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Month: March 2011

Fantasy Magazine Issue 48 Arrives — Including George R. R. Martin, Tanith Lee and Holly Black

Fantasy Magazine Issue 48 Arrives — Including George R. R. Martin, Tanith Lee and Holly Black

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fantasy-mag-march-2011The March 2011 issue (#48) of the excellent Fantasy magazine is now online.

This issue includes original fiction from George R. R. Martin, Tanith Lee, Holly Black, and Genevieve Valentine. It is the first issue assembled by the new editor, John Joseph Adams.

Nonfiction includes author spotlights, and the articles “Three Real Historical Figures Who Embarked Upon the Hero’s Journey,” by Graeme McMillan, “Five Fantasy Worlds That You Wouldn’t Want to Visit,” by Te Jefferson & J. Corbeau, “From Story to Screen,” by LaShawn Wanak, and an interview with Steven Erikson, conducted by Andrew Bayer.

Each week in March one story and one nonfiction article is posted free online. So far they’ve posted an editorial by John Joseph Adams, and the HTML and podcast version of Genevieve Valentine’s “The Sandal-Bride.”

You can buy the complete issue at any time for just $2.99 USD, or subscribe via Weightless Books. The complete Table of Contents is here.

The cover is by Scott Grimando. David Soyka reviewed Fantasy #2 for us back in 2008.

We Live In Small Worlds

We Live In Small Worlds

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neverknewTraveling around the world in eighty days is not only quite possible, but a leisurely journey. One could, on this trip, stop to smell the roses, perhaps do a little sight-seeing on an island or two, and pursue adventure in remote locations. Really, if one were pressed for time, anyone with a passport and a few plane tickets could circumnavigate the globe in about a week or two, depending on the flight paths of the planes.

Before planes, trains, and automobiles, I wonder at the size of the world. I think of all things not as objects divorced from the shifting perspectives of humanity, singular and solid and weighty, but as objects that are shaped primarily and inextricably from the experience of the object. To me, the moon is a slip of paper always out of reach until the day an astronaut landed upon it, becoming soil and sizable stone. To me, the woods and the wild places of the world are forever out of reach, an imaginary landscape where alien life forms like bears and monkeys inhabit the world according to my television screen, where men with cyclopean-eyed tentacles of cameras and wires carry our hyperreal lens into the forested hills beyond the suburbs.

My apartment, down to its tiniest detail, is in many ways a larger space, to me, than all of the Himalayas. What I experience and what I feel, are my life, and the objects and places that are physically present in that life are the ones that are larger to me than ones in the distant horizon, imagined and mythical in its telling, but not really impactful to me in a tangible way. I live in a world that’s defined by how far I can travel in about half a day. My parents’ house is about half a day away by car and plane. My sister’s house, as well. My fiancée lives about forty minutes by car, and together we explore the landmarks and points of interest between us. This is my whole world.

The point of all this is to say that in writing a world, the experience of that world is tied not to the size and shape of stones, hills, but to the experience of them.

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Monstrous Post on Monsters II: Full Sequence

Monstrous Post on Monsters II: Full Sequence

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See Item 1.
See Item 1.

When I first crawled to the surface to whisper of monsters in your ears — before pinching off those delectable auricles with my first layer of incisors — I said I’d be back in a month with a lowdown on the greatest monsters from the pages of heroic fantasy, maybe even with a Top 10.

Sure, three of your months have passed, but why would a creature of the abyss even give a damn about human timetables? As for a Top 10 — well, to be clear, I regard your arithmetic and integers in equal contempt. In truth there are only two ways in which you matter: either when you’re sustenance (i.e. lunch) or making a complete troublesome nuisance out of yourselves with your flaming swords, silver bullet-shooting AK-47s and your brandishings of various items of religious iconography for the sake of the futile postponement of your inevitable fate (as lunch).

See Item 2.
See Item 2.

As evidence of the innate inferiority of your puny mortal selves, I proffer the fact that your responses to my request to name the titans in the pantheon of monsters were, as your kind says, all over the map. I hypothesized that beyond Grendel and Tolkien the monsters that populate heroic fantasy haven’t been so shiver-some, and indeed most of you extended trembling hands into other subgenres to draw out the denizens that frighten you most. (With one major exception, which I will explain in detail when I’m good and ready.)

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Preview of THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR

Preview of THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR

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the-white-luck-warrior-3It won’t be long now…

R. Scott Bakker’s THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR hits stores on April 14, and I for one am extremely excited. 

Bakker fans have been waiting for this since Feb 2009, when THE JUDGING EYE was published as the first volume of THE ASPECT-EMPEROR series. This new series is itself a sequel to Bakker’s amazing PRINCE OF NOTHING trilogy. Same world, many of the same characters, and a whole lot of epic fantasy excellence. It is a thinking man’s adventure, a cerebral approach to high fantasy, and a journey into metaphysical realms of sorcery and spirituality.

A preview of THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR has been posted right here at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist: http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/03/exclusive-extract-from-r-scott-bakkers.html

Bakker is one of the most original fantastists to come along in quite awhile, and his stylistic prose is amazing in its clarity, attention to detail, and sheer philosophical scope. Here’s a description of the new book:

As Anasûrimbor Kellhus and his Great Ordeal march ever farther into the perilous wastes of the Ancient North, Esmenet finds herself at war with not only the Gods, but her own family as well. Achamian, meanwhile, leads his own ragtag expedition to the legendary ruins of Sauglish, and to a truth he can scarce survive, let alone comprehend. Into this tumult walks the White-Luck Warrior, assassin and messiah both, executing a mission as old as the World’s making ….

The White-Luck Warrior is a story filled with heart-stopping action, devious treachery, grand passion and meticulous detail. It is both a classic quest tale and a high fantasy war story.

As soon as I finish Howard Jones’ THE DESERT OF SOULS, I am all over this! A new Bakker book is always cause for celebration. With these two novels and the impending release of the long-awaited A DANCE WITH DRAGONS from George R. R. Martin, this is one great year for epic fantasy…

Peace!
John

Miscellaneous Musings

Miscellaneous Musings

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Reading The New York Times on-line (something I used to read about people doing in science fiction novels; I still prefer the actual paper version, though my resistance to eventually getting an e-book reader of some kind is slowly crumbling), I came across these two divergent items of interest to those who ponder the stability of our immediate universe:

elliot2-obit-popupAstronomer James Elliot gets a featured obit because he discovered the rings of Uranus (okay, wipe that smirk off your face). What’s also noteworthy is that he apparently did so in a kind of jury-rigged  fashion.  According to the Times obituary:

In 1977, using a telescope in an airplane, Dr. Elliot led a team of Cornell University scientists to observe the planet Uranus when it passed between Earth and a star. Flying at night over a patch of the Indian Ocean where Uranus’s shadow was to be cast, he had the foresight to turn on his equipment more than a half-hour early. This allowed him to record a series of slight dimmings that provided the first evidence of Uranus’s rings…“In the current culture of giant spacecraft missions and multibillion-dollar experiments,” Dr. [Michael] Person said, “he showed that someone dedicated to science with relatively small resources could still make very exciting discoveries.”

12japan-cnd-span4-articlelargeAlso in the news is the tsunami and the largest earthquake in a century or more that hit Japan. Whatever our global technological progress (even while world politics continues to destabilize), we tend to forget just how fragile we are as a species even without our efforts to do ourselves in.  During the Cold War, the end of the world was nuclear.  Then it was terrorism and religious fanatacism.  But, maybe it will end up just being good old Mother Nature.  Time to go reread J.G. Ballard.

Apex Magazine 22 Released

Apex Magazine 22 Released

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apex22Apex continues to mock us by releasing their issues on time.

Their latest includes two works of original fiction, “The Dust and the Red” by Darin Bradley, and “The Speaking Bone” by Kat Howard, as well as a reprint: “Rats” by Veronica Schanoes.

Poetry contributors are Jessica Wick with “Quest,” and the trio of Mike Allen, Sonya Taaffe, and Nicole Kornher-Stace, with  “The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves.”

Apex is edited by popular author and legendary supermodel Catherynne M. Valente.

We last covered Apex with issue 21 and issue 19.

Apex Magazine 22 is sold online for $2.99; it’s also available in Kindle, Nook, and a downloadable format through Smashwords. Previous issues are available through their back issue page.

Why not subscribe and get 12 issues for just $19.99? Support one of the best new fantasy magazines on the market. You know you want to (or as my English teacher would say, you know it is that which you want).

Rediscovering the Ubiquitous Donald F. Glut

Rediscovering the Ubiquitous Donald F. Glut

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frank_kindleDonald F. Glut is best associated with his 1980 novelization of The Empire Strikes Back. Some may recall his name today if they are between the ages of 40 and 45 and the movie was a touchstone of their childhood. I was not yet nine years old when the film was first released and read and re-read the paperback over and over again at a time when Star Wars meant as much to me as The Clone Wars does to my kids. The difference was, at age eight, I already recognized the name Donald F. Glut and knew him for a mysterious individual to be respected and admired because he wrote everything I wanted to read.

I was an avid comic book junkie as a kid and adored classic horror and science fiction films of decades past like many that grew up in the 1970s. Donald F. Glut was not a name like Stan Lee or Roy Thomas or even Len Wein or Marv Wolfman that I associated with specific titles that I eagerly devoured each month. Glut appeared where I least expected to find him – which in his case was nearly everywhere.

1An early 1978 issue of Marvel’s Star Wars, a stray issue of Marvel’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Kull the Conqueror that somehow made it past my Mom and into my hands, an Incredible Hulk mini-storybook that I picked up at Woolworth’s – they all bore his credit as author. It didn’t end with comic books. In those days before the internet, libraries were treasure houses for information and non-fiction books on the Frankenstein Monster or dinosaurs that I pulled off the shelf with trembling hands were also from the pen of the amazing Mr. Glut.

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OF SECRET WORLDS INCREDIBLE: A Psychedelic Journey into Clark Ashton Smith’s Poetic Masterpiece

OF SECRET WORLDS INCREDIBLE: A Psychedelic Journey into Clark Ashton Smith’s Poetic Masterpiece

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smith2What a TRIP…

In the world of epic fantasy, poetry often gets a bad rap. In the world of legendary fantasists, one name that continues to be revered is Clark Ashton Smith. As one of the “big three” WEIRD TALES writers from the 1920s and 30s, Smith gained a reputation that rivaled that of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard for fantastic fiction. His superbly dark fantasies set in realms such as Zothique, Hyperborea, Atlantis, and Averoigne set a new bar for weird fantasy. With his lush language, poetic sensibilities, and lyrical style, he was a word-wizard of the highest caliber. Any scholar of classic fantasy is sure to sing Smith’s praises. He is certainly one of this author’s favorite writers (especially his Tales of Zothique, my favorite of all his story cycles).

However, Smith thought of himself first and foremost as a poet. He wrote weird fiction because it paid well (yes, there was a time when short stories paid well). The key to his dark genius is probably to be found in his thousands of stanzas of verse…his poetry seeped into his weird fiction and made his tales baroque and lyrical. Smith denied the archetype of the conquering hero…his main characters were more likely to meet hideous doom than to defeat the eldritch monsters they encountered. His wizards were diabolical megalomaniacs or hermetic iconoclasts who explored forbidden mysteries and unlocked terrible powers.

Smith’s greatest piece of verse is (arguably) the epic poem entitled THE HASHISH-EATER or THE APOCALYPSE OF EVIL. It is a phantasmagoric tour de force through jeweled realms of fantasy laced with cosmic horror. It is a masterwork of fantasy, but is usually overlooked in favor of his short stories. It is also probably my very favorite poem. Ever.

Rather than attempt to explain why the poem is so magnificent, I thought I’d simply present it here at BLACK GATE, one stanza at a time, with a paragraph of analysis/commentary between each stanza. For those who prefer to read the poem without annotations first, I recommend a visit to my favorite CAS tribute site The Eldritch Dark, where the entire poem is posted without comments or analysis: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/572/the-hashish-eater–or–the-apocalypse-of-evil

You may want to light some candles and put on a stick of incense…I suggest the heady aroma of jasmine…maybe some old Black Sabbath in the background. Now…let us begin our celestial excursion into the depths of darkest fantasy…let us delve without fear into the eerie depths of a gorgeous nightmare…let us travel stanza by stanza through Clark Ashton Smith’s greatest poem….

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Checking in on The Hobbit

Checking in on The Hobbit

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hobbitThere’s a movie version of The Hobbit coming out. You knew that, right? But if you’re like me, it’s not something you keep tabs on every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love all things Tolkien, but movies move at a glacial pace, especially a highly anticipated movie like this one, and especially during pre-production. So I thought it would be interesting to talk a bit about it and update everyone.

So, after The Lord of the Rings movies, there were rumors aplenty that The Hobbit would be filmed as well. I was really psyched about this news. But then I read that Peter Jackson was in a dispute with New Line Cinemas regarding his contract for The Lord of the Rings and, considering that, couldn’t in good conscience agree to speaking about another movie with them until these issues were resolved. Jackson and New Line eventually came to some mutually beneficial agreement. Not only was the lawsuit by Jackson dropped, but he signed on to act as executive producer for The Hobbit film.

Then, early in 2008, I came across some news releases that reported about a new dispute with New Line, this time from the Tolkien estate. The allegation was that to date they hadn’t been paid a single penny for the movies. Wait a minute. What? The movies, which grossed more than the GDP of plenty of countries, haven’t resulted in any money for the Tolkien estate?

From the estate’s release:

The cumulative worldwide gross receipts to date total nearly $6 billion. Notwithstanding the overwhelming financial success of the films, and the fact that the plaintiffs have a gross participation in each of the films, New Line has failed to pay the plaintiffs any portion of the gross profit participation at all.

And this (emphasis mine):

The complaint seeks, among other things, in excess of $150 million in compensatory damages, as well as punitive damages, and a declaration from the Court that the plaintiffs have a right to terminate any further rights New Line may have to the Tolkien works under the agreements, including The Hobbit, due to the serious and material nature of the breach of the agreements.

Now, this is only one side of the story, of course. But being an author myself, and being such a fan, I quickly jumped to the defense of Tolkien. I’d heard about crazy accounting practices on the part of the studios to avoid having to pay royalties, but this? And, as a fanboy, I was pretty miffed that those (allegedly) greedy practices were going to prevent my beloved Hobbit movie from reaching the silver screen.

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Goth Chick News: The Huge Quantities of Latex Gross-ness

Goth Chick News: The Huge Quantities of Latex Gross-ness

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image001Yes, believe it or not, its time once again for the Halloween Costume and Party Show; the largest collection of Hollywood-style horror effects to be found in one place. Needless to say, this annual event causes just about as much activity in the underground offices of Goth Chick News as Halloween itself.

Generally held in Chicago, this year’s event has moved south to The America’s Center in St. Louis, meaning some well-thought-out preparation is in order. Having only rarely left my workspace unattended, sadly I know full well what has happened in the past when I’ve turned my back on the boys of Black Gate. Generally, it involves some manner of carnage being inflicted on my blender, my espresso machine or the barely acceptable unisex bathroom.

There was that one time when the espresso machine and the unisex bathroom ended up together, but I still can’t discuss that without needing a lie down afterwards.

So, with this in mind I will carefully remove all tempting objects out of the office to the trunk of my car  (including the super glue), make a pass through the local coffee shop drive-thru, and then I’m off to my most favorite event of the year.

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