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Last Minute Gift Ideas for your Game Geek or Webcomics Lover

Last Minute Gift Ideas for your Game Geek or Webcomics Lover

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It is the time of year for presents. If you celebrate Hanukkah, I’m late on giving you any gift ideas, but for people rushing to get gifts for friends in the next few days, here are a few last minute gift ideas. Do you know someone who loves interactive fiction? Someone who digs webcomics? If you’re shopping for someone who would rather have a digital gift than a package to open, you might encounter some gifting hurdles — but it can be done!

Happy holidays! Play a game!
Happy holidays! Play a game!

Games

I’ve already mentioned some games I like in this column, so anything I’ve already spotlighted is something I recommend. Here are a few games I’m planning to cover in upcoming posts:

  • Today’s just released Choice of Deathless by fantasy author Max Gladstone is an awesome mix of corporate espionage and demon fighting. I got to playtest this one (disclosure: Max is in my fiction critique group, Substrate) and I’ve already played it probably five times. I can’t wait to play it again. (Max is also the author of two amazing fantasy novels, Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise, which you can pick up at your local bookstore or use the expedited shipping option from your favorite online bookseller to get them in time for Christmas.
  • Choice of Ninja is exactly what you’d expect: lots of martial arts, magic, and stealth, and your choices help decide the fate of two warring shoguns. I’m still playing this one (so author Katherine Buffington may have some surprises!), but I’m really enjoying it so far.
  • I had so much fun playing a real-estate agent for a haunted house in Gavin Inglis‘s short game Eerie Estate Agent that I bought his novel Crap Ghosts. The book is downloadable without DRM via Kobo, which means if your friend is local, you can buy it and load it to your friend’s device (or send it via e-mail) rather than muck about with online gifting.
  • Failbetter Games (of Fallen London) is releasing a tie-in 2D adventure game, Sunless Sea, available now for pre-order. Best thing about this one is it comes with a “gift” option right from the order page.

Purchasing

So how do you send someone a digital game as a gift? It depends on the device, but here are a few tips:

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Vintage Treasures: Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

Vintage Treasures: Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

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Nine Horrors and a Dream-smallBack in September, prodded on by some comments Douglas Draa made in my article on The People of the Black Circle, I tracked down a copy of Joseph Payne Brennan’s short story collection The Shapes of Midnight (which I wrote about in detail here).

I didn’t know much about Brennan (that’s one of the wonderful things about this hobby — always delightful new authors to discover!) I recently came across him again, this time in a collection of 52 vintage paperbacks I bought on eBay for fifteen bucks — a collection which also included The Unknown and Robert Bloch’s Nightmares. (Here’s a pic of the set, since I know I’m gonna get questions about it). The book this time was titled Nine Horrors and a Dream, a very slender paperback containing, not too surprisingly, 10 stories.

Once again I turned to the experts to find out more. Our buddy Douglas Draa talks in detail about the book on his blog, Uncle Doug’s Bunker of Horror. Here’s what he has to say, in part:

Nine Horrors and a Dream has been one of my most sought after books these last several years… the wonderful “Richard Powers” cover art has help to maintain the high interest in this specific collection. So I was very happy to get this book at a fair price…

What I enjoy so much about these stories is Mr. Brennan’s economy of word, sense of place and strong mood. Most of his stories [are] fairly short, but he stills manages to make them into fully fleshed out reading experiences. Nine Horrors and a Dream is a prime example… That calibre of writing [isn’t] something you stumble across every day.

More than enough of an endorsement for me. I find it curious that there’s some story duplication with The Shapes of Midnight, though. And while we’re asking questions, which story is the dream? I suppose that’s all part of the mystery. I plan to dig into in this weekend and find out.

Nine Horrors and a Dream was published in 1962 by Ballantine Books. It is 122 pages, originally priced at 35 cents in paperback. It was originally published in hardcover by Arkham House in 1958. It has been out of print for over five decades. I bought my copy for about 30 cents, as part of a collection.

Robert E. Howard and the Yellow Peril

Robert E. Howard and the Yellow Peril

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MenaceSteve-Harrisons-Casebook1Many pulp writers were influenced by the success of Sax Rohmer’s Yellow Peril criminal mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu. The best of the early imitators was Achmed Abdullah’s The Blue-Eyed Manchu while the pulp era brought Robert J. Hogan’s The Mysterious Wu-Fang and Donald Keyhoe’s Dr. Yen-Sin to give the Devil Doctor a run for his money.Today, the best remembered Fu Manchu clone is undoubtedly Ian Fleming’s Dr. No. Marvel Comics’ The Mandarin and The Yellow Claw are the other two characters who have burrowed the furthest into popular culture’s collective memory of the past century.

Having to choose the one of the scores of imitations that came closest to matching Rohmer for style and yet was distinct enough to avoid being nothing more than a shameless copy, I would have to single out Robert E. Howard’s Skull-Face and Erlik Khan, the Lord of the Dead. Howard’s reputation as a story-teller has grown over the past few decades to allow him to escape the looming shadow of his immensely popular sword and sorcery hero, Conan the Barbarian and be recognized as a singular talent who mastered many genres during his all too brief life. Sadly, his Yellow Peril thrillers are still largely unknown outside the circle of Howard completists.

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The Worst Fantasy Films of All Time

The Worst Fantasy Films of All Time

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Highlander II The Quickening-smallWatch out, my friends. This weekend there is a storm a’blowing! The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is in theaters, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much angst among the fantasy lovers of the world.

Personally, I really enjoyed both Hobbit movies, just as I loved The Lord of the Rings movies. Hell, at this point Peter Jackson could make a movie about the struggles of union workers in ancient Moria and I’d go see it.

I understand every movie (and every book) has flaws, but some people are absolutely livid about Jackson’s rendition of The Hobbit on the big screen. I feel it’s my duty as a fellow fantasy-phile to point out how awful these movies could have been under different management.

There is an entire industry of bad fantasy movies out there. Maybe if we take a stroll back through history, we’ll gain a little perspective. So here I give you, my list of Least Best Fantasy Movies.

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A Look Inside Gorizia Castle, Italy

A Look Inside Gorizia Castle, Italy

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DSC_0107
Gorizia castle as seen from the town square.

The Isonzo River on the border with Italy and Slovenia has long been of strategic importance. Most famous as the site of the World War One Battles of Isonzo, you can find fortifications dating much earlier than the old bunkers and trenches that dot the hillsides.

One of the most magnificent is Gorizia Castle, which sits atop a steep hill overlooking the Italian city of Gorizia on the Isonzo River a few miles before it reaches the sea after its long trip from the Alps.

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New Treasures: Spirits From Beyond

New Treasures: Spirits From Beyond

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Spirits From Beyond-smallI don’t think I’ve given Simon R. Green a fair shake. The man is so prolific, with so many popular series, that he’s almost ubiquitous on book store shelves. I tend to overlook him when I scan the racks for new releases every week — my eyes are trained to ignore him, the same way they ignore the shelves dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien and Jim Butcher.

But being prolific certainly isn’t a crime, and neither is being popular. Being open to new things sometimes means trying that familiar midlist author you’ve ignored for too long. So last week I picked up a copy of the fourth and latest novel in his Ghost Finders series. After all, anyone who names his supernatural think tank the Carnacki Institute has got to be worth a look…

Meet the operatives of the Carnacki Institute — JC Chance: the team leader, brave, charming, and almost unbearably arrogant; Melody Chambers: the science geek who keeps the antisupernatural equipment running; and Happy Jack Palmer: the terminally gloomy telepath. Their mission: Do Something About Ghosts. Lay them to rest, send them packing, or just kick their nasty ectoplasmic arses…

Their latest assignment takes JC and the team to a small country village, site of a famously haunted inn. At first, JC thinks that the spirits in the King’s Arms are more the stuff of urban legend than anything that needs the Ghost Finders’ expertise. Then one story rings true: the tale of a traveler trapped by an unusual thunderstorm who retired to her room for the night — and vanished.

Trapped by an unusual thunderstorm — like the one that begins raging outside shortly after they arrive… As the team investigates, they are forced, one by one, to face some hard truths about themselves, their relationships, and the haunting itself — truths that may push Happy Jack over the edge into the madness that he has always feared…

Green is also the author of the Deathstalker space opera (8 novels), Hawk and Fisher (7 novels), The Forest Kingdom (4 novels), The Secret History series (7 novels so far), and Nightside (12 novels), among several others. I told you he was prolific. The Ghost Finder books take place in the same universe as his Nightside, Secret History, and other assorted novels, with frequent references to some shared characters, places and events. I bet keeping tabs on all that continuity drives him nuts.

The Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute tackle the paranormal with some gusto (their motto is “We don’t take any sh*t from the Hereafter.”) This looks like a fun Friday-night series, and I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Spirits From Beyond was published in September 2013 by Ace Books. It is 298 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital editions.

Explore The Dark

Explore The Dark

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The Dark Issue 1-smallSean Wallace is an editing powerhouse.

I don’t use that term lightly. But let’s just look at the man’s accomplishments: in the last few years he’s edited or co-edited multiple magazines, including Jabberwocky, Fantasy Magazine, and the prestigious Clarkesworld, for which he was nominated for the Hugo four times (winning three times) and the World Fantasy Award three times. He’s edited numerous anthologies, including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A.I., and War & Space.

Of course, that’s on top of his day job as founder, publisher, and managing editor of Prime Books — where he’s produced a terrific assortment of excellent titles. We covered more than a few, including Weird Detectives, Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy series, Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top, The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith, the War & Space anthology, and others.

So I was extremely intrigued when I heard he was launching a new online magazine of dark and strange fiction with Jack Fisher, former editor and publisher of the award-winning Flesh & Blood magazine. The debut issue of The Dark was released in October, 2013, and the second issue arrived on December 1st.

The first issue feature original fiction from Lisa L. Hannett, Nnedi Okorafor, Angela Slatter, and Rachel Swirsky. Issue 2 has all-new stories from Willow Fagan, Amanda E. Forrest, Sarah Singleton and E. Catherine Tobler.

The Dark is published bi-monthly; you can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by subscribing to the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 49 pages, and priced at $2.99.

A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15, and so far I really like what I see. Get in on the ground floor of a promising new magazine — subscribe today.

Prologomenon to Fantasy

Prologomenon to Fantasy

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bullfinchOne of the things that I frequently blather about is that, when I was growing up in the 1970s, “fantasy,” as it’s understood today didn’t really exist, at least not as a mainstream, popular genre.

Don’t get me wrong: the ’70s were a decade of fantasy par excellence, especially literary fantasy, from reprintings of earlier works, such as the Lancer Books Conan series (begun in 1966) and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (begun in 1969), to the Tolkien imitators, like Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara (1977) and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane (1977) – not to mention Tolkien’s own The Silmarillion (1977 once again!) – to modern classics like Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (guess what year?). The ’70s also saw fantasy rise to prominence in other media, like comic books, where Roy Thomas’s Savage Sword of Conan cultivated an entire generation of artists, and movies, where special effects artists continued to acquire the skills and technology to bring fantasy to life on the silver screen. And, of course, the decade also saw the appearance and flourishing of fantasy roleplaying games, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

Despite these strides, spearheaded by the faddish popularity of D&D and its imitators, I’d argue that fantasy didn’t really come into its own as a pop cultural phenomenon until much later. Consequently, when I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons very late in 1979, I had almost no direct experience of what we’d nowadays call fantasy. Indeed, I wouldn’t read a word of The Lord of the Rings or the tales of Conan until after I’d begun rolling polyhedral dice. For that matter, I don’t think I’d even heard of J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard until I encountered both their names in the pages of the J. Eric Holmes-edited D&D rulebook that was my introduction to the game. The same goes for Lovecraft, come to think of it, and most of the other authors whom we typically regard as the “founders” of fantasy. In that respect, my youth is very different than that of 21st century fantasy aficionados, almost all of whom I’d bet didn’t make it to the age of 10 without at least being familiar with the characters and ideas these authors birthed.

However, this isn’t to say I had no experience with fantasy before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, only that my introduction to it was of a different sort, one I expect I shared with many kids of my generation.

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Why I’m Here – Part One

Why I’m Here – Part One

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I don't want to be this man
I don’t want to be this man

A couple of times this past summer I felt really old. Somehow the classic sci-fi/fantasy books I grew up reading weren’t well known to younger readers (really, you don’t know who Manly Wade Wellman is?!?) or even all that important anymore. In the forty-year span of my sci-fi and fantasy reading life, the genres’ audiences had changed.

Now you could be a sci-fi reader without having read Dune or planning to ever read it. Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber was “shockingly discordant and unsatisfying to actually read all the way through.” This was nuts — cats-and-dogs-living-together nuts.

After my brain stopped spasming and cooled off a little, I started to actually think. Sure, there are certain — I’d say canonical — books important to the development of fantasy and sci-fi. But if you haven’t read them will somebody revoke your fandom card? If you don’t like the books I like, does that make you less discerning than I? I doubt it.

Besides, discerning is not a word I’d use for a lot of my own book choices. I mean, there’s a certain Lord of the Rings ripoff homage published by Ballantine in 1977 that I, along with the whole fantasy-reading audience, went nuts for. (You had to be there when fantasy pickings were meager.) I still love The Sword of Shannara today. It doesn’t get less discerning than that.

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)

A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)

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Return of Godzilla 1984 PosterOther Installments

Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)
Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)
Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1997)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

With the release of the teaser trailer for the upcoming Godzilla from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, a decade of cinematic silence has come to an end. Godzilla last appeared in 2004 in the Japanese movie Godzilla: Final Wars, which Toho Studios intended as the monster’s final bow before going on sabbatical. It’s the longest break in the iconic monster’s career, and regardless of what happens next, the forthcoming Godzilla ’14 is a reason for G-fans to celebrate. Maybe stomp a few cities. The trailer makes San Francisco look particularly stomp-able.

At this point, we only know as much about Godzilla ’14 as we’ve seen in the teaser. But it was an exciting glimpse that at least assured fans the new movie would not repeat the horrible mistakes of the first American attempt at a stateside Godzilla, the 1998 Roland Emmerich disaster.

This is the first of five (projected) installments covering the history of Godzilla on film, written and condensed for a broad audience. I hope these articles will help readers who have only a passing relationship with Godzilla — the general knowledge from pop culture osmosis — see the unusual variety of one of the longest and most durable film franchises in history. Many Black Gate readers are probably familiar with much of the information I’ll provide in these articles, but since I’ll also sling around my own opinions about the movies mixed in with the history, Godzilla fans may find parts of this worthwhile … if perhaps only to ignite arguments.

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