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Year: 2018

Rebecca Roanhorse Celebrates the Launch of Trail of Lightning with a Reading and Q&A

Rebecca Roanhorse Celebrates the Launch of Trail of Lightning with a Reading and Q&A

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Rebecca Roanhorse-smallTrail of Lightning-smallNebula Award winning author Rebecca Roanhorse released her first novel this week.

Trail of Lightning takes place on the Navajo reservation, where Roanhorse lived with her extended family (she, herself, is Ohkay Owingeh and African American). Environmental apocalypse has drowned most of the rest of the world, but the Navajo reservation — now called Dinétah — survived with some supernatural help. The Sixth World has dawned, bringing back the gods and monsters of old.

Main character, Maggie Hoskie, isn’t sure whether or not she’s a monster herself, but she excels at hunting them. When a new kind of horror starts abducting and killing innocent people, only Maggie, with the help of an unconventional (and rather attractive) medicine man named Kai, can hope to stop it; but can she defeat this great evil before it destroys what’s left of the world or will her own demons consume her first?

I had the privilege of facilitating a Q&A session with Roanhorse at the Jean-Cocteau Cinema on the day of her book launch. During the hour-long session, she read excerpts from her book and took audience questions about her work and process.

The video below is a record of that evening — unedited for the most part. The only parts it lacks are the signing session and the amazing cake that Roanhorse brought to celebrate.

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Harlan Ellison 1934-2018: Essential and Impossible

Harlan Ellison 1934-2018: Essential and Impossible

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Harlan Ellison-small

Did you feel that? That sudden drop in pressure, that slump, as if the world itself had let out a long-held breath? I’m sure it was registered on every spot on earth, from Cleveland to Calcutta, from Reykjavik to Tierra del Fuego. That was Harlan Ellison leaving the building. No man was ever less likely to die peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of eighty four, but that’s exactly what happened on the morning of June 28th, and the effect is tantamount to global nuclear disarmament. The immanent threat is over; finally, we can all relax a bit.

An authoritative assessment of Ellison’s tumultuous sixty year career can now begin and is far beyond the scope of this piece, even if I had the ability to do it — which I don’t. All that I can say is that the world has instantly become a less interesting, less vital place than it was when the human bomb that was Harlan Ellison was still ticking away. He was one of those rare people who can actually alter the atmosphere; in his presence, the air was sharper, the light brighter, the temperature higher, and everything seems a little dulled and diminished now that he’s gone.

The couple of times that I met him in person — in the mid 70’s, at the legendary Change of Hobbit bookstore in Los Angeles — the intensity and excitement radiated from him in waves. It was actually a bit frightening, like being too close to an enormous bonfire. It was immediately evident that this was a dangerous person; he would break boundaries in ways good and bad, because that was life to him, and he didn’t know any other way to exist. It’s amazing that he lived to be eighty four — by all rights he should have succumbed to stroke or homicide long ago.

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Birthday Reviews: Genevieve Valentine’s “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)”

Birthday Reviews: Genevieve Valentine’s “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)”

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Cover by Allen Williams
Cover by Allen Williams

Genevieve Valentine was born on July 1, 1981.

Valentine was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 2010 for “Light on the Water.” In 2012, her short story “Things to Know About Being Dead” was a Shirley Jackson Award nominee and her novel Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti was a Nebula Award nominee. That same year Mechanique won the William L. Crawford — IAFA Award.

“From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” was published by Ellen Datlow in Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fiction in 2013. It has not been reprinted.

Genevieve Valentine’s “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premier at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” is a story told in the form of letters, catalogue entries, and quotations from books about a lost pavilion at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. According to Valentine, part of the Exhibition was to be devoted to creatures and oddities from around the world: actual mermaids, fairies, and other mythical creatures, but a fire before the opening destroyed the exhibit.

The catalog of these exhibitions is interspersed throughout the story, beginning with the “Biddenden Maids,” a pair of German Siamese twins, but the entries get more inventive very quickly. Letters from Walter Goodall, the artist hired to paint images of the pavilion are also included as the reader is given background information about both the Exhibition and the staff that is handling this particular pavilion.

The plot of the story, such as it is, is essentially revealed in the work’s title. The enjoyment of the story comes from the descriptions of the oddities which would have been found in the pavilion and Goodall’s letters indicating that he is attempting to maintain at least a semblance of normalcy despite the strangeness of his commission. As a story, it works less well, but it is evocative and makes the reader want to learn more about the Exhibition and if anything like the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous was meant to exist.

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Birthday Reviews: June Index

Birthday Reviews: June Index

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Cover by Tony Roberts
Cover by Tony Roberts

Black Gate Issue 1
Black Gate Issue 1

Cover by John Picacio
Cover by John Picacio

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index

June 1, James P. Killus: “Flower of the Void”
June 2, Lester del Rey: “Fade Out”
June 3, Tony Richards: “Discards”
June 4, Nictzin Dyalhis: “Heart of Atlantan”
June 5, Margo Lanagan: “The Proving of Smollett Standforth”
June 6, Jay Lake: “The Water Castle”

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Shadows, Robots, and Warrior Monks: Amazon Selects the Five Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of June

Shadows, Robots, and Warrior Monks: Amazon Selects the Five Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of June

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Amazon Top Five SF & Fantasy in June

Amazon closes out a month of great books with their 5 Top Picks for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of June. The list includes some pretty familiar titles, including Peng Shepherd’s The Book of M, Yoon Ha Lee’s Revenant Gun, Stephanie Garber’s Legendary, and the debut novel by Black Gate‘s own Todd McAulty. Here’s their take.

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

Robots have taken over most of the world, but not quite in the way you’d expect. Some have fought their way to dominion. Others have been voted into power by human citizens who think AIs will make better decisions. Readers who enjoyed the complex robot-human relationships within Robopocalypse and the investigations in World War Z about how institutions function (or don’t) in the face of species-changing event will happily sink their teeth into The Robots of Gotham.

See the complete list here.

Peplum Populist: Goliath and the Vampires (1961)

Peplum Populist: Goliath and the Vampires (1961)

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goliath-and-vampies-lobby-card

Okay, another Maciste film! Let’s do this!

When writing about Maciste’s history in silent movies, I promised that the next Peplum Populist article would hurtle ahead to Maciste’s first appearance in the sword-and-sandal boom of the 1960s, Son of Samson (Maciste nella valle dei Re). But I have a DVD of Goliath and the Vampires (Maciste contro il vampiro) lying here on the shelf, and it’s about time I completed the “dark fantasy” trio of peplum classics after writing about Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) and Maciste in Hell/The Witch’s Curse (1962). Although Goliath and the Vampires doesn’t have the same visual imagination, it’s in the 90th percentile as far as sword-and-sandal fun goes.

Goliath and the Vampires features more stock genre situations than those two other films. The fantastic elements don’t dictate the story as much as they’re pasted onto the pre-fabricated framework of what sword-and-sandal films were quickly solidifying into.

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Birthday Reviews: Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control”

Birthday Reviews: Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control”

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Cover by Julek Heller
Cover by Julek Heller

Adam Roberts was born on June 30, 1965.

Roberts won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the British SF Association Award for his novel Jack Glass in 2013. In 2016, he won a second BSFA Award for his non-fiction book Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014. He has also been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the Sidewise Award, and the Kitschies. In addition to writing series science fiction, he also has published several fantasy parodies, usually identifiable based on a series of Rs as his middle initial.

“Pest Control” was purchased by Mike Ashley for inclusion in the 2005 anthology The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy. Although it appeared in a Science Fiction Book Club reprint of the volume, it has not appeared elsewhere.

A familiarity with the poem Beowulf is a benefit for those reading Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control,” although at the same it can be something of an hindrance. The story relates the events of the poem, but rather than Beowulf coming to Hrothgar’s aide to rid Heorot of Grendel, in Roberts’s version of the story, Beowulf, or Mr. Wulf, calls a modern day pest control company to get rid of the creature.

The humor of the story comes from the juxtaposition of the ancient story of Beowulf and Des Hannigan, the representative of King and Kegan Pest Control, treating the situation as normal, although he thought he was being called to take care of a rat infestation rather than a Grendel. The story follows the tripartite nature of the original poem, so anyone who knows the poem has a good idea about the results of each of the attempts at pest eradication.

Roberts manages to make his jokes land, although it seems like having Mr. Wulf as the pest control specialist and the person with the Grendel problem being a Mr. Hrothgar would have fit the pattern of the original poem a bit better. As it is, Des provides solutions for the clearly not very bright Mr. Wulf and while the reader is allowed to see the progression of the story, the ultimate pest control issue is left to the imagination.

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For Those Who Conjure: Anna Tambour’s The Road to Neozon from Obsidian Sky

For Those Who Conjure: Anna Tambour’s The Road to Neozon from Obsidian Sky

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The Road to Neozon-small The Road to Neozon-back-small

NEW READS!

The Road to Neozon is the latest collection of short stories by author Anna Tambour (Smoke, Paper, Mirrors; Crandolin; Spotted Lily; Monterra’s Deliciosa and Other Tales), and the latest publication of Obsidian Sky books.

Author Paul Di Filipo once wrote that Tambour will “register Richter-powerful on the delighted synapses of all patrons of weird, funny fabulism.” Her new book, Road to Neozon, invites “those who lack caution” to “proceed,” and offers its pages “to those who conjure. To those who wander. To those with a hopeful eye for things unseen.”

Neozon showcases eleven “distinctly Tambourian (7 special to this collection), typically slippery tales to celebrate life’s wondrous unease, and its unerring ability to attract the attention of forces that grin at the notion of human control.”

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In 500 Words or Less: Kate Heartfield’s Debut Novel Armed in Her Fashion

In 500 Words or Less: Kate Heartfield’s Debut Novel Armed in Her Fashion

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Armed in Her Fashion-smallArmed in Her Fashion
By Kate Heartfield
ChiZine Publications (350 pages, $17.99 paperback, $10.99 eBook, April 2018)

Fantasy is a tough industry. You can a) stick to tried-and-true tropes and structures and hope to stand out in subtler ways or b) come up with something truly outside-the-box and hope that it still appeals to the traditional fantasy audience. Neither of these options is a sure thing (is anything?). But it seems like every month, reviewers point out authors who are doing one or the other and doing it well.

That’s basically what I’m doing here. Not simply because I’ve been a fan of Kate Heartfield’s short fiction since well before I got to know her here in Ottawa (she’s awesome, by the way). It’s because her first novel, Armed in Her Fashion, is basically Option B on some performance-enhancing drug.

We’ve all seen the basic quest narrative, right? Protagonist and company need to travel somewhere and do a thing, they go through a bunch of challenges en route, and the path to their goal isn’t at all what they expect when they set out from home. Fashion is essentially a Campbellian hero’s journey, but it’s also way more. It’s set in 14th century Flanders, for one thing. It’s also alternate history, taking place at the outset of the Hundred Years War, but with a Hellmouth and revenants in play. And the cast is mostly women, centered on widow Margriet de Vos and her daughter Beatrix, looking to reclaim the latter’s inheritance from Margriet’s sorta-dead husband. The concept of women’s rights and authority is a huge piece of this story, but in a medieval context, and with an additional angle in the form of Claude, a transgender man-at-arms. Claude is a particularly compelling character, allowing Heartfield to explore a topic I’ve never seen in fantasy before: how a transgendered individual would be treated by a medieval, patriarchal society. As well, the disconnect between how Claude views himself and how even Fashion’s other protagonists view him as “that woman who dresses like a man” isn’t all that alien when compared to contemporary society.

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Birthday Reviews: Jeff Duntemann’s “Guardian”

Birthday Reviews: Jeff Duntemann’s “Guardian”

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Cover by Alex Schomburg
Cover by Alex Schomburg

Jeff Duntemann was born on June 29, 1952.

Duntemann began publishing in 1974 with “Our Lady of the Endless Sky,” and has mostly published short fiction. In 1981 Duntemann appeared on the Hugo Award for Short Story ballot twice, for “Cold Hands” and “Guardian,” losing to Clifford Simak’s “Grotto of the Dancing Deer.” In 2005 ISFiC Press published his first novel, The Cunning Blood. He collaborated with Nancy Kress on the story “Borovsky’s Hollow Woman” in 1983.

“Guardian” appeared in the September 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited by George H. Scithers. It was translated for its appearance in the German edition of the magazine, Isaac Asimovs Science Fiction Magazin 13 Folge and was included by Herbert W. Franke in the anthology Kontinuum 4 in 1987.

Duntemann’s “Guardian” is an interesting mix of futuristic and historic. The Guardian in question has been tasked with protecting Princess Divin Rea Hol Wervig, even beyond death. When the princess’s skull is taken from the swamp where she was interred, the Guardian seeks its return and vengeance. He makes his way into the nearby village where he finds himself confronting Abbot Gorman Izak.

In the millennia since the princess died and the Guardian, which is clearly robotic in nature, has come into contact with human civilization, society has changed, as has the technology level. Abbott Izak is clearly a religious in the Christian tradition who is able to have an intelligent conversation with the Guardian and manages to delay its vengeance by a week, during which time the Abbot promises to find the culprit who stole the skull.

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