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Year: 2015

Lightspeed 61: Queers Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue

Lightspeed 61: Queers Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue

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Lightspeed 61-smallJohn Joseph Adams shook this town to its roots with his groundbreaking Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue of Lightspeed, released last June. Funded by an enormously successful Kickstarter campaign, WDSF! spawned a two successful sequels, Women Destroy Fantasy! and Women Destroy Horror!

In January of this year, John invited his readers to take a sledgehammer to the tight strictures of the genre once again, by funding a special Queers Destroy Science Fiction! of Lightspeed. The Kickstarter campaign closed on February 16; with an initial goal of $5,000, the campaign successfully raised $54,523 from 2,250 backers, surpassing even the lofty success of WDSF!

John and his team delivered the issue right on time this month. Lightspeed 61: Queers Destroy Science Fiction! is guest-edited by Seanan McGuire, and the magazine contains the following stories:

“Emergency Repair” by Kate M. Galey
“勢孤取和 (Influence Isolated, Make Peace)” by John Chu
“Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind” by Erica L. Satifka
“Melioration” by E. Saxey
“Rubbing is Racing” by Charles Payseur
“Helping Hand” by Claudine Griggs
“The Lamb Chops” by Stephen Cox

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Do Fantasy Characters Poop in the Woods? Or, Real-Life Things That “Never” Happen in Fantasy

Do Fantasy Characters Poop in the Woods? Or, Real-Life Things That “Never” Happen in Fantasy

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Goldman ScreenWilliam Goldman isn’t the first person to comment on this phenomenon, but he’s the first person I ever came across who had an explanation. You know what I’m talking about: The difference between real reality and fictional reality. We all know about the lists of occurrences that happen only in the movies, or on TV – and the real life things that never seem to happen in movies or TV.

Like, the protagonist always finds a parking spot right in front of where she needs to be. She always has the right amount of money for the taxi already in her hand. She can always find a taxi when she needs one. And there’s always cell phone reception.

My personal favourite is how no one ever says “goodbye” on the phone. Not even so much as a “seeya.” Just try that some time in real life. Go ahead, hang up without saying “goodbye.” I dare you. Though the one I really wonder about is that people on TV don’t watch TV.

William Goldman, the screenwriter and novelist, is likely best known to us genre people as the creator of The Princess Bride – both the novel and the screenplay. It shouldn’t surprise us that, as an Oscar-winning screenwriter, he has an explanation for these phenomena. As he sees it, they’re essentially – and essential – short cuts. As those of us who are writers know, there are all kinds of real-life occurrences, that happen all the time, but that don’t advance the plot, or reveal character, and are therefore useless from the point of view of storytelling.

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Goth Chick News: 31 Shades of Malcolm McDowell

Goth Chick News: 31 Shades of Malcolm McDowell

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31 A Rob Zombie Film-smallYou know how some people talk about seeing something that scarred them for life?

I mean really scarred – like way worse than any episode of My Strange Addiction, or “casual Friday” in the Black Gate offices in July.

This happened for me in my early teens when during a sleepover, my friend snagged her Dad’s secret, “unrated” copy of Malcolm McDowell in Caligula.

Though I’ve seen things since that could be categorized as “more disturbing,” nothing has come close to those vomit-inducing scenes burned into my 14 year old retinas.

Of course, as you probably guessed, in the coming years I got seriously busy seeking out every bit of cinema that McDowell had ever done and eventually found my way to Cat People and A Clockwork Orange. If you only know McDowell from Star Trek or Entourage, you definitely need to check out his earlier work.

It takes a special talent evoke an audience’s gag reflex with that much panache.

So it really came as no surprise that today, Rob Zombie’s Facebook page made the following announcement.

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Is the Grail a Force For Evil? Understanding Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Is the Grail a Force For Evil? Understanding Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

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Indiana_Jones_and_the_Last_Crusade_A
What better quest story to unpick than this classic Indy adventure?

The Holy Grail – purportedly the last cup that Christ drank from, echo of the zombie-making Cauldron of Rebirth – is it actually a force for evil?

Until the 20th century, its main fictional outing was in the King Arthur cycle when its effect on the Round Table is akin to introducing the knights to crack-cocaine: the fellowship scatters, those who achieve the quest – the best knights – go straight to Heaven (read, die), Lancelot gets badly injured, and Britain ends up littered with the graves of knights who would be more useful protecting the realm from the King’s enemies.

Then we come to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I’m looking at Pulp and Pulp-inspired stores because I’m working on a retro-Space Opera, provisional title “The Eternal Dome of the Unknowable” (Sarah, this is ALL your fault). What better quest story to unpack than this classic Indy adventure?

What I found is rather odd.

Here’s the plot — I’ve added story questions in the form Question Answer But Now…

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The Novels of Tanith Lee: The Secret Books of Paradys

The Novels of Tanith Lee: The Secret Books of Paradys

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The Book of the Damned Tanith Lee-small The Book of the Beast Tanith Lee-small The Book of the Dead Tanith Lee-small The Book of the Mad Tanith Lee-small

We’re continuing with our look at the extraordinary 40-year career of Tanith Lee, who passed away on May 24th. We started with The Wars of Vis trilogy and her acclaimed Tales From the Flat Earth, and today we turn to her four-volume saga, The Secret Books of Paradys, published in the US by The Overlook Press between 1990-1993, with a striking series of covers by Wayne Barlowe (above).

Matthew David Surridge wrote a fine summary of the entire series for us two years ago, and I doubt I could do a better job of summarizing them than he did:

The fictive city of Paradys itself seems to accrue layers of meaning and complexity like a recurring landscape in a lucid dream. Above all, the books are weird with the weirdness of nightmare; though written with incredible technical skill, it’s difficult to articulate a single overall theme to the books, though multiple meanings suggest themselves.

Paradys is a city in northern France, originally a Roman settlement based around the exoploitation of soon-played-out silver mines. It developed over time into a major city, with a cathedral and taverns and damned poets and all the appurtenances of decadent gothic romance. The various stories of Paradys take place in different eras of the city’s life, told from different perspectives, using different styles. They’re linked by certain patterns of imagery — notably the ambiguous symbol of the moon — and a concentration on colour: each book, or long story, has a certain colour which defines it, and all colour-references within that story will refer either to white, black, or that specific hue. I can only imagine how difficult that technique is, but it’s incredibly effective at building distinct and distinctive atmospheres…

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The Bard’s Tale IV Kickstarter Fully Funded After 12 Days

The Bard’s Tale IV Kickstarter Fully Funded After 12 Days

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The Bards Tale IV

The Bard’s Tale was one of the first computer role playing games I ever played. It was developed in 1985 by Interplay, and published by Electronic Arts. I was in grad school at the time, and I’d play on the computers in the lab. Wandering around the 30×30 map of the ancient town of Skara Brae at night, getting killed by monsters, over and over (and over…) again. Good times, good times.

The Bard’s Tale sold, like, a billion copies, and became one of the big RPG franchises of the 80s (alongside Wizardry, Ultima, and SPI’s Gold Box games). There were two sequels and a construction set, before Interplay split off from Electronic Arts and began developing Dragon Wars (which was called Bard’s Tale IV until a month before its release in 1990). The Bard’s Tale franchise became dormant then, until Interplay founder Brian Fargo revived it for the first release from InXile Entertainment, The Bard’s Tale, in 2004. That game was a light-hearted console-style action game (with some absolutely killer tavern tunes).

Fast forward to 2015, where InXile Entertainment is now a triple-A studio with one of the finest RPGs in recent memory under its belt, Wasteland 2, and a reputation for record-breaking Kickstarter successes (Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera.) On June 2 Brian Fargo and team launched a new Kickstarter campaign, to fund a sequel to the original Bard’s Tale trilogy. The Bard’s Tale IV promises to be a modern single-player, party-based dungeon-crawler, an experience rich in exploration and combat, and “dungeons filled with challenging puzzles and devious riddles.” InXile set a goal of $1.25 million, and crossed that threshold in just 12 days. With 22 days to go, the campaign has over 28,600 backers, and plenty of exciting stretch goals, like free copies of the original games, a code wheel, and more. Check out the Kickstarter page here.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in May

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in May

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Marshall Versus the Assassins-smallM. Harold Page had a good month in May, with two of the Top Three articles. His detailed breakdown on choreographing dramatic combat, and mastering the conflicting demands of narrative and blow-by-blow description, “How To Write a Good Fight Scene,” was our #1 article. And just to show how easy it is, he also nabbed the #3 slot, with a look at the similarities between Edmond Hamilton’s pulp classic Return to the Stars and Ridley’s Scott SF masterpiece, in “Blade Runner: Edmond Hamilton’s Tears in the Rain?”

Bob Byrne prevented Martin from stealing all the glory by taking the #2 slot, with “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Adventures With Jeremy Brett,” just one of two Jeremy Brett article to make this list last month. I guess good things come in pairs.

Thomas Parker claimed fifth place with his look at Alice Sheldon and James Tiptree Jr, “The Woman Who Was a Man Who Was a Woman.” And Mark Rigney took #7 with a piece on adventures in role playing, “Long Arc or Short Arc?” (Mark’s complete epic adventure The Temple Of the Sea Gods also made the Top 50 list.)

Rich Horton was next, with “A Modest Proposal to Improve the Hugos,” a follow-up to his detailed article on the Rabid Puppy/Sad Puppy debacle, “The 2015 Hugo Nominations,” one of our most widely-read articles last month.

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Ancient Worlds: The Sabine Women, or How Not to Get Married

Ancient Worlds: The Sabine Women, or How Not to Get Married

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The Rape of the Sabine Women by Nicholas Poussin
The Rape of the Sabine Women by Nicholas Poussin

As I discussed in my previous two posts, Ovid does some amazing things in writing about sexual assault that I think all authors should take a look at. He often writes about it in a way that is subtle, empathetic, and respectful of rape as a crime with long term impact both on individuals and on larger societal groups.

Notice I said often. Because I want to make it very clear: Ovid was not a feminist. He was not a proto-feminist. He was often times more sensitive to issues that we would consider feminist today, but he was still a product of his time. He advised men when told “no” to keep trying. He advised women being pursued by men that saying “no” was a character defect. And he was willing to, say, turn one of history’s largest abduction scenarios into a punchline.

I refer, of course, to the Rape of the Sabine women, which Ovid covered in the Ars Amatoria. If you have never picked up the Ars, believe me when I say you are missing out. It is at times horrifying for having the sexual politics of, well, a first century wealthy Roman, but it is also an absolutely fascinating glimpse into daily life two thousand years ago. Ovid is advising young men on the art of finding, wooing, and keeping a lover, and he recommends that they take advantage of the close quarters of the theater to meet women. After all, that’s how the first generation of Proper Romans got their wives!

He then launches into the tale of how several dozen young Sabine women were invited with their parents to a performance shortly after the founding of Rome. At a pre-arranged signal, the Romans jumped up, grabbed a girl, and ran for it. The Sabines went back to gather their allies, returned after several months to reclaim their daughters and slaughter Romulus and his skeezy bros, and found that said daughters objected to the Sabines murdering their now-husbands. Peace ensues, and the Romans are left with many years of really awkward family reunions.

Hilarious, right? Not really. Not in the age of Bring Back Our Girls. Not then either, I imagine.

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Parenting Advice from the Wild West

Parenting Advice from the Wild West

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Geronimo (right) and some of his warriors at their final surrender in 1886.
Geronimo (right) and some of his warriors at their final surrender in 1886. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

As a historian, I spend a lot of time researching the Wild West. As a parent, I’m always looking for good advice. So the natural question arises–what can we learn about raising children from America’s frontier?

The truth is, not much. In the early days of the Wild West, there weren’t many kids about, and when settlers came with their families, the little tykes were usually put to work on farms and ranches like they were miniature adults. Yet there are a few nuggets of wisdom handed down from that era.

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Future Treasures: Frostgrave: Tales of the Frozen City edited by Joseph McCullough

Future Treasures: Frostgrave: Tales of the Frozen City edited by Joseph McCullough

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Frostgrave Tales of the Frozen City-smallJoseph McCullough is the author of one of the most popular articles in Black Gate history, “The Demarcation of Sword and Sorcery,” which today is considered one of the defining texts on the genre. He’s published fiction in BG and elsewhere, and is currently Project Manager for Osprey Adventures.

His latest project is the wargame Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, coming in July from Osprey. In support of the new game, Osprey is also publishing Frostgrave: Tales of the Frozen City, a new anthology edited by Joe which contains ten original stories telling the tale of wizards and other adventurers, as they venture into the ruins of the Frozen City.

Long ago, the great city of Felstad sat at the centre of a magical empire. Its towering spires, labyrinthine catacombs and immense libraries were the wonder of the age, and potions, scrolls and mystical items of all descriptions poured from its workshops. Then, one cataclysmic night, a mistake was made. In some lofty tower or dark chamber, a foolish wizard unleashed a magic too powerful to control. A storm rose up, an epic blizzard that swallowed the city whole, burying it deep and leaving the empire as nothing more than a vast, frozen wasteland. The empire shattered, and the magic of the world faded. As the centuries came and went, Felstad passed from history to legend and on into myth. Only a few wizards, clinging to the last remnants of magical knowledge, still believed that the lost city had ever actually existed. But their faith was rewarded.

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