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Month: August 2011

Art of the Genre: An Interview with Stephen Hickman

Art of the Genre: An Interview with Stephen Hickman

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lemurian-princess-254You know, life in LA is never easy, we all just make it look that way. I guess that’s why a few months back I got a rather rude awakening from none other than John Hocking. I’d just gotten back in from completing the Michael Whelan assignment, and considering everything that went into that, I was feeling pretty stoked.

The interview finally goes to press, I pop open the Champaign, and then what happens? Hocking rings me and asks when I’m doing a Stephen Hickman interview. Hmmmm, at that moment I felt like an NFL quarterback who just won the Super Bowl, goes off the field to the locker room to celebrate and has the owner pull him aside and ask, ‘what are you going to do next season that will get us back here?’

I mean come on! Can a guy get a moment to bask in the glory? Well, the answer is no, not here at BG L.A… The next thing I know O’Neill is calling, Kandline sits crying at the reception desk over a failed casting call, and Ryan Harvey won’t stop pestering me that he’s a published fiction writer so he should have the bigger oceanfront office. Yep, business as usual…

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Dorgo the Dowser and Me

Dorgo the Dowser and Me

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mad_shadowsWhen John O’Neill invited me to write article about my collection of sword and sorcery stories, Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, for the Black Gate blog, I was naturally thrilled and honored. I was also somewhat uncertain.

Where do I begin? What should I say?

So I asked myself… why not first tell readers something about your book — the world of Tanyime, the kingdom of Rojahndria, the city of Valdar, and its main character — and then talk a little bit about how it all came to be? Well, here goes.

Mad Shadows is a picaresque novel — six interconnected sword and sorcery tales featuring Dorgo the Dowser, a sort of private eye set in the 14thcentury of my alternate world. It is pulp-fiction, old-school sword and sorcery with a film noir twist. That’s one of the reasons for the subtitle, The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, and the retro look of the cover.

One reason of the reasons Dorgo is known as the Dowser is because he’s a sort of private investigator, searching for clues and answers like someone searching for water with a dowsing rod. The other reason for his epithet is that he actually uses a special kind of dowsing rod in his line of work. There are all kinds of dowsing tools, and each has its own special use or “power.” I even think that dowsing rods may be the inspiration for what we call “magic wands.”

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You Maniacs! You Actually Made Rise of the Planet of the Apes into a Good Movie!

You Maniacs! You Actually Made Rise of the Planet of the Apes into a Good Movie!

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rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-posterRise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Directed by Rupert Wyatt. Starring Andy Serkis, James Franco, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Freida Pinko.

This one may take me a while to process.

At the moment, I know that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a good movie. Dramatic, exciting, technically marvelous, intelligent. But I need more time to figure out if it is a great movie. I don’t mean over a couple of weeks, or even months. This film may require years before I can grasp how it stands in the science-fiction world. It feels possible that Rise of the Planet of the Apes will achieve the status of a movie that people watch over and over again on whatever the top home video device of the day will be, and which will sell perennially in each new “Special Edition” released. Or, it might become a modest good memory, a film people return to occasionally but don’t think about much beyond saying, “That ‘Apes reboot thingy’ was a sort of cool flick. Hey, let’s watch Inception again!”

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a movie that is either good or great, and I won’t feel comfortable placing a ten-dollar chip on either square at the moment. I only know that I enjoyed it more than anything else this summer, fannish Captain America love excepted.

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Adventures Fantastic Reviews Black Gate 15

Adventures Fantastic Reviews Black Gate 15

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bg-15-cover2Over at Adventures Fantastic Keith West, who wrote an open letter to Bud Webster in response to Bud’s first Who? column in BG 15, has reviewed the Warrior Women section of our latest issue:

The stunning cover by Donato Giancola kinda makes the point.  Eight of the twenty-one stories (not counting the excerpt from The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones) are part of this theme and have their own separate table of contents… Some of the stories relating to the issue’s theme stretch the definition of warrior woman pretty far.  Still, it’s not often that I can find eight stories by eight different authors (four men and four women if anyone’s counting) in a single venue that I enjoyed this much.  Usually there’s at least one or two that don’t click with me.  Not here.  Every selection was a winner.

He starts with “The Shuttered Temple” by Jonathan L. Howard:

Featuring the return of his thief for hire, Kyth, who made her first appearance in “The Beautiful Corridor” in BG 13… a clever tale well worth your time, even if it is somewhat darker in tone.  In both stories Kyth is required to survive by her wits, rather than her brawn or skill with a sword….  Mr. Howard has an inventive imagination, and I enjoyed trying to figure out the puzzle of the temple in this one.

And “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” by Sarah Avery:

This has a traditional warrior woman, who is leading an army in revolt against her former kingdom… Ms. Avery did a much better job than many writers would have done with this subject.  The heroine, Stisele, has to face her old mentor on the battlefield, making this a story of greater than expected emotional depth.  I look forward to Stisele’s further adventures.

He has words of praise for “Roundelay” by Paula R. Stiles:

Paula R. Stiles tells the tale of a sorceress who challenges the Queen of Hell for the soul of her husband in “Roundelay”.  It seems the woman’s son died of fever and her husband went in pursuit of the boy’s soul only to end up trapped himself.  The story takes place on a flying ship over an ocean.  There are a couple of supporting characters, and Ms. Stiles does a great job of fleshing them out so that they are more than just stock characters from central casting.

And especially  “Cursing the Weather” by Maria V. Snyder:

Nysa… is probably as far from the sterotypical warrior woman as you can get.  She’s a young girl working in a tavern, trying to earn enough money to buy the medicine needed to keep her dying mother alive.  Then a weather wizard moves in across the street…  I wouldn’t have considered this one to really fit the theme of warrior woman.  In spite of that, I think I enjoyed it the most.  I’m going to be checking out more of Ms. Snyder’s work.

You can find the complete review here, and the complete BG 15 table of contents here.

Being in the Nature of an Anniversary: Ruminations on Fantasy

Being in the Nature of an Anniversary: Ruminations on Fantasy

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Grey MaidenIf I’m counting right, this marks my fifty-second post on Black Gate, which means this is effectively an anniversary. At any rate, it’s a good point to pause and reflect, I think. Writing here’s been a blast, from my first piece about Howden Smith’s collection of historical adventures Grey Maiden, up through last week’s essay on the origin story of Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange. I’m eager to keep going, too; I feel like I’ve gotten better as a writer and critic from posting on this site, and I feel like I’ve begun to understand certain things about the nature of fantasy. I have to thank John O’Neill for inviting me to join his team, and Claire Cooney for her editing work; both John and Claire are accessible and generous with their time, and make posting here easy and fun. I also want to thank all the other bloggers who make this site, I feel, one of the best places on the web for fantasy fans. And especially I want to thank everyone who’s read and commented on my posts over the past year; I’ve been impressed with the level of responses I’ve seen, on my posts and others’, and fascinated by the conversations that’ve developed.

Lately, I find myself coming back to a question I started out with in one of my early columns. Mostly because I think I may actually have begun to figure out a few answers. In a post I wrote by way of an introduction to myself, I mentioned that I wanted to figure out what it was about fantasy that attracted me as a reader, and as a writer. What did it give me, in all its different forms, that no other kind of writing did? I felt that ‘escapism’ was an insufficient answer to explain the power of fantasy; I’d add that ‘wish fulfillment’ didn’t, and doesn’t, seem to cover it, either.

It’s a question that’s begun to seem especially pressing. On June 1 I started an online fantasy serial, The Fell Gard Codices. It’s been a powerful experience, and aesthetically rewarding. There’s no doubt that it takes up a good chunk of time; and yet it feels, paradoxically, liberating. I’m getting back something I couldn’t have gained in any other way.

Is what I’m gaining as a writer the same as what I get from fantasy as a reader? I think so, yes. But just what is it, in either case?

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Jabberwocky 7 & Goblin Fruit Summer 2011

Jabberwocky 7 & Goblin Fruit Summer 2011

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bgfrontjabberMorning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the rye!”

…Dear Mr. Carroll and Ms. Rossetti,

I AM SO SORRY!

But I couldn’t help myself!

I’m just so excited because the summer issues of Jabberwocky and Goblin Fruit are up!

Sincerely,

Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney

P.S. I’ll talk about both issues LOTS if you keep reading! Promise!


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Queen’s Blade: The Bouncing Bosoms

Queen’s Blade: The Bouncing Bosoms

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queene28099s-bladeDid you think the only problem with the 80s animated epic Heavy Metal was that there wasn’t enough nudity?

Do you enjoy old swashbucklers with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone crossing swords, musing that the only way the fight could be any more thrilling would be if they were both teenage girls? And naked?

Do you have a well-thumbed set of Luis Royo art books?

Then you’d probably enjoy the anime series Queen’s Blade. Or, as I like to style it, Bob Guccione’s Highlander. Finally in Blu-Ray!

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The Nightmare Men: “The Diehard”

The Nightmare Men: “The Diehard”

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crerarShiela Crerar, psychic investigator and adventuress, first burst into public view in the pages of The Blue Magazine in 1920 with “The Eyes of Doom”. The obscure creation of the intriguingly enigmatic Ella Scrymsour, Crerar battled ghosts, werewolves and gibbering ghouls of all types from May of 1920 to October of that same year, appearing in a grand total of six stories which vanished into the literary ether when The Blue Magazine folded not long after. Luckily for aficionados of occult sleuths, Ash Tree Press released a lovely collection in 2006, marking the first time these stories were collected or reprinted in any form.

Beginning with the aforementioned “The Eyes of Doom”, in which Crerar confronted the eponymous vengeful spirit, the series progressed with “The Death Vapour”, “The Room of Fear”, “The Phantom Isle”, “The Werewolf of Rannoch”, and “The Wraith of Fergus McGinty”. Unlike her masculine counterparts in the occult detective business, Crerar is a two-fisted phantom fighter, wading into supernatural situations with little more than guts, brains and a distinct lack of fear bolstered by harsh economic necessity. Not for her the remote recordings of Dr. Hesselius or the psychical solutions of John Silence. Instead she pounced willy-nilly on lycanthropes and luminescent manifestations, sinking her teeth into matters both mundane and malevolent with equal determination.

Say hello to Shiela Crerar, the Scottish terrier of the psychic set.

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If All Their Sand Were Pearl: An Interview with Jewelry Artist Ashley Full Stop Brown

If All Their Sand Were Pearl: An Interview with Jewelry Artist Ashley Full Stop Brown

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"Her Uncatchable Orbit
"Her Uncatchable Orbit" (Title from the Rhysling-nominated poem, "Red Engines," by Catherynne M. Valente.)

…And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.

William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

Now, I’m not saying that you all have to leap up and go right now to Ashley Full Stop Brown’s new Etsy site, Woodvine, but, you know, if there’s an anniversary or birthday or milestone to be celebrated (either your own or another’s), and you’re a fantastical sort of person (would you be reading this if you WEREN’T???), and you want a gift that is by its nature gorgeously handcrafted, thoughtful, and full of literary significance, travel no further than your browser!

bgissue24_largeI met Ashley… Let’s see… At WisCon. This year. At Cat Valente’s Fairyland Launch Party. Yes, that’s right.

If I recall aright (I should never write memoir, never), Ashley was wrapping keys in wire and jewels, which were later raffled off as pendants. And we all drooled for those jeweled keys. Oh, didn’t we just? (I did NOT win one, by the way. Alas.) We were having a little open mic that night, right after S.J. Tucker and the Traveling Fates gave us a faboosh concert. (Isn’t the word FABOOSH excellent? I have recently adopted it into my jargon.)

…You remember S.J. Tucker, don’t you? I did this whole long interview thingy with her, back in the Olden Days, before I was Black Gate’s FELL AND REVERED Blog Editrix.

I don’t precisely remember how I asked Ashley if she’d give me an interview for Black Gate Magazine. If people do cool things that have a fantasy bent, I immediately POUNCE! For your benefit, of course, DEAR READERS! Ahem. And ’cause I’m awful curious about PROCESS, you see.

It was at that party-cum-open mic I heard Elizabeth McClellan read her poem, “The Walking Man Goes Looking for the Sons of John: Six Cantos,” this amazing bluesy ghost poem in full Southern twang, recently published in Apex Magazine, Issue 24. Later, in the flurry of emails between Ashley and me, I learned that Ashley had created several pieces in honor of this poem.

It’s as if she takes the goosebumps we all get when reading or listening to something really extraordinary, and then transforms them into wearable art.

So. Without further ado, I give you…

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Tall, Long, Deep, and Wide: Weighing Your Books

Tall, Long, Deep, and Wide: Weighing Your Books

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Max
Great things come in small, lagomorphic packages
I have a confession to make.

Barnes and Noble and I are old friends.  We go way back, went on some double dates back in the day, you know?  So I try to stop in pretty frequently to see how the old boy’s doing.  He’s such a welcoming host I usually don’t leave without a new book or two in hand, even though my To-Be-Read pile is starting to resemble a fortress made of paper bricks and dusty mortar.

My confession is that, when I’m deciding exactly which books are going to accompany me home, I look at all the usual factors: Blurb, cover art, quality of the first page or two, and any positive or negative vibes about book or author I’ve absorbed from the aether.  But I also weigh the book, and surreptitiously pull out a tape measure to check how many inches separate the covers.

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