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Prelude to the Arak and Oz Reunion

Prelude to the Arak and Oz Reunion

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ArakAs I embark on a close reading of the complete 50-issue run of ARAK, Son of Thunder, I believe an introductory post is justified, wherein I try to rationalize why I would want to do such a thing. Why Arak? Why now? Why me? (And, for some of you: Who the heck is Arak?)

First, a series of snapshots. These will get at the “Why me?” part, I think:

* I am lying in a hammock outside my grandparents’ cabin, nestled in the ponderosa pine forest on the Mogollon Rim of Arizona…White clouds skim across a blue sky, so close you can almost reach up and touch them… The smell in my nose is pine mixed with the crisp scent of newsprint, courtesy of a Marvel Comics Star Wars and a DC House of Mysteries.

g.i. joe** I am curled up on the top bunk of my bunk bed (bunk beds rocked! — they were like having a tree-house/fort in your own bedroom), home sick from school. My dad (Happy Father’s Day, Dad!) walks in bringing the latest bounty from the mailbox: the new G.I. Joe comic. I eagerly rip off the plastic bag, anxious with bated breath to find out if Snake Eyes escaped the exploding bunker at the end of last month’s issue.

*** I am pedaling my bicycle down to the local gas station, eager to check the revolving display stand to see if the new installment of ROM or Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew has hit the stand (and, damn, I was in good shape back then, pedaling hither and yon. It was all downhill once I got my driver’s license).

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Three

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Three

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The Death of the Necromancer KindleBlack Gate is very proud to present Part Three of Martha Wells’s Nebula Award-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, presented complete online for the first time. Here’s a quote from Donna McMahon’s SF Site review:

It’s relatively easy to convey the plot of Necromancer, but far more difficult to describe the extraordinary texture of its setting. The city of Vienne has an Italian Renaissance flavour, plus nineteenth century technology, hints of Victorian England, and even whiffs of A Tale of Two Cities and The Tempest. From this seemingly improbable mix of historical and fantasy elements, Martha Wells creates a stunningly vivid society…

Wells’ characters are equally compelling: among them Nicholas, who is a gentle man with a dark streak of rage; Madeline, the ambitious actress who lives with him; Reynard, the disgraced but proud army officer; and Crack, the tough, terse henchman. And there are many more, none of them forgettable.

Still, Necromancer’s most impressive feature may be its complex, twisting plot and swift pacing, which kept me glued to the pages… this is a terrific novel. Wells is in a league with top writers like Lois McMaster Bujold and Barbara Hambly.

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen fantasy novels, including City of Bones, The Element of Fire, The Cloud Roads, and The Serpent Sea. Her most recent novel is the YA fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, published by Strange Chemistry Books in April. Her previous fiction for us includes “Reflections” in Black Gate 10, “Holy Places” (BG 11), and “Houses of the Dead“ (BG 12). Her most recent article for us was “How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?,” which appeared here March 13. Her web site is www.marthawells.com.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

The Death of the Necromancer was originally published in hardcover by Avon EOS in 1998. The complete, unedited text will be presented here over the next three weeks; it began on June 2 with the first four chapters here.

Part Three includes Chapters Nine through Thirteen. It is offered at no cost.

Read Part Three of the complete novel here.

Vintage Treasures: The Last Province Magazine, Issue #4

Vintage Treasures: The Last Province Magazine, Issue #4

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The-Last-Province-Issue-4I recently stumbled across a copy of a gaming magazine I’d never encountered before: The Last Province, a bi-monthly British publication that apparently lasted five issues, from October 1992 to September 1993.

This doesn’t happen very often, so it was definitely worth investigating. And I’m glad I did, as it turned out to be a delight.

I think the cover — a Martin Lennon character study of three very different adventuring fellows striding confidently across a green and pleasant land — effectively communicates both the content and editorial attitude. If the art doesn’t do it, the tag words “Independent British Roleplaying” at the top should give you the idea.

Paz Newis’s page 4 editorial is a perfect mix of defensiveness towards gaming stereotypes, and contempt for what others consider ‘normal.’ Pretty much exactly how I remember gamers talking in the 90s.

To my mind ours is one pastime with a wealth to offer its participants. It is to those of you who wish to take roleplaying out of the ‘spotty adolescents’ stereotype that this magazine is aimed.

Recently… I thought it would be a good idea to sit in front of the television. I was appalled! It really was brain numbing. All of my higher brain functions seized up. If this is what the majority of ‘normal people’ spend their time doing I have no desire to be normal.

The news section is jammed with headlines on the big events of the day — including Steve Jackson’s quarter-million dollar judgment against the US Secret Service for seizing their computer equipment during an investigation of GURPS Cyberpunk, the report that a young employee at a Glasgow branch of a well known game store chain was apparently fired for being female, and the release of a major new RPG from FASA with the strange title Earthdawn.

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New Treasures: The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction

New Treasures: The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction

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The-Simon-and-Kirby-Library-Science-FictionJoe Simon and Jack Kirby were perhaps the most important and successful comic team of the 1940s and 50s. Together they created Captain America (among many other popular creations) and produced an incredible body of work spanning numerous genres. Joe Simon was the first editor of Marvel Comics and the legendary Jack Kirby later partnered with Stan Lee to create some of the most enduring characters of the 20th Century, including Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Thor, the X-Men, and countless others.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction is packed with dozens of stories, many of them photographed from the original artwork. This is essential pulp science fiction, with tales of brave spacemen, intrepid jungle explorers encountering lost civilizations, living shadows, crash landings on bizarre alien worlds, sinister robots, giant monsters battling desperate armies, beautiful barbarian princesses, impossible inventions, and much more.

The Simon and Kirby Library: Science Fiction spans more than 20 years, beginning with the first stories Joe Simon and Jack Kirby ever produced together (beginning in June 1940) — their ten-issue run of Blue Bolt adventures. Then the Cold War years will be represented by Race For the Moon, featuring pencils by Kirby and inked artwork by comic book legends Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson.

Other rarities from both decades are included, and as a bonus for readers, the volume features stories illustrated by Crandall, Torres, and Williamson — without Kirby.

The book also includes an introduction by Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons. This is the fourth volume in The Simon & Kirby Library, following Superheroes, Crime and the best-selling Horror.

The book is in full-color throughout, and most of the art has been restored and vibrantly re-colored by Harry Mendryk. My only complaint about this volume is that only a handful of covers are included, in a sparse 3-page cover gallery in the back.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction was published by Titan Books on June 4. It is 352 pages in hardcover, priced at $49.95. There is no digital edition.

Robert E. Howard and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Robert E. Howard and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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Weird Tales July 1936 Red NailsGary Gygax’s famous Appendix N, the list of titles he considered essential reading for Dungeon Masters hoping to create authentic adventures for their players, is perhaps the purest distillation of the literary recipe at the heart of modern adventure gaming.

Gygax put Appendix N in the back of his Dungeon Master’s Guide in 1979. Read all the writers on that list and you’ll understand the creative gestalt underlying 20th Century fantasy that eventually exploded into Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

That’s the theory, anyway. Plenty of people have tried it. It’s sort of the gamer’s version of going walkabout. Immerse yourself in Appendix N and spiritual understanding will be yours. Plus, as a bonus, you end up with a rockin’ library.

Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode are attempting this spiritual journey together, and they’re chronicling it at Tor.com. They begin with a look at Robert E. Howard’s Conan story “Red Nails,” originally published in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales:

There is a giant mega-dungeon; it hardly gets more D&D than that. The two elements that really strike home here in terms of inspiration are the populated dungeons as its own character of rivalry and strife, and black magic. The city as one massive labyrinth is great, as is the characterization of its architecture & embellishment — gleaming corridors of jade set with luminescent jewels, friezes of Babylonianesque or Aztecish builders — but it is the logic of the city that shines brightest to me. “Why don’t the people leave?” There are dragons in the forest. “What do the people eat?” They have fruit that grows just off the air. “Where do all these monsters come from?” There are crypts of forgotten wizard-kings. There is a meaningful cohesion to the place; Howard manages to stitch dinosaurs, radioactive skulls, Hatfields and McCoys, and ageless princesses into something cogent.

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I Ain’t No Hero, See?

I Ain’t No Hero, See?

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Have Space Suit -- Will TravelI’ve got a friend I’ve known since we were nine years old who often says that we weren’t really brought up by our parents (neither his nor mine), but by the books we read. I’m not sure if we were lucky or unlucky, but those books were full of, well, heroes. The first book I ever read, by the way, was Treasure Island – I think having seen the movie helped me with the hard parts.

Aside: my parents didn’t come from cultures in which picture books were the norm, so we weren’t allowed to read them, nor comic books. Some illustration could be tolerated, but books with pictures on every page were for illiterate people.

Then my brother recommended The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. That was the first fantasy book I ever read. Almost immediately after that I read Have Space Suit-Will Travel, my first SF book.

Not very long after these came Lord of the Rings – and every other Fantasy and SF book I could put my hands on. These were the books that raised me.

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Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Three

Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Three

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2526022-fla42528342-fla5“The Awful Forest” was artist Dan Barry and writer Harvey Kurtzman’s follow-up to “Tartarus” and was published by King Features Syndicate from October 20 to December 30, 1952. The story shows a marked step forward in quality in Barry’s artwork. At times, he equals Alex Raymond, barring his love of EC-style comic grotesqueries which likely reflect Kurtzman’s involvement in the creative process.

Flash, Marla, Kent, and Ray arrive on horseback at the edge of the Awful Forest along with a party of satyr porters from Tartarus. The rain is pouring down steadily and the setting is clearly meant to call to mind Germany’s Black Forest.

No sooner do they arrive in the Awful Forest, then they encounter the figure of a gibbering madman who pleads with them to turn back, before rushing off into the woods in abject terror. Their porters recognize this strange figure as the Black Duke, Lucifan’s cousin who abducted Dale from the deposed king’s court. What should be an effective sequence of mounting suspense is let down by the depiction of the mad Duke as a comic loony who would have been at home in an early issue of Mad.

The Black Duke’s pitiable condition is enough to cause their porters to desert them during the night. Flash sets off on a fruitless quest to retrieve them and leaves Kent to care for Marla and Ray. The trio is beset by night terrors in which the strange noises of the forest give way to nightmarish visitations from a crowd of goblins and gremlins.

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New Treasures: The New Yorker Fiction Issue, June 10 & 17, 2013

New Treasures: The New Yorker Fiction Issue, June 10 & 17, 2013

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The New Yorker Fiction issue June 2013A while back I bought a subscription to The New Yorker. I had one in grad school and quite enjoyed it, during those rare moments when I had time to read it.

Which pretty much describes the current situation. Every time an issue arrives, I examine it with great interest and then set it aside to read later. Currently, there’s more than a dozen piled up by my big green chair in the library.

But I finally made the time to open one this week, and the occasion was the arrival of their summer Fiction issue. It’s a big double issue, thicker than most and with two dates on the cover (June 10 and 17, 2013).

It’s not just that there’s a lot of content, but the cover — the silhouette of a femme fatale clutching a mauser against a 1930s New York skyline — promised something I almost never see in The New Yorker: genre fiction. Like last year’s science fiction issue, it’s the kind of surprise that deserves to be investigated.

There are even bigger surprises in the Table of Contents, starting with “An Inch and a Half of Glory,” a new story by Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and the Continental Op novels.

Before you dash over to check Wikipedia (as I just did) — yes, Dashiell Hammett is still dead. He died in 1961.

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Art of the Genre: Kickstarter, it Really Shouldn’t be About the ‘Stuff We All Get’

Art of the Genre: Kickstarter, it Really Shouldn’t be About the ‘Stuff We All Get’

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kickstarter-logo-www-mentorless-com_Before I get into this, I want to throw out a disclaimer.  I don’t know anyone’s true costs or bottom line, only what I can hypothesize from my own experiences in running Kickstarters and cost research in the areas in question.  Certainly, costs can be mitigated to some degree by large volume orders, current pre-existing stock of product,’creative’ accounting, etc.

Good, now with that out of the way, I can certainly be accused of having Kickstarter on the brain, but I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with this problem.  As this platform continues to grow in the consciousness of our ‘incredible shrinking world’ society, and its power doesn’t seem to be dwindling, I’m going to give readers more advice that I’ve gleaned from my five successful, and one ongoing, Kickstarter campaigns.

First and foremost, I want to reiterate what Kickstarter truly is: a platform by which creative people can gain funding to create projects that otherwise would not be possible. The key word there is ‘funding’ and in the current landscape of the Kickstarter universe, that is becoming a very murky proposition.

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: All Hail the Library of Congress

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: All Hail the Library of Congress

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Until the end of the summer, this will probably be my last post at Black Gate. I’m moving, and that’s a good thing. Strenuous but good. My teaching schedule is almost entirely emptied out now, and the loose ends my students and I are tying up are all about foundational stuff, grammar and vocabulary. Tomorrow the house I’ve lived in for thirteen years starts emptying out, too.

Should it have been enough to stuff all my books into boxes, number the boxes, and write the tally down on my list of household goods? For a sensible person, a non-writing person, it probably would have been. Instead, I catalogued almost all my books on LibraryThing before packing them, because the thought of losing the research materials I need for my fiction filled me with existential terror. If my books on cavalry warfare, tapestry weaving, and small sailing craft disappear in the big move and can’t be replaced, who can I possibly be when I arrive in a new house? Unless I’m writing my stories, about my characters in my own nonexistent city, requiring this particular background from the world I actually live in, I’ll be fundamentally de-personned, right? Apparently the solution to existential terror is a bar code scanner for ISBNs.

Why yes, obsessive-compulsive disorder runs in my family. Why do you ask?

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