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Norman and Pagan Traces near Oxford

Norman and Pagan Traces near Oxford

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Iffley Church from the southwest, showing hte main west entrance. The yew is to the right.
Iffley Church from the southwest, showing the main west entrance. The yew is to the right.

Oxford is a popular destination in England thanks to its famous university and fine architecture, which includes a rare Saxon tower. What’s less well-known is the pleasant stroll along the River Isis two miles down to Iffley village. The walk will take you past the university boathouses, a pasture, an excellent pub, and some fine river views. Just past the pub, you’ll come across a lock and bridge taking you to a small village that contains one of the best-preserved Norman churches anywhere.

St. Mary’s Iffley Church was built c.1170-80 in the High Romanesque style. Early in its history, ownership passed from the local lord to an absentee lord. This distant owner continued to maintain the church, but did little to “improve” it, thus leaving it in much its original state.

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The Scorpion Revealed: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Twelve: Captain Marvel’s Secret

The Scorpion Revealed: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Twelve: Captain Marvel’s Secret

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The Adventures of Captain Marvel tom_tyler-smallHurry up and get in here! Be careful you don’t trip walking down the aisle — the lights have already gone down and they’ll be ready to start any minute. You’re late, but still in luck, because there’s one last seat left, over there on the right — see it? Now that we’re all in our places with bright shining faces, we’re ready for our story’s finale. Sit tight because here it comes — The Adventures of Captain Marvel, last chapter: “Captain Marvel’s Secret.”

Three title cards semi-coherently sum up last week’s action. “Captain Marvel — Rescues the Malcolm Expedition from a trap set by the Scorpion.” “Billy Batson — Refuses to enter the tomb to get Dr. Lang’s lens.” “Rahman Bar — Plans to arouse the natives against the expedition.” And now, for the final time, let’s shout together the mystic syllables that will bring down the magic lightning bolt and transform you into one of the greatest of all superheroes, Captain Marvel — Shazam!

Returning to the conclusion of last week’s chapter, Malcolm and Bentley, having recovered the hidden lens, stand outside the tomb chamber where Betty and Whitey are trapped, while Billy and Tal Chotali dither outside the tomb itself. The whole place is being shaken to pieces due to the eruption of the volcanic mountain Scorpio. “Scorpio is angry because unbelievers have entered the tomb,” Tal Chotali tells Billy. Actually, we know that Rahman Bar has caused the eruption by diverting a river into the crater, which, as everyone knows, acts as a volcano emetic.

As the shaking increases in intensity, Billy tries to run into the tomb to help his friends inside, but is held back by Tal Chotali. Everyone in the tomb — Malcolm, Bentley, Betty, Whitey — is doomed, hopelessly doomed!

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection

New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection

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The Year's Best Science Fiction 31-smallIt’s that time of year again. I’ve been reporting here on the annual crop of Year’s Best SF and Fantasy anthologies as they’ve arrived over the summer — including Rich Horton’s sixth (published in June), the eighth volume from Jonathan Strahan (May), and David Hartwell’s eighteenth volume (December 2013).

And now at last the great granddaddy of them all arrives: Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection. Arguably the most essential of the lot, it is certainly the most comprehensive and the most irreplaceable. Gardner, the Hugo Award-winning editor of Asimov’s SF for two decades, has been compiling and editing this volume every year without fail since 1984, and his richly detailed annual summation is required reading for anyone who expects to really understand science fiction.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world in the year’s best short stories.

This venerable collection brings together award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection was published by St. Martin’s Press on July 15. It is 750 pages, priced at $40 in hardcover, $22.99 in trade paperback, and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jim Burns.

The Series Series: Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck

The Series Series: Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck

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sword-of-the-bright-lady-mc-planck-smallIf you liked Eric Flint’s 1634 books, if you liked The Chronicles of Narnia, if you liked… Well let’s just start with those two, because Sword of the Bright Lady deals in surprising juxtapositions of familiar tropes.

At times I wondered whether it dealt in anything deeper. I’ve concluded that it does. This is a fun book and it feels like it was fun to write. The author’s acknowledgments note that it took three months to write and ten years to revise. Am I churlish to wish the revision had gone one step further?

What works here works beautifully. Less than a day after I finished reading, I had to go back and prove to myself that the narration was in the third person, because I remembered Christopher’s adventures with first-person clarity, as if they had happened to me.

Christopher went out to walk his dogs one Arizona night and woke up in the snowy hinterlands of another world. His rescuers, an earthy old churchman and his orphaned servant girl, nurse him back to health, though they have no common language with him. When he’s well enough to pick up some of the household work, he tries practicing kata from his martial arts practice back home. Before he knows it, he’s challenged to a duel by a local nobleman, blessed by a language spell that allows him to understand exactly how much danger he’s in, and claimed by the local war god.

At first, Christopher insists that he’s an everyman, not famous back home nor expected to be famous by anyone who knew him there. But as he begins to see how he can help the people who have saved him, he accepts the identity the villagers thrust on him: “Crazy Pater Christopher, who never means what everyone else means.” He sets about industrializing his feudal neighbors — who all have lively personalities and complex lives — preparing them for the spring’s military campaign, because the war god Marcius has promised to return Christopher home to his beloved wife… um… what was her name again?

And that brings us to a sticking point I have to talk about. It’s not that M.C. Planck has done anything uncommonly wrong here, but rather that he’s fallen into a classic blunder that I see committed all over the place, but that nobody seems to talk about.

Let’s call it the Precious Ming Vase Problem.

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Vintage Treasures: Tower of Dreams by Jamil Nasir

Vintage Treasures: Tower of Dreams by Jamil Nasir

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Tower of Dreams-smallEarlier this year, I was delighted to write a new New Treasures piece on the latest novel by Jamil Nasir. Tunnel Out of Death, as I noted at the time, had “one of the most original plot synopses I’ve read in the last year.”

That sent me on the hunt for his earlier novels, and over the last six months I’ve managed to track down most of them — including the highly regarded Tower of Dreams, which Jack Dann called “A powerful hallucinatory nightmare obsession from a writer who loves words and can turn them into the vital stuff of experience.”

In Advertising, Image is Everything.

Blaine Ramsey has an unusual occupation. He travels to foreign countries and lives like a native. He drinks in the culture with his mind, body, and soul. And he does it all in the name of American capitalism. For Blaine is an Image digger, one of an elite few blessed with the power to “dream” authentic images from the deep unconscious of foreign lands that are turned into alluring, computer-animated packages used by advertisers to sell their products.

But in a dusty Middle Eastern villa, something goes terribly wrong. Blaine is haunted by the recurring Image of a young Arab beauty suffering a brutal attack. For Blaine, her Image becomes the seductive source of romantic obsession–and a nightmare from which he cannot escape. And as Blaine is about to discover, her appearance in his dreams foretells tragedy — a disaster the likes of which the world has never seen….

Tower of Dreams was published in January 1999 by Bantam Spectra Books. It is 231 pages, originally priced at $5.99. That version is now out of print, but in 2009 the author self-published a trade paperback edition through iUniverse; that one is still in print. There is no digital edition.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: RPGing with a board — Runebound

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: RPGing with a board — Runebound

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RUnebound_BoardIt is very difficult to build a good RPG board game. The constraints of the medium make it hard to compare favorably with the actual pen and paper or PC/video game role playing experience.

By far, the best board/card game I’ve found that emulates the role-playing experience is the Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords Adventure Card Game. The adventures get more difficult, you level up and the gear gets better. You maintain your items, spells, and levels from scenario to scenario through an entire Adventure Path, rather than start over each game play session. I’m sure I’ll post on that excellent game in the future.

Another game that I enjoy (though not as much) is Runebound (2nd Edition) from Fantasy Flight Games. It’s not as slick as Wizards of the Coast’s Wrath of Ashardalon, and not as complex as Fantasy Flight’s Rune Wars. But it’s got an appeal for RPGers.

The large board is of thick stock and divided into hexes like old school D&D maps. You travel through different terrain to either enter towns or land on hexes with colored adventure counters. The four different colors represent difficulty levels, from easiest (green) on up through yellow, purple, and red, granting from one to four experience points per color category.

When a player lands on a counter, they select an adventure card of the appropriate color. It can be a challenge, an event, or an encounter. Usually, there’s a fight: sometimes with a skill test involved. You gain experience (and usually gold) from successfully meeting the adventure card.

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New Treasures: One Night in Sixes by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

New Treasures: One Night in Sixes by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

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One Night in Sixes-smallWe get a lot of review copies every month here at the Chicago rooftop headquarters of the Black Gate global publishing empire. You know what else we get? Press releases, pre-release galleys, PDFs, free Kindle books, stuff like that. We could never leave the office, and still keep you decently posted on the newest fantasy every month.

But we don’t aim for decent. We aim to keep you completely informed on the very best in the genre. And that means putting feet on the street, talking to folks in the industry, and visiting to bookstores. Lots and lots of bookstores. Like yesterday, where I found a copy of a fascinating “rural fantasy” from new writer Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson. I would never have discovered her first novel if I hadn’t been wandering the aisles at B&N, and believe me, it deserves your attention.

The border town called Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day. Still, Appaloosa Elim has heard the stories about what wakes at sunset: gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight.

And the daylight is running out. Elim’s so-called ‘partner’ — that lily-white lordling Sil Halfwick –- has disappeared inside the old adobe walls, hell-bent on making a name for himself among Sixes’ notorious black-market traders. Elim, whose worldly station is written in the bastard browns and whites of his cow-spotted face, doesn’t dare show up home without him.

If he ever wants to go home again, he’d better find his missing partner fast. But if he’s caught out after dark, Elim risks succumbing to the old and sinister truth in his own flesh – and discovering just how far he’ll go to survive the night.

One word of warning: One Night in Sixes is the kind of novel that has a 10-page glossary and 11-page “People and Place” reference in the back. If that scares you, go back to reading E. Nesbit and the Ranger’s Apprentice books. Lightweight.

One Night in Sixes was published on July 29, 2014 by Solaris Books. It is 439 pages (plus all those glossaries and stuff), priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The moody and effective cover is by Tomasz Jedruszek.

Self Published Book Review: The Severed Earth by Chris Presta-Valachovic

Self Published Book Review: The Severed Earth by Chris Presta-Valachovic

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Severed Earth coverIf you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

After a weekend spent trying to fix my computer (status: still crashing at least once an hour), it was an open question whether I was going to get this done. Well, here it is, hopefully not too much the worse for the wear.

This month’s self-published novel is The Severed Earth by Chris Presta-Valachovic. The Severed Earth is what is sometimes referred to as a portal fantasy, where characters from our world are transported to another one and are forced to deal with some great event. Sometimes the characters are quite willing, crossing over freely — in this book, they are definitely not.

The rock band Karma is in trouble. Despite the success they’ve had, their ex-manager Izzy embezzled most of the money before dying, leaving the members deep in debt. They have one chance to produce an album and turn their fortunes around, but their lead singer, Vao, is having a crisis of faith, and thinking of quitting after the death of his mother. The guitarist, Rafe, is fed up with Vao’s moping and unreliability and would just as soon be rid of him, while Jonathan just wants to hold the band together. Ian and Dylan just want to make music, but they, too, are stuck in this emotional train-wreck of a band. But when the record rep turns out to be a wizard, the band members soon find themselves with other things to worry about.

King Faolan of Kern is missing, and whether by coincidence or magic — it’s not entirely clear — Vao bears a remarkable resemblance to the missing king. He and his bandmates are brought to the land of Kern, Vao to take his place as king, and the others to take the fall for kidnapping him. The others manage to escape with the help of the bard Sion, but Vao is brought to the Crown City of Kern, where he is expected to assume the role of king, and in the course of a month, bond with a woman he’s never met and seal an alliance with the nation of Chulain. The others have the task not only of avoiding being captured and charged with kidnapping and murder, but rescuing Vao and finding the way home. Except that Rafe isn’t so certain that Vao is worth rescuing, and as time passes, it’s less and less clear that Vao wants to go home.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1952: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952-smallSometimes, it’s easy to think that writing science fiction in the early 1950’s couldn’t be easier. After all, how many cliches existed at that time?

Well, apparently there were plenty. Gold writes in his opening of Galaxy’s January, 1952 issue:

The world today is loaded with ifs! So crammed, crowded, bulging with ifs jostling each other, in fact, that it’s a pure bafflement to see writers turning the same ones over and over, looking for some new bump never before noticed on the use-worn surfaces.

Yes, he wrote this for the January 1952 issue. The more of his commentaries I read, the more I think nothing has really changed over time.

Galaxy set the bar high, not allowing anyone to write stale stories. “Known authors who depend on their names to sell inferior fiction are finding no market in Galaxy; new authors who are willing to dig for ideas and fresh treatments are getting an enthusiastic, cooperative welcome.” Gold cared deeply about quality fiction and it’s clear to me with each issue I read that he accomplished it.

I’d love the chance to tell him how much I respect the work he did back then, but since I can’t, I only hope it serves to drive others toward that same level of quality, whether as editors, authors, artists, or any other roles involved with speculative fiction. Let’s look to Galaxy as a standard to match or exceed, if that’s even possible.

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Summer 2014 Subterranean Magazine now Available: The Final Issue

Summer 2014 Subterranean Magazine now Available: The Final Issue

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Subterranean Summer 2014-smallI’ve always been amazed at how publisher William Schafer could produce a top-notch online magazine like Subterranean every quarter, and also run one of the most dynamic and productive small presses in the genre: Subterranean Press. I’ve published a fiction magazine and I know just how much work it is. I’ve never run a small press, much less a mini-publishing empire like Subterranean, but I imagine it must require a lot more work than a mere magazine.

That amazement compounded every quarter as the magazines appeared like clockwork — 31 issues over the last eight years. How does he do it?

Since the magazine was completely free, and yet still paid top rates, it was evidence of something more than just an admirable work ethic: a clear love of publishing, an understanding of the importance of magazines to the genre, and an enduring commitment to short fiction — all in the face of an increasingly indifferent marketplace.

So it is with considerable sadness, but no real surprise, that I note that Schafer has, with no prior fanfare, placed the words THE FINAL ISSUE on the Summer 2014 issue of Subterranean Magazine. I’m deeply disappointed that this is the last edition of one of the finest online publications the field has ever seen. But in my heart, I knew this had to come eventually and it doesn’t at all diminish what the magazine accomplished. Mr. Schafer, I salute your dedication and your amazing accomplishment.

The magazine goes out on a high note, with a fantastic table of contents, including a 33,000-word novella from Lewis Shiner, a 25,000-word novella from Kat Howard, plus novellas from Rachel Swirsky and Maria Dahvana Headley, a 16,000-word novelette from Alastair Reynolds, one of Jay Lake’s last stories, and more.

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