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Year: 2012

New Treasures: Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson

New Treasures: Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson

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alif-the-unseenI’ve been sitting impatiently on this one for months. I got an advance review copy in March, and it looked great.

But publicists get a little grumpy if you spill the beans on a new release too soon before the official on-sale date, and since it’s publicists — the finest people in the world — who send Black Gate fantasy books by the crateload every year, we like to keep them happy. So I kept my mouth shut.

The book in question is Alif the Unseen, the first novel by acclaimed comics writer  G. Willow Wilson (Cairo, Air). It officially went on sale July 3rd, and I am here to tell you about it. Let’s start with the flap copy:

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients — dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups — from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif — the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the State’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God,” the head of State security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.

Intrepid Black Gate investigative journalist Emily Mah has been writing a multi-part series on The Best of Modern Arabian Fantasy (in our Interview section), and this would fit right in. Alif the Unseen has received rave blurbs from some of America’s most respected fantasy writers, including Neil Gaiman, Matt Ruff, Jack Womack, and Gregoor Maguire. Here’s what Janet Maslin at The New York Times called it:

A Harry Potter-ish action adventure romance [that] unfolds against the backdrop of the Arab Spring… A bookload of wizardry and glee.

Alif the Unseen is 433 pages in hardcover from Grove Press. The cover price is $25 ($11.99 for the Kindle version), and you can read the first chapter online here.

The Steel Seraglio: a Review

The Steel Seraglio: a Review

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The Steel SeraglioThe Steel Seraglio
Mike, Linda, and Louise Carey
ChiZine Publications (424 pp, $15.95 US/$17.95 CAD, trade paperback)
Reviewed by Matthew Surridge

The Steel Seraglio is a fantasy novel by husband/wife/daughter trio Mike, Linda, and Louise Carey, put out by ChiZine Publications. There’s also a chapbook set in the same world (which you might be able to get if you order the book directly from ChiZine). It’s a story set in a pseudo-historical Arabia, in a desert of city-states ruled by sultans. When religious zealots stage a revolution in the city of Bessa, a chain of events is set in motion that results in the former Sultan’s former harem of 365 women banding together to take the city back, and installing their own enlightened rule. The book tells the story of the women, and the rise and fall of the city they make.

I thought it was a decent adventure novel with some nice touches; good enough, and the touches nice enough, that I wished it had been better — either a better adventure, or a better novel. I think the book narrowly fails to achieve all the grand effects that it aims for, mostly due to staging and logic that don’t feel entirely thought-through. And I think that what is most interesting about the book, specifically its narrative structure and use of narrative to establish character, is not particularly well-served by the epic adventure format. I also found I had some qualms about the setting, or at least how the setting was developed in the course of the story.

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Blogging Charlton Comics’ Adventures of the Man-God, Hercules – Part Two

Blogging Charlton Comics’ Adventures of the Man-God, Hercules – Part Two

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hercules-8Joe Gill modified Denny O’Neil’s take on the Labors of Hercules when he succeeded him as scriptwriter on Charlton Comics’ Adventures of the Man-God, Hercules in 1968. Gill took the character of Eurystheus that O’Neil referred to as a judiciary member of the pantheon of gods on Mount Olympus and developed the character as a mortal king who is Hercules’ cousin on his mother’s side (Gill actually referred to him as Hercules’ uncle in his first appearance). By Issue #8, it was established that Hercules turns to King Eurystheus to receive each assignment in the remaining five labors he must complete before he is accepted among the gods of Olympus. Eurystheus is portrayed as a mortal puppet of Hercules’ vindictive stepmother Hera, the queen of the gods.

Issue #8, “The Boar” sees Eurystheus set Hercules the seemingly impossible task of capturing the Great Boar of Eurymanthus without injuring the beast. Upon scaling Mount Eurymanthus, Hercules is set upon by yet another pteranodon (a favorite of artist Sam Glanzman, apparently). Perhaps cognizant of the winged reptile’s repetition, Joe Gill provides the explanation that the pteranodons are conjured up from Earth’s prehistoric past by Hera. Zeus berates his wife for this unnecessary persecution of his son. Hercules is warned off his quest by the nearby villagers, but ignores their caution and scales to the top of the mountain and encounters the great boar itself. The man-god tames the beast with relative ease and rides it down the mountain (admittedly, a great visual) to present it to King Eurystheus. The storyline is very slight compared to the previous labors (clocking in at only 12 pages).

The rest of the issue is taken up with a supporting feature, “The Legend of Hercules,” which depicts the man-god’s childhood in the home of his mortal mother, Alcmena. The story opens on the domestic life of the infant Hercules and his mortal half-brother, Iphicles. The child Hercules first shows his incredible strength when he slays a pair of serpents that crawl into the toddlers’ crib one night. The script reveals that the serpents were sent by Hera in her jealousy. While closer to the mythological depiction of Hercules’ origin, the incident contradicts the code-approved storyline from previous issues that Alcmena and Zeus were married before Zeus and Hera wed. This was not, of course, Denny O’Neil’s original intent, but Dick Giordano enforced the Charlton Comics editorial policy which prevented dealing with out of wedlock pregnancy as much as it limited any sexual suggestion. This certainly made the faithful depiction of a series inspired by Greek mythology capitalizing on the booming sword & sorcery market challenging to say the least.

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Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens”

Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens”

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universe-10I’ve been reading a lot of short fiction recently. It started as I was putting away a collection of Worlds of IF magazines and dawdled over the April 1970 issue, with Ron Goulart’s tale of casual wife-swapping, “Swap,” which I talked about here. The same thing happened with Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild” (in the June 1984 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine), and then George R.R. Martin’s “Nightflyers” (Analog, April 1980). And my wife wonders why it takes me two hours to put away a dozen magazines.

It happened again today, this time with Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens,” which also originally appeared in 1980, in the tenth volume of Terry Carr’s long-running Universe anthology series. I read it in Donald A. Wollheim’s The 1981 Annual World’s Best SF, where it had this introduction:

Science Fiction is subject to many definitions and there are some that are so specific that they might exclude this unusual story. But if science fiction deals with the probable that is just beyond the newspapers or with things that might have happened — even though they did not shake the world — then this is truly science fiction.

“The Ugly Chickens” won the Nebula Award for best novelette, and the World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. There are times when I look around at my collection of science fiction and fantasy, and wonder if I’ve wasted my time gathering such a concentration of work in relatively few genres. Then I read something like Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens.” If even a fraction of the unread books in my collection have the charm and wonder of this story, then I’m certain I’ll never grow tired of it.

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New Treasures: Best New Werewolf Tales, edited by Carolina Smart

New Treasures: Best New Werewolf Tales, edited by Carolina Smart

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best-new-werewolf-tales1It’s Thursday, so I must be Goth Chick. Sadly, I am not. Last night Goth Chick received reports of a possible sighting of the Jersey Devil in Skokie, Illinois, and she immediately leaped in the Gothmobile to investigate. At the moment, she’s diligently exploring the back alleys of the Chicago suburbs with an EMF detector and a Piña colada.

Frankly it all sounds dubious to me, but maybe that’s because I’m left holding the bag for the Thursday blog entry. “Uphold my fine journalistic standards — I will countenance nothing less,” said her last text. Had to look up “countenance,” which didn’t bode well.

Luckily, Toronto-based Books of the Dead Press came to my rescue with a well-timed announcement this week, promoting six new releases.

Founded in 2009, Books of the Dead Press is one of the most active small presses around. They’ve already released eight books this year; some of their recent titles include Berserk by Tim Lebbon; Husk by Matt Hults; Gary Brandner’s The Howling Trilogy, Pain Cages by Paul Kane, Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown, and the Zombie Kong anthology, edited by James Roy Daley.

But the title that really grabbed my attention was Best New Werewolf Tales, Volume 1, edited by Carolina Smart, which was released in paperback and Kindle format in May. Following on the heels of their popular anthologies Best New Zombie Tales and Best New Vampire Tales, this one contains “more than 100,000 words of ferocious, slavering, hairy horror” from Jonathan Maberry, Michael Laimo, John Everson, James Newman, David Niall Wilson, and many others — 20 short stories altogether.

The fiction appears to be all new (not reprints). The cover art is by Carl Graves. You can find the complete Table of Contents at the Books of the Dead website here.

“Ferocious, slavering, hairy horror.” That’s gotta be better than whatever Goth Chick finds in Skokie, no matter how good that EMF detector is. I tell you, good things come to he who waits. And who patiently checks his e-mail.

Best New Werewolf Tales is available for $9.99 in paperback and $3.49 in Kindle format. You can purchase both at their online store.

Vintage Treasures: Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

Vintage Treasures: Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

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bug-eyed-monsters2Last week I posted a brief article on Damon Knight’s landmark SF anthology, A Science Fiction Argosy (and I mean that in the literal sense — it’s so large that for years I used it as a visual landmark when scanning my bookshelves.) The first response in the Comments Section was from the esteemed John C. Hocking, who wrote:

Some years back I read the anthology Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry Malzberg, which leads off with Knight’s story “Stranger Station.”

This story knocked me out of my chair.

It is not a clever punch-line kind of tale, it’s a bravura piece of serious space operatic sf with strong characters, a vivid setting, genuinely alien horror, and a plot that manages to make the outcome of a single character’s dire situation a crux of cosmic importance without pushing the whole tale into wide-eyed melodrama.

The other stories in the collection were worth reading, but Knight’s tale put them deep in the shade.

So naturally I had to dig up my copy of Bug-Eyed Monsters, a 1980 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich trade paperback, to see what all the fuss was about. First thing I noticed was the Ruby Mazur cover. Mazur, who created over 3,000 album covers, was one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll cover artists of the 70s and 80s. His work here is serviceable but not particularly attractive, with a rather drooly BEM lording it all over a pulpy alien landscape.

But we’re here to talk about “Stranger Station,” not 70s cover art, and Mr. Hocking is right that Damon Knight’s story, which first appeared in 1956 in F&SF, is a fine piece. The editors give it pride of place as first in the anthology, calling it “a virtuoso performance — arguably, one of the two finest BEM stories ever written (the other being, of course, H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.)”

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Writing of Arabia

Writing of Arabia

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lionI get more and more e-mails about the sources I use to write about ancient Arabia, and questions about those sources come up more and more frequently every time I turn up on a convention panel. As a result, I took a long post live on my blog today about one of my favorite books, a historical memoir from the 11th century. When I talk about any of my sources in person I can only tell you how good I think it is. One of the benefits about putting my thoughts in writing is that I can provide examples from the text to prove my point.

So here, follow this link to read some truly great material from an 11th century warrior. Read on for tales of hunting, warfare, and loyal animals.

Purely by chance, another Black Gate writer took a post live about a graphic novel related to ancient Arabia over on his own web post this morning. Follow this link for more details about a stunning graphic novel known as the New Tales of the Arabian Nights over at the web site of John R. Fultz.

And  here’s a final link to a longer essay I penned about other great texts detailing old Arabia and its literature. These books deserve a far wider audience.

Howard Andrew Jones is the author of the historical fantasy novels The Desert of Souls, and the forthcoming The Bones of the Old Ones, as well as the related short story collection The Waters of Eternity, and the Paizo Pathfinder novel Plague of Shadows. You can keep up with him at his website, www.howardandrewjones.com, and keep up with him on Twitter or follow his occasional meanderings on Facebook.

Art of the Genre: The Art of Calvin and Hobbes

Art of the Genre: The Art of Calvin and Hobbes

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18I’m on vacation, but I just can’t seem to take a break from writing about something art related, even though I’m technically ‘off duty.’ Currently, I’m on my first leg, the dreaded trip from L.A. to Vinalhaven Maine, a small island off the coast of the mainland.

Now that is a journey! Up at 3 AM, on a plane at LAX at 6:30 AM, a layover in Chicago at noon, then on to Manchester, New Hampshire, at 5 PM, then into a rental car for a 4 hour drive up the coast to Rockland, Maine, where I get a room at an inn to await the 7 AM ferry to the island the next day…

Yeah, it was kind of rough, but once entrenched in a cabin overlooking the Atlantic with a bit of wifi and no phone service, relaxation can be had. So I now sit on the porch, watching the 15 foot tides roll in and think about one of the more brilliant moments of the trip thus far.

Yesterday, as my six-year old son, Ash, looked through the various books stowed in the cabin’s bookshelves he pulled forth a tattered copy of The Essential Calvin & Hobbes. It had been many years since I’d read one of these Bill Waterson classics, but as I saw him pull the book out, I was filled with a feeling of nostalgia.

My son, as it turns out, is the same age as Calvin, and is a single child, although instead of a pet tiger he has a plethora of plush Pokemon at his service. Nonetheless, he’s now reading fervently, has a bit of a precocious streak, and instantly fell in love with the book that is admittedly almost too large for him to read.

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July/August Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

July/August Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

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fantasy-and-science-ficiton-july-aug-2012Nice creepy cover on the new issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This one is by Ed Valigursky; click for a bigger version. Great line of writers this issue too, including Kate Wilhelm, Eleanor Arnason, Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Hughes, Rachel Pollack, Albert E. Cowdrey, and many others. Check out the TOC:

NOVELLAS

  • “The Fullness Of Time” – Kate Wilhelm

NOVELETS

  • “Wearaway and Flambeau” – Matthew Hughes
  • “The Afflicted” – Matthew Johnson
  • “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls” – Rachel Pollack

SHORT STORIES

  • “Hartmut’s World” – Albert E. Cowdrey
  • “The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times” – Eleanor Arnason
  • “A Natural History of Autumn” – Jeffrey Ford
  • “Wizard” – Michaele Jordan
  • “Real Faces” – Ken Liu

The tireless Lois Tilton has already reviewed the issue in detail at Locus Online, calling this one “A superior issue… most notably a fine novella by Kate Wilhelm and a short anthropological tale by Eleanor Arneson.” Here’s what she says about Matthew Hughes’ “Wearaway and Flambeau,” a far-future tale of Raffalon the thief:

This time, Raffalon has been nabbed in the act of breaking into the well-warded stronghold of the wizard Hurdevant the Stringent. The wizard employs an experimental punitive spell, which, fortunately for the thief, goes awry in a manner that offers unexpected possibilities. Entertaining stuff. The editorial blurb claims that this one is set in the author’s far-future universe, but it seems like a typical fantasy world of the sort with wizards and thieves.

The cover price is $7.50, for a thick 258 pages. Additional free content at the F&SF website includes book and film reviews by Charles de Lint, Michelle West, and Lucius Shepard; a Science column, “Quicksand and Ketchup,” by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty; and the “Curiosities” column by the talented Bud Webster. We last covered F&SF here with the May/June issue.

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Amazing Spider-Man

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Amazing Spider-Man

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amazing-spider-man-posterWith directing great superheroes comes great responsibility. I wish director Marc Webb knew this. Or perhaps directing superheroics on screen isn’t something the man is capable of.

Webb’s re-boot of Sony’s Spider-Man franchise is not an utter elevated train-wreck. If all you want is a bit of comic book action during the summer between The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, then The Amazing Spider-Man is adequate to the task. I certainly can’t give it a worse rating than something like Battleship or Dark Shadows. It’s not a Batman and Robin. There’s that.

But as a Spider-Man film, and me speaking as a Spider-Fan, the The Amazing Spider-Man is a huge disappointment. It’s even a bit depressing. I’m glad I have the Sam Raimi films to bolster me, knowing that somebody has already done Spider-Man right, because otherwise this very unnecessary (except for keeping a lock on film rights) re-do of Spidey’s origin would be… okay, an elevated train-wreck. And to hear Sony, and even some fans, try to do revisionist history on the Raimi films as if they were off the mark — that’s painful. Yes, Spider-Man 3 had many problems, most of which were forced on Raimi by the studio, but it is still a better “Spider-Man film” than this one. The first Raimi film is a well-crafted, dead-on origin story, and Spider-Man 2 is just a goddamn great film. Raimi balanced Spidey’s drama with the crisp fun of his comics.

The Amazing Spider-Man is an overall mess, but there are two major problems that injure it. Before getting into that, here’s a fast rundown on its many other problems:

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