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Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: Out of Space

New Treasures: Out of Space

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Out of Space Pelgrane PressIt’s been far too long since I’ve game mastered a Lovecraftian horror RPG. I miss the high-stakes drama, the desperate battles, the sheer cosmic scale and invention of Lovecraft’s horrors. Most of all, I miss the shell-shocked expressions on my players faces, the cries of “Dear God! Why would you do that to us? Why — why??” Good times, good times.

My favorite recent Lovecraftian horror RPG is Kenneth Hite’s Trail of Cthulhu, from the marvelous Pelgrane Press. They’ve been supporting it with a series of terrific PDF releases, including The Repairer of Reputations a massive 44-page adventure based on the classic story of the same name by Robert W. Chambers, in which the alien beings described in the play are as real as the players believe them to be. And the 40-page Hell Fire, set in the seedy underclass of 18th century London, where a horrifying plague is ravaging the city, its victims in the grip of a sinister entity bent on engulfing the world in disease and death.

Now Pelgrane Press has assembled both of those adventures, and three more — Flying Coffins, set in Winter 1918 above the skies of France, as players take the role of members of the Royal Flying Corps stationed near the Front, confronting rumors that the next big push is about to begin… and that recent Germany victories in the air are due to supernatural assistance; Many Fires, in which the Investigators take on Pancho Villa’s bandit army in the mountains of northern Mexico, as well as something ancient and obscene that lies smoldering among ruins older than the Aztecs; and finally The Millionaire’s Special, which invites the players to travel first class on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, where they are invited to a private viewing of one of the world’s great curiosities, a cursed Egyptian mummy.

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The 2012 Bram Stoker Award Winners

The 2012 Bram Stoker Award Winners

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The Drowning GirlWait, what? The 2012 Stokers have been awarded already? It seems like just yesterday they gave out the 2011 awards!

Man, the years are flying by. Soon I’ll be in a wheelchair in a retirement home, playing checkers with Howard Andrew Jones and shouting at kids to keep their hoverboards off the lawn. Which — now that I think about it — doesn’t sound too bad, as long as they have cable. And smothered chicken for lunch.

But back to the Awards. Sorry, your mind wanders at my age. Here’s the complete list of winners:

Superior Achievement in a Novel:

The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)

Superior Achievement in a First Novel:

Life Rage by L.L. Soares (Nightscape Press)

Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel:

Flesh & Bone by Jonathan Maberry (Simon & Schuster)

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel:

Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton (McFarland and Co., Inc.)

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Three

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Three

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The Death of the Necromancer KindleBlack Gate is very proud to present Part Three of Martha Wells’s Nebula Award-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, presented complete online for the first time. Here’s a quote from Donna McMahon’s SF Site review:

It’s relatively easy to convey the plot of Necromancer, but far more difficult to describe the extraordinary texture of its setting. The city of Vienne has an Italian Renaissance flavour, plus nineteenth century technology, hints of Victorian England, and even whiffs of A Tale of Two Cities and The Tempest. From this seemingly improbable mix of historical and fantasy elements, Martha Wells creates a stunningly vivid society…

Wells’ characters are equally compelling: among them Nicholas, who is a gentle man with a dark streak of rage; Madeline, the ambitious actress who lives with him; Reynard, the disgraced but proud army officer; and Crack, the tough, terse henchman. And there are many more, none of them forgettable.

Still, Necromancer’s most impressive feature may be its complex, twisting plot and swift pacing, which kept me glued to the pages… this is a terrific novel. Wells is in a league with top writers like Lois McMaster Bujold and Barbara Hambly.

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen fantasy novels, including City of Bones, The Element of Fire, The Cloud Roads, and The Serpent Sea. Her most recent novel is the YA fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, published by Strange Chemistry Books in April. Her previous fiction for us includes “Reflections” in Black Gate 10, “Holy Places” (BG 11), and “Houses of the Dead“ (BG 12). Her most recent article for us was “How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?,” which appeared here March 13. Her web site is www.marthawells.com.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

The Death of the Necromancer was originally published in hardcover by Avon EOS in 1998. The complete, unedited text will be presented here over the next three weeks; it began on June 2 with the first four chapters here.

Part Three includes Chapters Nine through Thirteen. It is offered at no cost.

Read Part Three of the complete novel here.

Vintage Treasures: The Last Province Magazine, Issue #4

Vintage Treasures: The Last Province Magazine, Issue #4

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The-Last-Province-Issue-4I recently stumbled across a copy of a gaming magazine I’d never encountered before: The Last Province, a bi-monthly British publication that apparently lasted five issues, from October 1992 to September 1993.

This doesn’t happen very often, so it was definitely worth investigating. And I’m glad I did, as it turned out to be a delight.

I think the cover — a Martin Lennon character study of three very different adventuring fellows striding confidently across a green and pleasant land — effectively communicates both the content and editorial attitude. If the art doesn’t do it, the tag words “Independent British Roleplaying” at the top should give you the idea.

Paz Newis’s page 4 editorial is a perfect mix of defensiveness towards gaming stereotypes, and contempt for what others consider ‘normal.’ Pretty much exactly how I remember gamers talking in the 90s.

To my mind ours is one pastime with a wealth to offer its participants. It is to those of you who wish to take roleplaying out of the ‘spotty adolescents’ stereotype that this magazine is aimed.

Recently… I thought it would be a good idea to sit in front of the television. I was appalled! It really was brain numbing. All of my higher brain functions seized up. If this is what the majority of ‘normal people’ spend their time doing I have no desire to be normal.

The news section is jammed with headlines on the big events of the day — including Steve Jackson’s quarter-million dollar judgment against the US Secret Service for seizing their computer equipment during an investigation of GURPS Cyberpunk, the report that a young employee at a Glasgow branch of a well known game store chain was apparently fired for being female, and the release of a major new RPG from FASA with the strange title Earthdawn.

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New Treasures: The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction

New Treasures: The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction

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The-Simon-and-Kirby-Library-Science-FictionJoe Simon and Jack Kirby were perhaps the most important and successful comic team of the 1940s and 50s. Together they created Captain America (among many other popular creations) and produced an incredible body of work spanning numerous genres. Joe Simon was the first editor of Marvel Comics and the legendary Jack Kirby later partnered with Stan Lee to create some of the most enduring characters of the 20th Century, including Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Thor, the X-Men, and countless others.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction is packed with dozens of stories, many of them photographed from the original artwork. This is essential pulp science fiction, with tales of brave spacemen, intrepid jungle explorers encountering lost civilizations, living shadows, crash landings on bizarre alien worlds, sinister robots, giant monsters battling desperate armies, beautiful barbarian princesses, impossible inventions, and much more.

The Simon and Kirby Library: Science Fiction spans more than 20 years, beginning with the first stories Joe Simon and Jack Kirby ever produced together (beginning in June 1940) — their ten-issue run of Blue Bolt adventures. Then the Cold War years will be represented by Race For the Moon, featuring pencils by Kirby and inked artwork by comic book legends Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson.

Other rarities from both decades are included, and as a bonus for readers, the volume features stories illustrated by Crandall, Torres, and Williamson — without Kirby.

The book also includes an introduction by Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons. This is the fourth volume in The Simon & Kirby Library, following Superheroes, Crime and the best-selling Horror.

The book is in full-color throughout, and most of the art has been restored and vibrantly re-colored by Harry Mendryk. My only complaint about this volume is that only a handful of covers are included, in a sparse 3-page cover gallery in the back.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction was published by Titan Books on June 4. It is 352 pages in hardcover, priced at $49.95. There is no digital edition.

Robert E. Howard and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Robert E. Howard and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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Weird Tales July 1936 Red NailsGary Gygax’s famous Appendix N, the list of titles he considered essential reading for Dungeon Masters hoping to create authentic adventures for their players, is perhaps the purest distillation of the literary recipe at the heart of modern adventure gaming.

Gygax put Appendix N in the back of his Dungeon Master’s Guide in 1979. Read all the writers on that list and you’ll understand the creative gestalt underlying 20th Century fantasy that eventually exploded into Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

That’s the theory, anyway. Plenty of people have tried it. It’s sort of the gamer’s version of going walkabout. Immerse yourself in Appendix N and spiritual understanding will be yours. Plus, as a bonus, you end up with a rockin’ library.

Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode are attempting this spiritual journey together, and they’re chronicling it at Tor.com. They begin with a look at Robert E. Howard’s Conan story “Red Nails,” originally published in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales:

There is a giant mega-dungeon; it hardly gets more D&D than that. The two elements that really strike home here in terms of inspiration are the populated dungeons as its own character of rivalry and strife, and black magic. The city as one massive labyrinth is great, as is the characterization of its architecture & embellishment — gleaming corridors of jade set with luminescent jewels, friezes of Babylonianesque or Aztecish builders — but it is the logic of the city that shines brightest to me. “Why don’t the people leave?” There are dragons in the forest. “What do the people eat?” They have fruit that grows just off the air. “Where do all these monsters come from?” There are crypts of forgotten wizard-kings. There is a meaningful cohesion to the place; Howard manages to stitch dinosaurs, radioactive skulls, Hatfields and McCoys, and ageless princesses into something cogent.

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New Treasures: The New Yorker Fiction Issue, June 10 & 17, 2013

New Treasures: The New Yorker Fiction Issue, June 10 & 17, 2013

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The New Yorker Fiction issue June 2013A while back I bought a subscription to The New Yorker. I had one in grad school and quite enjoyed it, during those rare moments when I had time to read it.

Which pretty much describes the current situation. Every time an issue arrives, I examine it with great interest and then set it aside to read later. Currently, there’s more than a dozen piled up by my big green chair in the library.

But I finally made the time to open one this week, and the occasion was the arrival of their summer Fiction issue. It’s a big double issue, thicker than most and with two dates on the cover (June 10 and 17, 2013).

It’s not just that there’s a lot of content, but the cover — the silhouette of a femme fatale clutching a mauser against a 1930s New York skyline — promised something I almost never see in The New Yorker: genre fiction. Like last year’s science fiction issue, it’s the kind of surprise that deserves to be investigated.

There are even bigger surprises in the Table of Contents, starting with “An Inch and a Half of Glory,” a new story by Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and the Continental Op novels.

Before you dash over to check Wikipedia (as I just did) — yes, Dashiell Hammett is still dead. He died in 1961.

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Vintage Treasures: The Radio Planet by Ralph Milne Farley

Vintage Treasures: The Radio Planet by Ralph Milne Farley

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The Radio Planet AceAnd so we come to the third volume of Ralph Milne Farley’s Radio Men series, The Radio Planet.

Like the first two, The Radio Man (aka An Earth Man on Venus, which I discussed here) and The Radio Beasts (here), The Radio Planet was originally published in Argosy All-Story Weekly, in six installments starting in June 26, 1926, following the previous novel by some fifteen months.

Farley wrote several more Radio novels, including The Radio Menace, The Radio War, The Radio Pirates, and The Radio Flyers, between 1930 and 1955. Only a few were even loosely connected to the first three; most of them were futuristic pulp adventures set on Earth, and Ace didn’t bother to reprint them.

Yes, that’s right. After three popular Radio Men novels, Ralph Milne Farley continued to merrily put Radio in every one of his titles, even though most had nothing to do with Myles Cabot, Venus, or Mars. Apparently, the man had only a rudimentary concept of brand marketing. And liked radio.

In any event, The Radio Planet was the last novel to feature Myles Cabot. Two other short adventures followed: “The Radio Man Returns,” a short story from Amazing Stories (June 1939), and “The Radio Minds of Mars,” originally published in the January 1955 issue of Spaceway magazine.

Fortunately for young teenage fans in the 1970s, such as yours truly, there were two inexpensive paperback editions of The Radio Planet, which kept it in print for roughly a decade. Both were from Ace Books.

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First Full-length Trailer Released for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

First Full-length Trailer Released for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-posterCurse teaser trailers and their teasing ways! I was teased as a kid, teased all through high school, and now I have to put up with teaser trailers. The universe, it is a cruel place.

Fortunately, teaser trailers are followed by full-length trailers. Eventually. As has now happened with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second installment in the three-part Hobbit epic from New Line Cinema and WingNut films. The story picks up where last year’s billion-dollar blockbuster The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey left off, following Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin and their dwarven companions into the Kingdom of Erebor, the dark heart of Mirkwood and the Necromancer’s lair, Esgaroth, and finally the human town of Dale to confront the dragon Smaug.

The trailer has some nice surprises, including plenty of scenes of Orlando Bloom as Legolas and Lost alum Evangeline Lilly as the elf Tauriel. If you watch closely, you can see the spiders of Mirkwood, the barrel escape down the river, and our first look at the terrifying Smaug himself.

The trilogy will conclude next year with The Hobbit: There and Back Again. All three films are based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, originally published in 1937.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was directed by Peter Jackson and written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson. It stars Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Christopher Lee, and A-lister villain Benedict Cumberbatch as both Smaug and The Necromancer Sauron. Check out the complete trailer below.

New Treasures: Reviver by Seth Patrick

New Treasures: Reviver by Seth Patrick

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Reviver by Seth PatrickI really haven’t been very good to fans of supernatural thrillers in my New Treasures columns recently. Honestly, I don’t hate you guys, there’s just been a lot of top-flight fantasy to gawk at lately.

But look, here I am with a peace offering: a peek at a great-looking debut horror/thriller novel just optioned by the producers of The Dark Knight Returns.

Jonah Miller is a Reviver, able to temporarily revive the dead so they can say goodbye to their loved ones—or tell the police who killed them.

Jonah works in a department of forensics created specifically for Revivers, and he’s the best in the business. For every high-profile corpse pushing daisies, it’s Jonah’s job to find justice for them. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence. Something is on the other side watching. Waiting. His superiors tell him it’s only in his mind, a product of stress. Jonah isn’t so certain.

Then Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered. Jonah finds himself getting dragged into the hunt for answers. Working with Harker’s daughter Annabel, he becomes determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Soon they uncover long-hidden truths that call into doubt everything Jonah stands for, and reveal a sinister force that threatens us all.

Am I keeping you hip, or what?

The first novel in a projected trilogy, Reviver looks like the real thing. And if it’s made into a movie, now you can spoil the ending for all your friends in the popcorn line.

Reviver goes on sale next Tuesday, June 18th. It is published by Thomas Dunne Books. It is 416 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $11.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures articles here.