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Year: 2017

Mage: The Hero Denied #2

Mage: The Hero Denied #2

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Mage 2So, the basic setup for the new Mage series is shaping up to be similar to the previous two volumes. At least one big fight scene and LOTS of talking. Seriously, you sign up for Mage and you’re signing up for lots of dialogue. As far as the issue breakdown goes (LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD), it’s 7 pages of Kevin and Magda arguing, tucking their kids into bed, and going up to the attic; 4 pages of evil insurance adjusters literally swallowing nightmare fuel; 4 pages of Kevin and Magda talking about a magic crock pot while Hugo stares out a window; 3 pages of Kevin taking his son out for lunch; and 5 pages of Kevin fighting a pair of flaming goat-men. I’m enjoying the series so far, but fair warning, that’s the sort of issue breakdowns you’re going to get, so if you prefer more action and less chatter in your comics, then you’re probably better off passing on Mage.

Was the above paragraph filled with spoilers? Sort of, a little bit. But none of it really felt like plot development so much as plot outlining. Issue two is still very much in the “setting up the story” stage, but as with the previous issues, the magic of this series is in all of the little details. The Gracklethorns reveal that they’re even less human than they initially appear and we start getting names, as well as distinctions between the five of them. Kevin cooks dinner, implying that the domestic duties are more evenly split between Kevin and Magda than I’d thought at the end of issue one. Magda’s hesitation to leave their home is based more on not wanting to disturb some magic spells she’s brewing than on a desire for pure domesticity. And the house is a rental, meaning they don’t have as much money as they initially appeared to have. Still no clues about Kirby, Joe, or the Mage. Hugo is reading an Animorphs book, which firmly dates this story at least fifteen years in the past.

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Rock Stars, Bloggers, and Hidden Magic: The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint

Rock Stars, Bloggers, and Hidden Magic: The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint

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The Wind in His Heart Charles de Lint-smallI met Charles de Lint when he was an unpublished author in the early 80s. We both hung out at the best bookstore in town, the much-missed House of Speculative Fiction in downtown Ottawa. There was a big fuss about his first novel, The Riddle of The Wren (1984), plucked out of the slush at Ace Books by legendary editor Terri Windling, but it was the bestselling Moonheart (Ace, 1984) that made us realize that Charles wasn’t just a local boy who done good — he was a major artist embarking on an extraordinary career.

71 books later, Charles is one of the most revered writers in fantasy. He’s been enormously kind to us over the years, even contributing a terrific story to the very first issue of Black Gate.  I asked Charles to tell us a bit about his latest book, and he was generous enough to send me this yesterday.

I’m excited to get back to writing for adults. It took me three years to write my new novel, The Wind in His Heart, pretty much double the time I’d normally take to complete a book, but this 545-page story was tricky to put together. It’s about a young man who works at a trading post and is the sole supporter in his family yet longs to go and explore the world; a rock star hiding from fame out in the desert; a teenage girl from an abusive family who gets tossed out of her dad’s car in the middle of the desert, and a blogger trying to come to terms with the suicide of her best friend. The story is about how their lives collide, and how they deal with their past and future. Many of my readers have been asking if it’s a Newford book, and the short answer is no, but it does have some Newford threads and connections.

This is a major new novel from one of the most important writers at work today. When word broke in our offices that it was arriving this month, there was frenzy to settle who would have the privilege of reading it first (Zeta Moore won; she’ll be reviewing it for us in a few weeks.)

The Wind in His Heart will be published by Triskell Press on September 19, 2017. It is 545 pages, priced at $7.99 for the digital edition. Read an excerpt in the Autumn issue of Faerie Magazine, and learn more at Charles’ website. And check out all our coverage of his previous books here.

Fantasia 2017, Day 10, Part 2: Inevitable Precisions (Born of Woman 2017 and A Day)

Fantasia 2017, Day 10, Part 2: Inevitable Precisions (Born of Woman 2017 and A Day)

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Un peu après minuitIn 2016, the Fantasia International Film Festival created a showcase of short films by women directors: Born of Woman. It was a very real success, a collection of intriguing and often powerful films, and it travelled as a collection to several other festivals. 2017 saw a new iteration of the showcase, boasting nine shorts from seven countries. Born of Woman 2017 played Saturday, July 22, and I was eager to see what was in store this year. Afterward I planned to go on to see a feature film, a Korean thriller called A Day (Haru) built around the Groundhog Day–like device of a man repeatedly living the same day. First, though, would be Born of Woman.

The program began with “A Little After Midnight,” (“Un peu après minuit,” also translated “Just After Midnight”) a 22-minute piece co-written and co-directed by France’s Anne Marie Puga and Jean-Raymond Garcia. It deals with a blind teacher (India Hair), witchcraft, and the interpretation of the world. If Hair’s teacher begins the film reliant on men’s sexualised tellings — a scholar who gives a fevered reading of one of Niklaus Mannuel Deutsch’s paintings of witches; later another man (Rémi Taffanel) who, at her request, tells her a pornographic story — then by the end of the story that’s changed as she finds a new source of power. There’s a subtext here, I think, deriving from Freud and his essay “The Uncanny,” in which he suggests the loss of the eyes is a symbolic castration. So in this movie there’s much to do with what is seen and what is hidden and the power that comes from seeing things — from identifying things and defining them. Visual art has resonance here, as do costumes that both hide and reveal. The film’s shot very nicely, with a dark, brooding feel that works well with the plot. The story’s not over-hurried, but the atmosphere’s the point, I think. If you can get into the feel of the thing, it’ll work; if not, perhaps not.

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Edgar Allan Poe Wrote Fake News

Edgar Allan Poe Wrote Fake News

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"Covfefe."
“Covfefe”

We’re living in the age of fake news. The Internet abounds with sites reporting child abuse rings hidden under pizzerias, skeletons of giants excavated in Israel, and cures for AIDS being suppressed by Big Pharma.

Just recently I got taken in for a minute by the reported death of Desmond Tutu shared by a Facebook friend. That story was on a plausible-looking African newspaper site. Only after I looked around the site did I realize it was the only story on it and the newspaper didn’t exist. Roll eyes. Run virus scanner.

But fake news isn’t new. In previous generations even the mainstream press regularly used it to boost sales, running outlandish stories to sell papers. Perhaps the most famous is the story in an 1890 issue of the Tombstone Epitaph about cowboys shooting down a pterodactyl, which led to the theory that it was the legendary Thunderbird and the creation of several faked photos. Other writers have created various fake stories to boost sales for their own newspapers.

One of these writers was no less a literary figure than Edgar Allan Poe.

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Future Treasures: An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard

Future Treasures: An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard

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An Unkindness of Magicians-smallKat Howard’s debut fantasy novel Roses and Rot was a Locus Award nominee for Best First Novel, and a Publishers Weekly Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror Novel of Summer 2016. Her latest is a standalone tale of a secret cabal of wizards in New York City, and a woman who wants to bring down the entire system from within. It arrives in hardcover from Saga Press in two weeks.

The Unseen World prides itself on remaining invisible as magicians walk the streets of New York City, rich and literally powerful.

Every twenty years, vying for power and standing during the Turning, the heads of magical houses would elect a champion, a family member or a magician-for-hire, and begin a series of duels.

But the Turning has come early, after thirteen years, and Ian Merlin, the heir to the most powerful house in the Unseen World has elected to become the champion of his father’s chief rival, House Prospero.

Enter Sydney: An unknown magician from a candidate house, an outsider easily dismissed amongst the established wealth and power of the Unseen World.

Acclaimed author Kat Howard has written a magical revenge thriller amidst the private world of New York City’s most influential citizens, who feed off each other in a hidden game of magical dominance.

What the Unseen World will soon learn is that Sydney is a formidable duelist with power that hasn’t been seen in decades, and she has a score to settle.

An Unkindness of Magicians will be published by Saga Press on September 26. It is 355 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Vault 49. Read Chapter One at Tor.com.

Fantasia 2017, Day 10, Part 1: Welcome to the Future (Napping Princess and Welcome to Wacken)

Fantasia 2017, Day 10, Part 1: Welcome to the Future (Napping Princess and Welcome to Wacken)

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Napping PrincessOn Saturday, June 22, I reached Fantasia’s Hall Theatre before noon to see a screening of the anime Napping Princess (Hirune Hime: Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari), a story about dreams, technology, and the 2020 Olympics. After that, I had a short film showcase to see, then another feature. But before either of those, I planned to pass by the Fantasia Samsung VR 360D Experience, which, as the name implies, gives people the chance to experience VR by watching one of a selection of short films. I’d tried out the technology last year with a number of short fiction films; this time out there was something a little different, a half-hour documentary called Welcome to Wacken, about the legendary annual German metal festival. I wanted to see how the technology would handle the documentary form, especially since I had all the respect in the world for the filmmakers — it was directed by Sam Dunn, whose previous work included the seminal metal documentaries Headbanger’s Journey and Global Metal.

First, though, was Napping Princess (which, according to Wikipedia, is also known as Ancien and the Magic Tablet). Written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, it begins in a dieselpunk otherworld called Heartland, where a daring princess named Ancien (voice of Mitsuki Takahara) seeks to regain her magic tablet with the help of an animated toy bear called Joy (Rie Kugimiya). A monster called the Colossus threatens Heartland, and Ancien’s father, whose palace is an enormous car factory like something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, has ordered her confined to a tower. But she escapes, meets a rebellious motorcycle-riding mechanic named Peach (Yôsuke Eguchi), and joins with him to counter the mysterious plot of the king’s sinister adviser (Arata Furuta) and the giant Colossus that emerges from the sea.

Until Ancien wakes up. In the world we view as real, a Japanese schoolgirl named Kokone is dreaming Ancien’s adventures. It’s 2020, and the Olympics are about to take place in Tokyo; Kokone and her father, Momotaro, a mechanic in the southern town of Okayama, wonder whether the autonomous cars Japan’s promised as a major part of the opening ceremonies will be ready on time (note that Okayama’s the setting for the original legend of Momotaro). But then Momotaro’s arrested and accused of corporate espionage against Shijima Motors, the company building the autonomous vehicles. Kokone has to escape Shijima’s representative, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the evil adviser of the king of Heartland, and work out the secrets contained in her father’s old tablet computer. What secret in his background has emerged? And how does it connect to the story of Heartland?

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Future Treasures: The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson

Future Treasures: The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson

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The Psychotechnic League-small Cold Victory-small Starship Poul Anderson-small

Poul Anderson was one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction writers of the 20th Century, and one of his most popular series was The Psychotechnic League, which told the story of the rise of a new civilization after a devastating nuclear war in the late 1950s that very nearly obliterated mankind.

The Psychotechnic League began as a Future History, a popular beast among short SF writers of the 40s and 50s. Anderson published the first story, “Entity,” in the June 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and set the opening of his series a decade in the future. The series continued for the next two decades, (appearing in Astounding, Planet Stories, Worlds Beyond, Science Fiction Quarterly, Cosmos, Fantastic Universe, and other fine magazines), eventually extending into the 60s. In the process, his “Future History” gradually became an “Alternate History,” as actual history trampled all over his carefully constructed fictional timeline.

That didn’t seem to bother readers though, and the tales of the Psychotechnic League remained popular well into the 80s. The series included some 21 stories, including three short novels: The Snows of Ganymede (1955), Star Ways (1956), and Virgin Planet (1957). The short stories and one of the novels were collected in a trilogy of handsome Tor paperbacks in 1981/82, with covers by Vincent DiFate (above). Now Baen books is reprinting the entire sequence in a series of deluxe trade paperbacks, starting with The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, on sale next month.

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Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny

Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny

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“Have you given any thought to what you are going to do if — rather, when — you make it to the top?”

“Look for trouble,” Dilvish said. “Defend myself at all times. Strike instantly if I see the enemy.”

Black and Dilvish to each other in “Tower of Ice”

oie_1271358c5k3rMonDilvish, the Damned (1983), by Roger Zelazny, had been on my list of books and stories to avoid because of who recommended them. With this book, it was someone I played D&D with. In fact, he introduced me to the original D&D rules back in 1977 or ’78.

He was, and remains, the most voracious reader I’ve ever known, though he rarely reads outside of sci fi and fantasy. He would always tell me about whatever book he was reading — often read while he walked the mile and half to my house. When he’d describe a book to me, though, it was always about how cool and awesome the most powerful characters were. Big cowls and fancy wizardly skullcaps were symbols of greatness. The more absurdly godlike the protagonists were, the better.

A few years ago, he told me he was disappointed that the Twilight books didn’t end in an epic all out vampires vs. werewolves war. That Stephenie Meyer wouldn’t do that really didn’t make sense to him. It’s that sort of take on books that led me to take for granted that any book he suggested was going to annoy me as much as it excited him. I’ve overcome that block slowly. It took me nearly thirty years and a lot of positive recommendations to read Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles. Even loving those — which I do — it took me another decade to pick up Dilvish, the Damned.

Dilvish is heir to both a Human house and an Elvish house, and a heroic warrior of great prowess. Two centuries ago, he came up against the powerful, evil sorcerer, Jelerak. The wizard, far stronger than Dilvish knew, turned the half-elf to stone and imprisoned his soul in Hell. It is only when Portaroy, a town once saved by Dilvish, comes under a new attack, he is freed to return to the mortal world with a metal horse named Black, and a desire to avenge himself on Jelerak.

Dilvish is part of the rebirth of swords & sorcery in the mid-60s alongside Elric and the Lancer Conan. Several of Zelazny’s stories were reprinted in S&S anthologies from the 1970s. Some of the stories are at least equal to those of Moorcock and Leiber, and way better than most by Lin Carter and John Jakes. Dilvish, the Damned is a 1983 fixup of all eleven Dilvish short stories. The first was originally published in Fantastic in 1965, and the last two first saw light of day in this collection.

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How I Spent My Summer Vacation

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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A Scanner Darkly Dick-small The Deep Range Arthur C Clarke-small The Killer Inside Me Jim Thompson-small

On May 25th I finished my thirteenth year at the small private school where I teach fourth grade. I love my job and I love my students, but remember the transports of joy that you felt when you were a kid, when the dismissal bell finally rang on that last day of school? I can assure you that your happiness was as nothing compared to the incandescent elation teachers feel on that final afternoon of the second semester.

At my school, we get eight weeks off, and I spend them much as I did when I was in school myself — I make a big stack of paperbacks and I read as many of them as I can before the next school year begins. Last summer, for some perverse reason I no longer remember, I changed my routine a bit; instead of tearing through the usual pile of science fiction/fantasy/mystery yarns, I decided to take on a different kind of book: David Foster Wallace’s postmodern magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Though it is itself marginally science fiction, Wallace’s massive novel is about as far removed from the kind of genre reading that usually fills my vacation as it is possible to get. I originally had some notion of doing a fair amount of my “normal” summer reading alongside of Infinite Jest, but it didn’t work out that way. I’m glad I read the novel, but it absolutely exhausted me; after hewing my way through thirty or forty pages I barely had enough physical and mental energy to hoist myself out of my chair, much less crack open a gaudy-covered Ace reprint of Radium Raiders of Deneb by Lester Cragwell Griggs.

If you’ve never tackled it, reading Infinite Jest is like driving coast-to-coast on a state of the art superhighway… that has a speed bump every fifty feet, for three thousand miles. I did manage to get Son of Tarzan read in between bouts with Wallace’s knotted prose, but the two books didn’t mix well, and left me feeling slightly seasick, not to mention somewhat confused about the nature of reality.

In any case, this year I was determined to return to sanity and my standard procedure and see if it’s possible to overdose on the heady fumes that waft from the pages of forty year old paperbacks. I now submit the results of my experiment for your edification… or, if you wish, to act as a grim warning.

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Modular: Picking Pathfinder

Modular: Picking Pathfinder

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I’m curPatfhinder_Corerently running a Swords & Wizardry (S&W) campaign for a few friends. I wrote here about why I chose S&W instead of my preferred system, Pathfinder. In fact, that post served as the genesis for this Black Gate feature,  Modular. But now, I’m going to look at some of the strengths of Pathfinder and why, when this S&W campaign is done, I’m going to transition the group to a Pathfinder adventure.

So, though I had both played and run Pathfinder, I chose S&W for reasons I talked about in that prior post. I wanted a more story-driven, less mechanics-based system. Also, because two-thirds of the party was new to pen and paper RPGing, I wanted something lighter in the rules department. And there’s no comparison between the two in that regard. The S&W Core Rules comes in at just over 140 pages. The Pathfinder Core Rulebook is almost 600!

Now, I explained in that first post that while I was still reading RPG products, I had stopped playing during 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D): there simply hadn’t been time for it.

But I wanted to get back into playing, and the choice seemed to be between Pathfinder and the newly released 4th Edition. Now, I had only ever played D&D, going back to 1st Edition. I mean, it was synonymous with role playing games and 4th Edition was the natural choice. But as I researched both systems, Pathfinder clearly seemed to be the way to go.

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