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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu, Part Two

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu, Part Two

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Trail late PyramidThe Trail of Fu ManchuSax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from April 28 to July 14, 1934. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The book marked the first time Rohmer employed third person narrative in the series and dispensed with the first person narrative voice modeled on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. The results dilute what would otherwise have been a stronger novel that saw the series return to its roots.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Alan Sterling, and Chief Inspector Gallaho follow Fah lo Suee from Sam Pak’s Limehouse opium den to the Ambassador’s Club, where the daughter of Fu Manchu has a rendezvous with Sir Bertram Morgan. The reader learns in short order that Fah lo Suee met Sir Bertram three years ago in Cairo and so has retained her old identity of Madame Ingomar. The old financier has fallen madly in love with the seductive Eurasian beauty. Sir Denis and company follow their car to Rowan House in Surrey, the former residence of Sir Lionel Barton, where Madame Ingomar’s father now resides. Once again, Rohmer refers back to the first book in the series, for it was at Rowan House where Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie first encountered Sir Lionel Barton.

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Goth Chick News: The Best of the HHA

Goth Chick News: The Best of the HHA

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image010As promised last week, my road trip to the Halloween and Haunted Attractions Show with Black Gate photog Chris Z yielded up a virtual bloody burlap bag of gooey tidbits to share with you.  I mean what could be finer than driving 5 hours to see the latest developments in apparatus for scaring the snot out of you – in the middle of a winter storm?

But like tweeners to a Twilight convention, we donned our flannel shirts and would not be deterred.

However, as we traveled south towards St. Louis, we were only out of Chicago a mere two hours before we ceased to see snow on the ground — and another two before the sky turned blue and the temperature gauge on the Black Gate company car started reading a balmy 45 degrees.

Which proves two things.

Life exists outside of Chicago primarily due to favorable atmospheric conditions, and 1973 Dodge Darts do indeed have temperature gauges.

We arrived at the America’s Convention Center to find it packed wall-to-wall with over 500 exhibitors showing off the cutting edge technology and special effects techniques which will ultimately be showcased in movies, videos and professional haunted attractions in 2013.  Which made narrowing down the field for inclusion here an arduous task, but one which Chris Z and I happily tackled during the extra-long trip home.

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Alex Bledsoe on “How I Discovered Silver John”

Alex Bledsoe on “How I Discovered Silver John”

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Who Fears the Devil Planet StoriesJust last week, we announced the winners of our Best One-Sentence Reviews of Manly Wade Wellman contest, and published twenty of the best entries. Not too surprisingly, many focused on Wellman’s popular Silver John stories, tales of monsters and Appalachian magic.

Alex Bledsoe, author of The Hum and the Shiver and the forthcoming Wisp of a Thing, knows a thing or two about Appalachian magic himself. I was fortunate enough to hear Alex read from Wisp of a Thing at Capricon here in Chicago last month, and I’m looking forward to receiving my copy. So I was pleased (and a little surprised) to see Alex’s article at Tor.com last week, explaining how he only recently discovered Wellman’s Silver John tales — and came across his novels for the first time at Capricon, of all places:

When Tor released my first Tufa novel, The Hum and the Shiver, back in 2011, many people asked me if I’d been inspired by Manly Wade Wellman’s tales of Silver John. Although I knew of them by reputation, I’d never actually read them until last year, when Planet Stories published Who Fears the Devil? The Complete Tales of Silver John.

The resemblance, as is so often the case in comparisons like this, strikes me as mostly cosmetic. Yes, Wellman’s stories are set in a vague Appalachia, and yes, they involve magic and inhuman creatures. But they’re far more Lovecraftian than Tufan, with their invocation of things from other realities bleeding into ours and poking out around the fringes to snag the unwary… I’m delighted that the stories are so different from my own stuff, because that means I can devour them with a clear conscience. These stories are cool.

Further, before Capricon in Chicago this year, I didn’t even know there were full length Silver John novels. Rich Warren of Starfarer’s Despatch, a used-book dealer, clued me in, and I picked up After Dark based on his recommendation. And lo and behold, it was a real, literal page-turner that kept me reading when I should’ve been doing other, more important things (like writing, or parenting).

Ah, Starfarer’s Despatch — that explains it. Rich Warren and Arin Komins have had a hand in more than a few discoveries of my own. They sold me that paperback edition of Vampires I talked about last month, not to mention the only copy of Tales of Time and Space I’ve ever seen. There’s a great photo of the two of them in action in Howard’s Worldcon wrap-up from last year, too (and their website is here). True booksellers have magic of their own.

New Treasures: Comics: The Complete Collection by Brian Walker

New Treasures: Comics: The Complete Collection by Brian Walker

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Comics The Complete CollectionThere are coffee table books, and there are coffee table books. Brian Walker’s Comics: The Complete Collection is the latter — meaning it’s a “coffee table” book in the sense that it’s large enough to be propped up and used as a coffee table. For a family of five.

If the very existence of a 672-page, 7-pound book crammed full of vintage American comics strips from the past 110+ years isn’t enough to interest you, then you probably have no soul. But maybe this will help: this book collects 1,300 of the best newspaper strips from some of the finest comics ever created, including Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Berke Breathed’s Bloom County, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, Scott Adams’s Dilbert, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, Will Eisner’s The Spirit, Gary Larson’s The Far Side, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs, Dik Browne’s Hagar the Horrible, Jim Davis’s Garfield, Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead, Johnny Hart’s B.C., Geroge Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan, Lynn Johnston’s For Better Or For Worse, Bil Keane’s Family Circus, Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, Dale Messick’s Brenda Starr, Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid, Brant Parker’s Wizard of Id, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, E.C. Segar’s Popeye, Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey, Tom Wilson’s Ziggy, and Chic Young’s Blondie.

And others. Lots and lots (and lots) of others.

It’s called The Complete Collection because it was originally published in two volumes: The Comics Before 1945 and The Comics Since 1945. These survey volumes were useful in their own right, with comics organized by decade, and well-written biographical profiles, as well as thoughtful analysis of the different genres. But the omnibus collection is both an incredible value and a beautiful piece of work, the kind of gorgeous and massive tome you could place prominently in the living room, flip through for years, and never exhaust. Or use to prop up the foundation of your house, whatever.

Comics: The Complete Collection was published in April 2011 by Abrams ComicArts. It is 672 pages in hardcover, and there is unlikely to be a softcover or digital edition. It’s a bargain at $40, and you can find copies online for around $29. Highly recommended.

Last Chance to Win One of Four New Copies of the Unearthed Arcana 1st Edition Premium Reprint

Last Chance to Win One of Four New Copies of the Unearthed Arcana 1st Edition Premium Reprint

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unearthed arcanaTwo weeks ago, we announced a contest to win one of four new copies of the Unearthed Arcana 1st Edition Premium Reprint, compliments of Wizards of the Coast.

How do you enter? Easy — by doing exactly what you’re doing already: telling complete strangers all about your D&D adventures.

Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with a one-paragraph summary of your most memorable D&D or AD&D characters. Points will be awarded for conciseness and originality. We’ll publish the best here at Black Gate, and the Top Ten as decided by our judges will be included in a drawing for one of four copies of the new Unearthed Arcana 1st Edition Premium Reprint.

These WotC Premium Reprints have become quite the hot property, incidentally. The first three — the Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual — are already sold out and out of print, and I strongly suspect the same will happen to this one. The upcoming volume Dungeons of Dread is perhaps the most interesting one yet, as it collects the first four adventures in the S Series — Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth — complete with the original b&w interior art.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Terms and conditions subject to change as our lawyers sober up and get back to us. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Good luck!

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Heroic Struggle and the Taxonomy of Meanies

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Heroic Struggle and the Taxonomy of Meanies

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Bedknobs And Broomsticks-smallThe preschool teacher tells me my five-year-old is doing much better at not hurting his classmates when he gets carried away with his pretend play. This might sound like faint praise, but after the week we’ve had, I’m thrilled to hear it. As we cross the parking lot, Gareth says to me, “I hate everyone at my school.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“There’s too much world peace in it.”

I try not to guffaw. I rarely learn anything new while in the act of guffawing. Instead, I say, “Do you know what world peace is?”

He says, “Of course I know. What is it?”

“You said you knew.”

“What is it, Mom?” He sounds a bit frantic. It turns out he’s been singing songs about this thing, sitting at circle time with his classmates to hear books about it read aloud, and doing little craft projects about it, but nobody has checked in with him about whether he knows what it is. His behavior lately has not been conducive to it, as he has been given to understand. My impulsive five-year-old, of whom his teachers say he’ll probably be running some illustrious lab at Princeton one day unless he lands himself in juvie first, is not a man of peace.

I have told him that meanies are to be resisted, not suffered in silence. I’ve told him stories about knights defeating meanies. The long video that we save for rainy days is Bedknobs and Broomsticks, with its comical/supernatural defeat of a Nazi invasion. It was my first attempt to explain what Nazis are that gave us our taxonomy of meanies.

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How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?

How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?

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cloud roadsI’ve always had a problem with genre categories.

What I’ve seen over the years is that when you try to define a category in order to make it easier for readers to find the kind of books they like, publishers begin to tailor their marketing to that definition. Then people begin to write to that definition. The definition becomes increasingly narrow, and it makes stories that don’t fit that definition in every respect harder to sell.

When you do sell a book that doesn’t fit, you occasionally get a reader email demanding to know why something sold as a fantasy doesn’t have a bearded white guy with a sword as the main character, because the definition is now so narrow that your book (and a lot of others) has been squeezed out of it.

When I wrote The Cloud Roads, the first of the Books of the Raksura, I still felt it fell mostly under the category of sword and sorcery, despite there not being any swords, and the sorcery being internal and intrinsic to the characters. The books I read that I thought of as sword and sorcery usually had one (or two) loner characters, bumming along in a fantasy landscape as mercenaries, looking for treasure or opportunities to make a living. They had been outlaws in the past, or were fleeing accusations of something, or a past of slavery or powerlessness or something in their lives that they had to hide.

In The Cloud Roads, Moon was profoundly alone, even when he was living with other people. He was traveling in a fantasy landscape looking more for food and shelter than treasure, and he had something to hide.

But instead of a career as an outlaw or a failed rebel, he was hiding the fact that he was a flying shapeshifter whose other form resembled top-tier predators that were famous for destroying whole cities and eating their inhabitants. Instead of a sword, he had claws.

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New Treasures: Enter The Wolf: Vampire Earth Volume 1

New Treasures: Enter The Wolf: Vampire Earth Volume 1

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Enter the WolfE.E. Knight’s Vampire Earth is one of the best adventure series on the market — action-packed, highly entertaining, and filled with great twists and surprises. Set on a near-future Earth conquered by a vampiric alien race, it’s the kind of fast paced and chilling narrative that would have resulted (as Paul Witcover puts it), “If The Red Badge of Courage had been written by H.P. Lovecraft.”

The Science Fiction Book Club has just released a high-quality hardcover omnibus of the first three books, Enter The Wolf. My copy arrived last month, complete with a sewn-in bookmark and great new wrap-around cover art by Gregory Manchess (click on the image at right for a bigger version).

Earth, 2065. Everything you know has changed. 43 years ago, the bloodthirsty Reapers came to Earth to feed their insatiable hunger. Now a ragtag rebel alliance is all that remains in the fight against our vampiric alien overlords. This is the world of the Vampire Earth saga, author E. E. Knight’s riveting blend of horror, dystopia and all-out military SF action. Devour this addictive series’ first three thrilling novels in Enter the Wolf, an SFBC 60th Anniversary omnibus!

Way of the Wolf: For four decades the Reapers have ruled our world. But Lieutenant David Valentine believes the human spirit remains unconquerable. And he’s on a mission to take back the Earth. Choice of the Cat: They call them the Cats — an elite stealth force of the finest warriors humanity has to offer. David Valentine is out to join their ranks. But first he must uncover the secret of the Twisted Cross, a deadly and mysterious new force under Reaper command. Tale of the Thunderbolt: As the human Resistance continues their struggle to overthrow the Reapers’ reign, Valentine embarks on a harrowing quest to find a long-lost weapon. Is it enough to turn the tide of darkness and end the Kurian Order’s dominion of Earth forever?

If you haven’t already, read E.E. Knight’s short story of ancient fellowships and dread sorcery, “The Terror in the Vale,” published in January right here at Black Gate.

Enter The Wolf: Vampire Earth Volume 1 was written by E.E. Knight, and published exclusively by the Science Fiction Book Club in February 2013. It is 803 pages in hardcover priced at $16.99 for members; it’s available as part of the introductory offer to the club for just $1. Check it out here — I’ve been a member of the club for years, and recommend it highly.

Kickstarter Alert: Dungeon Roll Dice Game

Kickstarter Alert: Dungeon Roll Dice Game

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DungeonRoll-bitsTasty Minstrel Game’s latest Kickstarter project has blown away funding goals and, with a week left, looks to be one of the best Kickstarter deals that I’ve seen in quite some time. This game is basically a dice-based dungeon crawl in a box (a treasure box, no less … and a mimic box for Kickstarters!) that has 7 days to go as of this writing (funds at 1:00 am Eastern on March 20).

The basic gameplay (as demonstrated in this video) is that you’re rolling a group of Dungeon Dice to get the monsters on a given level of the dungeon and then the Party Dice to try to get a combination that can beat the monsters. The different faces of the Party Dice get different benefits against given monsters, such as a Wizard on the Party Dice being able to destroy all of the Oozes with a single attack. The Heroes can modify the basic rules (the first 5 Heroes are shown on the video here). The goal is to get treasure and experience, making your way through the dungeon.

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Red Sonja 14

Red Sonja 14

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Red Sonja 14 coverSo this issue begins with Red Sonja walking through an unnamed town at night, minding her own business. Not sure how small the town is or how late, but on page one, we see only one other person on the street and he’s sleeping on it. I’ve probably mentioned before in these reviews that I find the preponderance of unnamed towns and unnamed demons to be a bit annoying, especially coming from Roy Thomas, who’s fairly knowledgeable about all things Hyborian. Seriously, just make up a name for the town or use a real city name. No one’s going to check.

Watch. Evanston. Red Sonja’s walking through Evanston, trying to forget her beloved Suumaro (the mommy-fixated boy-king who treated his wives like slaves and wanted Sonja to join his harem – what a catch). Now let’s move along.

So Red Sonja is just minding her own business, which is pretty much all the invitation anyone seems to need to bother her. She’s approached by a glowing nobleman named Gonzallo (see, no one cares that it’s a stupid name), who offers to pay her a diamond if she’ll act as his bodyguard for a few hours. When she asks why he’s glowing, he dismisses the question by saying that he’s eccentric.

The diamond looks real, so Red Sonja lets herself be hired. The first thing Gonzallo does is guide her to his gondola (oh, so they’re in Venice) and his requisite deformed gondolier, Karon. As the three of them make their way through the canals of (Venice? Evanston? Lower Aquilonia?), Sonja notices the surroundings have begun to change and soon they’re moving through an underground canal. The chamber is lit faintly by phosphorus, just enough for Sonja to see an iron gate rising up out of the water to block the way they’d come.

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