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Challenging the Classics: Questioning the Immutable Hallmarks of Genre

Challenging the Classics: Questioning the Immutable Hallmarks of Genre

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The Gone-Away WorldEvery once in a while, usually in the midst of conversations about the history of SFF or arguments about its greatest works and writers, I’ll guiltily remember how few of the Classics I’ve read, and make rash promises to remedy the situation.

I know Orson Scott Card is a raving homophobe, I’ll think to myself, but I really should read Ender’s Game. In a fit of mad optimism, I’ll add various works by Isaac Asimov and William Gibson to my Amazon wishlist, only to delete them the next time I’ve got money to spend, because I just can’t muster up the interest. Friends have lent me copies of Jack Vance, Vernor Vinge, and Gene Wolfe, and each time, despite my best intentions, the books are left to molder by the bedside in favor of something by Catherynne M. Valente or Nnedi Okorafor.

It’s not like I have any moral objection to books by straight white male writers – after all, I’ve been compulsively reading and rereading both Discworld and A Song of Ice and Fire for over a decade, I’m an absolute sucker for China Mieville and Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World will forever be one of my all-time favorite novels (and that’s just for starters).

But with the genre developing in so many different directions at once, it feels needlessly regressive to pry myself away from the latest book by Elizabeth Bear or N. K. Jemisin and instead try to read, out of duty rather than passion, some decades-old novel that’s already been analysed, reviewed, and criticised ad nauseum.

Which doesn’t make them bad novels, or mean that there’s anything wrong with loving, critiquing, discovering and talking about them now. They’re just not for me, is all, and most of the time, I can live with that. But then I’ll read yet another article complaining about newcomers to SFF reinventing the wheel for lack of familiarity with the Classics, or hear someone bemoaning the fact that fantasy Isn’t What It Used To Be, and part of me starts to doubt my own credentials. Can I really call myself a fan of science fiction if I’ve never read Dune? If I let slip that I never made it past book one of The Wheel of Time, are the Geek Police going to come along and revoke my right to talk about epic fantasy on the Internet?

If I’ve never read the Classics, then how did I get into SFF in the first place?

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New Treasures: Lonely Souls edited by Gordon van Gelder

New Treasures: Lonely Souls edited by Gordon van Gelder

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Lonely SoulsI love novellas, and I think they’re the perfect length for SF and fantasy. Long enough to really explore characters and setting, short enough to demand ruthless pacing — and to read in one sitting. I bought as many as I could fit for Black Gate (a few more than I could fit, truthfully), and writers were always grateful. Time and again I was told that the novella was a hard sell these days… only a handful of markets would take them.

One editor who does regularly feature novellas is Gordon van Gelder, for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Even though each issue is a massive 256 pages, however, he’s still limited in how many he can fit. So I was pleased to see the recent appearance of Lonely Souls, an anthology of four novellas just published by Gordon’s Spilogale press.

Many science fiction writers view the novella as the optimal length-short enough to be read in one sitting, but long enough to build a world. And what better world can we build and examine, than the landscape of our lonely souls? Gordon Van Gelder has brought together a set of four novellas that dig deeper into the recesses of our beings.

In “Goliath of Gath,” Jan Lars Jensen offers us a look at figure of legend not usually considered: Goliath. One of the last of his people, the giants, in a changing social and political landscape. A pacifist manipulated into death with the promise of peace. A man whose story is rarely examined in favor of David, the plucky hero of the Bible.

Then Eric Carl Wolf brings us to a grassy, cowboy-country, beef-herding planet as barren as the Old West in “Demands of Ghosts,” where we meet a former assassin seeking anonymity and redemption.

In “One Day at the Zoo” by Rand B. Lee a young girl with special powers is “saved” from being experimented on by the closest person to her, her mother, who seeks instead to destroy her.

In a strange, violent, debauched future, an assassin confronts a new technology that enables immortality, destroying the value of death, and he begins a quest for oblivion, so goes “Final Kill” by Chris DeVito.

Spilogale also publishes digital versions of Fourth Planet from the Sun (covered here) and F&SF. We covered the July/August issue of F&SF here.

Lonely Souls is currently available in electronic format. It is 267 pages, priced at $5.99. There is currently no print edition. Learn more here. Check it out and support great short fiction at a great price!

James Frenkel Leaves Tor

James Frenkel Leaves Tor

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James FrenkelLong-time editor James Frenkel has left Tor Books.

Frenkel was one of the most accomplished editors at Tor — indeed, in the entire industry. I first came across his name in the mid-80s, when he was publisher of Bluejay books, a science fiction imprint that produced trade paperback editions of K.W. Jeter, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, and many others. Among many other accomplishments, Bluejay Books first began publishing Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies.

Frenkel joined Tor after the collapse of Bluejay in the late 80s, where he edited some of the biggest names in the industry, including Vernor Vinge, Joan D. Vinge, Frederik Pohl, Andre Norton, Dan Simmons, Jack Williamson, Timothy Zahn, Greg Bear, and many others.

Frenkel’s departure from Tor comes following accusations of sexual harassment, stemming from an incident at Wiscon reported by Elise Matthesen:

Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different house joined the conversation briefly and decided to do the thing that I reported. A minute or two after he left, one of the hosts came over to check on me… So I reported it to the convention. Somewhere in there they asked, “Shall we use your name?” I thought for a millisecond and said, “Oh, hell yes.”

While Matthesen did not immediately identify the editor in question, he was famously ID’d by Mary Robinette Kowal in her June 18 blog post “Why am I afraid to name the editor?” Yesterday Tor senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden made the announcement via Twitter that James Frenkel was no longer associated with Tor Books.

Frenkel currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Joan D. Vinge. He has not yet made any public announcement regarding the issue.

You’ve Got Crime in My Fantasy Novel. You’ve Got Fantasy . . .

You’ve Got Crime in My Fantasy Novel. You’ve Got Fantasy . . .

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PathSo, I decided to write a serial-killer book. All my friends were.

Perhaps I should explain. A lot of my friends are crime and mystery writers, and with them, after a few glasses of wine, the talk always seems to turn to serial-killer books. Who’s writing one. Who wants to. Who’s never gonna, no matter what. How publishers always push for one. It’s like serial killers are the new black.

Inevitably someone turns to me and says “Well, you don’t have to worry, Violette. It’s not like you could write a serial-killer fantasy novel.” Well, as you can imagine, I regarded those as fighting words – and now you know the origin of my novel, Path of the Sun.

Of course, that friend was echoing the John W. Campbell opinion on science-fiction mysteries that I mentioned a few weeks ago. According to Campbell, it couldn’t be done. Here in the community, experience has shown us that Campbell was wrong. But the attitude among non-fantasy or SF readers is still pretty much the same as his.

The trick, as most of you know, is to solve the crime – sometimes after figuring out how to commit the crime – within the parameters of our created worlds. Sometimes, we can even create crimes our pure-mystery-loving friends have never even thought of. Any common thief can steal money, the Fantasy or SF thief can steal your soul. Or a few hours of time out of your life. Or, perhaps, the best time of your life.

But let me get back to my serial killer.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s President Fu Manchu, Part Three

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s President Fu Manchu, Part Three

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President GoldbergDaniel Webster stampSax Rohmer’s The Invisible President was originally serialized in Collier’s from February 29 to May 16, 1936. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US under the title President Fu Manchu. The novel is the first in the series to fictionalize real events with characters based on familiar figures in the US in the 1930s such as Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin. More than one critic has noted the story may have influenced the classic Cold War conspiracy thriller The Manchurian Candidate.

The presidential debate is the centerpiece of the book and is masterfully played out by Rohmer. Abbot Donegal turns up and is taken into protective custody by the FBI. Dr. Prescott attends the debate at Carnegie Hall and, thanks to his having been drugged by Fu Manchu earlier, makes a complete shambles of countering the progressive candidate, Harvey Bragg. The audience at Carnegie Hall and those listening around the country to the radio broadcast are shocked at how badly the conservative candidate loses the debate.

As the triumphant Bragg tells the press afterwards that he will transform the United States and then the rest of the world, one of his union backers, Paul Salvaletti, clicks off the names of the continents. As he says “Asia,” Herman Grosset’s brainwashed programming clicks into gear. He brandishes a pistol and shoots and kills Harvey Bragg on the spot. Bragg’s security guards turn their weapons on Grosset and shoot him dead seconds later.

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Goth Chick News: Stoker’s Manuscript by Royce Prouty

Goth Chick News: Stoker’s Manuscript by Royce Prouty

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image002Tell me a good story and I’ll follow you anywhere.

This is what I mean at least, when I say “willing suspension of disbelief.” It doesn’t imply your narrative has to be perfect, with every “T” crossed and every “I” dotted. Instead it implies that close is good enough, if you tell me a tale sufficiently riveting to distract me from the details you might have missed.

Case in point: World War Z the movie.

I recently read a review that outlined three major flaws in the plot; specifically, things the audience would need to get over in order to enjoy the movie. Having read the book, I was prepared to not get over any of it, and suffer through the potential cinematic bastardization just so I could tell you not to.

Instead, twenty minutes in I was utterly willing to forget why anyone would be the least bit interested in Gerry’s (Brad Pitt) survival considering he was neither a scientist nor a doctor, and was at best a disenfranchised United Nations worker of some kind. I just let it all go while watching a horde of manic zombies crawl over each other by the thousands to scale an insanely high wall and eat the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Just tell me a good story and I’m right there with you…

And that is why I feel particularly abused when a good story stretches my disbelief to the breaking point, utterly diverting me from the tale and making it impossible for me not to say, “Huh…?”

Which brings us (finally) to Royce Prouty’s freshman outing, Stoker’s Manuscript.

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Alan Snow’s Worse Things Happen at Sea Released This Week

Alan Snow’s Worse Things Happen at Sea Released This Week

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Worse Things Happen at SeaAlan Snow’s first novel, Here Be Monsters, was the last book I read to my kids, some time in 2007. I used to read out loud to them every night — back when they all went to bed at the same time. These days, I can’t even get them in one room at the same time. Teenagers.

I think I first became interested because of the artwork. Snow is the artist behind what may be the finest kid’s book ever created, Don’t Climb Out of the Window Tonight, and I can’t tell you how many times I read that thing out loud. Over and over (and over). I think I still have it memorized. Don’t climb out of the window tonight, because Frankenstein’s gang is in the bushes. Man, that book is a surreal masterpiece.

Anyway, I think my kids really enjoyed Here Be Monters too. I know I sure did. Box trolls, cabbageheads, secret subterranean tunnels inhabited by races of underlings, catapults made of knickers, a mad inventor, and a hero who flies over the city at night using only a pair of wings and a box with a crank. It all came together to form a madcap adventure involving illegal cheese hunts, pirates, and the rats who run the Nautical Laundry. Seriously, he had me at “box trolls,” that other stuff was just gravy. As a splendid bonus, Snow’s delightful drawings of his bizarre and wonderful characters appeared on virtually every page, and added enormously to the book.

I enjoyed it so much that I really hoped there would be sequels. Shortly after it appeared, Amazon started referring to Here Be Monsters as The Ratbridge Chronicles, Book 1, which made me think, hey, I dunno, maybe.

In point of fact, additional volumes did appear: Worse Things Happen At Sea (Oct 2010) and Thar She Blows (coming in December 2013). Sadly, they only appeared in the UK, because everyone there reads Charles Dickens and watches Doctor Who, and hence are trained from birth to recognize awesome when they see it. But earlier this year, stop-motion studio Laika, creators of Coraline and ParaNorman, announced plans to film Here Be Monsters as their next feature (now titled The Boxtrolls) and suddenly American publishing realized it better get on the stick.

And so Worse Things Happen at Sea was published here on Tuesday, and I can finally order it without heinous overseas shipping charges. Which I will do. But first I think I’ll dig up that battered copy of Don’t Climb Out of the Window Tonight and read it one more time. Because gobins are in the bushes, and they mean business.

Worse Things Happen at Sea was published July 9, 2013 by Atheneum Books. It is 352 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Apple Found Guilty of Ebook Price Fixing

Apple Found Guilty of Ebook Price Fixing

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Steve JobsApple’s long-running legal battle to prove that it did not mastermind a conspiracy to price-fix digital books ended yesterday with a guilty verdict.

In April of last year, the US Department of Justice filed suit against Apple and the largest book publishers in the United States: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster. All the publishers settled, and only Apple chose to fight the battle in court. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote sided with the DOJ, saying that Apple played a “central role” in the conspiracy and that Apple and the publishers conspired to eliminate price competition in the emerging digital books market.

The legal battle and the discovery phase leading up to it, have been very much in the public eye. One of the most fascinating aspects (at least for people like me, whose eyes glaze over at 80-page legal documents) was the publication of behind-the scenes e-mails between Steve Jobs and publishers as they hammered out the details of the scheme. The Atlantic reprinted several of Jobs’s e-mails from January 2010, including an exchange with James Murdoch at News Corp, negotiating on behalf of HarperCollins:

Jobs wasn’t willing to compromise. He sent this reply to Murdoch the same day, arguing that Amazon’s pricing wasn’t sustainable and would train people to think that ebooks were cheap. Jobs also reminded Murdoch of Apple’s vast reach–“over 120 million customers with credit cards on file.” You need us more than we need you, he seemed to be saying.

Hatred of Amazon’s discounted ebook pricing strategy seemed to be the engine of the entire conspiracy and Judge Cote made specific mention of it in her ruling:

Before Apple even met with the first Publisher Defendant in mid-December 2009, it knew that the “Big Six” of United States publishing… wanted to raise e-book prices, in particular above the $9.99 prevailing price charge by Amazon for many e-book versions of New York Times bestselling books and other newly released hardcover books. Apple also knew that Publisher Defendants were already acting collectively to place pressure on Amazon to abandon its pricing strategy… The Publishers conveyed to Apple their abhorrence of Amazon’s pricing, and Apple assured the Publishers it was willing to work with them to raise those prices.

Apple contends that it has done nothing wrong, and plans to appeal the verdict.

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews The Mist-Torn Witches

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews The Mist-Torn Witches

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The Mist-Torn Witches15808272
by Barb Hendee
Roc (336 pages, mass market first edition May 7, 2013, $7.99)

The Mist-Torn Witches isn’t exactly the novel I wanted, but it fits into a category of novel I’d like to see more of. It’s modest in the best senses of the word: Focused on a handful of characters, limited to a single setting (a prince’s castle), and with a tightly focused plot, centered around a magically-enhanced murder investigation. It also manages to be relatively light in pacing and tone, something I’d like to see more of in a market seemingly saturated with the gruesome, grim, and gut-splattered.

Orphaned sisters Celine and Amelie are a likable pair. Celine was trained my her mother as an apothecary, but makes most of her income by pretending to have inherited her mother’s powers as a seer and distributing invented fortunes, while Amelie is an armed-and-dangerous tomboy who serves as the duo’s muscle. They’re forced to flee their rural home when Celine, for the first time, has a truly prophetic vision. Unfortunately for her, that vision is of local ruler Sub-Prince Damek murdering his betrothed after the wedding, which drives Celine to warn the girl away from marrying him.  Celine and Amelie are forced to seek refuge with Damek’s younger brother, Anton, and his brave guard captain, Jaromir.

Anton is a just ruler, and his people are happy, but not all is well within the walls of his castle. Young women are being murdered under mysterious circumstances, their bodies turning up as withered husks. Anton offers the sisters a deal: Use Celine’s newfound powers of true prophecy to find the killer and they’ll be rewarded with an apothecary shop inside his walls. Fail, and they’ll be turned out to make their way alone, vulnerable to the wrath of Sub-Prince Damek.

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D.B. Jackson Interviews Ethan Kaille, Thieftaker

D.B. Jackson Interviews Ethan Kaille, Thieftaker

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thieftakerToday I have the pleasure of publishing an interview I’ve had with Ethan Kaille, one of Boston’s leading thieftakers.

Welcome, Mr. Kaille, to my humble office, and thank you for taking time to speak with Black Gate. Please begin by introducing yourself to our readers. Who is Ethan Kaille?

I am no one of consequence, really.  I work in Boston as a thieftaker — for a negotiated fee, I recover property that has been stolen, and return it to its rightful owner.

Surely there is more to your life than thieftaking. What did you do before you began to work in your current profession?

[Long pause.]  I don’t usually like to speak of it, but if you must know, I was a prisoner. Years ago, as a young, foolish man, I took part in a mutiny aboard a ship called the Ruby Blade.  When the mutiny failed, I was placed in the brig, and eventually was tried and convicted.  The Admiralty Court spared my life, but sentenced me to fourteen years at labor on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean.

And before all of that, I was a sailor in the British navy, just like my father before me, and his father before him.  I enlisted during the War of the Austrian Succession and fought at Toulon as a crewman aboard the HMS Stirling Castle.

When was the first time that you became aware of your powers as a conjurer?

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

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