Browsed by
Author: Tony Den

Long time Role Player (RuneQuest mainly), fantasy and science fiction fan.
An Anthology for Anthologists: Continuum by Roger Elwood

An Anthology for Anthologists: Continuum by Roger Elwood

Comments 5 comments


Continuum 1-4 (Berkley Medallion paperback editions, 1975-76). Covers by Vincent Di Fate

The accolade “anthologist” is not easily obtained. One can only imagine the effort spent splicing different elements into a cohesive anthology that sits well, and with a theme that attracts buyers.

Roger Elwood (1943-2007) most definitely earned that title, having put together 64 mostly science fiction anthologies between 1964 and 1980. Like many of his peers, he was also an author who published a small number of fiction novels and short stories, not to mention editing the short-lived Odyssey magazine (1976).

This article is not a celebration of Mr. Elwood’s career, though. I want to look at an intriguing oddity from the the past century, a 4-volume anthology series he edited titled Continuum.

…

Read More Read More

Robert Low, 1952 – May 31, 2021

Robert Low, 1952 – May 31, 2021

Comments 2 comments
Robert Low in Viking Reenactment Regalia

Back when there was a print version of Black Gate, Bill Ward introduced a new author by the name of Robert Low in Issue 14 (2009). Bill had good things to say about The Wolf Sea (2008), the second book in the author’s Oathsworn series, which had appeared a year after the first, The Whale Road.

Bill went on to cover subsequent installments in the series, and his reviews impressed me enough to seek them out. The Oathsworn eventually rounded out as a five book series, including The White Raven (2009), The Prow Beast (2010) and Crowbone (2012).

I recently got to thinking of Robert Low and looked him up to see what else he’d published. This sadly revealed that this talented author of historic fantasy had passed away earlier this year.

Robert Low was a Scottish journalist and author who started on a long career at the age of 17. By 19 he was in Vietnam on assignment, an eye opening experience for sure. He returned to journalism in Scotland but occasionally went on other dangerous assignments in Kosovo, Sarajevo, etc.

Later in life an interest in ancient warfare lead Robert Low to delve into the re-enactment scene, which in turn encouraged him to write the excellent Oathsworn series. By no means done, he subsequently published three other series.

…

Read More Read More

An Inaudible Blast from the Past: Silent Death: The Next Millennium (Part II)

An Inaudible Blast from the Past: Silent Death: The Next Millennium (Part II)

Comments 0 Comment

Silent Death The Next Millenium-small

Silent Death: The Next Millennium Deluxe Edition (ICE, 1995). Cover art by Kevin Ward

In Part I of this two-part series on the iconic space combat miniatures game Silent Death – Metal Express, published by Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) in 1990, I discussed the game’s history and basic mechanics. Due to various factors, I.C.E. ceased production of their original Silent Death – Metal Express game after the Night Brood expansion was released in 1992. Part 2 discusses what happened after that decision.

ICE took the bold move to reboot Silent Death rather than try and fix it through further expansions. In 1995 a new version, Silent Death: The Next Millennium (TNM), hit the shelves. By all accounts it was an immediate hit that saw a number of reprints over the next few years. The Deluxe Edition box set was impressive, including a huge rulebook that revised and expanded the original rules while providing the balance that the punters craved. It came with 48 plastic miniatures with revised ship designs as well as much of the same setup paraphernalia as the original game box.

On a personal level I found the whole reboot somewhat vexing. Having invested a lot in the original game, I was super upset that it and all it stood for had been swept aside. TNM had also become expensive beyond my reach. So for the next few years, apart from the occasional nostalgic game using the original rules, Silent Death took a back seat for me, until my finances improved and I discovered eBay some years later.

While ICE pursued a vigorous publication schedule, things were far different. The expansions they’d planned for the original game were revised and released in quick succession, while numerous additional supplements followed. Silent Death: The Next Millennium went from strength to strength. The last official expansion for their flagship science fiction RPG SpaceMaster was released in 1994, and Silent Death appears to have taken up the slack and continued to expand on what had come before.

…

Read More Read More

An Inaudible Blast from the Past: Silent Death — The Game of Spaceship Combat (Part 1)

An Inaudible Blast from the Past: Silent Death — The Game of Spaceship Combat (Part 1)

Comments 6 comments

Silent Death - Metal Express-small

Silent Death – Metal Express original box set (Iron Crown Enterprises, 1990). Art by Angus McKie

What do a fantasy miniatures line and a contemporary science fiction novel have in common? Not much at a glance, but if you put on your Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency hat and apply the theory of The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things, a relatively straight line can be drawn between the two.

A recent post here at Black Gate about Chaos Vector, an exquisite looking new novel by Megan E. O‘Keefe, got my attention. While I dearly want to lay my hands on it (and its forerunner, Velocity Weapon), what really piqued my interest was the beautiful SPAC (Single Person Attack Craft) with its forward swept wings on the cover.

You see, it looks quite a bit like a ship called a Talon, from the beloved space combat game Silent Death. Which triggered this article, and a step back in time to the late 1980s…

Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) was a game publisher known mostly for their successful Middle Earth Role Playing line and the complex Rolemaster fantasy role playing game. They released the Rolemaster Future Lore book in 1985 , which subsequently spawned the SpaceMaster Science Fiction line (stay with me here). Star Strike, a space combat game for SpaceMaster, was created by Kevin Barrett and released in 1988. That could have been the end of it, and this article could be covering Star Strike, a game I’ve only read about…

It did not end there! While Star Strike was relatively successful for its time, it was dogged by its heritage. Even though it was a fast-paced space combat game, its association with the notoriously crunchy SpaceMaster came at a cost. While Rolemaster and SpaceMaster had loyal fan bases, plenty of gamers found them to be overly complex and rules heavy.

…

Read More Read More

Battle of the Sexes: Sword & Circlet Volume 1 by Carole Nelson Douglas

Battle of the Sexes: Sword & Circlet Volume 1 by Carole Nelson Douglas

Comments 0 Comment

Art: Steven Hickman
Art: Steven Hickman

Art: Steve Crisp
Art: Steve Crisp

Art: Luis Royo
Art: Luis Royo

Earlier this year I wrote about two books by Carole Nelson Douglas which became known as the Kendric and Irissa duology. These eighties’ fantasy classics spawned a subsequent trilogy, The Sword and Circlet. Whilst I had this trilogy on hand, I thought a break was in order after completing my review of Six of Swords and Exiles of the Rynth. John had been enticing me to visit some other neglected volumes on my shelf through his ongoing Vintage Treasures posts which saw me breeze through some Wyndham and Vance (which I posted mini-reviews for, in the comments of each article). With this post, I am back to focus on Carole Nelson Douglas.

When one starts to read volume one of the Sword and Circlet Trilogy it becomes immediately clear that this is no afterthought, or clumsy tack on to ride the wave of success the first two books experienced.  Keepers of the Edanvant picks up almost immediately where Exiles of the Rynth left off, pausing only to provide a small prologue and recap of what had gone before.

…

Read More Read More

An Offshore Haul

An Offshore Haul

Comments 5 comments

Haul-small

Latest Haul

As I’m sure regular visitors have noticed, Black Gate has over time become a home for like-minded people, introducing readers to new authors. The regular posts that really appeal to me are, not surprisingly, John O’Neill’s reports on the book collections he’s secured online, or via visits to local conventions like Windy City Pulp & Paper. Nick Ozment has also come across the odd windfall while glancing about thrift stores.

Not to be outdone this side of the Atlantic, I’ve also made some cool finds, often at bargain prices. Recently I killed an hour in a second hand bookshop, and it’s a testament to Black Gate that the books I came away with were far different from what I would have sought out a decade ago.

The shop in question is a bit of a mess, with volumes haphazardly stacked. They have (for the most part) separated books into genres, but between inattentive browsers — and perhaps just lack of diligence on the part of the owners — the books are all over the show, with only a minor nod to any sort of alphabetic sorting. Faced with this challenge, I dug in and soon found myself sporting a decent pile of overlooked volumes, including the sought after Panther version of Farewell Fantastic Venus (discussed at Black Gate some time back).

While nowhere near the size of many of John’s hauls, I am fair impressed with what I managed to pick up for the princely sum of ZAR97 (about USD6.75). The only duplicate, that I am aware of (mistakes have been made before), is the Lyndon Hardy, which I chose to complete the set by the same publisher.

…

Read More Read More

Eighties Fantasy Classics: Six of Swords and Exiles of the Rynth by Carole Nelson Douglas

Eighties Fantasy Classics: Six of Swords and Exiles of the Rynth by Carole Nelson Douglas

Comments 1 comment
Six of Swords Corgi-small Exiles of the Rynth-small

Corgi editions of Six of Swords (1985) and Exiles of the Rynth (1986); art by Steve Crisp

I started reading fantasy as a teenager during the second half of the 1980s. A friend recommended Anne McCafferey’s Pern books, readily available at the public library. Another friend whom I had recently started playing D&D with was very much taken with David Eddings’ Belgeriad and advised me to give them a bash. I have since grown out of Eddings, but at the time I thought The Belgariad was the best thing since sliced bread.

I began to mince about the fantasy and science fiction shelves in local bookshops. The main chain store bookseller of the day predominantly stocked British publishers; mainly Corgi, Grafton and Orbit. Corgi was the most accessible, being moderately cheaper than Grafton. They also had a habit of including advertisements in back pages. One came up consistently; Six of Swords by Carole Nelson Douglas. It looked interesting , and I picked it up in a clearance sale and read it sometime in the mid 1990s. I eventually discovered the sequel, Exiles of the Rynth, and a follow on series, the Sword and Circlet trilogy. I thought I would concentrate on the first two here, and post about the others in due course.

I will not go too much into the development of 1980s fantasy. Matthew David Surridge explored how the decade in many ways was a proving ground for the Big Fat Fantasy that followed in his review of Lyndon Hardy’s Master of the Five Magics series, and touched on the topic several times in his book Once Only Imagined: Collected Reviews, Vol II. What I can say is that my fantasy baptism mostly occurred in the 80s, notwithstanding my dabbling with Jane Gaskell. As such I was unencumbered with other expectations. I only got around to Robert E Howard and JRR Tolkien right at the end of the decade.

…

Read More Read More

Weird Sea Adventures: Archipelago – Calendar Year 1

Weird Sea Adventures: Archipelago – Calendar Year 1

Comments 0 Comment

Archipelago Portal-small

Archipelago Portal

Some time back I posted a brief review of the Archipelago Kickstarter reward chapbook. I was impressed, and joined the Archipelago crew at their chosen home, Patreon, becoming a Crew Member for the princely sum of $2 per month. This slightly higher rank than the run-of-the-mill $1-paying Bilge Rats allows for certain privileges, such as voting in the occasional Blood Pearl polls, through which one can guide the direction of certain stories. The main privilege of course is access to the excellent monthly magazine, every issue of which contains three installments set in the shared world of Archipelago.

Archipelago’s inaugural issue was in May 2017; since then it has been monthly. I initially hoped to cover a quarterly spread of issues, but I got distracted with other tasks. Things have not changed much, as may be obvious from my thin coverage and participation at Black Gate in 2018.

Fortunately my cell office is so remote and difficult to find among the winding multi-level corridors of the Black Gate basement that I’ve managed to escape eviction for not pulling my weight. I’m fortunate John O’Neill doesn’t usually bother to read the contributions from us underground dwellers (preferring to leave such editorial drudgery to a bot — also somewhat confusingly called John O’Neill), otherwise this article may just remind him to dispatch someone into the dungeon basement to root me out.

I resolved to write my review in two parts, each based on calendar year, thus buying myself some time to read the 2018 editions. That said, this particular article has been pending for months, so time to get cracking and let BG readers know what’s happening on the world of Archipelago!

…

Read More Read More

A Relative Journey: Starflight 3000 by R.W. Mackelworth

A Relative Journey: Starflight 3000 by R.W. Mackelworth

Comments 3 comments

Starflight 3000-Balllentine

Cover by Chris Foss

While perusing the shelves of Bookdealers of Rosebank, in Johannesburg, an excellent shop that sadly closed its doors a while back, I came across a nondescript book with an unbent spine. Finding a used paperback of any age with a good-as-new spine is a rarity, and I was drawn to it.

I slipped it from its recess and took a closer look. It was a Ballantine paperback with an intriguing space ship on a wrap around cover. The title was Starflight 3000 by R.W. Mackelworth.

I had never heard of Mackelworth, but then again I am not the best informed on science fiction authors. While I was impressed with its pristine condition, it also set off some warning bells. Why was it unread? Was the story that bad? But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And besides, it was a very reasonable price. I bundled it with some other selections and headed to the cashier.

…

Read More Read More

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

Comments 8 comments
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.

…

Read More Read More