in last month, and I’m working on my second spicy tales post.

I came late to Howard. I have loved mythology since grade school. The Iliad remains one of my all-time favorite stories, and I have a copy of Schleimann’s Ilios. That led me to Dungeons and Dragons in middle school, and I know I was reading The Lord of the Rings somewhere around the 8th grade. I was a fantasy fan for life.

I bought the first Ace Conan paperback, but it sat on my shelf, unread. Not sure why. I know I read David C. Smith’s Oron, but not that one. As my son was playing with the Thomas the Train layout in the kids section of Barnes and Noble one day, I started reading the first Dely Rey Conan book. I read that the next time we were there. And I bought it. And Robert E. Howard would move up the ranks of my favorite writers, as I bought more Del Reys.

Conan and El Borak are about even at the top, and then Solomon Kane. But I just continued to like Robert E. Howard, more and more.

Here are all of my own Robert E. Howard-related essays here at Black Gate. A couple are pretty good, I think. Mostly in the first two sections below. Check out a couple, please. By Crom!

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Southern Horror: Pigeons from Hell by Robert E Howard

Southern Horror: Pigeons from Hell by Robert E Howard

“Voodoo!” he muttered. “I’d forgotten about that—I never could think of black magic in connection with the South. To me witchcraft was always associated with old crooked streets in waterfront towns, overhung by gabled roofs that were old when they were hanging witches in Salem; dark musty alleys where black cats and other things might steal at night. Witchcraft always meant the old towns of New England, to me—but all this is more terrible than any New England legend—these somber pines, old deserted houses, lost plantations, mysterious black people, old tales of madness and horror—God, what frightful, ancient terrors there are on this continent fools call ‘young’!”

This exclamation by Griswell, the protagonist of Robert E Howard’s racially fueled horror tale set among the piney woods of the Louisiana-Arkansas border region, always struck me as a bit of a “take that!” to the old gentleman of Providence, HP Lovecraft. I think Howard was on to something as “Pigeons from Hell,” published posthumously in 1938 is a riveting tale of well-earned revenge, voodoo, and the walking dead. Two young travelers from New England decide to spend the night in an abandoned plantation mansion. The balustrade is covered by a flock of pigeons. Its oak door sags on broken hinges, and the interior is dark and dusty. After they fall asleep, they are ensnared by events set in motion many years ago.

“Pigeons” opens with Griswell (no first name), waking up from a troubled sleep on the floor of a dilapidated plantation mansion. He had dreamt of a “vague, shadowy chamber” wherein “three silent shapes hung suspended in a row, and their stillness and their outlines woke chill horror in his soul.” In the corner crouched a “Presence of fear and lunacy.” As his eyes open, he spies something crouching at the top of a flight of stairs.

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Ladies Are Dangerous: Dastardly Damsels, edited by Suzie Lockhart

Ladies Are Dangerous: Dastardly Damsels, edited by Suzie Lockhart

Dastardly Damsels (Crystal Lake Publishing, October 11, 2024)

Dark fiction anthologies are currently very popular and, with a few exceptions, tend to be a medley of horror, fantasy, mild SF or something in between. I don’t like the expression “speculative fiction” but maybe this is an acceptable label.

Some are published exclusively in digital format, which explains why the number of stories included is getting increasingly higher.

The present anthology, for instance, features thirty-two contributions (including a couple of short poems). A distinctive characteristic of this book is that the contributing authors are all female (including the editor), and so are the leading roles in the various tales.

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A to Z Reviews: “The Dybbuk in Love,” by Sonya Taaffe

A to Z Reviews: “The Dybbuk in Love,” by Sonya Taaffe

A to Z Reviews

Over the weeks as I’ve written these reviews, I’ve noted coincidences such as sequential stories that have similarities. Today’s review of a story about Jewish folklore just happens to be the one that falls on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Originally published as a chapbook in 2005, Sonya Taaffe’s “The Dybbuk in Love” is a look at a traditional part of Jewish folklore.  Not as well-known as the golem,  which traditional states was created by Rabbi Judah Loew in sixteenth century Prague, the dybbuk dates to the same period and refers to the soul of a dead person that possesses a living person in order to achieve an unfinished goal.

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Goth Chick News: Frankenstein’s Monster Gets One (Maybe Two) Loving Tributes

Goth Chick News: Frankenstein’s Monster Gets One (Maybe Two) Loving Tributes

Just in time for Spooky Season, I have two bits of exciting news about one of our favorite classic monsters.

For over a year I’ve been talking about Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Netflix. News has been incredibly scarce from the jump, to the point of rumors coming and going that del Toro had shelved the project as he has so many other others (over 30 to be precise).

However, in January quite a lot of very specific information came out about Frankenstein including a cast list, a brief description of project details, and the fact that in March 2022 Netflix optioned the visual representation of Frankenstein, owned by Elizabeth S. Wrightson. This is the imagining of the monster that American artist Bernie Wrightson (1948-2017), Elizabeth’s husband, developed in 1983. This seemed to indicate that del Toro would be delivering a reimagining of Frankenstein rather than simply a retelling of Shelly’s work.

And this is all important as the first exciting announcement comes from our friends at Centipede Press.

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