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Year: 2013

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in April

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in April

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Pressure mounts, but Tales was my most successful and well received novel, so I'm still feeling the love.We presented nearly 100 new articles on the Black Gate blog last month, covering virtually every aspect of fantasy — from Kickstarter to Red Sonja , Space: 1999 to exotic food.

Why do we do it? Here’s a clue: it’s not the great pay, or the breezy offices of our rooftop headquarters here in downtown Chicago. It’s not the allure of maverick journalism, and the way publishers tremble when we walk into a room. It’s not the travel, or the lousy expense accounts, or the drunken nights playing poker with George R.R. Martin and Gordon van Gelder (man, that guy can bluff). It’s not the endless review copies of the latest fantasy releases, or the —

Hold up there, Sparky. Review copies? Ummm, those are pretty cool. Yeah, free books never get old. Forget what I just said. We pretty much do it for the freebies.

Plus, we do it for you, our fans. For the great letters to send us, and the thoughtful comments, and those books you mail us with sticky notes that say, “Just thought you’d like this!” Seriously, you guys rock. Also, free books. Those are great too.

Here’s what the Black Gate supercomputer tells us were the 50 most popular articles we published last month. Enjoy. And keep those comments and mail coming!

  1. Art of the Genre: The Joy and Pain of Kickstarter [and How Backed Projects Still Fail]
  2. An Open Letter from Jeremy Lassen at Night Shade Books
  3. Vintage Treasures: Chaosium’s Thieves World
  4. Red Sonja: The Novels
  5. Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Writing Fantasy Heroes
  6. Night Shade Attempts to Avoid Bankruptcy with a Sale to Skyhorse Publishing
  7. The Company That Time Will Never Forget: A Visit to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Incorporated
  8. Red Sonja: The Movie 
  9. Are You Going to Eat That?
  10. Vintage Treasures: The People of the Black Circle by Robert E. Howard 

     

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Or Should That Be Teaching Versus Fantasy Literature?

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Or Should That Be Teaching Versus Fantasy Literature?

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The Woman Upstairs Claire MessudTeaching and writing can feed one another.

My students needed me to articulate how I work, so I had to examine my own processes. My writing processes didn’t serve all my students well, so I had to learn other writing processes, ones I might never have considered for myself otherwise, deeply enough to help my students try them.

As a student, I could get away with not revising, until about three years into grad school. My students couldn’t get away with that, and I learned to revise from watching their successes when they followed the advice I’d been hearing all along, and passed on to them, but had never put to use.

Above all, my students made me fit, as a human being, to write fiction. All the characters I tried to write when I was in my teens and in college were either my own doubles or cardboard cut-outs.

Only when I had to think my way into my students’ experiences and thought processes did I develop the imaginative empathy to write a character fundamentally unlike myself. There are days when it’s hard to remember all that. It is worth remembering.

Teaching and writing can tear at one another.

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My Youth Was Delivered Yesterday: AD&D 2nd Edition Re-Released

My Youth Was Delivered Yesterday: AD&D 2nd Edition Re-Released

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I was introduced to roleplaying in as a teenager in the early 90’s, and the game that did it was 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D). However, I’ve never had a real strong sense of nostalgia, so years ago – when I switched over to D&D 3rd edition – I got rid of my old 2nd edition books.

Since then, I’ve occasionally missed the streamlined simplicity of 2nd edition and lamented the loss of these books.

So imagine my pleasure when I received a package yesterday from Wizards of the Coast containing review copies of the three core 2nd edition rulebooks, repackaged and re-released for a new generation:

ADDpix

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Fantasy Face-Off: Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis vs. Robert E Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian

Fantasy Face-Off: Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis vs. Robert E Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian

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Weird Tales, July 1938, featuring Elak of Atlantis in "Spawn of Dagon"
Weird Tales, July 1938, featuring Elak of Atlantis in “Spawn of Dagon”

Now, before I start actually looking at these two heroes, I should probably explain why I’m doing what I’m doing.

You see, when Robert E Howard — creator of the sword and sorcery sub-genre, bare-fisted boxer, and all-round amazing writer — killed himself at the age of thirty, he left a pretty substantial gap in the pulp fiction market, one that was very hard to fill, but one that had to be filled. So Henry Kuttner, a fellow writer more famous for his science fiction than his fantasy, was called in to take up the sword and sorcery mantle — and stumbled in doing so.

The blurb describes the Elak stories as “exciting tales that helped establish a genre,” and “a major step in the evolution of the genre.” (I read Gateways kindle collection.)

Yeah that’s… an overstatement, not much more than a writer’s hyperbole. To be frank, the Elak tales are most easily comparable to a Saturday morning cartoon or a SyFy B-movie, what with all the hackneyed prose and clichéd characters.

Kuttner makes no attempt to advance the formula that Howard established, no attempt to evolve the genre as the over-enthusiastic blurb suggests. What you get instead is a readable adventure, entertaining, but not much more; it’s plot and prose, its action and characters merging with all the other yarns you’ve read and books you’ve consumed.

But then perhaps that’s the point. Pulp is meant to entertain; it’s not The Lord of the Rings or The Game of Thrones, it’s not supposed to make you think or take sides, not intended to evolve anything. Just to entertain.

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The Top 15 Black Gate Fiction Posts in April

The Top 15 Black Gate Fiction Posts in April

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Nina Kiriki Hoffman-smallNina Kiriki Hoffman’s tale of a rest stop gone horribly wrong, “Truck Stop Luck,” was our top fiction post last month.

Coming in a close second was Ryan Harvey’s sword & sorcery tale of intrigue and dinosaurs, “The Sorrowless Thief,” followed by Aaron Bradford Starr’s 35,000-word epic fantasy mystery “The Sealord’s Successor,” in which Gallery Hunters Gloren Avericci and Yr Neh find themselves battling a deadly conspiracy centered around a very peculiar painting. Also making the list were terrific stories by Emily Mah, Steven H Silver, Jason E. Thummel, E.E. Knight, Joe Bonadonna, Harry Connolly, David Evan Harris, and many others.

If you haven’t sampled the adventure fantasy stories offered through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line, you’re missing out. Every week, we present an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry, all completely free.

Here are the Top Fifteen most read stories in April, for your enjoyment:

  1. “Truck Stop Luck,” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
  2. “The Sorrowless Thief,” by Ryan Harvey
  3. “The Sealord’s Successor,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
  4. “Disciple,” by Emily Mah
  5. “The Cremators Tale,” by Steven H Silver
  6. An excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
  7. “The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
  8. “Assault and Battery,” by Jason E. Thummel
  9. An excerpt from The Waters of Darkness, by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna
  10. “The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
  11. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
  12. “The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
  13. “Seeker of Fortune,” by David Evan Harris
  14. “A Princess of Jadh,” by Gregory Bierly
  15. “The Pit Slave,” by Vaughn Heppner

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Robert Rhodes, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here. The Top fiction from March is here.

We’ve got plenty more in the coming months — including a big surprise this Sunday — so stay tuned!

Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy February 1951The February, 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction is groundbreaking. The first story is a novella by Ray Bradbury titled “The Fireman.”

My heart skipped a beat when I saw this, and I quickly discovered that Bradbury later expanded this tale into the classic novel Fahrenheit 451.

In “The Fireman,” Mr. Montag works as a fireman – not one who douses flames, but one who starts them in order to destroy books. Books, after all, are upsetting and challenge the brain-numbing entertainment of the day. People who are well-read might unbalance a society of non-thinkers.

I read Fahrenheit 451 in school, and I didn’t understand all of the warnings Bradbury issues throughout the novel. When I read “The Fireman,” there were parts that really concerned me as I considered our own society. Replace references to “television” with “Internet” or “Facebook,” and suddenly Bradbury’s dystopia doesn’t seem so distant anymore. This is a story I wish everyone would read – and think about while reading it. It really is quite chilling.

“…And it comes out here” by Lester del Rey – A man travels back in time to prepare his younger self for an expedition. The mission is to retrieve a device from the future and claim it as his own invention.

I love the second-person narrative of this tale, and I equally enjoyed the way that everything circuitously ties together. It was interesting how del Rey used the protagonist both as a character and as a narrator, and because time travel was involved, these were essentially two different people.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering — yes, this is the same man who started Del Rey Books.

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New Treasures: The Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar

New Treasures: The Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar

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The Bookman HistoriesI’m a big fan of these Angry Robot omnibus volumes. Talk about reading feasts… I can settle into my big green chair with a bag of chips and one of these babies, and I’m set until August.

They’re surprisingly diverse, too. There’s Tim Waggoner’s zombie detective saga The Nekropolis Archives, Aliette de Bodard’s Aztec mystery series Obsidian & Blood, Andy Remic’s blood-drenched sword-and-steampunk epic The Clockwork Vampire… and now we have Lavie Tidhar’s steampunk serial-killer trilogy The Bookman Histories to add to the list.

The trilogy opened with 2010’s The Bookman (cover here), described as “a steam-powered take on V for Vendetta.” Set in an alternate Victorian London on the verge of the first (cannon-powered, naturally) expedition to Mars, the book follows the exploits of the young poet Orphan, who witnesses a stunning attack by a masked terrorist that paralyzes the city. Filled with mysterious automatons, airships, exploding books, pirates, giant lizards, pirates, and more airships, The Bookman was the first novel from the short fiction author whom Locus called “an emerging master.”

Camera Obscura (2011) introduced us to the mysterious and glamorous Lady De Winter, agent of the Quiet Council. Tasked with solving a locked-room murder on Rue Morgue in Paris, De Winter soon finds herself drawn into a far more sinister mystery.

The series wraps up with The Great Game (2012), which begins with Mycroft Holmes’ murder in London. It falls to Holmes’ protégé Lucy Westerna to solve the case — but before she does she crosses paths with a young Harry Houdini and a retired shadow executive named Smith (team up!). Together they find the trail leads inexorably to a foreboding castle in Transylvania… and to get there they’re need to cope with with airship battles, Frankenstein monsters, alien tripods, and more.

The Bookman Histories contains all three novels in one fat 1,022-page package. It was published by Angry Robot in December, 2012; the paperback is $15.99, and the digital version is $9.99. Lavie Tidhar won the 2013 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Osama; this is a guy who is clearly going places. Ignore him at your peril.

You can see all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Further Tarzan-on-Demand: Tarzan the Magnificent

Further Tarzan-on-Demand: Tarzan the Magnificent

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Tarzan the Magnificent Warner Archive DVD coverThe Warner Bros. Archive Collection has taken good care of Tarzan fans. This manufacture-on-demand division of Warner Home Video offers all the films from the lesser-known Tarzan actors who followed Johnny Weissmuller in swinging from the jungle ceiling: Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney, Mike Henry, and the two seasons of the Ron Ely television story. The best of the lot for a more casual viewer is Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959), but Tarzan the Magnificent from 1960 comes a close second to it. It’s not as lean and stripped-down as its predecessor, and director Robert Day lacks the same skill at pacing an action picture as John Guillermin, but the movie ranks among the top live-action Tarzan films ever made. And it’s just a darn good adventure film in general, with some surprising levels of violence and mature subtexts.

(Tarzan disambiguation notice: The movie has no connection to the Burroughs book of the same title published in 1939 that combines two separate novellas.)

Tarzan the Magnificent is the second movie of the series from producer Sy Weintraub, who created the “New Look” Tarzan that took the character back to his more adult and violent Edgar Rice Burroughs roots. Best of all, Tarzan got his full vocabulary returned to him, breaking over two decades of film tradition that ruled the Lord of the Jungle had to horribly misuse pronouns and exterminate helping verbs.

Weintraub’s “New Look” favored crime stories set in the African rainforest, which gave them a harsh and naturalistic feel. They also borrowed elements from the Western, and Tarzan the Magnificent is the most explicit example. The movie opens with a band of outlaws, an archetypal blood clan of murderous brothers under an obsessed patriarch, committing a hold-up in broad daylight. The criminals rob the pay office of a mining company in a small town, passing “Wanted” posters of themselves on the way in. Except for the African locals walking the dusty street, this might be any frontier town in a Western of the day. With veteran John Ford stock-company actor John Carradine in the role of the clan head, Abel Banton, it’s hardly much of a leap to see this taking place in a lawless American frontier town. Even the name “Banton” has a Western ring to it, echoing the Clantons from the story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

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Vintage Treasures: The World Invisible by Shulamith Oppenheim

Vintage Treasures: The World Invisible by Shulamith Oppenheim

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The World InvisibleI just found a dusty plastic bag stuffed full of paperbacks tucked in a corner of my living room. Hidden behind another pile of books, of course. Near as I can figure, I bought them at Capricon back in February (possibly at the same time as Peter Haining’s Vampire anthology.) Man, I need a better filing system.

There’s some good stuff in it, though. If I did indeed buy them, and the bag didn’t just spontaneously materialize from the ether, then I clearly have great taste. Or maybe I just patronize fabulous booksellers. Whatever the case, the bag was filled with vintage paperbacks by Norman Spinrad, Robert Silverberg, Jerry Sohl, and Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. The most intriguing item, however, was a slender Ace paperback from 1984, The World Invisible by Shulamith Oppenheim.

Beware the world invisible.

It lies in forest shadows beneath the hills, and below the waves that pound so fiercely on Scotland’s shores.

It is a world of beauty and magic, of fey creatures wondrous beyond imagination.

But beware.

Do not cross its boundaries or consort with its denizens. Or you will never be content with the human world again…

Okay, I have no idea who Shulamith Oppenheim is. According to some hasty research at her website, she’s a children’s writer with 14 books to her credit, including one about Albert Einstein, who was best man at her wedding (!). The World Invisible appears to be her only adult fantasy. It was reprinted in 2007 by White River Press, with the world’s most boring cover (what is that? An island? A fog machine? It’s like a travel book for blind people). Seriously, if you want to read it, the Ace version with the Don Maitz cover is the one to get (click on the image at right for a full-sized version).

The World Invisible was published by Ace Books in 1984. It is 198 pages in paperback, with an original price of $2.75. I figure I paid around two bucks for my copy. It is currently in print in both paperback and digital formats from White River Press.

See all of our recent Vintage Treasures articles here.

Adventure on Film: Flesh and Blood

Adventure on Film: Flesh and Blood

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2206Se_ores_del_AceroFlesh and Blood (1985) is neither high art nor Paul Verhoeven’s best film, but it does contain flashes of genuine magic and an exceptional eye for the grime and grit of Medieval Italy. It also carries its fair share of star power thanks to the presence of Rutger Hauer, Verhoeven’s frequent co-conspirator, as mercenary soldier Martin.

The plot in a nutshell: Martin and his band of trouble-making friends are part of Hawkwood’s Army (though which of Hawkwood’s many armies is allowably unclear), but soon enough Hawkwood turns on his scruffy, ill-mannered war-hounds, stripping them of their pay and their pickings. Demoralized but determined, Martin and company make a break for the countryside, where they kidnap Princess Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), then hole themselves up in a rural castle in which Agnes teaches her captors, as best she can, the fine arts of civilized behavior. But of course Hawkwood comes calling, paid now to recapture the princess. The clash that follows pits swords against fumbling attempts at science, with bubonic plague waiting in the wings.

Flesh and Blood proves to be a trifle cartoonish at times, a la Robocop, but one thing Verhoeven never lacks is energy. He’s a naughty schoolboy, yes, and at times his fondness for splatter, gore, and, well, flesh, threatens to undermine the film’s highbrow, philosophical script, but he’s also a craftsman with the heart of an animator –– both the camera and its subjects are in almost constant motion –– and provided you’ve got a strong stomach, Flesh and Blood provides ample period entertainment and many a fine battle.

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