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Year: 2018

Asphodel by Jane Lindskold, Out Now!

Asphodel by Jane Lindskold, Out Now!

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Asphodel Jane Lindskold-smallI had the privilege of reading Asphodel by Jane Lindskold soon after it was written and cannot recommend it highly enough.

It’s surreal, but in a very grounded way, if that makes any sense. Lindskold weaves together deep myth and literary allegory with fabulist escapism, and manages to take the reader on a very real journey into human love, loss, and redemption.

The book is available as a trade paperback, and as an ebook on Kindle, Nook, i-Tunes , GooglePlay, and Kobo.

Here’s the jacket copy.

Prison or Refuge?

Nameless in a doorless tower graced with seven windows, she is imprisoned. Who is her jailer? What is her crime?

After she discovers the secret of the seven windows, the nameless one, accompanied by two impossible companions, sets forth on fantastical journeys of exploration. But, for the nameless one, learning her name may not be a welcome revelation, and the identity of her jailer will rock the foundations of a tower that has come to be as much refuge as prison.

Read on for Lindskold’s post on how this book came to be.

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Short Sharp Adventures: World of the Masterminds / To the End of Time and Other Short Stories by Robert Moore Williams

Short Sharp Adventures: World of the Masterminds / To the End of Time and Other Short Stories by Robert Moore Williams

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World of the Masterminds-small To the End of Time and Other Stories-small

At the very top of my Books to Read shelf I have a slowly growing collection of Ace Doubles. I usually work my way forward numerically, starting with the D series, but will occasionally jump back a few if a new addition arrives. Thanks to this habit (and some other haphazard literary tastes) I am still, pleasantly, stuck within the Ace Double D range.

The next one in the schedule is a well preserved book with both sides by the same author, Robert Moore Williams. Ace Double D-427 comprises a “complete” novel, World of the Masterminds, and a collection of short stories, To the End of Time and Other Stories.

Robert Moore Williams wasn’t an author I was familiar with, although Black Gate readers will have encountered the odd mention of him, including a 2015 review by Rich Horton of the Ace Double The Star Wasps by Robert Moore Williams, paired with Warlord of Kor by Terry Carr.

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New Treasures: Nemo Rising by C. Courtney Joyner

New Treasures: Nemo Rising by C. Courtney Joyner

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Nemo Rising-smallC. Courtney Joyner has more than 25 movies to his credit, including the Viggo Mortensen film Prison. His new novel Nemo Rising began as a screenplay, as Joyner reveals in the appendix, “Nemo Rising: From Script to Novel and Back Again.” Here’s a snippet.

A kiddie matinee, with popcorn boxes and cups of soda flying overhead, was my introduction to Jules Verne. The movie was Mysterious Island, that grand and very loose adaptation of Verne’s semi-sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which featured that wonderful giant crab, created by Ray Harryhausen, and a mesmerizing Captain Nemo in the form of actor Herbert Lom. I was about eight years old, and hadn’t read any Verne yet, but I knew who he was, thanks to monster magazines, comic books, [and] paperbacks… I wish I could pretend my interest in Verne, and all that he created, had more sophisticated roots, but the movies and comic books touched the nerve that made me want to discover the real thing and sit down and read.

Joyner sounds like a man after our own heart. I get the feeling he and our Saturday morning blogger Ryan Harvey would hit it off especially well. His script version of Nemo Rising (a sample of which he includes in the appendix) was a sequel to Verne’s adventures of Captain Nemo; he turned it into a novel and attracted the attention of Tor Books, no mean feat. Here’s the description.

Sea monsters are sinking ships up and down the Atlantic Coast. Enraged that his navy is helpless against this onslaught and facing a possible World War as a result, President Ulysses S. Grant is forced to ask for assistance from the notorious Captain Nemo, in Federal prison for war crimes and scheduled for execution.

Grant returns Nemo’s submarine, the infamous Victorian Steampunk marvel Nautilus, and promises a full Presidential pardon if Nemo hunts down and destroys the source of the attacks. Accompanied by the beautiful niece of Grant’s chief advisor, Nemo sets off under the sea in search of answers. Unfortunately, the enemy may be closer than they realize…

Nemo Rising was published by Tor Books on December 26, 2017. It is 368 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Raymond Swanland. Read the first chapter here.

Birthday Reviews: Monte Cook’s “Born in Secrets”

Birthday Reviews: Monte Cook’s “Born in Secrets”

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Cover by Cliff Nielsen
Cover by Cliff Nielsen

Monte Cook was born on January 29, 1968. Cook has mostly focused his attention on the gaming sector, working for Iron Crown Enterprises on Rolemaster and Champions before moving to TSR, where he designed the game Dark•Matter.

After TSR was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he was put in charge of the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons. He left Wizards of the Coast and eventually started Malhavoc Press and published game supplements. Cook eventually founded another gaming company, Monte Cook Games.

“Born in Secrets” was published in the January 2000 issue of Amazing Stories, edited by Kim Mohan. The story is set in the world of Dark•Matter and the magazine had an essay about the game published alongside the story. Cook would publish a novel, Of Aged Angels, set in the same world the next year.

“Born in Secrets” tells the story of Jessie Campbell and Lewis McAndrews, two hydrogeologists working on a lengthy assignment in South Dakota when they stumble across an old sod house in the desert. Taking a break from their more pedestrian duties, and at Jessie’s urging, they explore the building and find some rusted tools and an old engraving metal platter.

Intrigued by their discovery, Lewis uses the internet to try to figure out what the German engraving means. Although he isn’t able to translate the entire thing, he does come across a reference to “Ministers of the Mind” and tries to learn what he can, sending e-mails to various websites. The few responses he receives are anything but enlightening and he shares them with Jessie before they abandon the mystery to return to their work.

Eventually, they are contacted by people who are tied to the Minsters of the Mind and learn that most of their wild speculations were true. They are now hosts to a second consciousness, which the Ministers believe is the next step in evolution.

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Vintage Treasures: Barrow by John Deakins

Vintage Treasures: Barrow by John Deakins

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Barrow John Deakins-small Barrow John Deakins-back-small

One of the reasons I like Roc is they have a long reputation of taking chances on new authors. Some of those gambles pay off handsomely, including folks like Jim Butcher, Anne Bishop, Carol Berg, Rob Thurman, and many others. Sometimes the authors involved produce a trilogy or two, and then retire into obscurity. And sometimes, like John Deakins, they produce a single novel and then vanish.

John Deakins’ Barrow was published by Roc in April 1990. It was the first and last book he published with Roc (or any mainstream publisher). There isn’t a lot of information about Deakins online, although I did find this brief bio by blogger Janika Banks, who appears to have been a neighbor.

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GOING BIG! Super Sized Marvel Treasury Editions

GOING BIG! Super Sized Marvel Treasury Editions

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Super Sized Marvel Treasury Editions-small

Ex-size-ior! Few things give me an exhilarating rush of childhood more than a Marvel Treasury Edition.

I see one and suddenly I’m five years old again, sprawled on the shag carpet by the bedroom door when I’m supposed to be asleep, that ginormous comic book spread out in front of me like a Life Magazine, surreptitiously turning the newsprint pages and delving into the four-color wonders of Spider-Man fighting a guy with a stegosaurus head or the Avengers flying across the sky to do battle with various nemeses or Conan hewing villains to rescue a curvaceous damsel.

Popular in the 1970s, Treasury Editions were mostly just reprints on Super Growth Hormone. They were, in a way, precursors to graphic novels: Each edition collected three or four comics from a series, sometimes with some new material thrown in.

Measuring 10” by 13”, they were striking. Part of the appeal to a younger reader would be the pictures are all bigger and more easily digested. I remember “reading” them before I could really read.

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Birthday Reviews: Parke Godwin’s “The Night You Could Hear Forever”

Birthday Reviews: Parke Godwin’s “The Night You Could Hear Forever”

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Cover by Kent Bash
Cover by Kent Bash

Parke Godwin was born on January 28, 1929 and died on June 19, 2013. He received the World Fantasy Award in 1982 for his novella The Fire When It Comes. Godwin published the Arthurian novels Firelord, Beloved Exile, and The Last Rainbow as well as the Robin Hood novels Sherwood and Robin and the King. His Snake Oil series was a religious satire. He co-wrote the novels The Masters of Solitude and Wintermind with Marvin Kaye.

“The Night You Could Hear Forever” has only appeared in its original publication, the September/October 1992 issue of Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine, edited by Dean Wesley Smith.

“The Night You Could Hear Forever” isn’t really a science fiction story, except in the way it describes the way people use technology. Its viewpoint character is located in Truckee, California and when he can’t sleep at night, he signs onto his ham radio equipment.

On the night Godwin describes, the atmospheric conditions are perfect and he is able to connect with other ham operators located in New Jersey, Utah, and Mississippi, each of whom are known to each other on the radio, but not in person, and only by the names of their states. In many ways, their relationship mirrors many relationships people now have online. Although the characters all have very different political views and backgrounds, they are able to remain friends, even as they disagree.

Unlike the online medium, using their voices allows them to get additional context and humanizes them. As they discuss the problems with the state of the country, they are joined by a new voice, from Maryland, who has not joined their nightly rap sessions, although Utah thinks the voice is familiar. Today’s world is mirrored in this story, although the technology has changed tremendously. The internet, however, causes anonymity without the sound of voices and inflection, so the friendship Godwin’s characters have managed to build despite their differences seems rarer in the modern era.

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Future Treasures: Pride & Prometheus by John Kessel

Future Treasures: Pride & Prometheus by John Kessel

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Pride and Prometheus John Kessel-back-small Pride and Prometheus John Kessel-small

John Kessel seems to be back.

He produced a string of well-regarded novels a few decades ago: Freedom Beach (1985, with James Patrick Kelly), Good News from Outer Space (1989) and Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997). Then he pretty much gave up on novels, switching to short fiction and producing five fiction collections between 1992 and 2012.

He returned in style last year with The Moon and the Other, his first novel in 20 years. Library Journal called it “Speculative fiction at its finest… impossible to put down,” and the Chicago Tribune labeled it “One of the year’s most intelligent and provocative novels.”

His fifth novel Pride & Prometheus, arriving in hardcover next month, blends Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein as Mary Bennet falls for the enigmatic Victor Frankenstein and befriends his monstrous Creature.

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When Science Fiction Sucks: Rich Horton on Alien Sea, by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb

When Science Fiction Sucks: Rich Horton on Alien Sea, by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb

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Alien Sea John Rackham-small C.O.D. Mars E C Tubb-small

Black Gate has some very prolific reviewers. Ryan Harvey has produced 290 articles for us, Matthew David Surridge 330, and Sue Granqust has written exactly 400. But the most prolific reviewer in our small community is doubtless Rich Horton who, in addition to his duties here, writes a regular monthly column for Locus, contributes short fiction reviews to places like Tangent Online, and maintains his own blog, Strange at Ecbatan. Not long ago Rich posted his 100th Ace Double Review at his blog, covering the forgotten novels Alien Sea by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars by E. C. Tubb, published in 1968.

I started these on the wonderful old Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written back in the early 2000s. I retain an interest in Ace Doubles for an intersection of reasons… the feeling that they give room for an awkward story length (25,000 to 45,000 words, say); the fact that they provided space for new writers to get published; the sometimes goofy subject matter; the fact that they could be a home for unpretentious adventure SF; and their uncommon format. But it must also be said that a lot of the stories published as Ace Doubles were downright crappy. And indeed this review, the 100th, perhaps appropriately features a couple of awfully weak short novels.

Even though the novels sucked, Rich gives it his all, as always. Here’s his thoughts on two bad science fiction novels by John Rackham and E.C. Tubb.

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The Animated Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters Mostly Does Its Job

The Animated Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters Mostly Does Its Job

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Go-ji-ra — a strange word with mythic resonance when it rolls off the tongue of native Japanese speakers. But it’s a tough sell as the English title of a 1950s monster movie. For the sake of global audiences, the Foreign Sales Department of Toho Studios gave their 1954 movie and its monster a Romanized name: Godzilla. It makes sense as a transliteration: the katakana character shi (シ) in Gojira (ゴジラ) can be Romanized as -dzi-, and the “R” sound in -ra (ラ) slides into an “L.” By happy accident — or sly intention — Toho baptized their behemoth with the word God at its front, hinting at a creature greater than life, dominant in a way no mere monster could be.

The highest compliment I can give to the new animated film, Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (currently streaming on Netflix), is that it explores and explodes the “God” in Godzilla. Other movies in the series have emphasized the monster’s inscrutability and deity-like unstoppability. The first mention of Godzilla in the 1954 original comes from an old fisherman who speaks of a legendary beast that has kept his island in fear for centuries. Planet of the Monsters pushes this god(zilla)hood into the spotlight. Godzilla has literally conquered Earth, driving the scraps of humanity into exile in space, then transforming and ruling the planet’s ecosystem unchallenged for twenty thousand years. This is Godzilla Earth, where the monster is both creator and destroyer.

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