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A Gemmel-esque Adventure in a World of Sand: Hugo Nominee Timothy C. Ward’s Scavenger: Evolution

A Gemmel-esque Adventure in a World of Sand: Hugo Nominee Timothy C. Ward’s Scavenger: Evolution

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Scavenger Evolution
“Gemmel-esque”

Tim Ward, along with the rest of the Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast team, just got a Hugo Nomination for best Fancast.

Like his colleagues, he’s not just a fan, he’s a writer. Just in case you were wondering, How good? here’s a quick review of his debut novel Scavenger: Evolution: (Sand Divers, Book One).

First, let’s get something out of the way — we don’t want a sad-pandas-at-the-Black-Gate-gate!

Tim and I have been friends since he interviewed me. We chat online from time to time. We beta-read each other’s material — he’s saved me from handing in a duff manuscript at least twice! — and both belong to that community of aspiring authors breaking into, or just starting to get established in, the profession.

However, part of the reason we’re friends is mutual professional respect. I like his work. Here’s why.

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Vengeful Specters, Vampires, and Monster Worms: Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson

Vengeful Specters, Vampires, and Monster Worms: Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson

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Night Terrors the Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson-smallWordsworth’s Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural volumes (or, as we like to call them, TOMAToS) have been a virtual graduate course in British horror for me, introducing me to a host of classic Nineteenth and Twentieth Century ghost story and supernatural fiction writers. But I have to admit I was a little relieved to come across Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson, since at least I’ve heard of E.F. Benson.

Benson (July 24, 1867 – February 29, 1940) was an English archaeologist and novelist who published over 60 novels between 1883 and 1934. Today he is chiefly remembered for his ghost stories, collected in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912), Visible and Invisible (1923), The Horror Horn (1923), Spook Stories (1928), and Old London (1937), among others.

Unlike many of the subjects of the Wordsworth collections — who’ve been sadly neglected by modern readers — Benson is still fondly remembered. His work has seen many modern collections, including the Panther edition of The Horror Horn (1974), Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991), The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson (1992), Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994), and the five-volume The Collected Spook Stories from Ash-Tree Press (1998 – 2005), which collects all of his supernatural fiction.

H.P. Lovecraft thought highly of Benson’s work, especially “The Horror-Horn,” “The Man Who Went Too Far,” and “The Face,” calling him an important contributor to the weird short story. If you’re interested in a nice one-volume introduction to his work Night Terrors is an excellent option. It collects 54 of his best-known stories, and an introduction by David Stuart Davies, in a handsome and economical 718-page paperback.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1952: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952-smallThis is an issue I had looked forward to for a long time. One of my first steps toward reading Galaxy was listening to an X-Minus One radio broadcast titled “Surface Tension,” based on the story with the same title by James Blish in Galaxy’s August, 1952 issue. My wife had gotten this one for me early on, but I hadn’t made my way to it until now.

“Surface Tension” by James Blish — Humans explore the galaxy, seeding adaptations of themselves on any Earth-like planets. Hydrot is all water and marshes, and the crew of La Ventura has only a short time before they die, stranded because their ship wrecked. So they create microscopic versions of themselves (but not with their memories) that can survive in water, hoping they can compete for survival without dominating the other lifeforms on the planet.

This was considerably different from what I remember of the radio broadcast. But it’s a well-told story that’s highly inventive.

“Proof of the Pudding” by Robert Sheckley — One man survives the final war on Earth by taking a ship into space. He returns to the desolate planet and discovers he has the power to create anything he imagines.

I had difficulty relating to the protagonist. Not to spoil too much, but the story picked up considerably with the introduction of a second character.

“Yesterday House” by Fritz Leiber — Jack Berry is a biology student working in Maine for Professor Kesserich.  Jack takes a boat past where he was told to go, and he discovers an island. As he explores it, he comes to a fence and climbs over. He meets a young woman who lives in a house, but she’s convinced it’s 1933 rather than 1951. Her aunts keep her on the island throughout the year, never allowing her to go to the mainland. He wants to prove the truth to her, if he can, without arousing her aunts’ suspicion.

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Ode to the Sacrificed On the Battlefield (Or Before. And After)

Ode to the Sacrificed On the Battlefield (Or Before. And After)

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I started planning this post by thinking: Hey, Good Friday, awesome time for a post on sword and sorcery crucifixion. That evolved into: okay, that might be in poor taste (that’s personal growth, that right there). How about just on hero sacrifice, then? They bring us lessons by sacrificing stuff, right?

I am He-Mullet!
I am He-Mullet!

Yes, right. And the stuff (or people, whatever) they sacrifice is often forgotten by the time we’re screaming cheers and profanities during the final battle. We feel that something good has been accomplished and we forget everything that was left behind. Well, no more. Today, let us take a moment to ponder these sacrifices.

Hair
Let’s just start this with an important one, with a view to the 80s movies boom of S&S (sounds kind of Fifty Shade-ish when it’s put like that. Ha.) A mullet covered in lice is just not an easy look to pull off. Sadly much hair was sacrificed in the name of victory.

Weapons
So many weapons are cast aside. They’re special for one scene, then they get stuck in a rib cage and game over. Just abandoned like it never mattered. Let us remind the swords that yes, they did matter.

Rib Cages
On the same line, with the sword stuck in them and all. Perhaps if it had been protected by more than a bikini, the story could have ended differently .

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Amazon.com Returns to 1999 for April Fool’s Day

Amazon.com Returns to 1999 for April Fool’s Day

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Amazon.com April Fools 2015-smallAmazon.com has turned back the clock to 1999 for April Fool’s Day.

The world’s largest online retailer has re-formatted its main page to precisely mirror the look and feel it had on April 1, 1999. It’s not just a snapshot of the page from sixteen years ago — it has replaced everything on the page, including the links on its top Books, Music and Videos, with April Fools-themed products.

The Amazon 100 Hot Books, for example, is topped by these three titles:

April Fool’s Day, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, by Carolyn Keene
The Practical Joker’s Handbook, by Tim Nyberg
April Foolishness, by Teresa Bateman

All the titles are real. None of the links function, however (clicking anywhere on the page will dump you back to the 2015 version of the Amazon home page).

As someone who used to shop regularly at Amazon in 1999, this page really takes me back. I love the prominent link to “VHS Top Sellers” in the bottom right. All of Amazon’s regular services — such as your cart, wish list, and the search functions — operate normally. It’s just the main page that’s been pranked.

Visit the Amazon home page here.

Presumably, Amazon’s home page will return to normal by the end of the day. Click on the image at right for a screen capture of the full page.

Metal on Metal: Swords of Steel edited by D.M. Ritzlin

Metal on Metal: Swords of Steel edited by D.M. Ritzlin

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oie_3111058UFfTOs2zWhen John O’Neill posted a few weeks ago about Swords of Steel, edited by D.M. Ritzlin, I knew I had to read it. The hook was simple: swords & sorcery stories written by members of metal bands. Tons of heavy bands — Uriah Heep, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Metallica, Megadeth, to name several — have drawn on the themes of heroism, monster-fighting, and sorcery for lyrics and look. Sometimes they lift stuff directly from favorite authors, like the UK band called Conan, or Texas band The Sword with the song “Beyond the Black River.”

When I read Tolkien I hear folk music in my head; when I read Karl Edward Wagner I hear Black Sabbath. So although I recognized the name of only one band represented in the collection, I was stoked to dive in. With an amazingly cool cover by Martin Hanford and its back cover claim that it’s “NOT FOR WIMPS!,” I was expecting great things from Swords of Steel. It came tantalizingly close.

Set in England during the reign of Elizabeth I,”Into the Dawn of Storms” by Byron A. Roberts (vocalist, Bal-Sagoth) gets the book off to a solid start. Captain Blackthorne is plagued with dreams of death and magic and seeks help from the legend-shrouded scholar, John Dee. It’s billed as the first chapter in an ongoing saga and I’ll be keeping my eyes open for Chapter Two.

From the author bio (and there’s a nice one included for everybody), I learned that Roberts has developed a mulitverse that forms the foundation of his band’s music. This story, with references to past exploits and multiple worlds, is set there as well.

“The Riddle Master” by Ernest Cunningham Hellwell (bassist, Hellwell) is one of the best stories in the collection but, sadly, not S&S at all. A nameless writer narrates his run-in and bet with a demon, made to ensure eternal fame.

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Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Campaign Adventure Module Series of All Time

Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Campaign Adventure Module Series of All Time

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Did Bloodstone make the list?
Did Bloodstone make the list?

I’m not really sure when I played my first adventure module, although I think it was at my first D&D Club meeting in 8th Grade. My only clear memory of actual adventure, while I sat in that library on Wednesday evenings after school, was trying, and failing, to enter the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. So, I assume that G1,2,3 [well, at least G1] was my first ever module, and I think that is interesting because it means my induction into gaming came from the adventures that define what campaign modules should be.

Having recently begun my own quest to create a campaign series of modules, I’ve decided to put my epic game of Risk with Ryan Harvey on hold, tell Kandi to hold all my calls, and pray that Goth Chick doesn’t show up unexpectedly wearing a corset and stockings that would most assuredly derail my Black Gate L.A. productivity for the day.

Why would I do this? Well, to create another Top 10 list of course! This time around, I’m not looking at the best modules of all time, but instead looking at the best/greatest campaign series of modules of all time. Yes, so without running my deadline further into the red, let me get started.

First and foremost, I’d like to say that this is my list, and therefore shouldn’t be judged as some kind of ‘true’ entity. My views are certainly colored by the experiences I’ve had with most of what you see below, and at one time in my life I’ve owned them all.

As for Bloodstone, I’ve played it as recently as 2007, but that said, I can neither confirm of deny the fact that it did or did not make the list. I do, however, hope you enjoy what I’ve created below and that it does bring back a few good memories to you all!

So, let’s get started, shall we?

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Adventures In Italy: Calvino’s Italian Folktales

Adventures In Italy: Calvino’s Italian Folktales

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Blue FolktalesI grew up on Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grimm, and the myriad anthologies of Andrew Lang: The Blue Book Of Fairy Tales, The Brown Book Of Fairy Tales, The Red Book Of Fairy Tales, etc. Most of these were read aloud by my father, so I received them as part of humanity’s long oral tradition, a fact for which I am now very grateful. Aesop, too, arrived in my life as something overheard rather than read.

All of the above work shared a common heritage. In fact, prior to high school at least, they led me to believe that fairy tales were specific to Europe, something vaguely Nordic, and familiar to the degree that the characters within the stories were uniformly white and spoke English. Who knows when it finally occurred to me that these stories were translated, and that many had international sources that transcended culture, race, and geography.

By 1980, when Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales finally arrived in an English-language edition (translated by George Martin), I was moving into different myths: Tolkien, certainly, but also the grittier, street-savvy story-telling of S.E. Hinton, Robert Cormier, and early Bruce Springsteen. The publication of Italian Folktales made not a ripple in my life. Indeed, I eventually read several other Calvino classics (If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…, The Baron In the Trees, and The Non-Existent Knight) before realizing his omnibus folktales even existed.

It took me another ten years to order a copy and crack the covers, and ten more still to really delve into this enormous, 760 page trade paperback (Harcourt). What finally tipped me over the edge was the need for a new book to read to my adventure-obsessed youngest son.

At the outset, I admit to being worried that Calvino might not be a hit.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Terry Pratchett’s ‘City Watch’

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Terry Pratchett’s ‘City Watch’

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CityWatch_GuardsCoverAs readers of this column are certainly aware, I’m quite the fan of detective and private eye novels. Beyond just the guy that the whole thing is named after. As I mentioned in last week’s post on Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel, I’ve made several posts about the genre.

Related yet distinct is the police procedural (though some stories, like the aforementioned Caves, fit in both genres). As you can guess from the name, these focus on police officers, rather than private operatives. They are all over television, such as Castle, CSI (insert name here), Hill Street Blues, and brand new shows like Battle Creek. Ranging from Dragnet and The Streets of San Francisco to Hawaii Five O (which lasted 12 seasons before coming back in its current incarnation).

The literary police procedural, while popular, has a lower profile than its television version and is definitely overshadowed by the private eye story.

Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), who I consider THE master of the mystery short story, wrote more tales of New York’s 87th Precinct than I can count: and I can count to one, two, three, many (that’s a Terry Pratchett joke). Probably my favorite straight police procedurals are Tony Hillerman’s novels about The Navajo Tribal Police. The subject of a future post, they are superb police mysteries, set in the Indian reservation lands of the Four Corners. (I ended up doing a pretty solid three-part series on those fantastic books)

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Susan Kaye Quinn on Mind Control, Cashing Out Souls, and Publishing Your Own Way

Susan Kaye Quinn on Mind Control, Cashing Out Souls, and Publishing Your Own Way

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The Legacy Human-smallSusan Kaye Quinn is an author and a rocket scientist who hails from the Chicago area. It’s hard to say what she’s best known for. Her YA science fiction Mindjack trilogy, noir science fiction Debt Collector serial, South Asian steampunk Dharian Affairs trilogy, and middle grade fantasy Faerie Swap have all been well received.

Her most recent release is dystopian cyberpunk The Legacy Human, which is the first book of her Singularity series. A member of the Indelibles (one of the first indie author groups to take off, back in the day) and the Emblazoners (an equally pioneering middle grade indie author group), she is also the author of The Indie Author’s Guide.

Now, this interview is a little out of sync with reality. I conducted it in September 2013, and then hit some technical difficulties, and then got buried by my startup business, so I apologize that the projects she’s talking about are now all published (but that means you don’t have to wait to read any of them.)

I have the privilege of sharing a German translator with Susan, and we both started our indie careers at around the same time (I’m E.M. Tippetts in indie world, a chick-lit writer). Together we’ve seen indie publishing evolve from an unheard of option with a strong stigma, to what it is today, providing both her and me a living. I’m just lucky.

She, on the other hand, is good, so I strongly recommend you hear what she has to say!

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