Browsed by
Month: January 2019

Future Treasures: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Future Treasures: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Comments 0 Comment
The Priory of the Orange Tree-small The Priory of the Orange Tree-back-small

Samantha Shannon, author of the bestselling Bone Season trilogy, is the latest YA author to attempt the jump to adult fantasy. Her highly anticipated The Priory of the Orange Tree — all 830 pages of it — arrives in hardcover from Bloomsbury in a month.

The transition from YA superstar to mainstream success isn’t easy, however (just ask JK Rowling). But I’m extremely intrigued about this one. Mostly because of Sarah Avery’s review of The Bone Season to be honest, published right here back in 2014. Here’s the snippet that caught my eye.

Read this book. Just read it. Ignore the reviews that call Samantha Shannon the next J.K. Rowling, or call the series that opens with The Bone Season the next Hunger Games… It’s the book you would get if Philip K. Dick decided to write about the wild Victorian occult scene that flourished under Madame Blavatsky, blossomed again in the time of W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley, lingering until it faded with its evenstar, Dion Fortune. That is, if Philip K. Dick decided to take all that supernatural grandiosity, and steampunk adaptations of Victoriana, and turn them on their heads by transposing them into a dystopian near-future historical moment that feels intermittently like hard SF with its what-ifs scrambled.

The early reviews of The Priory of the Orange Tree have been very promising. Marie Brennan calls it “An astonishing achievement,” and Laini Taylor labels it a “magnificent epic of queens, dragonriders, and badass secret wyrm-slaying priestesses.” Publishers Weekly says it’s a “massive standalone epic fantasy with court intrigue, travel through dangerous lands, [and] fantastical religions.” Here’s the description.

…

Read More Read More

The Beautiful and the Repellent: An Interview with Charles A. Gramlich

The Beautiful and the Repellent: An Interview with Charles A. Gramlich

Comments 1 comment

GramlichFinal

It is not intuitive to seek beauty in art deemed grotesque, but most authors who produce horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b) driven by strange muses. Weird fiction masters (Robert E. Howard, Poe, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft…) held serious beliefs that their “horror” was actually beautiful. This interview series engages contemporary authors & artists on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.” Previously we cornered weird fantasy authors like John Fultz, Janeen Webb, Aliya Whiteley, Richard Lee Byers, Sebastian Jones, and Darrell Schweitzer.

Charles Gramlich grew up on a farm in Arkansas but moved to the New Orleans area in 1986 to teach psychology at Xavier University. His degree is in Experimental Psychology with a specialization in Physiological Psychology; Charles served as chair of the department several times between 1988 and 2002. He was instrumental in developing the Psychology Pre-medical program for the department. He’s since published eight novels, three nonfiction books, five collections of short stories, and a chapbook of vampire haiku. Charles likes to write in many different genres but all of his fiction work is known for its intense action and strong visuals. Check out his Razored Zen blog and Amazon page.

Previous interviews are revealing: in 2007 Shauna Roberts interviewed Gramlich about his Talera Cycle (also included in Write with Fire) and in 2014 Prashant C. Trikannad’s interview focused on his western Killing Trail. This round we focus on his poetic take on pulp adventure. In addition to publishing many short stories that fit the bill, he published an essay in Weird Fiction Review #7 called “The Beautiful and the Repellent: The Erotic Allure of Death and the Other in the Writers of Weird Tales” (Fall 2016 edition).

…

Read More Read More

Hither Came Conan: Fletcher Vredenburgh – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”

Hither Came Conan: Fletcher Vredenburgh – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”

Comments 34 comments
Frank Frazetta's famous work
Frank Frazetta’s famous work

Submitted in 1932 to Weird Tales, “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” is possibly the first Conan story of entirely new material (read Keith West on the story’s publication history), and it is also unique in its style. It is stripped down to the bare, primal essences of sword & sorcery, and exists on the lip between reality and nightmare. There’s more of myth and dream to “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” than to any other Conan yarn. When I first encountered it in my younger days, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but since then, I’ve come to appreciate it on several levels.

The lone survivor from a band of Aesir, Conan the Cimmerian finds himself facing Heimdul, the sole survivor from a Vanir war party, on a corpse-littered field of snow. As soon as Conan defeats and kills the Vanir warrior, he finds himself overcome by the blinding sunlight reflected off the blood-stained snow.

He is raised from his stupor by the arrival of an ivory-skinned, red-haired woman of surpassing beauty. She is barefoot and naked, save for a filmy gown. Soon she is taunting him and he is chasing her. Both rage and mad lust drive him after her into increasingly mountainous terrain with a sky streaked by the colors of the borealis. As he finally nears her, two armored giants rise up from the snow and the woman reveals herself to be their sister. She has lured the Cimmerian northward to his doom.

He proves too powerful, though and, driven by a primal urgency, dispatches them quickly. Unable to ward off Conan any longer, the woman calls on her father, the terrible god, Ymir, and in response to her cries a cascade of blinding blue lights from the heavens strike Conan, leaving him unconscious again. He next finds himself shaken awake by some of his comrades from another war band.

A debate follows whether Conan’s experience was real or just the result of the blow to his head that dented his helmet. One old soldier, Gorm, claims to have seen her in his youth. She is Atali, daughter of Ymir, and has lured men to their deaths for ages. Only Gorm’s wounds kept him from following her himself. Despite the tale, Conan is still unsure of what really happened – until he realizes he still clutches a gossamer gown in his hand.

…

Read More Read More

Call for Backers! DreamForge: A Magazine of Science & Fantasy Fiction Campaign on Kickstarter

Call for Backers! DreamForge: A Magazine of Science & Fantasy Fiction Campaign on Kickstarter

Comments 3 comments

A new science fiction and fantasy market is about to launch, and they’re calling for Kickstarter backers to help get them off the ground. DreamForge, headed up by Scot Noel, is recruiting “dreamers, heroes, and optimists” to back, submit to, and subscribe to this new magazine. Check out their Kickstarter video above!

This magazine is an exciting addition to the publishing market and Noel is open to all the subgenres of speculative fiction. The overarching theme is hope.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Space, Time & Crime edited by Miriam Allen deFord

Vintage Treasures: Space, Time & Crime edited by Miriam Allen deFord

Comments 4 comments
Space Time & Crime-small Space Time & Crime-back-small

Genre blending these days is very popular. So you have steampunk space operas like RJ Theodore’s Flotsam, SF noir like K.R. Richardson’s Blood Orbit, near-future police procedurals such as Serial Box’s Ninth Step Station, and every conceivable genre mash-up in between. But there was a time when daring to mix genres like science fiction and mystery was exciting and new. One of the first paperback anthologies to try it was Miriam Allen deFord’s Space, Time & Crime, published by Paperback Library in 1964, when I was just six months old. But even then, as deFord rather astutely observes in her introduction, it had been going on quietly in the genre for for time.

I believe it was Sam Moskowitz who praised Caves of Steel, by Frederik Pohl and the late Cyril Kornbluth, for “accomplishing the impossible by successfully combining detective stories with science fiction.”

As a matter of fact, that intermixture is so far from impossible that it has (as this book attests) attracted a great many of the best known writers in both fields. And it is natural that this should be so. Both mystery and science fiction are concerned primarily with X, the unknown quantity. In the mystery story — both the detective and the suspense story — X is the criminal; in science fiction X may be, for example, life on planets other than ours, life in the future, life in an alternate parallel universe, or some other extrapolation of known scientific fact into imaginative probability. The interest in the unknown, but knowable, which moves the mystery story writer moves the science fiction writer as well. In consequence, both writers often turn out to be the same person.

Setting aside that jaw-dropping gaff in the very first line (um, Caves of Steel was written by Isaac Asimov, not Pohl and Kornbluth), Space, Time & Crime is a terrific anthology, with stories from Fredric Brown, Anthony Boucher, Frederik Pohl, Avram Davidson, Ron Goulart, Isaac Asimov, Reginald Bretnor… plus a Solar Pons story August Derleth and Mack Reynolds and a Change War tale by Fritz Leiber. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

…

Read More Read More

Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Phoenix Award

Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Phoenix Award

Comments 6 comments
The Weirwoods-small The Dolphin and the Deep-small Day of the Minotaur-small

Ace edition covers by Gray Morrow

Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12″, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And Steven suggested that much as he is covering awards for 1980, I might cover awards for 1973 here in Black Gate.

And, indeed, 1972 is when I discovered Science Fiction in the adult section of Nichols Library in Naperville, IL. Mind you, I’d already read and loved The Zero Stone by Andre Norton, and read and kind of liked Robert Silverberg’s Revolt on Alpha C, and read and loved a ton of fantasies such as the Narnia books, The Hobbit, and George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie and At the Back of the North Wind. But I found all those in the children’s section. When I was 12 two things happened. In my seventh grade class we were introduced to a variety of books via a huge set of large folded cards, each of which had a substantial extract from a book. You were supposed to read the extract and answer a quiz about it, but the real motive of the developers was to try to get kids interesting in reading the whole of some of these books.

I read a bunch of things – Exodus by Leon Uris is one I recall – but I quickly realized it was the Science Fiction that lit me up. Books I recall reading because of that class include The Currents of Space, by Isaac Asimov; Against the Fall of Night, by Arthur C. Clarke; The Universe Between, by Alan E. Nourse; Time is the Simplest Thing, by Clifford Simak; and Galactic Derelict, by Andre Norton. And, of course, to find those books I had to go the adult section of the library. Where I quickly also found other stuff by those authors, and then other authors, and perhaps more important, anthologies. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame was a revelation. And so were the Nebula anthologies. And Anthony Boucher’s Treasury of Great Science Fiction. So I was hooked forever.

…

Read More Read More

The Complete Borderlands Campaign now Available in PDF from Chaosium

The Complete Borderlands Campaign now Available in PDF from Chaosium

Comments 5 comments
Chaosium Borderlands-small Chaosium Borderlands-back-small

A few years ago I took a nostalgic look back at one of my favorite adventure settings, the boxed set Borderlands published by Chaosium in 1982, in the provocatively titled “Can Playing RPGs Really Make You a Billionaire?”

Some of the most treasured possessions in my games library are the boxed adventure supplements published by Chaosium between 1981 – 1986. They include some of the finest adventure gaming products ever made, such as the classic Thieves’ World (1981), Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer (1981), the brilliant Masks of Nyarlathotep (1984)… Borderlands is still very much worth a look today. It’s a complete, self-contained adventure scenario in the River of Cradles in Prax, part of Greg Stafford’s world of Glorantha, and is (relatively) easy to adapt to Sixth Edition RuneQuest and other modern game systems. Players play the role of down-on-their luck mercenaries drawn to the lawless borderlands along the river, “a fertile valley separating the devastation of Vulture’s Country and the wretched chaparral of Prax.” There, in the employ of the generous Duke of Rone, they will help civilize a new domain filled with tribal peoples, creatures, and monsters (ducks to dinosaurs, whirlvishes to wraiths.)

Like all the Chaosium boxed sets of the era, it came absolutely packed with content, including a heavily illustrated, 48-page Referee’s Handbook, a dense 32-page Referee’s Encounter Book, mostly filled with tables, two sets of maps, and seven individually bound, linked scenarios.

The article frustrated more than a few readers since, like virtually all Chaosium’s boxed adventure supplements from the early 80s, copies are highly collectible and very pricey today. Even the Moon Design paperback reprint from 2005 is ridiculously expensive, routinely commanding $100 and up on eBay. So I was delighted to see a completely remastered edition of the Borderlands boxed set offered as a single PDF by the original publisher, Chaosium, as their final PDF release of 2018.

…

Read More Read More

Godzilla Raids Again / Gigantis the Fire Monster (1955)

Godzilla Raids Again / Gigantis the Fire Monster (1955)

Comments 2 comments
godzilla-raids-again-japanese-poster-1

It was disheartening to sum up the recent Godzilla anime trilogy, the only Japanese Godzilla films I never plan to rewatch. Even with the Hollywood mega-millions epic Godzilla: King of the Monsters only a few months away, the feeling of deflation within my favorite movie franchise made it necessary for me to plug a bit of hope into my schedule immediately. Not by watching a great Godzilla film, mind you, but by watching a mediocre Godzilla film. Why? Because it’s the best way to remember how even lesser entries in the series can offer some enjoyment. Like watching Godzilla actually move. This is a radical concept the anime filmmakers let slip past them.

Thus I present Godzilla Raids Again, a middle-of-the-road G-movie that’s mostly faded into obscurity despite its prime position as the first Godzilla sequel.

…

Read More Read More

Mage: The Hero Denied 14

Mage: The Hero Denied 14

Comments 0 Comment

Mage 14So we’re down to the penultimate issue of the entire Mage trilogy. Obviously, I’m not expecting any big reveals until the very last issue, so this one is just going to let things simmer just a little bit further until the boil.

We begin with the reveal that Magda and Hugo did NOT kill a Gracklethorn last issue, instead just knocking her out. When two of her sisters find her, they set her free, then start squabbling about what to do about their prisoners escaping. Their argument is interrupted when Karol walks in holding the Fisher King.

The scene shifts to Hugo and Magda walking through a cavern. Magda mentions that the doorway they entered through disappeared, so they can’t go back the way they came. She then reasons that “it had an entrance, which means that it has to have an exit as well.” And while that’s not technically true, she’s likely just saying that to calm her son. Up next, Hugo sees a troll with his magic glasses and knocks it off a cliff with a magic light bulb before it can sneak up on his mother. Before they can go any further, Magda’s wedding ring lights up, which apparently signifies that it’s detected Kevin nearby.

We cut to a scene of Kevin holding Excalibur, which suggests that the Magda’s ring didn’t detect him so much as detect the ignition of his magic. After killing what looks like the entire Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, Kevin is asked by Mirth if he’s all right. It’s at this point that Kevin mentions (for I believe the first time in this series) that his hands sometimes hurt after he uses his power. Mirth explains that, while Kevin’s power continues to grow, it will become more than he can handle. As Kevin, Mirth, and Miranda continue through the caves, we see the little imp hiding behind a rock, observing them.

Cut back to the Fisher King, who explains that he’s finally come out of hiding so that he can bear witness to the “moment of confluence.” He does a whole nine-panel spread of shape-shifting to show that he can assume a variety of forms and a variety of names and that none of them really matter. Olga is about to kill him, when Karol reminds her that the Umbra Sprite needs him alive for the ritual. This is the ritual that the Umbra Sprite has been planning since the very beginning of Hero Discovered. Of course, at this point, the Gracklethorns have no idea where their mother is or how to reach her.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger

New Treasures: For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger

Comments 0 Comment

For the Sake of the Game-smallLaurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger have edited four popular Holmes-themed anthologies: A Study in Sherlock (2011), In the Company of Sherlock Holmes (2014), and Echoes of Sherlock Holmes (2016). Their newest features contributions from a stellar list of authors, including Peter S. Beagle, F. Paul Wilson, William Kotzwinkle and Joe Servello, Duane Swierczynski, and Gregg Hurwitz. Publishers Weekly says it presents a wide range of genres “from cozy to horror;” here’s a snippet from their full review.

The 14 selections include a poem, Peter S. Beagle’s “Dr. Watson’s Song,” which provides a deeper look at the doctor’s emotional life, and a comic, William Kotzwinkle and Joe Servello’s “The Case of the Naked Butterfly,” which continues the exploits of insects Inspector Mantis and Dr. Hopper. Fans of the BBC’s Sherlock will appreciate Alan Gordon’s take on Holmes’s relationship with Mycroft in “The Case of the Missing Case.” Reed Farrel Coleman weighs in with one of the more memorable contributions, the metaphysical “A Study in Absence,” in which a book editor asks for help tracing an author using the pseudonym of I.M. Knott. The best light entry is Harley Jane Kozak’s “The Walk-in,” featuring a Sherlockian British intelligence agent, which opens with the tantalizing line “It’s not every day that you walk into your apartment and find that your cat has turned into a dog.”

Here’s the description.

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times bestselling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: ask some of the world’s greatest writers ― regardless of genre ― to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle.

The results are surprising and joyous. Some tales are pastiches, featuring the recognizable figures of Holmes and Watson; others step away in time or place to describe characters and stories influenced by the Holmes world. Some of the authors spin whimsical tales of fancy; others tell hard-core thrillers or puzzling mysteries. One beloved author writes a song; two others craft a melancholy graphic tale of insectoid analysis.

This is not a volume for readers who crave a steady diet of stories about Holmes and Watson on Baker Street. Rather, it is for the generations of readers who were themselves inspired by the classic tales, and who are prepared to let their imaginations roam freely.

Leslie S. Klinger’s previous books include In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe and The Annotated Watchmen; Elizabeth Crowens interviewed him for Black Gate last year. For the Sake of the Game was published by Pegasus Books on December 4, 2018. It is 264 pages, priced at $25.95 in hardcover and $12.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Christine Van Bree.