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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Short-Lived Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Short-Lived Holmes

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HouseofCardsNetflix’s House of Cards redefined what can be achieved by a web series. Everything about it, from casting to story to visuals, screams “quality.” The fact that it was intended to run for only a single season yet has already been renewed for a third testifies to the success that the show has had. It’s tough to maintain viewership when there’s almost nobody to root for, but they’ve done it.

But I wonder how many people realize that it is a remake of a 1990 British miniseries (apparently lust for power transcends decades. And centuries…)? Ian Richardson plays the Kevin Spacey role. Francis Urquhart has a disarming smile that makes him seem more warm than Spacey’s Frank Underwood. Don’t be fooled!

HouseofCardsRichardsonThe original House of Cards has a few Holmes ties. Female lead Susannah Harker appeared opposite Charlton Heston in the TV version of Crucifer of Blood, a modified version of The Sign of the Four.

She was also the client in Jeremy Brett’s version of The Adventure of the Dying Detective. Also, Colin Jeavons was Brett’s Inspector Lestrade. But it is Richardson’s brief tenure as Sherlock Holmes that we will look at now.

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Why We Keep Weaving These Webs

Why We Keep Weaving These Webs

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uncle hugosMy buddy Gabe and I, when we first met almost two decades ago, we knew — man, we knew our stuff was better (or was going to be better) than just about anything out there. It was the haughty arrogance of youth and ego, plus the fact that we just hadn’t read nearly as much of what was out there as we have now.

Consider, too, the impressions we’d formed in our teen years of what was most prevalent in the various popular-media streams: the (much smaller) fantasy book aisle was dominated by Terry Brooks and many lesser Tolkien imitators churning out derivative high-fantasy formula. Comics were still stuck in stunted-development adolescence, just on the cusp of the revolution when writers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman would kick that medium in its juvenile ass. Films were mostly sci-fi knockoffs of Star Wars or B-grade fantasy with special-effects budgets so meager they wouldn’t fund a single episode of a typical SyFy TV show. And television animated fantasy didn’t aspire much beyond Hanna-Barbera cartoons and He-Man.

In short, based on that narrow and selective assessment, any cocksure young tale-weaver could survey that crop and think, “I can do better than that.” But we weren’t the only Gen Xers who nursed such thoughts. Many others could also do better, and they have.

With our generation, speculative fiction has entered into what seems a golden age, borne out in all those mediums — books, comics, film, television (and add another medium that was just emerging from its nascent stages when we entered the fray: video games). Individuals with tastes and perceptions kindred to our own are drawing on the best of the past like never before, fusing with modern sensibilities what they mine from those rich veins to create some of the finest work the genre has ever seen.

And they’ve infiltrated all levels of the creative business. When I watch old He-Man and She-Ra reruns with my kids, I get the impression that those writers were just lazily phoning it in for a paycheck and couldn’t give a damn about the words they were putting to paper or the stories they were slapping together. Contrast that with the short-lived He-Man relaunch (2002-2004). It wasn’t a stand-out show by any means, but it was heads above virtually anything that cynically aired in the early ‘80s to sell us toys from Mattel and Kenner and Hasbro. Yeah, that particular corner of the market still exists to sell toys — to our kids and grandkids now — but the people who are creating the product were kids like Gabe and me, who thought, “Man, if I could have a job writing that show, I would make it so cool.” And they do have those jobs, and they are.

So where does that leave us, web-weavers in a surfeit of webs?

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New Treasures: Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland by Stuart Boon

New Treasures: Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland by Stuart Boon

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Shadows Over Scotland-smallCall of Cthulhu remains one of my favorite role playing games, despite the fact that I haven’t played it in… woof. Let’s say nearly 25 years.

Part of it, I think, is simple fondness for the source material, H.P. Lovecraft’s marvelously rich and creepy Cthulhu Mythos. But just as much stems from an appreciation for the enormously inventive adventures and supplemental material published for the game over the years, since it first debuted in a handsome box set from Chaosium in 1981.

Sure, I’d love to play CoC again. But until I find the time (and a group to play with), I’m quite content to read the best new releases. Because Call of Cthulhu continues to draw fabulously talented creators and artists and, unlike most RPGs, its adventures are highly readable all on their own.

Take the new Cthulhu Britannica line from Cubicle Seven, for example, which transplants Lovecraft’s horrors to the green and pleasant land of England. So far, there have been four volumes: the Cthulhu Britannica core book by Mike Mason (2009); Avalon: The Somerset Sourcebook by Paul Wade-Williams (2010); Folklore by Stuart Boon, James Desborough, and Gareth Hanrahan (December 2012); and the first hardcover volume, Stuart Boon’s Shadows over Scotland.

(That’s not even including the crazy-ambitious, Kickstarter-funded Cthulhu Britannica: London Boxed Set by Dominic McDowall, which rivals the legendary boxed set Horror on the Orient Express. The London Boxed Set raised £90,412 on a £15,000 goal and will include three books, four large full-color maps, and numerous handouts. The Kickstarter closed on December 12 and the set is scheduled for delivery in August.)

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Vintage Treasures: Rogers’ Rangers by John Silbersack

Vintage Treasures: Rogers’ Rangers by John Silbersack

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Rogers' Rangers-smallIf you know the name John Silbersack, it’s likely for his many significant accomplishments as a publisher and literary agent.

Silbersack has founded no less than six different imprints, including ROC Books at Penguin, Warner Aspect, and Harper Prism. Over a decade ago, he walked away from publishing and decided to become an agent, partnering with Trident Media Group, where he now reps some of the biggest names in the industry, including Barb & J.C. Hendee, Guy Gavriel Kay, E. E. Knight, William F. Nolan, David Schow, Paul Park, and the Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert estates.

But back in the early 80s, this publishing Renaissance man also tried his hand at writing and editing. With Victoria Schochet, he edited the first four volumes of The Berkley Showcase (1980 – 1982), an anthology of science fiction and fantasy that presented original work from Berkley authors. It lasted five volumes and published a fabulous range of fiction from Orson Scott Card, R A Lafferty, Pat Cadigan, John Kessel, Howard Waldrop, Connie Willis, Thomas M Disch, Marge Piercy, Eric Van Lustbader, and many others.

All very interesting. But what we want to talk about today is Silbersack’s sole novel: Rogers’ Rangers, a sequel to the original Buck Rogers novel, published by Ace Books in 1983, which I found in a collection of SF books from the 1980s I acquired two months ago.

Back in 1979, Glen A. Larson, the producer behind the original incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, launched a new SF TV show for Universal: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, starring Gil Gerard and Erin Gray (and the voice of Mel Blanc as Twiki, Buck’s robot companion.) The series was a hit, and I vividly remember seeing the pilot episode in theaters, shortly before the TV version launched.

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Politics and Fantasy Make Strange Bedfellows

Politics and Fantasy Make Strange Bedfellows

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strange bedfellowsIn January, both M. Harold Page and I wrote posts about politics in fantasy literature. While we came at the topic from different points, I think we narrowed in on the same conclusion. I quote from Page’s post:

Of all the genres, Fantasy must be the worst possible channel for the politically minded author. They simply can’t be heard over that clash of steel and the roar of dragons…

Really enjoyed and appreciated his post. And I do take his point – escapism is great fun and entertaining. But ultimately escape and make believe can only go so far, and at other times and places we will have other needs, other reasons to want to read. Something that touches us inside.

The reason I’m coming back to this topic, perhaps more convinced than I was before of this serious liability in fantasy, is that I’ve just read Strange Bedfellows: An Anthology of Political Science Fiction. I’d mentioned the anthology in my post as something I was looking forward to reading.

Now that I have, maybe I’m having one of those stumbling-upon-a-watch-in-the-heath moments, because, for the life of me, I can’t see how fantasy could have done even a fraction of what this anthology seems to have accomplished effortlessly. A few examples will make this clear.

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Is the Original SF and Fantasy Paperback Anthology Series Dead?

Is the Original SF and Fantasy Paperback Anthology Series Dead?

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Orbit 9 Damon Knight-smallI miss the era of the original paperback anthologies. It seems to have faded away without anyone really noticing and I’m not sure why.

Well, I guess I do know why, but I’m grumpy about it. Short fiction isn’t really viable in mass market anymore. Ten years of trying — and failing — to publish a fantasy fiction magazine taught me that.

That wasn’t always the case. For decades, SF and fantasy readers supported several prestigious, high-paying paperback markets for short fiction and they attracted the best writers in the field. Damon Knight published 21 Orbit anthologies between 1966 and 1980; Robert Silverberg edited New Dimensions (12 volumes, 1971-81) and star editor Terry Carr helmed 17 volumes of the Universe series (1971-1987), for example.

I’d be hard pressed to tell you which of those three was the best source for original SF and fantasy, and I don’t really feel qualified to anyway, since I didn’t read them all. (Or even most of them — we are talking a combined 50 volumes, just for those three. I read pretty fast, but I’m not Rich Horton.)

In any event, those days are gone. And now that they are, I wonder — was it the sheer editorial talent of Messieurs Knight, Silverberg, and Carr that allowed their respective anthologies to continue for decades?

Or was there simply more of an appetite for short fiction forty years ago? Could an editor with the same talent and drive accomplish what they did today? Or is it futile, like trying to argue football with the Borg?

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The Series Series: Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk

The Series Series: Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk

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Blood and Iron Jon Sprunk-smallOf all the wild re-envisionings of the Crusades I’ve seen lately, Jon Sprunk’s Blood and Iron may be the wildest. His alternate-universe Europeans are recognizably European, but the opposing culture they face is that of a Babylonian Empire that never fell. And why has this Babylon-by-another-name persisted for thousands of years, so powerful that only its own internal strife can shake it? Because its royals actually have the supernatural powers and demi-god ancestry that the ruling class of our world’s Fertile Crescent claimed.

The Crusades seem to be having a moment in fantasy literature. This is the third novel I’ve covered this year that reimagines them. David Hair’s novel Mage’s Blood separated east and west with a sea so storm-ridden it could only be crossed every twelve years by means of a giant magic bridge, and the twelfth year coming was sure to unleash war. The alternate history in M. Harold Page’s Marshal Versus the Assassins was much more familiar — basically our own, with the addition of a few conspiracies and with unambiguously real miracles.

Jon Sprunk’s book takes the prize for strange worldbuilding. The Akeshian Empire is approximately what the Akkadian Empire might have looked like, had each of its major cities lasted as long and urbanized as complexly as Rome did. When monotheism comes to Akeshia, it arrives as a local heresy run amok, rather than as a foreign faith attracting converts. Akeshia’s gods are not kind gods; its semi-divine ruling caste are not nice people. However, when our hero comes to understand them from something closer to their own perspective, he finds much to admire and many people worth trying to save from the civil war that is beginning to take shape around him.

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The Novels of Michael Shea: The Incompleat Nifft

The Novels of Michael Shea: The Incompleat Nifft

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The Incompleat Nifft-smallUnder editor Eric Flint, Baen Books has led the way in producing inexpensive mass market reprints of some of the most essential classic SF and Fantasy of the 20th Century — including Robert E. Howard, Andre Norton, James H. Schmitz., Murray Leinster, and P. C. Hodgell’s God Stalker Chronicles, among many, many others (They’ve continued in this tradition with fabulous anthologies, including the recent In Space No One Can Hear You Scream and many others.)

In 1997, Baen Books turned to Michael Shea, publishing his second Nifft the Lean novel, The Mines of Behemoth. By 2000, they were preparing to trumpet the arrival of his third, but by that point the original World Fantasy Award-winning volume Nifft the Lean had been out of print for almost two decades.

So five months before the release of The A’rak, Baen bundled both of the first two novels into a single paperback, cleverly titled The Incompleat Nifft, signally the impending arrival of the what would be the final book in the series. At 576 pages it was a terrific bargain, collecting both Nifft the Lean and The Mines of Behemoth under a Gary Ruddell cover, and it has become perhaps the most collectible paperback in Shea’s catalog.

This Time, They Would Make a Killing

Join master thief Nifft the Lean with his companion-at-arms, mighty barbarian Barnar Hammer-Hand, as they trust to their wits and their luck. Once Nifft and Barnar were hired by the ghost of a dead woman to kidnap the man who betrayed her and drag him down to hell to join her. A simple task — or so they thought at first…

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The Future of the Magazine of the Future: On the Return of the SFWA Bulletin

The Future of the Magazine of the Future: On the Return of the SFWA Bulletin

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SFWA Bulletin 203-smallRight about now, the new SFWA Bulletin should be starting to hit mailboxes. The first SFWA electronic Bulletin won’t be far behind. It’s a new era for the Bulletin and one I’m really excited about.

The Bulletin is one of those magazines that’s a particular challenge to edit. The SFWA membership is relatively small, but wildly varied in its needs and interests. Our members range in experience from a couple of years of sales to 50+ years of publishing, in markets from small magazines to Big Six publishers. We could probably put out ten different versions of the magazine and still miss a few needs.

Finding the balance so that everyone gets something, but a cohesive product is still put out, is a hearty challenge. The pool of potential authors is one of the richest in the industry, as we are also able to reach into the scientific, entertainment, and artistic communities for relevant content, but that has to be balanced against highlighting what the membership has to offer.

The revamped Bulletin will, we hope, be a force in the modern market, offering benefits and information for authors at every stage of the business. Content will range from SFWA-oriented information to in-depth journalism on a variety of subjects.

Issue 204 is chock-full of information about SFWA and the writing business, from interviews to budget breakdowns, and even a honey badger cartoon. Tansy Rayner Roberts and I edited this special issue, with significant groundwork from long-time editor Jean Rabe. It will be our go-to handout for the next few years, offering a concentrated look at what SFWA has to offer, as well as remaining a useful resource for years to come.

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New Treasures: The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan

New Treasures: The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan

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The Cold Commands Richard Morgan-smallWay back in Black Gate 13, the distinguished John C. Hocking contributed a feature review of Richard K. Morgan’s first fantasy novel and it alerted me to the fact that I was missing out on a major new work of sword & sorcery.

Here’s what he said, in part:

Richard K Morgan has made a name for himself with a chain of dark, slickly written science fiction thrillers… one might reasonably expect Morgan to continue in that style… Instead, he has written one of the most unusual, powerful, and daring sword & sorcery novels to see print for decades.

The Steel Remains follows a trio of characters, each of whom played a dramatic part in humanity’s grim battle with the Scaled Folk — reptilian invaders from the sea, defeated several years past…

As the three heroes are slowly drawn back together, a threat older and even more alien than the Scaled Folk moves into the world. Ringil and his friends will meet it with steel.

You can see why I was intrigued. Can that Hocking fellow write a review or what?

I’m a little late to talk about the sequel, The Cold Commands, especially in a column that ostensibly deals exclusively with the latest releases. But I just discovered it, so I’m going to do it anyway (I blame Hocking.)

The Cold Commands was released in in hardcover in 2011. It is subtitled Book Two of A Land For Heroes. You know what that means: now that there are two books, Morgan was forced to come up with a name for his series.

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