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Month: January 2011

Another Reason to Love Netflix “Watch Instantly”: Vampire Circus

Another Reason to Love Netflix “Watch Instantly”: Vampire Circus

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vampire-circus1Vampire Circus (1972)
Directed by Robert Young. Starring Adrienne Corri, Laurence Payne, Anthony Higgins, Thorley Walters, John Moulder-Brown, Lalla Ward, Robin Sachs, Lynne Frederick, Richard Owens, David Prowse, Robert Tayman.

It seems that any time I log into Netflix to manipulate my queue to get physical DVDs, I discover more treasures that I can watch with only a click of the mouse button. Sometimes films unavailable on DVD—or any home video format—for many years. Such as Vampire Circus. (It is available on Blu-Ray, but I don’t have that option.)

Vampire Circus is one of the small treasures of 1970s Hammer Horror, and unfortunately few people on this side of the pond have had the opportunity to see it; the movie has remained incredibly elusive in the U.S. When it was released theatrically in the States, the U.S. distributor de-sanguinized it to a PG rating. Netflix has oddly maintained the PG rating on their page for the film, even though the version they have is uncut and contains the copious amount blood and bare breasts that were the marks of Hammer in its latter days.

Hammer Film Productions knew they were losing the youth audience as the decade started. Their dominance in the Anglo-horror cycle through the late 1950s and the first half of the ‘60s weakened as more graphic and contemporary movies edged in on them, making the Gothic Victorian trappings seem quaint. Hammer also lost a number of its best stars, directors, and technical people, and quality slipped as the ‘70s started. After the excellent Taste the Blood of Dracula, the Dracula series never recovered, and the attempt to reboot the Frankenstein series with The Horror of Frankenstein (on my short list for the worst horror movie the studio ever put out) was a disaster.

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Howard Andrew Jones Reviews Traveller RPG Supplements

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews Traveller RPG Supplements

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Spinward Marches_cover.indd

The Traveller RPG was originally released in 1977 as a game system in which players could explore generic space adventure games. (One of the game’s creators, Marc Miller, claims the idea came from wanting to do Dungeons & Dragons in space.)

If you like playing games set in space – whether space opera, hard SF, planetary romance, or space cowboys (you know who you are)  – you might want to check out Traveller‘s flexible system to help supplement your gameplay. You can find out more from their current publisher, Mongoose Publishing, or go to the source of all (questionable) knowledge, Wikipedia.

Today, we’re presenting three reviews from the pages of Black Gate which focus on Traveller materials. Two are of new supplements from Mongoose and the third review is for a CD-ROM containing many supplements and modules from earlier editions of the game.

Enjoy!

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Solitaire Gaming

Solitaire Gaming

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island-of-lost-spells
Another great adventure from Dark City Games.

I blame the whole thing on John O’Neill.

A few years back I asked him about the solo Dark City Games adventures that Andrew Zimmerman Jones and Todd McCaulty had reviewed so favorably for Black Gate. John happens to have a larger game collection than most game stores, so I’d come to the right person.

Solo games were great fun, John told me. “Here’s an extra copy of an old game you’ve never heard of that’s really cool. Go play it.”

That was Barbarian Prince. And yeah, it was pretty nifty (you can try it out yourself with a free download here, along with its sister solitaire product, Star Smuggler).

I started playing and enjoying the products created by Dark City Games, which the rest of the staff and I have continued to review for the magazine.

barbarian-prince3But what are these solitaire games like?

The most obvious analogy is to say that solitaire games are a little like computer adventure games played with paper, with dice and cards taking the place of a computer game’s invisible randomization of results.

My first thought was something along the lines of “how quaint,” but it turns out that while the play experiences are similar, the flavors are slightly different, even if playing them stimulates similar centers of the brain.

It’s like switching off orange pop to try some root beer, or vice versa. You may not drink one or the other exclusively, but they both sure are sweet on a hot day.

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"You mean your only plan is to stand behind a few feet of mealie bags and wait for the attack?"

While playing a solitaire game you may not see any computer graphics, but your imagination will paint some images for you.

And there’s the tactile pleasure of manipulating the counters and looking over the game board and flipping through the booklet and rolling the dice.

Solitaire in no way means that you will get the same game play each time, and to my surprise I’ve discovered that a well designed solo board game has better replay value than many computer games.

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Shrek Forever After

Shrek Forever After

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shrek_4_poster_08-535x800Last week, I discussed my favorite fantasy films of 2010 and realized that, surprisingly, they were overwhelmed by young adult films, and even animated ones. And this isn’t just because I have two young kids, it’s because they’re actually making some of the best films out there for young adults.

Maybe they always have and I just didn’t notice, because I was part of the demographic they were aiming at. But as I approach the age where I’m constitutionally-permitted to run for President, it’s clear that these movies are being made without my thirtysomething self as the intended target … yet somehow they’re resonating very well with me, in ways that the films which are being made for adults don’t seem to.

One film which didn’t make the list was Shrek Forever After, and that was for a simple reason: I hadn’t seen it.

Well, I took care of that late last week … and it certainly needs to be added. I swear, between Shrek Forever After and How to Train Your Dragon, Dreamworks might actually give Pixar a run for their money at the Academy Awards this year. (Although, once again, I must rant: Would it kill Dreamworks to include a digital copy of the film?)

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80s Fantasy and Master of the Five Magics

80s Fantasy and Master of the Five Magics

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Master of the Five MagicsI’ve been thinking lately about fantasy in the 1980s. More specifically, about the wave of fantasy fiction that began to be published in the late 70s, in the wake of The Sword of Shannara and the first Thomas Covenant books, and which over the following years developed into fantasy as we know it now. So far as I can learn, it seems that this was when fantasy really took root as a novel category — that is, when fantasy novels stopped being relatively rare events and began to flourish as a genre. As a result, I think, it was a time when the idea of fantasy broadened; new ideas and forms and voices were tried, even if certain assumptions (like a quasi-medieval-European setting) were often unquestioned. What I wonder is whether certain things tried then and since almost forgotten are in fact worth revisiting.

It sometimes seems like that generation of books is either ignored, or remembered only for its most popular examples — the big sellers, or the series which started then and are still going. I can’t find much thoughtful criticism of 80s fantasy fiction as a whole, or even much discussion about the relevance of the books of that time to contemporary fantasy writing. This is annoying, as I think it increases the possibility of good work slipping through the cracks. I don’t mean to suggest that there’s a mass of neglected masterpieces, but I do suspect that some of those 80s fantasies have elements to them which might be worth re-examining, or which might speak to contemporary ideas in fantasy.

Take, for example, Lyndon Hardy’s three-book sequence Master of the Five Magics, Secret of the Sixth Magic, and Riddle of the Seven Realms.

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Jackson Kuhl Reviews The Birthing House

Jackson Kuhl Reviews The Birthing House

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birthing-house-tpbThe Birthing House
Christopher Ransom
St. Martin’s Press (320 pp, $14.99, August 2009 – August 2010 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Jackson Kuhl

Conrad Harrison is driving through rural Wisconsin when, on a whim, he buys a nineteenth-century house with insurance money received after the death of his estranged father. The building was, Conrad learns, The Birthing House – a hospice where expectant women could deliver their babies. Conrad returns to Los Angeles to pack up his things, his dogs, his wife — the house for him a chance to save his troubled marriage and begin over after a series of career failures. But upon moving to the house, Conrad becomes aware of a lurking presence within and soon discovers…

Well, he doesn’t discover much. His wife departs to attend job training and remains offstage for much of the book, leaving Conrad home alone to be harassed by apparitions and occurrences. There is never a sense of menace; the previous owner lived there some twenty years and while aware of the weirdness, is indifferent to it. That fact by itself results in a haunting minus any mystery or apprehension.

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“Jirel, Ma Joie!” (In Which I Encounter My First C.L. Moore)

“Jirel, Ma Joie!” (In Which I Encounter My First C.L. Moore)

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jirel21Due to an unfortunate (or perhaps I should say, “fortuitous”) comment I let slip in an email, Howard Andrew Jones discovered I had no idea who C.L. Moore was.

My comment was something to the effect of, “C.L. Moore? What did he write?”

I met Howard in person once, about a billion years ago at World Fantasy in Saratoga Springs. I retain no clear picture of him in my head, except from images I’ve gleaned off of his Facebook profile page, but from his quick reply, I could so clearly see the bare patches on his skull where he had just torn out huge clumps of hair in rage and frustration.

But he was quite polite about it all.

In his email, he linked me right to Ryan Harvey’s thorough and passionate overview of Herself, Catherine Lucille Moore, Mighty Sorceress of the Pen, Queen Mother of the First Female Sword-Swinging Spit-Fire Protagonist in Fantasy and Science Fiction. This article I happily read, promising myself I would devour some C.L. Moore books the first chance I got!

And then I promptly forgot all about it.

But Howard Andrew Jones and John O’Neill, undaunted by my insouciance, both earnestly strove to further my education in this, our beloved genre. By hook, crook and conspiracy, they contrived to smuggle me a copy (through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered) of C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry for my birthday.

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Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans

Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans

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speculateSpeculate! is a podcast for writers, readers, and fans, run by Gregory A. Wilson and Bradley P. Beaulieu, two writers of speculative fiction. Speculate! will be sharing podcasts of several different types, including:

  • Fiction Reviews – discussions of novels or short fiction.
  • Author Interviews – interviews or roundtables with some of the great and new voices in speculative fiction.
  • Writing Technique – nuts and bolts discussions of writing technique that stem from the works we’ve reviewed.
  • Artist Interviews – just to shake things up, we thought we’d include some interviews with various artists in the speculative fiction arena.

In general, though we may not always stick to this formula, we’ll be discussing a particular set of short stories or a novel, then we’ll interview the author(s) in the following episode, and will finish up with a show where we get into the more nitty gritty details of writing technique. This allows us to dig deeper into the fiction we’re discussing, and it hopefully allows you, the listener, to be both entertained and informed. We’re always looking for suggestions for improvement, though, so if you have any thoughts on new topics or even authors we might interview, please feel free to discuss in our posts or send us an email through the contact page.

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New Year Short Fiction Roundup

New Year Short Fiction Roundup

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2011-snI’ve contributed book reviews to the SF Site since 1998 (wow, that’s a long time); in fact, it was the first on-line “publication” I wrote for (and, yes, you can end a sentence with a proposition, though, technically, I haven’t).  That’s where I “met” John O’Neill, which explains how I wound up here (for those of you wondering how that could possibly have happened).  You can see a list of all my SF Site reviews here.

My latest review in the January 2010 issue is about a short story collection entitled “She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror. ” Worth checking out for the title alone.

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In other short fiction news,  Strange Horizons now has a regular blog, as well as a slight shift in editorial scheduling, as outlined by new editor-in-chief Niall Harrison.
Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part One: “The Wire Jacket”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part One: “The Wire Jacket”

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devildoctorcassell“The Wire Jacket“ was the first installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story made its debut in Collier’s on November 21, 1914 and was later edited to comprise Chapters 1-3 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.returnfumanchumcbridenast

Rohmer displays an admirable economy of writing with this first sequel to Fu-Manchu. The story opens two years after the events of the original serial with our narrator, Dr. Petrie (his first name is never revealed) enjoying the company of his house guest, Reverend Eltham, the soft-spoken English cleric who 15 years earlier did much to provoke the Boxer Uprising as an intolerant missionary in China.

The two men chat amiably about Nayland Smith, who has returned to his post as Police Commissioner in the British colony of Burma. Petrie hasn’t received a letter from Smith in over two months and attributes it to a love affair gone sour that Smith hinted at in his last letter.

Modern readers may be intrigued by Petrie’s refusal to confirm whether the affair was with a woman or not when asked directly and Eltham’s subsequent remark that Burma makes a mess of a man. Add to it Petrie stating that Smith is never likely to marry now and most readers today will almost certainly conclude that Smith has had a homosexual encounter.

However, it should be noted that Petrie reflects the Edwardian reticence to discuss anything remotely intimate even among friends and his discomfort likely has more to do with Eltham’s probing than any dark secret of Smith’s that he is hiding. Petrie makes mention that Eltham is not at all common for a clergyman and his directness is certainly atypical of English social etiquette then as well as now.

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