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Month: April 2011

Andrew Zimmerman Jones Reviews Shard RPG

Andrew Zimmerman Jones Reviews Shard RPG

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shardI first discovered the Shard RPG at GenCon in 2009. Despite being one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen, I was instantly enthralled by the premise. If the review below wets your appetite, then you can get more information (including a free Welcome Booklet download) from the Shard RPG website.

Shard RPG Basic Compendium

Aaron de Orive and Scott Jones
Shard Studios (352 pages, $39.99, August 2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

One of the pleasures of going to GenCon is to stumble upon some of the small press games, which are like little treasures sprinkled throughout the dealer’s room. The last time I went, one such treasure was Shard, a game with a spark of originality that is rarely found even in the gaming industry.

Don’t get me wrong, I love traditional fantasy settings and even love the permutations where tradition is turned on its ear, such as the way mythical creatures are portrayed in White Wolf’s World of Darkness line.

But still, there’s something to be said for a game that doesn’t rely on mages, elves, vampires, werewolves, and so on as the basis of their originality.

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I Still Don’t Understand the Amulet, But I Love The Secret of NIMH

I Still Don’t Understand the Amulet, But I Love The Secret of NIMH

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secret-of-nimh-theatrical-posterThe Secret of NIMH (1982)
Directed by Don Bluth. Featuring the Voices of Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Strauss, Dom DeLuise, Derek Jacobi, Hermione Baddeley, David Carradine, Arthur Malet, Paul Shenar, Wil Wheaton, Shannon Doherty.

Hello, my name is Ryan Harvey, and apparently all I do here at Black Gate is review animated fantasy films.

With 1982’s The Secret of NIMH now out on a fresh new Blu-ray Disc. . . .

Wait a minute. Seriously, MGM Home Video? (Or Fox, or whoever actually handled this disc.) This is the best you can do with your new release of The Secret of NIMH onto hi-def? Normally, I would wait until the end of a movie review to discuss the quality of a DVD/BD, but you require me upfront to take you behind the shed with a very large paddle. This is shameful. The Secret of NIMH is an acknowledged animated masterpiece, the film responsible for starting the uphill climb from years of “limited animation” doldrums toward the new flowering of the 1990s. This movie taught a generation of viewers what was possible in the medium. It has fans of freakish dedication, such as myself, a scads of websites dedicated to its deconstruction and analysis. And all you can do is slap down whatever print you had on hand and stick on 1080 lines of resolution?

No, no, this is unacceptable. Disney pours immense work into restoring their classics for Blu-ray release, using the best prints possible and cleaning them up so the films look as fresh as they did on the animators’ table. But your current version of The Secret of NIMH looks far worse than it did on theater screens in 1982. I should know, since I was there as a wide-eyed youngling, and recall how the movie blew apart my nine-year-old mind with its motion, depth of imagery, beautiful backgrounds, and bizarre fantasy effects animation. And yet you give us a Blu-ray slathered in scratches and noise with dulled colors and a washed-out palette. This is hardly a step up from the 2007 DVD release. You couldn’t even bother with an interesting popup menu font! Are you aware that this is a classic?

Ah, clearly not.

I think I have that out of my system. Breathe. Breathe. Okay, now I think I can talk about one of the greatest fantasy experiences ever put on animation cels.

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Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

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clarkesworld-55The 55th issue of the Hugo Award-winning online magazine Clarkesworld has now been posted.

Clarkesworld is the brainchild of publisher/editor Neil Clarke, who conceived of the magazine while running his excellent (and sadly now defunct) online bookshop, Clarkesworld Books. The first issue was published in October 2006; since then it has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2009 and 2010, the World Fantasy Award (in 2010), and was a finalist for the 2010 Locus Award for Best Magazine. In 2010 it won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Every issue contains two complete short stories. This issue features “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (also available as a podcast, read by Kate Baker), and “Matchmaker” by Erin M. Hartshorn.

Non-Fiction this issue is Linguistics for the World-Builder by Brit Mandelo, and an interview with science fiction author John Scalzi by Jeremy L. C. Jones.

Clarkesworld is edited by Neil Clarke. The non-fiction editor is Cheryl Morgan. Cover art this issue, “Post-apocalyptic Fisherman,” is by Georgi Markov.

Ebook editions of Clarkesworld are available for $1.99 from Wyrm Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble (scroll to the bottom of the page). This month only the Clarkesworld #54 ebook is only 99 cents at Amazon and B&N.com. Try it out and support one of the finest magazines in the genre!

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #9.

Lord Dunsany and “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth”

Lord Dunsany and “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth”

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Lord DunsanyLord Dunsany’s short story “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth” has been called the first sword-and-sorcery story ever written. That attribution has been contested elsewhere, though. I don’t particularly intend to grapple with the question — it seems to me that genres are defined by conventions, which is to say by expectations held by a reader; whether a story fits a genre therefore depends on whether the conventions it uses are the ones that the individual reader expects, and while many stories use conventions in such standard ways that there’s broad agreement about sort of tale they are, some, like ‘Sacnoth,’ will vary in definition from person to person. But as a story, I think “Sacnoth” is worth discussing. Like most of Dunsany’s early short stories, it’s really quite brilliant.

(You can find it online here, and if you’ve not read it before I strongly urge you to give it a try.)

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Update: Black Gate Back Issue Sale

Update: Black Gate Back Issue Sale

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bg_3_cover_500On Monday I announced a sale on back issues of Black Gate magazine.

Response to the sale has been terrific — thanks to everyone whose purchases have helped me clear away back stock, and get a lot closer to fitting my precious automobile in the garage.

Since Monday I’ve emptied four boxes of back issues, and lost count of how many I’ve packed up to take to the post office.  This afternoon I did a quick inventory count to see what’s left.

We’re virtually sold out of Black Gate 3 (just a handful of copies left), and I opened the last box of Black Gate 4 on Friday. I found another box of Black Gate 5, which brings the total to two boxes. Compared to those three, we have fair stock in all other issues.

For the duration of the sale any two back issues are just $25 (plus shipping and handling). Any three are just $35, and any four just $45. This includes our first issue (regularly $18.95), as well as our double-sized issue 14 (also $18.95). You can buy a complete set of the first four issues, a $65.80 value, for just $45.

For the Table of Contents for all of our back issues, use the navigation bar at left and scroll down to “Back Issues.”

The sale will run for a limited time. Once I can squeeze my Audi into the garage and shut the door, the sale is over.

Just use the form on our subscription page to order. Remember that PDF copies are just $8.95, even for big double issues.  You can also order print versions of both of our 384-page double issues, BG 14 and 15 (combined cover price $37.90, plus $4.50 shipping) for $32.95, shipping included.  We’ll ship BG 14 this week, and send the massive BG 15 right to your door hot-off-the-press later this month.

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Like Remaking Gone With the Wind

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Like Remaking Gone With the Wind

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image001It’s difficult to believe that I’m about to type this, but here goes.

Someone is trying to remake the 1981 masterpiece, Time Bandits.

There are almost more things wrong with that statement than I can fit in one post. But I’ll run down the obvious ones, and you can debate the rest amongst yourselves.

I’m just too distraught.

First, I’m struggling with the concept of this classic being given what Hollywood is euphemistically terming a “reboot.” Let’s be honest, Time Bandits is perfect precisely the way it is. It doesn’t need updating, CGI’ing, or God-forbid, 3D’ing.

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Fantasy Magazine April 2011 Arrives — Including Peter S. Beagle, Jonathan L. Howard, and Carrie Vaughn

Fantasy Magazine April 2011 Arrives — Including Peter S. Beagle, Jonathan L. Howard, and Carrie Vaughn

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fantasy-april2011The April issue of Fantasy magazine, issue 49, has been posted online.

New content is posted weekly at the magazine’s website. There’s plenty to interest Black Gate readers this month, including Kat Howard’s tribute to Choose Your Own Adventure books, the short story “Choose Your Own Adventure” (also available as a podcast) — in which the stakes are literally life and death. In an accompanying non-fiction piece Molly Tanzer talks to Ellen Kushner about her experiences creating the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and Matt Staggs, Jeremiah Tolbert, Esther Inglis-Arkell and others about their experiences reading them.

This issue also includes a reprint by Peter S. Beagle, “The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon;” “House of Gears” by Jonathan L. Howard, author of the Kyth the Taker stories in Black Gate, “The Beautiful Corridor” (BG 13) and “The Shuttered Temple” (BG 15); short story “A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait” by Carrie Vaughn; an interview with N. K. Jemisin; Author Profiles; and articles by Genevieve Valentine and Helen Pilinovsky.

These features will all appear online as the month unfolds; you can also purchase the entire issue immediately as an eBook for just $2.99.

Fantasy is edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Sean Wallace. Their webmaster is Jeremiah Tolbert, whose story “Groob’s Stupid Grubs” appears in Black Gate 15. The cover artist is Max Bertolini.

We last profiled Fantasy in March with issue 48.

Apex Magazine 23 Released

Apex Magazine 23 Released

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apexmag04pubitThe April edition of Apex Magazine boasts what publisher Jason Sizemore terms “the first of our new expanded editions.”

Editor Catherynne M. Valente’s fiction selections include Eugie Foster’s “Biba Jibun” and Michael J. Deluca marks his first Apex debut with “The Eater.” The reprints are Mike Allen’s Nebula Award-nominated “The Button Bin”  and Jennifer Pelland’s Nebula Award-nominated story “Ghosts of New York” from Dark Faith, about which I said:

The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given  our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.

Also included are Rose Lemberg’s poem “Thirteen Principles of Faith”and the history of the Nebula Awards by Michael A. Burstein.

Apex Magazine 23 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. We last profiled Apex with Issue 22.

You can subscribe and get 12 issues for just $19.99.

Ravenwood: The Forgotten Occult Detective

Ravenwood: The Forgotten Occult Detective

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ravenwood-fortier2ravenwood-davis1The phrase “pulp fiction” has been misused long before Quentin Tarantino appropriated it. For the past several decades nearly all genre fiction of the first half of the twentieth century has been considered pulp when in fact many of its bestselling authors (such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sax Rohmer) were published in the better-paying slicks and not the downscale pulps. The writing in the slicks tended to be more polished in sharp contrast to the breakneck pace of the pulps whose authors often hid behind house names and whose primary motivation was packing in as many thrills as possible in each story while still meeting their deadline.

Ravenwood is a typical pulp creation. Nowhere near as successful as Doc Savage or The Shadow, Ravenwood appeared as a support feature in five issues of Secret Agent “X” in 1936. The creation of prolific pulp writer Frederick C. Davis, the character did much to pave the way for the occult crimefighter The Green Lama and was a strong influence on Marvel Comics’ Dr. Strange.

Altus Press collected Davis’ five original pulp stories in a single volume, Ravenwood: The Complete Series published in 2008. More recently, the acclaimed contemporary pulp-specialty publisher Airship 27 revived the character for an anthology of new stories from their talented stable of modern pulp writers. Their Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery was published in 2010.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Artist and Dark Beauty Editor Topher Adam

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Artist and Dark Beauty Editor Topher Adam

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darkbeautyYes, even Goth Chicks sleep with something under their pillows.

It started with a Deady Bear, then a vintage Rocky Horror Picture Show t-shirt and then a Living Dead Doll. But until now, it had never been a magazine.

About a month ago, I became acquainted with Dark Beauty and fell instantly in love. Not in a Johnny-Depp-as-Jack-Sparrow kind of way, but in a David-Bowie-in-jodhpurs-with-a-riding-crop-in-Labyrinth kind of way.

In other words, hopelessly.

A little digging led me to artist extraordinaire and Editor and Chief, Topher Adam who is well on his way to making my “Top 10 Most Interesting of the Underground” for 2011. Ever dreamed of seeing yourself as your favorite literary or movie character? Have a vision of yourself as Tolkien’s Elf King or as the Green Lantern? Topher is here to make your personal fantasy visions come true.

So pull up a leather chair and meet Mr Topher Adam.…

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