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Month: May 2015

Vintage Treasures: Clockwork’s Pirates/Ghost Breaker by Ron Goulart

Vintage Treasures: Clockwork’s Pirates/Ghost Breaker by Ron Goulart

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Clockwork's Pirates Ron Goulart-small Ghost Breaker Ron Goulart-small

We’re back to our survey of Ace Doubles, this time with a surprising pair of adventure books by Ron Goulart.

I’m a fan of Ron Goulart, although I only discovered him recently, when I sampled some stories from his excellent collection What’s Become of Screwloose? and Other Inquiries in 2012. So I was pleased to spot his 1971 Ace Double, Clockwork’s Pirates and Ghost Breaker, in a collection of 23 old paperback I found on eBay. Twenty-two bucks later, the collection was all mine.

Goulart has a well-deserved reputation for satire and comedy, but with Screwloose I was happy to discover he has a talent for mystery and adventure as well. Mystery and adventure are very much what’s advertised in Clockwork’s Pirates and Ghost Breaker. The former is a novel of robot pirates, the scourge of the spaceways, who steal the planetary governor’s daughter and sell her on the slave markets, and the latter is a collection of short stories featuring a modern supernatural detective, in the mold of John Silence and Carnacki the Ghost Finder.

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Psychical Violence and Beckoning Beauties: The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions

Psychical Violence and Beckoning Beauties: The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions

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The Dead of Night The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions-smallWhile I was at the World Fantasy Convention last November, I sat in on a panel called “Ghost Stories Without Ghosts.” Truth to tell, I was only there because of the delightful Patty Templeton, who was a guest on the panel, talking about her popular debut novel There Is No Lovely End.

However, the other panelists — S. T. Joshi, Jonathan Oliver, and Darrell Schweitzer — had interesting things to say as well, and several times the conversation came around to Oliver Onions, who was held up as an exemplar of the form.

All very interesting, but who the heck is Oliver Onions?

When faced with a situation such as this (an embarrassing lack of knowledge about a revered figure in 19th Century Supernatural Fiction — which happens a lot more often than you might think), I invariably turn to the same resource: the always reliable Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural. Or, as we like to call them, TOMAToS.

Sure enough, the Wordsworth Tales line includes a huge Oliver Onions volume: The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions. 627 pages of creepy fiction featuring werewolves, haunted houses, a dream shared down through history, living ghosts, an obsessed sculptor, characters in a romance novel who come to life, a temptress who’s doomed countless men through the centuries until she falls in love for the first time, a haunted meadow, a cheery Christmas ghost who disobeys the Special Committee on Ethereal Traffic and Right of Way to save lives, and many others.

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Future Treasures: The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence

Future Treasures: The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence

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The Liar's Key-smallPrince of Fools, the first volume in Mark Lawrence’s new fantasy series The Red Queen’s War, was released in June 2013. It is set in the same world as his previous trilogy The Broken Empire (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, and the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Award winner Emperor of Thorns).

The Liar’s Key, the second book in the series, will be published this June, and it continues the story of the unusual fellowship between a rogue prince and a weary warrior.

After harrowing adventure and near-death, Prince Jalan Kendeth and the Viking Snorri ver Snagason find themselves in possession of Loki’s Key, an artefact capable of opening any door, and sought by the most dangerous beings in the Broken Empire — including The Dead King.

Jal wants only to return home to his wine, women, and song, but Snorri has his own purpose for the key: to find the very door into death, throw it wide, and bring his family back into the land of the living.

And as Snorri prepares for his quest to find death’s door, Jal’s grandmother, the Red Queen continues to manipulate kings and pawns towards an endgame of her own design…

We published the first chapter of Prince of Thorns, with a brand new introduction by Mark, here, and Howard Andrew Jones’s interview with him is here. Mark’s long article on writing and selling The Prince of Thorns is here.

The Liar’s Key will be published by Ace Books on June 2, 2015. It is 496 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Into the Wastelands: Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak

Into the Wastelands: Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak

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Enchanted Pilgrimage-smallClifford Simak is often described as a pastoralist, his sci-fi stories set in rural Wisconsin or some reasonable facsimile thereof. Kindly robots as well as smart and faithful dogs feature in many of his books. Scholars are more likely than soldiers to figure as his heroes. There’s more kindness and sense of wonder than violence in most of his stories.

If you haven’t read him (which wouldn’t be surprising since most of his twenty-six novels and multitude of story collections are out of print in the US), snag a battered old copy of City or Way Station to start. City holds a place in my heart as one of my favorite books. Simak brought a gentle humanity to his writing. Love of an unhurried life and respect for common decency run through many of his stories.

Inspired by John O’Neill’s post about The Goblin Reservation, I dug out the first of Simak’s three fantasy novels, Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975). In it, a disparate party of travelers leave the safety of humanity’s lands to explore the dangerous, magical Wasteland. He would revisit this theme twice more before his death in 1986, in the structurally similar The Fellowship of the Talisman (1978) and Where the Evil Dwells (1982).

I remember liking the book thirty years ago and thirty years later, I still like it. It’s fully fantasy and science fiction, both. While there are goblins, gnomes, witches, and trolls, there are also UFOs, a robot, and a traveler from an alternate Earth.

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June 2015 Analog Science Fiction Now on Sale

June 2015 Analog Science Fiction Now on Sale

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Analog Science Ficiton June 2015 1000th issue-smallI don’t usually cover Analog Science Fiction and Fact here at Black Gate — in fact, I think the most recent issues we’ve covered were April 1980 (containing George R.R. Martin’s “Nightflyers”) and August 1968. When it comes to science fiction, Analog is about as hard as it gets, and the magazine has always been proud of the fact that it doesn’t publish anything so fluffy as fantasy.

But I’m happy to make an exception in this case. The June 2015 issue of Analog happens to be the 1000th issue, a landmark well worth celebrating.

Analog first appeared in January 1930, as Astounding Stories of Super-Science, under editor Harry Bates, and it has been published continuously ever since. Over the course of 85 years, Astounding/Analog has become the most important magazine in the history of science fiction and fantasy, and it continues that proud tradition today under editor Trevor Qachari.

In celebration, this issue has special columns from emeritus editors Stanley Schmidt and Ben Bova, and genre historian extraordinaire Mike Ashley, as well as fiction from Sean McMullen, C. C. Finlay, Ted Reynolds and William F. Wu, Richard A. Lovett and many others, all under a great cover by Vincent DiFate.

Here’s the complete list of contents.

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Celebrating Pulp Fiction Magazines at Windy City Pulp & Paper

Celebrating Pulp Fiction Magazines at Windy City Pulp & Paper

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If you’ve been following Black Gate for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me mention the Windy City Pulp & Paper Show, my favorite local convention (my detailed report on the 2013 show is here).

It’s difficult to capture the scale and feel of a show like Windy City with a blog post, however. Fortunately, I was very pleased to discover an in-depth documentary on the show on YouTube. Created by Krovia TV and just released today, this twelve minute and 35 second video gives you a great sense of the scope of the show, and has some nice interviews with founder Doug Ellis, and several exhibitors and buyers, such as Tom Roberts of Black Dog Books, Steve Spilger, Tim Isaacson, Fred Taraba, and others. It’s a great way to get a taste of Windy City without leaving your comfy chair.

See the complete film here, or click on the clip above.

Belated Movie Reviews #5: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Belated Movie Reviews #5: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome poster-smallContinuing the story from my last post (Belated Movie Reviews #4: The Road Warrior), we come to the final movie of the original trilogy: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (MMBT).

Since this was a big Hollywood movie, the sound is good and the visuals are good — both pretty much run rings around the first two. This film, as opposed to The Road Warrior, is a bit more expansive, which is only logical, given that they can’t just repeat the conflict from the other two movies. Meaning they couldn’t simply have a mad-dog gang leader, or a siege, without looking lame (I’m looking at you, Highlander 3).

So they delved deep into shades of grey. Very, very grey. Setting up a conflict that isn’t so much two-sides-of-the-same-coin as as two jackasses out to get each other.

To the makers’ credit, MMBT really contains no “bad guys” at all. Just antagonists, opponents and opportunists. Aunty Entity says it up front — this is all really more of a family affair. Max is just a dude caught in a clash of two mighty wills, and as usual, he just wants his car back.

The movie lacks some connective tissue. Why is the gyrocaptain from Road Warrior here? Isn’t he the leader of the Great North Tribe? And while it makes sense that Max and the gyrocaptian don’t recognize each other at first (Max is all swathed against the wind and sun), it is pretty clear that the gyrocaptian does recognize him later — although he doesn’t particularly do anything. In fact, while he could barely keep his trap shut in RW, the gyrocaptain doesn’t say much of anything at all in this one.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine-smallThe first — and one of the finest — of the Best of the Year collections has arrived: Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine. Strahan has crammed 28 stories into his latest anthology. He published the complete table of contents earlier this year, and it looks fantastic. Here’s the description:

DISTANT WORLDS, TIME TRAVEL, EPIC ADVENTURE, UNSEEN WONDERS AND MUCH MORE!

The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past twelve months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan. This highly popular series now reaches volume nine and will include stories from both the biggest names in the field and the most exciting new talents. Previous volumes have included stories from Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Joe Abercrombie, Paolo Bacigalupi, Holly Black, Garth Nix, Jeffrey Ford, Margo Lanagan, Bruce Sterling, Adam Robets, Ellen Klages, and many many more.

This kicks off the Best-of-the-Year season; there will be over a dozen more released from various publishers between now and October.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Wrapping up Jeremy Brett’s Adventures

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Wrapping up Jeremy Brett’s Adventures

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Brett3_RucastleClick here for parts one and two of this look at Jeremy Brett’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The second installment of Granada’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes kicked off on August 25, 1985 with The Copper Beeches. Tapped for the role of one of the Canon’s most dastardly villains, Jephro Rucastle, was veteran actor Joss Ackland. Back in 1965 he had starred opposite Douglas Wilmer’s Holmes in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, playing her former suitor, Philip Green.

Other tangential Holmes-related efforts had included John Cleese’s disastrous parody, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It and an episode of the BBC series, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, based on the anthologies edited by Hugh Greene.

And in 1989 he would play the King of Sweden in Christopher Lee’s Sherlock Holmes & The Incident at Victoria Falls. Ackland’s Rucastle is one of the most memorable evildoers in the entire Granada series; menacing in a creepy but understated way.

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Vintage Treasures: The Arabesk Trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Vintage Treasures: The Arabesk Trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

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Pashazade-small Effendi-small Felaheen-small

Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Vampire Assassin Trilogy (The Fallen Blade, The Outcast Blade, and The Exiled Blade) has earned him an enviable rep as a fantasy author. But I first became acquainted with him over a decade ago with The Arabesk Trilogy, a trio of acclaimed novels that had the unusual distinction of being nominated for both the British Science Fiction and British Fantasy Awards.

The Arabesk Trilogy isn’t easy to describe. It’s sort of an alternate history fantasy cyberpunk hard-boiled detective series, if that makes sense. The point of divergence with our reality is 1915, with Woodrow Wilson brokering a peace accord that prevents World War I from expanding outside the Balkans. All three books are set in Alexandria, in Islamic Ottoman North Africa (called El Iskandriyah in the novels), in the 21st century. The main characters are Raf, a genetically enhanced ex-street criminal now posing as a rich Ottoman aristocrat, and the hallucinatory fox Tiriganiaq, who frequently accompanies him.

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