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Month: October 2011

Weird Tales Summer 2011

Weird Tales Summer 2011

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wt358-170As usual, I’m behind the curve. I was delighted when I first heard that Ann VanderMeer was taking over Weird Tales but never got around to reading an issue under her direction because, well, I just never got around to it.  Alas, now she’s been relegated to the slush pile as a new owner wants to return the magazine back to its pulp Lovecraftan roots (although, the latest news is that the transition is being handled with a little more class than originally reported and it seems a final VanderMeer edited adieu issue is forthcoming).

I’m undoubtedly in the minority here amongst the crew of the good ship Black Gate in not being overly fond of Lovecraft, Howard and all the other pulp writers and am much more inclined to the “New Weird” sort of fiction that VanderMeer has championed.  Just take a look at the cover of the latest issue.  Nothing pulpish here. To my sensibilities, that’s a good thing.

Or, I guess I now have to say, was a good thing.

In any event, since nothing makes you more eager to catch up on your to-do-list than finding out some of the items are about to disappear, herewith my review of the fiction in the next-to-last VanderMeer edited Weird Tales.

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Take a Journey to Strange Worlds

Take a Journey to Strange Worlds

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strange-worldsStrange Worlds, a new anthology of Sword & Planet stories edited and illustrated by Jeff Doten, is now available. And it sure looks like an attractive package.

Containing all original fiction from Charles A. Gramlich, Ken St. Andre, Paul R. McNamee, Charles R. Rutledge, and others, Strange Worlds is fully illustrated with both full-color and black & white art accompanying each tale. Here’s the copy from the back cover:

New worlds and new adventures.

A sword and blaster at your side, the wind in your hair and the ringed moons rising overhead…

Sword and Planet is where it all started, the original space adventures on exotic and perilous worlds. Strange Worlds is the first collection of ALL NEW Sword and Planet adventures in a very long time. Eight stories and one comic, each story with both black and full color illustrations. This is space adventure at it’s (sic) rawest down in the dirt form, so strap on your gear and let’s get going.

Other than the obvious typo, it sounds good to me. According to contributor Paul R. McNamee, editor Doten provided nine color plates and commissioned nine authors to craft a sword-&-planet tale using one of them as inspiration. Doten also added some black & white interiors based on the resulting stories.

Strange Worlds is available from Space Puppet Press for $27 plus $3.75 U.S. shipping. Order today from strangeworldsanthology.com.

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Fifteen – “The Fall of Ming”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Fifteen – “The Fall of Ming”

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flash_3_-_fall_of_mingraymond_flash_fall_ming_cvr“The Fall of Ming” was the fifteenth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between January 19 and June 29, 1941, “The Fall of Ming” picks up the storyline where the fourteenth installment, “The Power Men of Mongo” left off with Flash having reached the gates of Ming’s concentration camp in a daring attempt to rescue Zarkov and the other political prisoners held there. Bulon is just about to assassinate Flash when he is captured by Ming’s guards. The traitor quickly reveals Flash’s hiding place. Flash barely escapes with his life, but later succeeds in infiltrating Ming’s “death patrol.”

Dale makes a full recovery and learns from Rena that Bulon is plotting against Flash. The two girls defy Ergon’s orders and set out to rescue Flash. Dale is captured by Sergeant Mordo, one of Ming’s patrolmen while Rena manages to escape. Dale is sent to the concentration camp, but Flash soon learns of her arrival and sets out to rescue her.

Alex Raymond again pushes the boundaries of 1940s sensibilities in the panel showing the muscular and unattractive female guards stripping Dale of her clothing. Likewise, his efforts to show the brutality of German concentration camps proves effective on an entirely different level. The camp’s warden Terro is depicted as a monocled Aryan monster (admittedly, Mongo is also filled with other politically incorrect caricatures from insidious Asians to traitorous Semitic characters as was common in the pulp fiction of the era). Raymond shows many of the prisoners with shaved heads, half-starved, and regularly beaten by the abusive warden. He also depicts a nubile young woman with her back being broken on a wheel. Don Moore’s script notes that prison cells are designed to prevent inmates from standing straight or being able to sit or lie down in an attempt to drive them mad. Raymond was obviously outraged by the War in Europe and was doing the best he could to draw readers’ attention to it by making Ming’s heinous actions strongly parallel Hitler’s atrocities that were recounted in newspapers of the day.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 7.2 “Hello Cruel World”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 7.2 “Hello Cruel World”

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Dean tries to help Sam deal with his hallucinations.
Dean tries to help Sam deal with his hallucinations.

Following the season 7 premiere, Castiel is taken over by the leviathans that he sucked out of Purgatory. This episode begins with a weakened Castiel-turned-leviathan leaving Dean and Bobby with a promise to deal with them later. He heads out into a lake and dissolves into black cloud of water that erupts out flowing in all directions … right into the local water supply, which allows the leviathans to begin taking over unsuspecting residents.

The vessel of Castiel appears to have not made it through the process, leading me to believe that Misha Collins (the actor who played Castiel) is gone from the show, at least for the foreseeable future. Dean certainly laments him, as he finds his trademark trenchcoat floating in the lake.

Sam is having some problems of his own, of course, as he’s having visions of Lucifer, who’s telling him that he never actually escaped from the cage where he trapped Lucifer and Michael (back at the end of season 5). Instead, Lucifer claims to have been inspiring this delusional post-apocalyptic “escape” as a way of torturing Sam. Dean claims that Lucifer isn’t real, but then that’s also what Lucifer says about Dean, so it’s hardly a compelling argument.

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Goth Chick News: The Doctor Will See You Now… So Run!

Goth Chick News: The Doctor Will See You Now… So Run!

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image003Considering what I get up to in my free time, one would not immediately peg me as squeamish. Rodents? No problem. Dead bodies? Nope! I dissected one in college. I’ve even gone so far as to occasionally baby-sit children who are not yet potty trained and not even flinched.

At least not much anyway.

But even those of us that can claim a stoutness of heart in nearly every situation, the operative word there is “nearly;” because everyone has something that makes their skin crawl.

Now this skeeviness is not to be confused with fear. Fear is saved for terrifying things like clowns. I’m talking about that one thing, rational or not, that makes your stomach roll over and all the blood run out of your face until someone asks you if you need to have a lie down.

For me, this is hospitals.

Before you jump in and try to tell me I’ve got a doctor phobia, I don’t. I’ve never been admitted to a hospital or been seriously ill.

However, I did work in a hospital and the results of this adventure are that even passing someone in the mall wearing a little too much white can make me throw up in my mouth a little.

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Alyx Among the Dandelions: Exploring Joanna Russ and Ray Bradbury

Alyx Among the Dandelions: Exploring Joanna Russ and Ray Bradbury

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My copy looked like this. A far cry from John's vintage original.
My copy looked like this. A far cry from John's vintage original.

I think our book club should have a name. It’s that cool. It consists of our Mighty Robot Overlord John O’Neill, awesomely chill Chicago author Geoff Hyatt, our own Dread Patty Templeton and myself. Four people make for a nicely balanced book club, in my opinion.

Now, we may not meet in the most consistent fashion ever (our two meetings had a wee gap of four months between them), but we do read SPIFFY BOOKS. Or at least… discussable ones.

I mean, we started out with The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, which was written up by Mr. Hyatt back in May. Then we decided to get our claws into some Joanna Russ and vintage Bradbury. Next we’re going to do Fritz Leiber’s Swords against Death and China Mieville’s Iron Council.

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Art of the Genre: A Gaming Family Tree

Art of the Genre: A Gaming Family Tree

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Sir Fleetwood: Basic Edition Fighter, Level 30, Art by Jeff Easley
Sir Fleetwood: Basic Edition Fighter, Level 30, Art by Jeff Easley

I began my journey here at Black Gate telling everyone that I was a gamer, a lifer as I put it, and that’s something I just can’t seem to shake. It all began when I was in junior high school, very early eighties, and with that damnable Red Box… but that isn’t to say that there weren’t thousands of others who did the same things I did concerning the D&D hobby in their school years.

What makes me different is that I still play today, but again, I’m not alone in that either as sites like Dragonsfoot help link like-minded, and yes ‘old’, gamers into an online world where they can still discuss the trials and tribulations of gaming life.

[Note: True story, I was on Dragonsfoot last week and someone asked a question about the module B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. I answered the question and added a bit about the nasty trick in the room in question. Bam! I get jumped all over for not posting a spoiler alert on my answer… for a thirty-year old D&D module! We old gamers take our hobby seriously I guess.]

But back to the point, I salute anyone who can continue a hobby for thirty years. Like most things started in youth most people will simply grow out of such simple passions. For me, however, a deep love of history and art kept me involved in gaming, along with a good deal of chance.

To tell this story, I’m going to provide a history, but for the art side of things I’ve gone to great lengths to recruit all the friends I’ve made in this industry the past two years as a visual guide. To me there is a symbiosis involved, and one cannot truly appreciate the tale without the visual additions, because any good fantasy tale deserves some wondrous illustration.

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Bill Ward’s four-part story “The Box” begins at Pathfinder Tales

Bill Ward’s four-part story “The Box” begins at Pathfinder Tales

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pathfindertalesBlack Gate Reviews Editor Bill Ward is a multi-talented gent.

Not only is he one of the most energetic editors in the field, with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Who’s Who in modern fantasy, but he’s also a very talented writer in his own right.

And Paizo Publishing has given him an opportunity to show off some of that talent by commissioning him to write a story for their Pathfinder Tales Web Fiction line — a weekly presentation of multi-part adventures featuring the exploits of daring denizens of the Pathfinder world.

Bill’s 4-part story is entitled “The Box,” and here’s what he tells us about it:

When a supposedly easy theft goes bad, Kostin Dalackz finds himself caught up in a deadly criminal conspiracy centered on a mysterious, magically locked box. Enlisting the aid of a diverse group of adventurers and rogues, Kostin strikes out to settle accounts — and re-acquire the twice-stolen property. ‘The Box’ is a journey through the seedy underbelly of the city of Magnimar, part of the Pathfinder world setting of Golarion.

Pathfinder Tales Web Fiction are completely free adventure tales that provide a taste of the thrills in Pathfinder Tales novels. Past contributors to their growing online library include Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Ed Greenwood, Elaine Cunningham, Robin D. Laws, Erik Mona, Monte Cook, and many others.

Part I of “The Box” appeared on Wednesday, Sept 28; Part II is scheduled to be posted tomorrow.  The tale awaits you here.

14 Questions for S.M. Stirling

14 Questions for S.M. Stirling

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_dsc2558_2I’ve known S.M. Stirling, or Steve as his friends call him, for ten years now. He and I were in the same writers group in New Mexico, called Critical Mass, and I believe I’ve read exactly eight-five kajillion of his words. A rigorous editor and rewriter of his own work, he’d often dwarf the rest of our submissions for the month. It’s been my privilege to watch from this vantage point as he climbs the sales charts, from a well respected niche writer to now a New York Times bestselling one.

Unfortunately, my move from New Mexico to London ended my time in Critical Mass, but not the friendships or the contact, thanks to the miracles of modern technology. Steve’s career continues to move from strength to strength as he fleshes out his Emberverse series. Set in a future in which some of the laws of physics have taken a vacation, humanity must live without electricity, gunpowder, or even steam power. Any attempt to harness these old technologies falls flat. Magic and mythical visions, however, gain strength with each passing year. To me, this a brilliant fantasy premise that makes use of the science fiction conceit, “it could happen someday”. The characters learn to make castles out of concrete and swords out of scrap metal. SCA members find their fluency in Tolkein Elvish and armor making skills useful in a way they never imagined. Wicca becomes a mainstream religion, and a history professor who once worshipped the despots of old becomes one. Whether you’ve actually made your own chain mail, or merely think that’s a cool idea, you should give his books a try.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Venus, Part 5: “The Wizard of Venus”

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Venus, Part 5: “The Wizard of Venus”

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wizard-of-venus-roy-krenkel-frontpieceThe Venus series ends not with a novel, but a novella. Consequently, this will be the shortest entry in my survey of Burroughs’s last series, but I have appended a wrap-up with my final thoughts on the Venus books as a whole.

Our Saga: The adventures of one Mr. Carson Napier, former stuntman and amateur rocketeer, who tries to get to Mars and ends up on Venus, a.k.a Amtor, instead. There he discovers a lush jungle planet of bizarre creatures and humanoids who have uncovered the secret of longevity. The planet is caught in a battle between the country of Vepaja and the tyrannical Thorists. Carson finds time during his adventuring to fall for Duare, forbidden daughter of a Vepajan king. Carson’s story covers three novels, a volume of connected novellas, and an orphaned novella.

Previous Installments: Pirates of Venus (1932), Lost on Venus (1933), Carson of Venus (1938), Escape on Venus (1941).

Today’s Installment: “The Wizard of Venus” (1964)

The Backstory

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s experiment of writing the previous Venus book as four linked novellas succeeded — commercially, at least — so he forged ahead with a new story in 1941 to start a second quartet. But no magazine purchased “The Wizard of Venus.” ERB moved on to the second story, which he started on 2 December 1941 in his home in Hawaii.

You can see where this is headed.

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