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Year: 2015

Vintage Treasures: The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance

Vintage Treasures: The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance

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The Anome-small The Brave Free Men-small The Asutra-small

Jack Vance was an amazingly prolific writer, and he wrote for over six decades. That’s two decades shy of Jack Williamson’s astonishing eight-decade run as an SF writer, but still pretty darned impressive. Vance made his fiction debut in the Summer 1945 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories with “The World-Thinker,” and his last short story, “Phalild’s Fate,” appeared in the ebook collection Chateau d’If and Other Stories in April 2012, a year before he died at the age of 96. No one is entirely sure how many books he produced in all that time, and estimates range from 60 to as high as 90.

Not too surprisingly, one of the marvelous things about Jack Vance is that I’m still discovering his work. I’ve never read his Durdane trilogy from the 1970s, for example — and in fact, I acquired a complete set for the first time last April at the Windy City Pulp & Paper show here in Chicago. Before I settled in to read it, I had a look back at its publishing history (doesn’t everyone do that?), and discovered just how many editions there have been over the years. Here’s a quick survey of a few of the more interesting incarnations of one of Vance’s more overlooked fantasies.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

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REHWesterns_Cover
Intro by James Reasoner…

After Paul Bishop’s excellent post on REH’s boxing stories turned my initial post on hard boiled private eyes into the start of a series, the next topic I knew I wanted to cover was westerns. And James Reasoner was the only person I considered to write it. Historical fiction, noir and westerns: he’s excellent in all of those areas. 1914’s Robert E. Howard Days 2014 Featured Attendee is one of the best western writers alive. Let’s hit the trail!

When Robert E. Howard was growing up in Cross Plains in the 1920s, it was entirely possible that some of the older men in town might have gone on cattle drives in their youth, as the great trails from Texas to the railheads in Kansas opened up after the Civil War and changed the focus of the Lone Star State’s economy. Whether a young Bob Howard ever listened to these old cowboys spin yarns about those days, we don’t know, but he certainly might have.

J. Marvin Hunter’s classic book Trail Drivers of Texas appeared in 1927, and this volume might well have caught Howard’s interest, too, although we have no record of him ever reading it.

What we do know, however, is that Howard wrote several Western stories in which the trail towns which served as destination points for those great herds of Longhorns play an important part, beginning with “Gunman’s Debt”, which went unpublished during Howard’s lifetime but is one of his best Westerns. It’s set in the small Kansas settlement of San Juan, and although Howard tells us that the rails and the trail herds haven’t reached it yet, it’s clear that they’re on the way. San Juan is new and raw and more than a little squalid:

Three saloons, one of which included a dance hall and another a gambling dive, stables, a jail, a store or so, a double row of unpainted board houses, a livery stable, corrals, that made up the village men now called San Juan.

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Future Treasures: Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction edited by John Joseph Adams

Future Treasures: Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction edited by John Joseph Adams

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Loosed Upon the World-smallThere have been few aspects of our planet’s future as hotly debated as climate change. And regardless of your opinion on the matter, you have to admit: it’s a fascinating topic, and one ideally suited for exploration in fiction. Editor John Joseph Adams, who just took home his second Hugo award for Lightspeed magazine, has assembled a stellar line-up of writers — including Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Tobias S. Buckell, Alan Dean Foster, Margaret Atwood, Seanan McGuire, and Jean-Louis Trudel — with a massive, 565-page anthology that looks at our changing planet through the unique lens of science fiction.

This is the definitive collection of climate fiction from John Joseph Adams, the acclaimed editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Wastelands. These provocative stories explore our present and speculate about all of our tomorrows through terrifying struggle, and hope.

Join the bestselling authors Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Nancy Kress, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jim Shepard, and over twenty others as they presciently explore the greatest threat to our future.

This is a collection that will challenge readers to look at the world they live in as if for the first time.

See the complete table of contents here.

Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction will be published by Saga Press on September 15, 2015. It is 565 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.

Sahib: Colonial Military Life in India or on Mars

Sahib: Colonial Military Life in India or on Mars

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SahibIf you are in the Northumbrian town of Alnwick, chasing Hogwarts or visiting the Hotspur School of Defence, stop by Barter Books — it’s like that library in Name of the Rose, except all the books are for sale and the coffee’s better. Imagine a Victorian station turned into a used book store and you’re there.

It’s where I get random stuff, or regret not buying it. For example, there was this 1930s book on WWI air warfare in Bulgaria but it was too pricy, and now I wish I’d splashed out anyway…

“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.” (CS Lewis)

In the past, I returned to Edinburgh laden with Leigh Brackett books. This time, among my finds was a copy of Sahib: The British Soldier in India by Richard Holmes.

It’s a book you can read as history, especially if you are British, but also as context for Steampunk and Space Opera.

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August Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

August Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

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Swords and Sorcery Magazine August 2015-smallIssue 43 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated August 2015, is now available.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett. Each issue contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue includes new fiction from Connor Perry and Sandra Unerman.

“Stragglers in the Cold,” by Connor Perry, is the tale of a skin changer faced with the choice of dying of starvation in the snow or breaking the rules of his kind and taking another person’s body. Perry is new to Swords & Sorcery but not to fantasy. His work can be seen on-line in his web serial, Monsters of Nottingham.

“Thorncandle House,” by Sandra Unerman, is the story of a man coming home against his will to a house that wants him more than he wants it. Unerman’s work has not previously appeared in Swords & Sorcery but she has been a fantasy writer for many years. She has recently published stories in Frostfire Worlds and in the Worms anthology from Knightwatch Press. She lives in London and is a member of the Clockhouse Writers’ Group.

Read the current issue here. We last covered Swords and Sorcery Magazine with Issue #42.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett, and is available free online. Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed issue #42 in his July Short Story Roundup.

Our September Fantasy Magazine Rack is here, and all of our recent magazine coverage here.

Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?

Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?

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The Gate to Women's Country-smallThere’s been a lot of election talk in the air lately (here in Canada we’ll have our federal election on the 19th of October) and that’s led me to thinking about politics in general, and politics in genre fiction in particular. Without having gathered any statistics, just on a gut feeling, it seems to me that politics plays a stronger or more obvious role in genre writing than it does in non-genre writing.

Unless we’re writing thrillers or mysteries, when we create our worlds, we can’t just take the background of the real world for granted, as non-genre writers can. Even if our focus is family drama or interspecies romance, we have to create the socio-political framework for our novels along with everything else – this is part of the “world building” that so many panels at so many conventions address.

I know this to my cost, as my editor at DAW, Sheila Gilbert, is always asking me for details that I just take for granted. I always thought that when I say “king” everyone else just fills in the socio-political blanks, and I can get on with my story without having to figure out where the food and the saddled horses came from.

That turns out not to be the case.

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New Treasures: Crucible Zero by Devon Monk

New Treasures: Crucible Zero by Devon Monk

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Crucible Zero-smallOne of the great joys of buying original fiction is seeing the talented writers you found in the slush pile finally get wider recognition. The very first story I ever purchased for Black Gate, a delightful piece called “Stitchery’ by Devon Monk, gradually evolved into the House Immortal fantasy trilogy, as Devon explained on her blog last year…

[House Immortal] isn’t a “standard” urban fantasy, but more like a science-fiction-y urban fantasy. But even though it’s set in the future a bit, it still (I hope) reads like urban fantasy, with a strong female lead character, some butt kicking, some humor, some trouble that could spell out the end of a world or two, and a host of interesting people and places.

Publisher and Editor John O’Neill at Black Gate noted here, that it reminded him of “Stitchery” the first short story he bought from me for Black Gate. I’m so happy he noticed! The series is based off of that short story, (albeit loosely) and Matilda, Neds, and Grandma were all first introduced in that short.

The first novel in the series was House Immortal, followed by Infinity Bell. Now Devon completes the trilogy with the final novel, Crucible Zero, on sale this month from Roc. The truce between the ruling Houses has shattered and chaos now reigns. Only one woman has the power to save the world — but she could also destroy it…

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Goth Chick News: Crushing On Neil Gibson’s Tortured Life

Goth Chick News: Crushing On Neil Gibson’s Tortured Life

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Tortured Life-smallAdmittedly, I’m a sucker for a Brit.

And that goes double when he’s also a comic writer.

If he also happens to write dark, gothy stories…

Well, you get the idea.

We first met Neil Gibson back in early 2014 at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2 for you cool kids). Then he was promoting volume one of Twisted Dark; the illustrated story he had written which had just been published by indy comic house TPub in the UK.

TPub believes it is their mission to change the way people view comics and get more people to read them, and in May last year Twisted Dark had already reached number one on the UK Kindle chart. And though I could not locate current stats, when I was in London’s famous Foyles bookstore last month, Twisted Dark was highlighted as a “staff pick” in the graphic novel section.

So a couple weeks ago when Neil emailed to let me know his newest project with TPub, Tortured Life was complete, I was has happy as a cosplayer in at a 2-for-1 spandex sale to get a look and tell you all about it.

Tortured Life tells the story of Richard Carter and his little “problem.”

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A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling

A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling

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The Book AwardsOne thing that’s been a constant in the back-and-forth over the Hugos has been the refrain from the folks who think there’s nothing wrong with them as they stand: “Why don’t you create an award for stuff you like?” Comments on this very blog have raised that point, and at least one commenter meant it in all seriousness.

This grates on me a bit. In one sense, to create a new award sounds like an admission of defeat, of an inability to make an award that’s supposed to represent all of fandom really do that. In another sense, though, it’s a way to ensure that at least one set of awards for SF/F represent what it is truly about: the story above all else.

I’ve developed a proposal for just that: a series of awards to celebrate and commemorate the SF/F storyteller’s art. It’s modeled after the Hugos, with two major changes: a panel of judges evaluates the nominees to ensure that they are indeed good SF/F stories, and can reject a limited number of them; and the pool of eligible voters is based on a web of trust starting with the signers of the proposal. All voting and nominating is done automatically, on the Web.

I’ve tried and failed to come up with a unique name for the awards. My first choice was the Heinleins, after the greatest storyteller in SF, but that was taken. Next, I thought I’d use the name of one of Heinlein’s characters who was a great storyteller, Noisy Rhysling, but that was taken as well. Rather than thrash around the question, I decided to punt and let others suggest names.

The actual proposal-cum-manifesto is after the jump.

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Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman

Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman

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Sword fight in Robin Hood-smallIn my book Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists, I devote about 45 pages to advice to writers. I thought the readers here at Black Gate might like me to expand a bit on some of the points I made there. Let me start with a quote:

There are several distinct skills that go into a good written fight. They are:

  • visualizing the fight accurately, to avoid describing impossible actions;
  • maintaining dramatic tension and pacing the fight to be exciting;
  • maintaining characterization: making sure that the characters’ actions in the fight give the reader the sense of their personalities that you want; and
  • serving the plot, so that the fight meets the needs of the story and is not just shoehorned in.

Dramatic tension, characterization, and plot are key skills for a novelist; ask M. Harold Page if you don’t believe me. Visualizing a swordfight accurately is a much less common writing skill.

Assuming that training in actual swordsmanship for a few years is out of the question, here are three ways to get it right, if you want to go into technical detail (which blade goes where).

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