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Small-Scale Epic Childhood: Memories of Playing at the Cabin on the Mogollon Rim

Small-Scale Epic Childhood: Memories of Playing at the Cabin on the Mogollon Rim

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Mogollon-960x371Some of my fondest memories are days spent at my Nan and Grandad’s cabin in Heber, Arizona, up on the Mogollon Rim nestled in the largest ponderosa pine forest on the continent. Surrounded by that fantastic landscape, it was easy to let one’s imagination run as free as the Mogollon Monster…

The Woodpile

The “woodpile” behind my Nan and Grandad’s cabin was mostly dirt, left over from when part of the lot was first cleared to make way for the trailer (the cabin was a large trailer home, actually, with a deck built on). The wood came from the pine trees that had been cut down, their trunks buried under the heaping dirt mound, giving the woodpile its foundation and shape.

It wasn’t so big, really, but to my cousins and me it was our own private mountain fortress. How many times did we flop down on it for cover as Injuns shot arrows at us, and then return fire over its crest with our wood-knot guns? Or, other times, the wood-knots were machine guns and we were out there fighting Nazis.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: John Cleese as Holmes – Take One

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: John Cleese as Holmes – Take One

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Cleese_ElementaryJohn Cleese is best known, of course, as the sardonic Q opposite Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond in Die Another Day. Though not as well remembered, he also played a key role in the British comedy troupe, Monty Python.

I’m kidding!

On January 18, 1973, the final episode of Python’s third season aired. It was Cleese’s last episode with the group, which would continue on for one more season. That very same same day, Cleese’s next project aired – Comedy Playhouse Presents: Elementary, My Dear Watson. It was produced by Barry Took, who had brought the Python members together.

I’m going to tackle the Achilles heel (really, it’s more like the entire torso) of this show, the plot: or rather, the lack of one. It’s barely a story. Try to stick with me, and no, I’m not leaving things out: it really goes like this…

The show opens in a room full of dead lawyers, slumped over their desks, each with a knife in the back.  Some would say that’s a pretty good start, but let’s stay focused. Thus the show’s subtitle, The Strange Case of the Dead Solicitors. A policeman and a secretary exchange what are intended to be witty comments, which immediately brings the lame laugh track to the viewer’s attention. This is not the most robust laugh track you’ll come across.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Multiple Personalities of Omniscient 3rd Person: Spotlight on “Head-Hopper”

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Multiple Personalities of Omniscient 3rd Person: Spotlight on “Head-Hopper”

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lighthouse

This is part 8 in the Choosing Your Narrative Point of View Series

Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, does a brilliant job with our next POV style:

  1. Head-Hopper

If you’ve not read her novel, I urge you to do so. I also urge you to read it aloud, even if you’re sitting outside at a café, which I did a few summers ago. The book is graced with many long, complex sentences that loop and flow, and sometimes change point of view from one clause to the next. Reading it out loud helps the brain make sense of the phrases and clauses in a way that eyes-only reading can’t manage as well. When done well, as Ms. Woolf did, it is a brilliant writing stratagem. But it works best in stories where there is very little physical plot. The conflict comes mainly from the contrast of how different characters perceive the same moment, and in the shifting emotions of characters.

Which means, generally, it is not a good point of view choice for action-packed genre stories.

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Canadian Steampunk: Chatting with Anthologist and Editor Dominik Parisien

Canadian Steampunk: Chatting with Anthologist and Editor Dominik Parisien

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Clockwork-Canada 2In December, Black Gate editor John O’Neill scooped the world with the cover of Clockwork Canada, Dominik Parisien’s newest offering as an anthologist. Dominik is best known as a poet and writer, but also for his editorial work with the Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and Saga Press. Exile Editions is launching Clockwork Canada this month and I wanted to chat with Dominik about his intriguing vision behind this anthology.

To set this up, I include the back-cover blurb:

Welcome to an alternate Canada, where steam technology and the wonders and horrors of the mechanical age have reshaped the past into something both wholly familiar yet compellingly different. These fifteen supercharged all-new tales reimagine Canadian historical events, explore alternate Canadas, and gather inspiration from the northern landscape to make us wonder: what if history had gone a different way?

Experience steam-powered buffalo women roaming the plains; join extraordinary men and women striking out on their own or striving to build communities; marvel as giant rampaging spirits are thwarted by a miniscule timepiece; cringe when a great clock chimes and the Seven O’Clock Man appears to terrorize a village in Quebec; witness a Maritime scientist develop a deadly weapon that could change the course of the American Civil War.

Anachronistic technologies, retro-futuristic inventions, alternative history, fantasy, horror, historical fiction, and other branches of speculative fiction all culminate in this uniquely Canadian search for identity.

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How to Worldbuild a Good Sandbox: Four Rules from the Warhammer 40K Universe

How to Worldbuild a Good Sandbox: Four Rules from the Warhammer 40K Universe

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Honour Guard Dan Abnett-small
Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K universe is one of the best sandboxes around.

I’m working on a sandbox Space Opera setting.

Sandbox is the tricky part; a “sandbox” is a storyworld that lets you tell (or experience — if you are a gamer) all sorts of different kinds of story. Essentially, I’m building my Discworld.

Oh, you say, just make it big with lots of different kinds of settings plus spare blank spots on the map.

Yes, that gives you lots of flexibility (though less than you’d think). However, the stories won’t be — sorry, I can’t think of a better word — branded.

I mean, the asteroid miners over here and the fight against the dark lord over there, don’t need to belong in the same universe and the reader (or player) won’t really feel as if they are revisiting the same place.

So a good sandbox is one that maximises the possible range of branded stories.

Spend time with a 12-year-old tabletop gamer and you quickly realize that — in this light — Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K universe is one of the best sandboxes around. You can could dump just about any Space Opera SF story into it, and it would still feel like 40K. To do Firefly, just plug in Orcs, Inquisitors and Space Marines and Imperial Guards. To do Starship Troopers tell a story about the Imperial Guard. To do Star Trek, just follow a Tau captain on their five year mission.

Less so in the Star Wars universe.

Firefly Wars would need a local civil war as backstory, since the cleanup after the prequels feels like it would involve more mass graves. Your Alliance could be the Empire, but the Empire doesn’t really feel as if it would do dark secrets — why bother hiding them? — or have secret super soldier programs– it has Stormtroopers and Sith anyway. Starship Troopers could be about the latter-day Stormtroopers, but the moral ambiguity would be lost. Star Trek…? No, not without taking a ship to a different galaxy and then it would not feel like Star Wars. It would lose its brand.

So the 40K ‘verse is a far better sandbox than the Star Wars one.  How can this be? It appears to follow four basic rules…

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Brederode: A 14th Century Castle in the Netherlands

Brederode: A 14th Century Castle in the Netherlands

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DSC_2887

In the North Holland province of the Netherlands stands the atmospheric ruin of Brederode Castle, a battered survivor of a violent past.

Unlike the more popular Dutch castle Muiderslot, which I’ve also written about here on Black Gate, Brederode is mostly ruins but still makes a rewarding day trip from Amsterdam.

Brederode started as a bailey and square keep built in 1282 by Willem van Brederode to guard an important coastal road. In 1300 the original fortification was rebuilt with a large keep with three square and one round tower at the corners. A moat surrounded the entire structure. In 1351, it was the scene of fighting in the so-called Hook and Cod Wars. This was a struggle over the rights to the title of the Count of Holland. The “Cod” faction was mainly made up of city merchants and was called this by their enemies in the landed nobility because a cod will continue to greedily eat and grow as long as there’s food to consume. The traditional nobility called themselves the “Hooks” because, of course, that’s what you use to catch a cod. The Brederode family was part of the Hook faction but this proved to be a bad decision because a Cod force besieged the castle in 1351 and destroyed it.

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The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth

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oie_41116gM9IFpIH                                                                                                             who is thu

                                                                                                             who is thu i can not cnaw

                                                                                                             what is angland to thu what is left of angland

                                                                                                             i specs i specs

                                                                                                             but no man lystens

                                                                                                                                                  from The Wake

For nearly four hundred pages Buccmaster of Holland, protagonist of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake, speaks — first warning against impending doom, then trying to rally his fellow Englishmen against their Norman conquerors, and always trying to explain and justify himself. Though most people he meets — his tenants, his family, even his fellow guerillas — don’t listen, I did.

Even though he speaks in an amalgam of Old and contemporary English, he speaks forcefully, and I listened to every word, every mad thought, every angry conversation with gods, and every poetic meditation on England. Numerous times I found myself speaking his words aloud, falling into a cadence at once alien and familiar. Alien because it’s an English stripped of nearly every non-Germanic accretion. Familiar because the author’s invented Saxon vernacular feels like it’s exposing some ancient rhythm that’s encoded into the very syntax and syllables of English. This is one of the most immersive and enthralling books I have ever read.

NOTE: Since readers here don’t have the benefit of the book’s glossary and pronunciation guide, I heartily recommend reading out loud the passages I’ve included in this review. Words that look odd will be immediately familiar when spoken aloud.

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In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Fourteen

In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Fourteen

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In The Wake of Sister Blue Mark Rigney-medium

Linked below, you’ll find the fourteenth installment of a brand-new serialized novel, In the Wake Of Sister Blue. The battle for the armory is the main order of business, followed by a benedictory aftermath. But wait, we’re not done yet! The final installment will follow in two weeks’ time, so stay tuned –– and for those who fear I’m writing a doorstop, be reassured. This will be Book One of a pair (but no, not an ongoing, endless cycle), and the Great Divide between the two is all but in reach.

A number of you will already be familiar with my Tales Of Gemen (“The Trade,” “The Find,” and “The Keystone“), and if you enjoyed those titles (or perhaps my unexpectedly popular D&D-related post, “Youth In a Box,”) I think you’ll also find much to like in this latest venture. Oh, and if you’re only now discovering this portal, may I suggest you begin at the beginning? The Spur awaits…

Read the first installment of In the Wake Of Sister Blue here.

Read the fourteenth and latest installment of In the Wake Of Sister Blue here.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard Dons the Deerstalker

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard Dons the Deerstalker

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RonHoward2SmileArthur Wontner was the first great screen Holmes of the sound era, followed by Basil Rathbone. Wontner was 56 when he first donned the deerstalker and looked older. Rathbone was 54 for his last Holmes film, though he came across as younger.

I’ve already written a post here at Black Gate (Go ahead: read that before continuing on with this one. You know you want to…) on Ronald Howard’s under-appreciated performance as Holmes in Sheldon Reynolds’ television series, which was filmed in France. Howard, son of British actor Leslie Howard (familiar to Bogart fans), was 36 and portrayed a much younger Holmes than the previous standards. His Watson, H. Marion Crawford, was less of a doofus than we’d seen from Nigel Bruce (Rathbone) and Ian Fleming and Ian Hunter (Wontner).

It’s Elementary – Rathbone was not impressed with his successor: “All I can say is, I think he’s too young for the role. I never thought of Holmes being so young…”

While the scripts often left something to be desired, Howard and Crawford gave fresh performances in the 39 episodes they filmed. The first two, while self-supporting, actually formed a two-parter, by design.

The second episode, The Case of Lady Beryl, took place immediately after the conclusion of the first, The Case of the Cunningham Heritage. Reynolds was a savvy operator and he was hedging his bets. If the pilot episode failed to sell, he could splice the two together and sell it as a filler movie. However, the series was picked up and the two episodes aired in back-to-back weeks in October of 1954 on NBC stations in America. Today, we’re going to look at those two episodes.

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