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Month: August 2010

On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

On Stories: Discovering a kindred spirit in C.S. Lewis

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cs-lewisThough he’s best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was also a prolific essayist and an ardent defender of fantasy literature. In addition to medieval studies (The Allegory of Love) and Christian apologetics (Mere Christianity), Lewis wrote several essays about the enduring appeal of mythopoeic stories, connecting fantasy’s remote, heroic past to its flowering in the early 20th century.

Lewis’ passion and erudition in the mythopoeic comes pouring through in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, a collection of essays and reviews loosely tied around fantasy literature. Lewis’ overarching theme in On Stories is that the best mythopoeic/romance literature (which includes works like E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and H. Rider Haggard’s She) stacks up with the best mainstream literature, and thus deserves to be not only enjoyed, but studied and preserved (I can sense a lot of nodding heads around here, but keep in mind that Lewis wrote these essays in an age when it was heresy to compare fantasy fiction to “real” lit).

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Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

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image004Fresh off my movie frenzy of the last few blog entries, I felt it was time to unplug for a least a week and pick up what looked like the most interesting of the new book releases to find their way first to the Black Gate front office, and then to the underground bunker of Goth Chick News.

With the summer interns finally packing off to their respective institutes of higher learning, I am back to actually getting my mail — as opposed to having it pillaged by a pack of over-hormoned neophytes who snag anything with a girl on the cover. Thus I felt fortunate that this particular new release made it to my mail slot.

On July 27th, prolific author Kelley Armstrong released the 11th book in her Women of the Otherworld series, Waking the Witch. Narrated by twenty-one year old witch Savannah Levine, who readers will recognize from her appearances in prior stories, Savannah is eager to prove herself not only as a sleuth, but as a storyteller in her own right.

And though it is first and foremost a mystery, Waking the Witch is chock full of enough supernatural beings to satisfy the most devout occult enthusiast, though I am almost relieved to say; no vampires to be found. And really, haven’t we all had enough at this point?

Readers like me who haven’t read the prior books, will be intrigued enough by the many hints of multiple back stories to head out in pursuit of the first ten in the series; while devotees will be thrilled with the continuing saga that was born in 2001 with Kelley Armstrong’s first book in the series, Bitten.

I was honored to have recently discussed the books as well as the creativity behind them with Ms Armstrong herself.

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And Gen Con Begins

And Gen Con Begins

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gen-conAfter a hectic morning, my wife and I finally made the 45-minute drive into Indianapolis with our littlest, 8.5-month old Gideon. (The elder, 5-year old Elijah, will be joining us tomorrow.) Parking was crazy, but we found a spot finally and made our trek over to the convention center that is the home to Gen Con, the best four days in gamig (self-proclaimed).

This is the first year that Gen Con has offered free wi-fi access, but it’s not cooperating with my laptop too well, so this will be a short post. A lengthier post, with accompanying pictures will come later in the day, possibly in the evening when I get home to my computer.

In the meantime, follow my Tweets on the event (my iPad TweetDeck App seems to connect fine) at @azjauthor.

Barnes & Noble up for sale

Barnes & Noble up for sale

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barnes-and-noble2When I moved to St. Charles, Illinois, in 1997, one of the things that drew me to the town was the abundance of used bookstores. There were roughly a half-dozen in easy driving distance, and two in walking distance. I spent a lot of happy hours picking through the vintage science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, until Alice finally pulled me away to go look at stoneware or baby clothes.

Those bookstores are now gone. Several factors conspired to destroy the viability of the small-town bookstore in the 1990s, but one of the chief culprits was the arrival of the suburban megabookstores erected by Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Scarcely a decade later, Borders USA narrowly avoided bankruptcy with a round of debt refinancing in 2009 (Borders in the UK was neither so swift nor so lucky, and went belly up last year). And now comes the news that America’s largest chain of high-end bookshops, Barnes & Noble, has put itself up for sale in the latest sign of the turbulent changes in US book retailing in the new age of the iPad and the Kindle.

B&N owns some 720 bookstores across the US.  The announcement comes after a 45% slump in share price over the last year, and a nearly 5% decline in year-over-year sales from its store operations, to $4.3 billion.

It’s hard to drum up too much sympathy for the corporation partly responsible for the death of all those local bookshops, and part of me sees a healthy dose of poetic justice here.  But at the same time, B&N built some of the finest, most attractive, and most well-stocked bookstores I’ve ever seen, and it put one right on my streetcorner. If they vanish, they’ll be dearly missed.

ON WRITING FANTASY: The Plot Thickens

ON WRITING FANTASY: The Plot Thickens

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elric-storm1“Plot is what the characters do
to deal with the situation they are in.”
     — Elizabeth George

“The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.”
     — Christopher Charles Herbert Lehmann-Haupt

“Character is plot, plot is character.”
     — F. Scott Fitzgerald

What happens next?!?

In this third installment of an ongoing series I’d like to talk about the role of “Plot” in Fantasy Fiction. (Previous installments covered Originality and Style.)

On the surface, Plot sounds extremely simple. And it can be. But what is it exactly? Basically, it’s nothing more than What Happens. Plot is a series of events that follow one another in a logical order. Although sometimes that order can be intentionally mixed up to create more dramatic tension (ala Tarantino’s PULP FICTION). There is an art to writing a good plot, to being original, to rising above the recycling of “stock plots” and tired formula.

So what is the secret of writing a great plot? One word: CHARACTER.

Fitzgerald said it best: “Character is plot, plot is character.” This is a sentiment Alan Moore also echoed in his writings about the craft of writing. Another way of saying this is that Characters Will Follow Their Desires. When you have a well-imagined setting all you have to do is drop some well-imagined characters into it and let ’em go. Like scientists dropping mice into a little maze. What do the mice want? The cheese at the end. So they run and run and run until…Voila!…they solve the maze and get the cheese. (Or run themselves to death, if the story is a tragedy.)

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Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

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action-1ABC News is reporting that an American couple in the South, who have asked to remain anonymous, discovered a copy of Action #1 while clearing out their home in preparation for a foreclosure sale. 

It’s not clear if the couple immediately knew what that had.  They did have the presence of mind to contact an expert, Stephen Fishler, who brokered the record-breaking $1.5 million sale of a copy in March of this year.

Action #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, is perhaps the most valuable comic in existence, and certainly one of the rarest. It appeared in June 1938, and while millions of copies were printed, only a handful are known to still exist in good condition.

The comic was part of a stash of old magazines and old comics the couple found as they were searching for boxes in the basement and preparing to move. Although Fishler reports he was initially dubious, he quickly became convinced when the couple texted him a photo.  He took the comic to the San Diego Comic-con in July for a valuation.

The comic was appraised at “Very Good” (5/10 on the strict comic grading scale), which is exceptionally high for a 72 year-old comic.  It is expected to net $250,000 or more when it goes up for auction through ComicConnect on August 27th.

As for the couple, ABC News reports that Fishler had to make a series of calls to the bank to convince them to hold off on the foreclosure while the auction goes forward.

Reports that a house down the street that discovered two dozen copies of Youngblood #1 in the basement was immediately bulldozed, have not yet been confirmed.

Prelude to GenCon 2010…

Prelude to GenCon 2010…

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hollow-earthIt’s that time of year again, when I’ll be slipping into full-on geek mode (as if I ever slip out of geek mode, of course) and reporting on this blog from Gen Con Indy, “The Best Four Days in Gaming.” This year, it’ll just be the best three days for me – Thursday, Friday, and Saturday – and while that won’t be enough time to see everything at GenCon, it’ll definitely be time to see plenty, photograph it, and, who knows, maybe even pulls together a video or two. (No promises on that last one.)

First, let me link back to some of my reports from last year, so that we can see what the big stories were:

Through these posts, you’ll see that I got introduced to a lot of great games last year: Colonial Gothic, Pathfinder, Hollow Earth Expedition, Desolation, Hero Mages, and the visually stunning Shard RPG.

I expect nothing less this year, with the most fun usually coming from the games that I’d never even heard of until I stumbled upon the booth. This year, I’ll also try to get some coverage of the other aspects of Gen Con, such as the writing panels by top fantasy authors and editors.

And let us not forget the abundance of media guests, including the majority of the cast of the gamer-based web television series “The Guild.” (Dare I dream that I might get my DVD copy of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog autographed by Miss Felicia Day?) Actually, now that I think about it … I’ll have to find a way, if the opportunity arises, to present Wil Wheaton with an autographed copy of String Theory for Dummies. If I pull that off, rest assured, a picture will be posted!

Feel free to offer up any other tips on what you’d like to hear about.

Guillermo del Toro’s Grim Grinning Ghosts and Mad Mountains

Guillermo del Toro’s Grim Grinning Ghosts and Mad Mountains

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guillermo-del-toro1The following “news” is at least a week old, but readers rarely head straight to Black Gate to get breaking film news. But two recent announcements from writer-director Guillermo del Toro, one of the great genre artists in the film business right now, are so cosmos-shattering amazing, especially for the sort of person who seeks out Black Gate, that I finally have an excuse to click on that “news” button for the first time on one of my posts and feed you some “elder news.” It’s late, but if you haven’t heard it yet . . . it’s big. It’s cyclopean. It’s 999 pieces of killer.

The fast version: Guillermo del Toro, the genius behind Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, will next be writing and producing a new movie about Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion” theme park attractions, and writing and directing an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s short novel At the Mountains of Madness.

The first piece of news came as a complete surprise to me; the second I knew would happen “some day,” but I didn’t think that meant, well, now. Both announcements hit me where I live in hefty ways. I would move into the Haunted Mansion if I could, and H. P. Lovecraft volumes would line the shelves beneath Nicholas Roerich paintings that stretch to reveal that the Himalayas are built over an alligator-filled lagoon.

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A Review of The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly

A Review of The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly

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ladiesThe Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly
Del Rey (311 pages, $2.95, March 1984)

The first note I made on The Ladies of Mandrigyn was, “too many adjectives!” I also took an immediate dislike to the main character, a mercenary captain who routinely buys and keeps teenage concubines.

The second problem resolved itself nicely during the course of the story, but the adjectives never did let up. If you like spare prose, this is probably not a book for you.

Before I talk about the story, I should mention that I’ve only read this book once. For all my previous reviews, I chose books that I’d read before. If these reviews have a theme, after all, it’s “good books you probably don’t know about,” so I started with some stories I remembered fondly. With this one, I checked to make sure it was the first of a series (the other two are The Witches of Wenshar and The Dark Hand of Magic) and bought it.

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Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

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frank2Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, by Jane Frank
McFarland Publishing Co (534 pages, $148.00, February 2009)

My initial interest in amassing my collection of SF & Fantasy magazines began with the appeal of the cover art.

I jumped on Robert Weinberg’s Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists when it was published in 1988. This work has been virtually alone since then as a definitive coverage of the lives and work of most all of those whose art graced the genre pulps and digests. As with Mike Ashley’s work on the history and accounting of the magazines themselves, Weinberg’s book took front and center on my shelf of core reference books which explain so well to me what I have in my collection.

Reference books of this sort are few, and a work of passion, and as such become updated only with supreme will and dedication, as in the current case of Mike A’s updating of his original 4-volume history of the science fiction magazine. I really hadn’t expected a similar effort to come out of the Art segment of the field. Fortuitously it has now appeared.

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