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Month: April 2018

Birthday Reviews: Adrian Rogoz’s “The Altar of the Random Gods”

Birthday Reviews: Adrian Rogoz’s “The Altar of the Random Gods”

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Almanahul literar
Almanahul literar

Adrian Rogoz was born on April 19, 1921 in Bucharest Romania, and died on July 28, 1996. He was a founding member of the first science fiction fan club in Romania, SF Cenacle. In addition to his own work, Rogoz translated works by Ivan Efremov and Stanislaw Lem into Romanian.

“The Altar of the Random Gods” was originally published in Almanahul literar in 1970 as “Altarul zeilor Stohasrici.” Its English translation first appeared in Franz Rottensteiner’s anthology of European science fiction View from Another Shore, and has been included in several reprints of that volume. The story has also been translated into French, Dutch, Hungarian, German (twice), Serbian, and Italian.

In this translation of “The Altar of the Random Gods,” by Matthew J. O’Connell, Rogoz describes the trip from Mobile to Huntsville Alabama via a superfast highway of computer controlled cars. Homer is making the journey and looking forward to seeing Barbara at the end of it when a freakish malfunction occurs.

The story is interesting not because of its predictions about technology or the way Homer takes the superhighspeed transportation for granted, but rather because of the way it feels like a mixture of science fiction and fantasy. The first half of the story, up until the collision, is clearly in the realms of science fiction, tothe point where Rogoz’s descriptions (or at least the translations of those descriptions) feels clichéd.

Following the accident, the story moves more into the realm of fantasy, with Homer meeting three gods, who may well be aliens, who explain to him what has happened. Rather than speak in the terms gods in fantasy stories usually use, the gods in “The Altar of the Random Gods” speak in terms of probability, using mathematics to tell Homer what has happened to him and what he can expect for his life going forward.

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Future Treasures: All the Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma

Future Treasures: All the Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma

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All the Fabulous Beasts-small All the Fabulous Beasts-back-small

Michael Kelly’s Undertow Publications has introduced me to some truly fabulous writers in the nine years it’s been around, including V. H. Leslie, Eric Schaller, Sunny Moraine, Conrad Williams, and others. Their upcoming volume All the Fabulous Beasts, arriving in trade paperback on May 1st, looks like a beautiful addition to their catalog. It’s the debut collection from Priya Sharma, gathering 16 tales of “love, rebirth, nature, and sexuality… A heady mix of myth and ontology, horror and the modern macabre.”

Priya Sharma is a UK writer and doctor. Her short story “Fabulous Beasts” won a British Fantasy Award, and she has appeared in Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Black Feathers, Nightmare Carnival, Interzone, Black Static, Tor.com, Nightmare magazine, and many other fine venues.

If you’re not already familiar with Undertow, All the Fabulous Beasts would make a great introduction. But if you can’t wait until May 1st, allow me to suggest eight earlier volumes from Undertow we’ve reviewed right here at Black Gate, including their flagship publications Shadows & Tall Trees (7 issues, and a finalist for the British Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, and Shirley Jackson Award), and the marvelous Year’s Best Weird Fiction (4 volumes).

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Magical Realism from the Sudan

Magical Realism from the Sudan

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The Longing of the Dervish-smallIt feels like we’re in a Golden Age for translations of speculative fiction. We’re seeing everything from the rise of Egyptian dystopian novels to Chinese authors making it big in the American market. Of course, some nations and cultures are better known than others. One that is little known to English-language readers is Sudanese fiction. It can be hard to get in the West, and even on my regular visits to the American University in Cairo bookshop I have to hunt to find authors from south of the border.

It’s worth the search. Sudanese literature is rich in history and folklore, and a large measure of what I’ve come across contains speculative elements. One could call it magical realism, although I have not seen any Sudanese author use that term.

My most recent acquisition was Hammour Ziada’s novel The Longing of the Dervish. Set in the nineteenth century during the time of the Mahdi’s brief empire, it follows the adventures of the slave Bakhit and his obsession with the Alexandrine Greek nun Theodora. Poor Theodora spends most of the novel as a ghost while Bakhit sets out to avenge her killing. The historical setting is richly drawn, as are the characters, and one gets the feeling that the phantom Theodora is not the product of Bakhit’s madness. There’s also some interesting scenes of folk magic.

The journal Banipal, which publishes Arabic literature in translation, dedicated their issue 55 to Sudanese writing. A couple of the stories have speculative elements. “Amulet and Feathers” by Leila Aboulela is another tale of revenge that involves a female character who dresses as a man to avenge her father’s killing only to go through a even more radical transformation. “The Jealous Star” is a children’s tale with a star as the main character who convinces all the other stars to move to the daylight. Other stories are set more firmly in reality, including an excellent one by Hammour Ziada about what happens to an isolated village when a Bedouin tribe decides to move in.

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The Secret Origin of Ultron

The Secret Origin of Ultron

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Avenges-67-August-1969-cover

With the entire world counting down to an imminent and inevitable event that may shake the entire world and light up Twitter like nothing previous – no, not a Trump impeachment, but the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War – an Avengers robot column may be the only thing to soothe and distract the hordes long enough for the rest of us to stock up on survival gear, water, and dark chocolate.

For that I need to go back one movie to Avengers: Age of Ultron. Every good comic historian knows the origin of Ultron. He’s introduced in the pulsating pages of Avengers #55 (August 1968) as Ultron-5 and his back story is laid out in delectable detail in Avengers #58 (November 1968). Some indefinite time in the past Hank Pym – Ant Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, pick one – was noodling around in his workshop tinkering with “a crude but workable robot .. A faltering step on the path to synthetic life!” For reasons never explained, the robot turns itself on and its brain evolves from infant to adult in a matter of magnificent moments, giving it more daddy issues than all the Miss Golden Globes titlests combined. He, now definitely a gendered he, blanks Hank’s memory while he spends time off-page continually upgrading his body so that when readers get their first glimpse he introduces himself as Ultron-5.

NOTE: This article was updated on September 21, 2018 for a vital correction. See the addition of the Ultimate Ultron below.

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Birthday Reviews: Keith R.A. DeCandido’s “A Vampire and a Vampire Hunter Walk into a Bar”

Birthday Reviews: Keith R.A. DeCandido’s “A Vampire and a Vampire Hunter Walk into a Bar”

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Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories

Keith R.A. DeCandido was born on April 18, 1969.

DeCandido has written the Precinct series as well as works in a number of licenses series, including Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, StarGate SG-1, and Dungeons and Dragons  In 2005, he published the official novelization of the film Serenity. DeCandido has also written numerous comics and blogs for Tor.com. In 2009, he was inducted as a Grand Master by the Scribe Awards for his work on media tie-in publications.

“A Vampire and a Vampire Hunter Walk Into a Bar” was published in the final print issue of Amazing Stories from Paizo Publishing, cover dated February 2005. The story has not been reprinted since.

The very clichés which DeCandido skewers in “A Vampire and a Vampire Hunter Walk Into a Bar” are what cause the story to work. On its surface, it’s the tale of the two title characters sitting in a bar complaining about the expectations the public has about them, particularly the vampire, based on the films Nosferatu, Dracula, and the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

However, the very sense of camaraderie the characters show is based on the idea that during the Victorian period, when Dracula was first published, gentlemen antagonists would have a level of respect for each other’s abilities.

The story is a lighthearted look at two individuals whose (incredibly long) lives are linked together. The humor of the piece comes from how pedestrian their interaction is under the most extraordinary of circumstances. The story also serves to deconstruct the vampire story by questioning all of the things people “know” about vampires.

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In Hell — We Reap What You Sow: Hell Hounds by Andrew P. Weston

In Hell — We Reap What You Sow: Hell Hounds by Andrew P. Weston

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Hell Houds Andrew P Weston-small Hell Houds Andrew P Weston-back-small

Hell Hounds by Andrew P. Weston
Perseid Press (508 pages, $23.85 in hardcover/$8.90 in digital formats, October 25, 2017)
Cover art and cover design by Roy Mauritsen

I inhaled deeply, my phantom nostrils flaring in pleasure as a pungent blend of brimstone and exhaust fumes filled my nonexistent lungs. Home — the perfect place for me, Daemon Grim, the Reaper, Satan’s personal enforcer. This was my kind of place, and I loved it here. But I suppose that was understandable, as I was top of the food chain.

According to Wikipedia, “Bangsian fantasy is a fantasy genre which concerns the use of famous literary or historical individuals and their interactions in the afterlife. It is named for John Kendrick Bangs who often wrote it.” And that is what the Heroes in Hell series is all about.  Now, while the identity of Andrew Weston’s character, Daemon Grim, remains a mystery, that’s all part of the fun: who was Grim in life? What famous or infamous person from earth’s history was he, and how did he become Satan’s personal enforcer?

Hell is, as Weston states in his dedication, “the best playground — ever!” And that’s true indeed, for writers, and for us readers. This is Weston’s second novel in Janet Morris’ Heroes in Hell Universe, following closely on the heels of his Hell Bound, published in 2015, which I also reviewed for Black Gate. This second novel from this best-selling author is a real mind-blowing trip through the dark, dangerous and various levels of the infernal Afterlife.

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New Treasures: Spectral Evidence by Gemma Files

New Treasures: Spectral Evidence by Gemma Files

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Spectral Evidence Gemma Files-small Spectral Evidence Gemma Files-back-small

There’s no pleasure quite like a top-notch collection of horror stories, and I’m always on the lookout for one. Gemma Files’ latest collection Spectral Evidence, released in February from Trepidatio, sounds like a great candidate. Just check out these story descriptions.

An embittered blood-servant plots revenge against the vampires who own him; a little girl’s best friend seeks to draw her into an ancient, forbidden realm; two monster-hunting sisters cross paths with an amoral holler-witch again and again, battling both mortal authorities and immortal predators. From the forgotten angels who built the cosmos to the reckless geniuses whose party drug unleashes a plague, madness, monsters and murder await at every turn.

Monster-hunting sisters? Ancient, forbidden realms? Reckless geniuses and holler-witches? Why don’t I have this book already?

Spectral Evidence gathers nine stories from major anthologies of the past few years, including Ellen Datlow’s Fearful Symmetries, Hauntings, October Dreams II from Cemetery Dance, and many others. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Sorcery and Science: The Broken Lands by Fred Saberhagen

Sorcery and Science: The Broken Lands by Fred Saberhagen

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The Broken Lands Saberhagan-smallI wonder if Fred Saberhagen suspected that his short 1968 novel, The Broken Lands, was laying the groundwork for a series that would ultimately run 15 volumes. The initial three books, The Broken Lands, The Black Mountains (1971), and Changeling Earth (1973) — collected together as The Empire of the East — take place in America a long time after some yet-undefined catastrophe. While bits and pieces of technology — one giant piece in particular — survive, there is also magic. Wizards, familiars, demons, elementals, even love charms, they’re all there in a very unfamiliar landscape.

The setup for The Broken Lands is one only the slackest of readers haven’t encountered a hundred times or more: young boy faces off against evil empire, discovering and drawing on heretofore unknown skills and abilities. Along the way he encounters unrequited love, a wise mentor, and a villain with honor (and more style than everyone else). The primary narrative concerns the search for a secret thing with which to fight the empire. Did I mention the empire was evil?

I like this book way more than I should. Stock as the characters are, routine as the setup feels, at some point we start getting hints that something bigger and better is going on. In fact, that it feels like what’s coming next is going to be familiar, and then it isn’t, is a big part of the book’s success for me. In the meantime Saberhagen’s writing is clean and the story’s pacing is brisk. There’s little poetry in The Broken Lands, but there is an economy that keeps the undertakings lively and enjoyable.

Only recently has the much-feared Empire of the East expanded its grasping hands into the West. The people of the region, mostly farmers, have been easily conquered and cowed into submission. In addition to bronze-helmeted soldiers, the forces under the local Satrap, Ekuman, include intelligent flying reptiles and a pair of wizards. It is with his wizards the Satrap is conferring as the book begins.

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Birthday Reviews: Lloyd Biggle, Jr.’s “Gypped”

Birthday Reviews: Lloyd Biggle, Jr.’s “Gypped”

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Galaxy Science Ficiton July 1956-small Galaxy Science Ficiton July 1956-back-small

Cover by Jack Coggins

Lloyd Biggle, Jr. was born on April 17, 1923 and he died on September 12, 2002.

Biggle was nominated for the Hugo Award for his short story “Monument” and for the William Atheling, Jr. Award for Criticism or Review for his essay “The Morasses of Academe Revisited.” He was a musician and oral historian and helped found and run the Science Fiction Oral History Association. He was also the founding treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

His first published short story was “Gypped,” which was bought by H.L. Gold and published in the July 1956 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It was translated into French for an appearance in the French edition of the magazine the following year. Its only other appearance was in the anthology Science Fiction for the Throne: One-Sitting Reads, edited by Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial.

“Gypped” is the story of a bureaucrat assigned a desk in a distant backwater. Occasionally he has to deal with strange cultural requests and in order to make his life easier, he sends people on wild goose chases covering many light years, figuring that if they ever returned, he could deal with the situation then. In the meantime, he continues his work reasonably uninterrupted and amuses himself by thinking of the places he’s sent people.

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Roleplaying the Possibility Wars: Torg Eternity (Part One)

Roleplaying the Possibility Wars: Torg Eternity (Part One)

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Torg EternityLater today, early tomorrow, sometime next week, the world began to end.

Imagine the Earth wreathed in storms spitting red and blue lightning. Imagine invaders from beyond reality turning the world piece by piece into something other than what we know. Imagine a cyberpunk theocracy in France, dinosaurs overruning the great cities of the United States, colonial gothic horrors in India, a post-apocalyptic wasteland in Russia haunted by decadent technodemons, zombies in East Asia, a mad pulp super-villain and would-be Pharaoh building a fascist empire among the pyramids of Egypt, and elves and wizards and dungeons and dragons in the British Isles and Scandinavia.

The storm has a name …

Torg is a tabletop role-playing game first published in 1990 by West End Games. I started running a campaign in 1991 that lasted for over a decade, off and on. Last year game publisher Ulisses Spiele launched a successful kickstarter to fund an updated edition of the game, Torg Eternity; they’re currently running another kickstarter for the rebooted game’s first sourcebook, The Living Land. The original Torg was the most explosively imaginative game I’ve ever played. The new is an intelligent update, refining the first version’s rules and concepts while respecting what made it work. Preparing to run the first session of a Torg Eternity campaign, I was shocked to realise how much power the original game had for me; and how well the new game not only maintained that imaginative power but added to it.

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