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Time Travel, Reincarnation, and the Evil Lurking Behind the Curtain: The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

Time Travel, Reincarnation, and the Evil Lurking Behind the Curtain: The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

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The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare M. G. Buehrlen-smallHigh-school junior Alex Wayfare has had visions of the past — usually triggered by a moment of déjà-vu — ever since she was a little girl. These visions feel real to Alex and they cover real historical events (such as Jamestown or the World’s Fair). When she gets hurt during these visions, the wounds (for example, a cat scratch) appear on her body. She wonders if she might be schizophrenic.

After yet another vision — this one of 1920’s Chicago — Alex finds a note from a man named Porter. When Alex meets with him, Porter tells her the visions are real and that Alex is a Descender — a person who can travel back in time through a portal to the afterlife called Limbo.

Not only that, she’s a special sort of Descender called a Transcender. This means that when she travels back in time, she doesn’t become a different person, she drops into one of her own past lives. Porter also tells her that the man who created this technology is after her, and so she is in mortal danger.

This book blends time-travel and reincarnation to give readers a unique twist on each trope. Based on the premise alone, I had high hopes for this book. I wanted to like it. But… well, the novel has good points and bad, and unfortunately the bad outweighed the good for me.

It’s clear MG Buehrlen can write well. The prose flows, and I didn’t stumble over a single sentence or wonder what the author meant to say. The premise is inventive and unique, and the plot is intricate. Wayfare is not-quite-science-fiction, not-quite-fantasy, and not-quite-thriller, and the author does a good job of blending these genres into a coherent narrative.

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Traveling Gunslingers, Exorcists, and Zeppelins: A Review of Dead Man’s Hand

Traveling Gunslingers, Exorcists, and Zeppelins: A Review of Dead Man’s Hand

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Dead Man's Hand John Jospeh Adams-smallAs a kid, I remember my grandfather’s shelves lined with multiple copies of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour westerns with titles like Wild Horse Mesa, Crossfire Trail, and Fair Blows the Wind.

I never actually read any (even today). Which is no knock against my grandfather’s tastes… my grandmother’s shelves were equally burdened with mysteries, primarily Agatha Christie, which I also never read (to date, I’ve only read one Agatha Christie novel).

But I actually adore a lot of movie westerns, especially classics with actors like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Though I admit that I mostly like the spaghetti (i.e. Italian or Italian influenced) side of the genre.

I also love SF&F, and it  has seen its share of experimental westerns crossovers. For example, we had the not-so-great 2011 Cowboys and Aliens, the perhaps even worse 1999 Wild Wild West, the fairly flat 1973 sci-fi Westworld, and the OK 1969 The Valley of Gwangi.

Fortunately there are have been some excellent exceptions as well, especially in the horror sub-genre, such as 1987’s Near Dark, the 1990 camp classic Tremors (though with less-successful sequels), 2008’s The Burrowers, and the outstanding 2011 zombie flick Exit Humanity.

But can the western genre mix well with SF&F in written word?

You bet it can! Though I’m sure there are forerunners to it, my first foray into such western cross-pollination is the latest anthology from John Joseph Adams called Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West.

Besides being the editor of Lightspeed, Fantasy, and Nightmare magazines and co-hosting his own geeky podcast, Adams is also the editor of several acclaimed SF&F anthologies. The ones that I have read and enjoyed are his 2012 Epic: Legends of Fantasy and his very successful 2008 The Living Dead, but I’ve heard great things about his others as well.

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New Treasures: Broken Souls by Stephen Blackmoore

New Treasures: Broken Souls by Stephen Blackmoore

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Broken Souls Stephen Blackmoore-smallI covered Stephen Blackmoore’s first hard-boiled detective zombie novel, Dead Things, last February. It was an obvious candidate for a series, and 17 months later a sequel has finally appeared.

This isn’t the first time Blackmore’s written about LA undead. His first novel, City of the Lost (January 2012), featured Joe Sunday, killed by the rival of his crime boss and returned as a zombie to carry on as LA lowlife. If you’re a fan of necromancers, crime novels, or the darker side of LA, Stephen Blackmoore is definitely your guy.

Sister murdered, best friend dead, married to the patron saint of death, Santa Muerte. Necromancer Eric Carter’s return to Los Angeles hasn’t gone well, and it’s about to get even worse.

His link to the Aztec death goddess is changing his powers, changing him, and he’s not sure how far it will go. He’s starting to question his own sanity, wonder if he’s losing his mind. No mean feat for a guy who talks to the dead on a regular basis. While searching for a way to break Santa Muerte’s hold over him, Carter finds himself the target of a psychopath who can steal anyone’s form, powers, and memories. Identity theft is one thing, but this guy does it by killing his victims and wearing their skins like a suit. He can be anyone. He can be anywhere.

Now Carter has to change the game — go from hunted to hunter. All he has for help is a Skid Row bruja and a ghost who’s either his dead friend Alex or the manifestation of Carter’s own guilt-fueled psychotic break. Everything is trying to kill him. Nothing is as it seems. If all his plans go perfectly, he might survive the week.

He’s hoping that’s a good thing.

Broken Souls will be published on Tuesday by DAW Books. It is 264 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital version.

Vintage Treasures: Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

Vintage Treasures: Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

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Starlight Alfred Bester-smallThere was a time when Alfred Bester was considered one of the top writers in science fiction and fantasy.

I know. You’ve never heard of Alfred Bester. Perhaps his greatest novel — The Stars My Destination (1956) — is in print only in an expensive trade paperback edition from a small press, and his classic The Demolished Man (1952), the first novel to win a Hugo Award, is out of print altogether.

Bester’s reputation was not built entirely on his novels, however. Before he stopped writing SF, he produced a number of brilliant stories, including “Fondly Fahrenheit” and “Adam and No Eve.” His short fiction was gathered in two hardcover collections, The Light Fantastic (1976) and Star Light, Star Bright (1976). Neither had a paperback edition in the US, and both are now long out of print.

Fortunately, they were collected into a huge omnibus edition, Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester, published in a handsome paperback edition by Berkley Medallion in July, 1977. It’s also out of print, but not particularly hard to find — and well worth the effort.

After giving up on the field in the late sixties (which he discusses in the story notes in Starlight), Bester returned to science fiction with three novels in the late 70s and early 80s: The Computer Connection (1975), Golem 100 (1980), and The Deceivers (1981). He died in 1987.

The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) named him its ninth Grand Master, presented posthumously in 1988. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2001.

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New Pulp Delivers its own Occult Anti-Hero in Magee

New Pulp Delivers its own Occult Anti-Hero in Magee

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22ca6069f22a20114e9bdbb1f223deb7f3ce43c715119I’ll come right out and admit I have mixed feelings about ebooks. I travel considerably for my day job and don’t mind having portable versions of books I own for quick reference, but the idea of owning books that cannot be found in print editions on my shelves at home irks me. That said, I recognize the market for digital-only titles is steadily growing, particularly among small press publishers. This, of course, is having its impact on the “New Pulp” community. Witness Pro Se Press’s decision earlier this year to discontinue their pulp magazine, Pro Se Presents and replace it with their Single Shot Signatures line of short stories available exclusively as ebooks.

My first sampling of the above is the newly published Magee, Volume One – “Knight from Hell” by David White. At first glance, I was struck by the apparent illustration of publisher Tommy Hancock on the cover, but on second glance I determined it was actually author David White wearing one of Tommy’s trademark hats. Of course, I was wrong on both counts since the illustration actually depicts the anti-hero of the piece, Magee.

Magee, it transpires, is actually the fallen angel Malachi who was exiled from Heaven after a fight over a woman with the archangel Michael. We’ll pause right here and note that David White is not a theologian and plays fast and loose with Christian tradition on such celestial matters. Following that disclaimer, we’ll make mention of the fact that Michael likewise banished the archangel Lucifer from Heaven following a similar fight. It seems that God is an absentee deity in these proceedings as He has abandoned Heaven to putter around in the Garden of Eden for several thousand years now.

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Goth Chick News: The King Kong vs Godzilla of Movie Remakes

Goth Chick News: The King Kong vs Godzilla of Movie Remakes

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image006It’s probably time for me to cave and stop complaining about present-day remakes of classic (or at least older) films.

Things have just gone far too far.

According to several movie sites, upwards of 50 (yes, five-zero) movies remakes / reboots have been green-lighted for production between 2013 and 2016. These movies make bank and there’s no use trying to stop Hollywood by crying foul that they’re defacing original works of art by replacing effect makeup and animatronics with CGI.

Blasphemous as it may sound, CGI can indeed take films that were somewhat “conceptual” 30 years ago and make them insanely realistic today. That’s not to say this is better, just different.

And success has landed all along the spectrum; with blockbusters like Star Trek at one end, whose reboot was admittedly cool and embraced by the fans, to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, whose high-tech remake was spectacularly rejected by fans (rightly so) and which slunk off into obscurity in favor of the low tech but brilliant original.

Sometime more just isn’t better.

Which brings us, in a rather convoluted way, to today’s topic.

During the Legendary Pictures panel at San Diego Comic-Con last Saturday, the production company announced plans to bring King Kong back to the multiplex in the form of a prequel.

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Taking Five Worlds Before Breakfast: The Pleasures of EVE Conquests

Taking Five Worlds Before Breakfast: The Pleasures of EVE Conquests

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Eve Conquests-smallI have a real weakness for board games, and especially large-scale space strategy games. It’s one thing to punch that Pop-O-Matic bubble and move your little green marker around a Trouble board; it’s something else entirely to stealthily assemble an unstoppable fleet and launch them en masse towards the unsuspecting alien armada in orbit around Sirius. Ah, I get a thrill just thinking about it.

Sometimes a great space game will sneak up on me. It’s not my fault — I can barely keep up with all the fantasy books that show up at Barnes & Noble every week. I’ve totally given up on keeping track of new sci-fi board games.

This one snuck up on me at the Games Plus Spring Auction back in March. I’m sitting there in the front row, minding my own business, when the auctioneer suddenly hefts this big heavy box unto his shoulder, says something like “EVE Conquests, a strategy game set in the world of EVE Online. Opening bid: one dollar,” and starts the bidding.

So I blink a couple of times, and think, what the heck is this thing? I thought EVE Online was an online game? Oooooo, it looks cool, whatever it is. And heavy. Like it’s packed with beautiful starship miniatures and mounted boards and strange artifacts of alien civilizations… I want it. I shall bid on it.

Well, not for long I won’t. Twenty seconds after the bidding started, it moved well out of my price range and remained there for some time. Screw this, I thought. I can find a cheaper copy online. Famous last words.

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A Look at the Latest Incarnation: Dungeons & Dragons 5.0

A Look at the Latest Incarnation: Dungeons & Dragons 5.0

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D&D Monster Manual Fifth Edition-smallWith Wizards of the Coast gearing up to release their latest incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons, it took me back to 1978, when I first encountered the game.

I was eight years old, browsing a hobby shop in Ohio with my family, when I saw this blue box with a picture of a dragon sitting on a pile of gold and jewels on the front cover. A warrior and a wizard were preparing to attack. What was this???

I took a better look and then promptly asked my father to buy it for me. His first reaction was a bit negative, telling my brother (who now wanted the game, too) and me that Dungeons and Dragons was for college students and we wouldn’t understand it. But the more he explained the concept, the more I wanted to play. Finally, he agreed, and we went home with it.

Shortly afterward, we ran our very first D&D session. My brother and I were the players, and Dad was our first dungeon master. I remember I played a fighter named Brandon the Bold, and my brother played a magic-user. (No fancy titles like Wizard or Mage for us!)

Together, we delved into the crumbling catacombs under a sorcerer’s tower, where we encountered goblins, animated skeletons, and a clan of pirates operating out of the ruins. Much evil was conquered and a bit of treasure won, and finally we emerged from the catacombs victorious.

We were hooked.

It wasn’t long before I had recruited my friends and was DMing games for them. Over the next few years, I created new worlds, original dungeons, and complete campaign storylines with which to entertain my victims…. er, players. And it’s continued for more than thirty years to today.

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Into the Tomb: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Eleven: Valley of Death

Into the Tomb: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Eleven: Valley of Death

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Captain Marvel Chapter Eleven - poster-smallAh, the excitement in the theater is palpable as we near the end of our journey and today’s eleventh chapter in The Adventures of Captain Marvel, “Valley of Death,” begins to flicker across the screen. Because the seats are largely filled with sweaty elementary school children, something else is palpable too — whew! Baths and showers are definitely called for when you get home, kids…

Today’s title cards summarizing Chapter Ten will, as always, enlighten the enlightenable and confuse the confusable. (Or maybe it’s the other way around.) “Malcolm — Is shipwrecked on a reef off the coast of Siam.” “Captain Marvel — Rescues Malcolm’s party and the crew from the S.S. Carfax.” “Betty — Is left aboard ship by the Scorpion.” Now it’s time for the word we’ve come to know so well, though I’m sure only a few of you remember exactly what the letters mean. Me? Of course I know… but, uh, we’ve no time to waste with trivia… Shazam!

A flashback to the previous cliffhanger puts us with Billy and the unconscious Betty on board the sinking Carfax (and if the title card says it’s the Carfax, that’s good enough for me). As the ship goes down and water pours into Betty’s cabin, Billy gets himself and Betty off the doomed vessel (a judicious cut ensures that we don’t quite see how) and manages to swim to shore with the buoyant secretary in tow. It’s a good thing he decided to skip band camp last summer and take those swimming lessons at the YMCA.

Once on dry ground, Betty relates how an unknown assailant struck her from behind. “Why would anyone want to kill you?” Billy asks. “He must have been after my section of the map; he took my handbag,” Betty replies. Everyone seems satisfied with this explanation. This is 1941 and it won’t do to entertain the idea that the Scorpion just wanted the purse. But what of the map? It wasn’t in the bag — “It’s in a waterproof envelope pinned inside my jacket.” At this news, Bentley looks like a kid who wanted the big new Hot Wheels set for Christmas and instead got one of those last-resort toys that isn’t even really a toy, like a grip-strengthener.

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Ancient Worlds: Argonauts vs The Giant Robot

Ancient Worlds: Argonauts vs The Giant Robot

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talos3ng4If you saw the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts, you probably remember this scene. It’s classic Harryhausen: stop-animation work that was looks cartoonish now, but was state-of-the-art at the time.

Like some of the other episodes in this movie (Skeleton battle!) you may have thought that this was all Hollywood. But Talos, the gigantic bronze guardian of Crete, was described in the Argonautica as well. Apollonius tells his readers that Talos was the last of the race of Bronze (mythical predecessors of modern humans), and that Zeus had set him to guarding Crete as a favor to his lover Europa. Since he was made entirely of metal, he was completely invulnerable, except for one spot on his heel where a thin membrane of skin covered his vein.

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