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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

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I’m honestly not sure where September went. It was just here a second ago, and then…. bam. It slipped out the back like a grounded teenager with the car keys.

Well, September may have been brief, but it was action packed. We published 108 blog entries, celebrating neglected fantasy of all kinds — old, new, and in between. We explained why humorous fantasy isn’t popular, examined the iconic beauty of Princess Leia, revealed the lost Sherlock Holmes story, and highlighted a great many new releases and vintage paperbacks. I’m still catching up on all the great stuff we covered, and it’s halfway through October already.

Our most popular article last month was Scott Taylor’s list of the Top 10 TSR Cover Paintings of All Time, a nostalgic look at the finest artwork from the Golden Age of roleplaying. If you played RPGs at all last century, Scott’s piece will bring back some great memories.

Second on the list was Part I of Patty Templeton’s Self-Publishing Checklist, an item-by-item catalog of the essential steps to getting your self-published novel into the hands of readers. Patty’s own book, There is no Lovely End, exploded onto the scene in July and has already become one of the hottest self-published horror titles of the year.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Michael Stone’s Streeter

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Michael Stone’s Streeter

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The Low End of NowhereJust after I moved to Colorado Springs, a Denver private investigator named Michael Stone released his first book about Streeter, a bounty hunter in the Mile High City. The Low End of Nowhere had a very cool cover by Owen Smith, who would provide three more for A Long Reach, Token of Remorse, and Totally Dead.

Then, nothing: After four very good novels, Stone simply quit writing. It was as if he’d suddenly passed away. Over the years, I tried to find some news of him on the web but came up empty. He just seemed to lose interest in being a writer in 1999.

That’s a shame, because the Streeter books are quite good. They are very much in the style of the old pulpsters, but with a light touch. Stone clearly appreciated those who had gone before him, like Hammett and Nebel. But his character was no Mike Hammer or Race Williams. There’s finesse in the writing that reminds me of Joe Gores and his DKA novels.

Steeter (we never learn any other name) is physically imposing, having played football at a small division one school for two years before a fight with tragic consequences derailed that life plan. He was working as a bouncer and an accountant (how many of those have you read about?) when he ended up getting a job as a bounty hunter.

He lifts weights daily, fighting a slowly losing battle against the aging process. He even buys some hair-restorer but promptly puts it in a bathroom drawer, afraid to use it. Streeter isn’t a superhero: he’s a guy who works hard at working hard.

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Why Did I Say That? Or, The Perils of Writing a Series

Why Did I Say That? Or, The Perils of Writing a Series

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Christie StylesA frequently heard complaint about a series, whether in book or TV form, is that the characters never change, and that they keep doing the same things over and over. Another frequently heard complaint is that the characters have changed out of all recognition from the ones we first knew and loved, and why do we never see them doing some of the things they used to do?

Why does this happen, you ask? Because writing a series is more complicated than it looks.

For one thing, you don’t actually know you’re writing a series until you’re on your third, or even your fourth, book. Sure, you may be planning to write a series long before that, but you’re not actually writing one until then. It probably isn’t until your third or fourth book that you have to consider one of the all important factors: will my characters age?

Agatha Christie famously regretted making Hercules Poirot a retiree when she wrote her first book about him, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but she didn’t realize then that she’d be writing those novels for another 50 years. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, along with their recurring secondary characters, simply don’t age. Even though the world goes on around them, with very few exceptions each of their stories is told as if it was a single, stand alone novel.

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Frayling Tackles his own Yellow Peril

Frayling Tackles his own Yellow Peril

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Yellow PerilSerialFuManchuThe centennial of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu character is a topic I have covered both for the anniversary of the Devil Doctor’s first appearance in the story, “The Zayat Kiss,” in 1912 and the publication of the first novel (really a fix-up of stories), The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, in 1913.

While Rohmer and the character are largely forgotten outside of pulp circles today, the legacy of the criminal mastermind is alive and well in film and comics. The concept of the Yellow Peril from an era when the broad term Oriental grouped together people from parts of Eastern Europe with all of Asia and the Middle East may sound anachronistic, but given the continued delicate relations between the Middle East and the West, those same fears personified are still the stuff of fiction and paranoia well over a century on.

Sax Rohmer did not invent the criminal mastermind, nor was he the first to capitalize on the Yellow Peril for works of fiction. What he did do was create an archetype that managed to embody and transcend the fears of a “foreign other” to instead personify the fear of Western society falling to a superior intellect operating under a completely different set of values. Rohmer did this better than anyone before and while Fu Manchu as a name may seem ridiculous, the concept of the character is still with us from James Bond films to the media’s portrayal of terrorist leaders in the 21st Century.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

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March 1952 Galaxy magazine-smallThe March, 1952 issue of Galaxy opens with a word from the editor, H. L. Gold. Gold introduces Willy Ley, who’s beginning his monthly department, “For Your Information,” that will vary from complete articles to brief reports on “significant developments in science.”

Along with the introduction, Gold states that a number of readers have asked what he’s like, so shares some details. Of his name, he writes, “Named H(orace) L(eonard) after a prompt casualty in the Princess Pat Regiment. I can’t pretend to be fond of my name, but I don’t use initials to escape it; that was decided upon by an editor, though other editors have used the whole thing. Having had 32 pen names, I find the problem shrug-worthy.” 32 pen names? Was he going for a world record?

About Galaxy, Gold writes, “Galaxy, of course, is my own dream come true. I know I sometimes push too hard, but that’s because everyone wants his dream to be perfect.” I’m glad he did. It was a good dream.

“The Year of the Jackpot” by Robert A. Heinlein — Potiphar Breen is a numbers guy — statistician, analyst, or any role where he can use his skills in numbers and patterns. The latest pattern is an increasing number of odd behaviors, such as women publicly disrobing for no apparent reason. He interviews one of the women, Meade Barstow, and the two of them begin meeting routinely. When the statistics show the approach of an unknown climactic event, Potiphar and Meade flee the city, hoping to avoid becoming a statistic of their own.

I couldn’t quite buy in to the premise of the story, but I let that go. It does move along pretty quickly, and when things start to go bad, they go really bad. And by that point, the predictability of it all isn’t as important as pure survival.

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Art of the Genre: Photographs from a Long Lost Lake Geneva

Art of the Genre: Photographs from a Long Lost Lake Geneva

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Cartographer Dennis Kauth wants a piece of Larry Elmore's beautiful mind!
Cartographer Dennis Kauth wants a piece of Larry Elmore’s beautiful mind!

Over the past four years, I’ve struck up a friendship with Nick Parkinson, son of the late fantasy and D&D artist Keith Parkinson. We both live in San Diego and it is always nice to share thoughts on the sweeping industry of games as a whole.

One thing very few people understand who look into fantasy art is that the bulk of all artists DO NOT play RPGs.  Of the ‘Big Four’ for TSR (Elmore, Easley, Parkinson, and Caldwell), only Keith actually played Dungeons & Dragons.

Todd Lockwood was a D&D player until he started working at TSR in the late 1990s and he often speaks about how the ‘magic was gone’ once he started actually designing the game. That is a subject I’ll look at another day, however, although it is intriguing.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit off target here, so let me refocus. Nick and I had a conversation where I was looking to acquire a few old character sheets from ‘famous’ players for an io9 article a friend was writing and he said he’d just seen some of his father’s old sheets when he’d moved a few months before.

A week later, I didn’t get the character sheets, but he did send over a nice grouping of old TSR photographs and I was very interested to see the ‘process’ of how these great creators worked together to make some of the famous images we all know and love.

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September Short Story Roundup

September Short Story Roundup

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Sept Oct 2014-smallSeptember was a good month for swords & sorcery stories. While the next issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is still several months away, Fantasy & Science Fiction (presently celebrating its sixty-fifth year of publication) has a trio of tales. Swords and Sorcery Magazine, as every month for the past two and a half years, presented two new stories.

I started subscribing to F&SF earlier this year, but until now there haven’t been any S&S stories. Now in the September/October 2014 Issue, they’ve presented three. The first is a novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein. “The Caravan to Nowhere” is a tale in her long-running saga of the minstrel Alaric. It’s actually a reprint, with the story first appearing in the recent anthology Rogues, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. The first story in the series, “Born to Exile,” appeared in the same magazine all the way back in 1971.

Alaric is a far-traveling minstrel with magical powers. He can shift his location from one spot to another instantaneously. In a world where such sorcery is usually feared, he is always on the move, seeking fresh opportunities and material for new songs. At the story’s start, he joins a caravan into the desert hunting not just inspiration, but also legendary hidden treasure and a lost city. While the caravan master, Piros, dismisses the tales as only drunken fancy, Alaric decides it’s still worth joining the party.

Alaric discovers that in addition to its purpose of buying salt, the caravan is journeying into the heart of the desert to acquire a supply of the Powder of Desire. It gives its users visions of great wonders, but it’s ultimately dangerous and debilitating. Piros’s dissolute son is himself addicted to the substance. When they arrive at the source of the powder, things take a dangerous turn.

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Volkswagen Ad Reunites William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy

Volkswagen Ad Reunites William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy

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You’ve probably heard the recent reports about William Shatner’s possible return in the upcoming Star Trek 3, where he and Leonard Nimoy would appear together as Kirk and Spock one more time.

Pretty exciting stuff for an old-time Star Trek fan like me. Although the big event has just been scooped by a German Volkswagen ad released this week, which features both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner (not to mention the Star Trek theme music, which probably wasn’t cheap to license for a car ad) in a charming 45-second spot. Yes, the ad is in German, but you’ll have no trouble following the dialog (Hint: The German phrase for “Captain Kirk” is “Captain Kirk.”)

The complete spot is below. Enjoy.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The First Great Holmes (Gillette)

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The First Great Holmes (Gillette)

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I recently wrote about John Barrymore’s film, Sherlock Holmes, which was based on William Gillette’s massively popular play about the great detective.

In 1897 or 1898, Arthur Conan Doyle decided to “revive” Sherlock Holmes, who had gone over the ledge at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893. He wrote the first draft of a play starring the detective.

Gillette_Poster1Since he already had scored a hit with his non-Holmes play, A Tale of Waterloo, Doyle must have figured that the public would ring up the cash register in seeing their favorite detective again: this time on the stage.

Doyle lost interest in the project, but his agent sent the five-act play off to noted Broadway producer and agent Charles Frohman. Frohman, who died aboard the ill-fated Lusitania, felt that the play was not commercial enough as it was and told Doyle that popular American actor William Gillette should revise and then star in it.

The uninterested Doyle gave his permission and Gillette transformed Holmes into more of a melodrama star and less of a stodgy British detective.

Gillette read all of Doyle’s original stories, took four weeks off from his current tour for the popular Secret Service and rewrote the play. That November, a fire in San Francisco’s Baldwin Hotel destroyed all of the scenery and sets of Secret Service; and also the only script of Sherlock Holmes!

It’s Elementary – Gillette asked Doyle if he could marry Holmes for the play. Doyle’s reply via telegram has become famous: “You may marry him, murder him or do anything you like to him.”

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Announcing the Winners of Free Copies of Mark Rigney’s Check-Out Time

Announcing the Winners of Free Copies of Mark Rigney’s Check-Out Time

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Check Out Time Mark Rigney-smallLast month, we told you that you had a chance to win a free copy of Mark Rigney’s latest Renner & Quist novel, Check-Out Time. All you had to do to enter was send us an e-mail with the title “Check-Out Time.” Two winners were drawn at random this morning from all qualifying entries.

We are pleased to announce the winners are:

Barbara Barrett
Galt, CA

Yusuf S Nasrullah
Boston, MA

Congratulations! You should receive your copies in the next 5 – 10 days. In the meantime, enjoy our feature review by William Patrick Maynard, who called the book “Funny, moving, enlightening, entertaining – Mark Rigney’s Renner & Quist series is in a class of its own.”

Check-Out Time will be published by Samhain Publishing on October 7, 2014. It is 250 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $5.50 for the digital edition. Be sure to read Mark’s article on the series, The Adventure Continues: the Return of Renner and Quist, published right here in February.

Thanks to all those who entered our contest and thanks again to Samhain Publishing and Mark Rigney for making it all possible!