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The Rumors Are True: JJ Abrams to Helm Next Star Wars

The Rumors Are True: JJ Abrams to Helm Next Star Wars

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157825331JL169_Children_s_DLate last night, Walt Disney Studios announced that J.J. Abrams will direct the still-untitled Star Wars: Episode VII.

An announcement was expected following Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in October and rumors have been swirling around Abrams for the last 48 hours.

In entertainment circles, this hook-up is akin to the marriage of Michael Jackson and Priscilla Presley, which made Jackson Elvis Presely’s son-in-law. Abrams, who directed 2009’s Star Trek, unites science fiction’s two largest film franchises under a single creative umbrella.

Abrams had an impressive television resume long before he became King of SF Film: his creations include Felicity, Alias, Lost and Fringe. He wrote and directed the Spielberg homage Super 8 and the action flick Mission: Impossible III, and co-wrote Armageddon. George Lucas said in a statement:

I’ve consistently been impressed with J.J. as a filmmaker and storyteller. He’s an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn’t be in better hands.

According to Disney’s Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning writer of Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, and the upcoming The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, will write the screenplay. It will arrive in theaters in 2015, and Disney has announced plans to release a new Star Wars film every two to three years after that. The Empire Strikes Back writer Lawrence Kasdan will script the second, and Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) is on deck for the third.

Rumors abound on the plot of the next three films, including whether or not they will include Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford. Recent reports in The Guardian and Reuters suggest they could center on Luke Skywalker’s attempts to found a Jedi academy on the planet Yavin 4.

Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon – Part Twelve, “The Atomic Age”

Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon – Part Twelve, “The Atomic Age”

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emperorMongo“The Atomic Age” was the twenty-fifth installment of the Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between October 7, 1945 and March 17, 1946, “The Atomic Age” sees Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov taking the battle to Kang the Cruel, son of Ming the Merciless, who deposed Prince Barin from the throne of Mongo. Armed with weapons from King Radon, Flash sends word to the Freemen to gather at the border to prepare for an assault on Mingo City.

Believing he is only facing foot soldiers, Kang orders a combined air and ground assault to wipe out the army of Freemen. The Emperor discovers too late that the Freemen are protected by a force field barrier. The atomic rays the Freemen are armed with make short work of Kang’s tanks and rockets. Facing certain defeat, his own men turn on the Emperor and take him hostage. Flash is given a hero’s welcome when the Freemen arrive in Mingo City for having liberated Mongo from the despot. As is common with Austin Briggs’s tenure on the strip, the pace is far too fast and much drama is sacrificed to the detriment of the story.

Before Flash can take possession of his prisoner, Kang makes an escape by ruthlessly gunning down his captors. We are introduced to his queen, Evila, and his henchman, Grusom. The villainous trio escapes to the underground with Kang radioing Flash with the vow that he will reclaim the throne. While Flash orders all citizens to aid in the manhunt, he soon finds that not everyone is happy to see the Emperor deposed.

 

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Goth Chick News: The Haunted Mansion Gets the del Toro Treatment

Goth Chick News: The Haunted Mansion Gets the del Toro Treatment

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image002Among the laundry list of scary projects Guillermo del Toro currently has his name attached to (including the recently-released, love-never-dies horror flick Mama, a creepy version of Pinocchio, and the-house-is-haunted-get-the-heck-out Crimson Peak), is the somewhat exciting news of a reboot of The Haunted Mansion.

This would be Disney’s second attempt at adapting my all-time favorite Magic Kingdom attraction for the big screen; the first being that train wreck of a 2003 effort starring Eddie Murphy and let’s say no more about it.

Back in 2011, Del Toro was rumored to be writing a script, but little has been heard about it since. However, during an interview earlier this week with MySpill.com, del Toro confirmed that the new Haunted Mansion is happening.

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Stephen King’s “On Writing”

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Stephen King’s “On Writing”

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I confess: I’m horror-illiterate. Being horrified on my way to some other reading experience is often worthwhile, but reading just to poke my amygdala with a stick is, for me, a joyless enterprise. Some horror writers are manifestly brilliant; I’m still not their audience. Chalk it up to an inherited predisposition to PTSD.

And yet Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is one of my favorite writing books. It’s unusual among writing books for its combination of memoir and manual. The memoir could have stood on its own; the manual could not. King knows that most of the true and useful things that can be said in a book to a beginning writer have been said many times, so he finds a way to say those things in a context that spins together cautionary tales, zany vignettes, and roaring triumphs. When he talks about what a writer needs in the way of work space, he shows us the corner of an attic where he wrote his first stories as a child, the laundry room in a trailer where he wrote his first novels, the uselessly enormous and overcompensating desk he bought during the early coke-snorting days of his wealth, and the study-turned-family-room where his kids lounge on couches while he writes contentedly in a corner. There’s something practical, and something human, to be learned from each of those workspaces.

The book is structured in four main movements: two central sections of advice on craftsmanship, bracketed by two sections about the writing life in general by way of King’s own writing life. The opening movement is cheekily titled “C.V.” A C.V., or curriculum vitae, is what an academic has instead of a resume. For a writer who has been so many times disdained by academics to appropriate the term, and then interpret the Latin curriculum vitae literally as the course of his life, is gutsy.

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A Slew of Old D&D (and AD&D) Books Now Available Digitally

A Slew of Old D&D (and AD&D) Books Now Available Digitally

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Fiends Folio for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition
Fiend Folio for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition

Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast officially released the first wave of backlist products available in digital format. These books are available in PDF format through DriveThruRPG, and you can access all of the Wizards of the Coast titles there … or through their new website, DnDClassics.com.

The move to make their classic backlist titles available was originally announced back at their GenCon keynote (which I liveblogged back in August). The ultimate plan is to have every Dungeons & Dragons resource ever published available, but that’ll obviously take a while.

They appear to have started with collection of about 86 products, ranging from some core rulebooks, adventure modules, setting manuals, and so on. Even in just this first wave of products, we’ve got access to some truly classic material, such as the Basic Set Rulebook and the original Fiend Folio for Advanced D&D.

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Adventure on Film: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

Adventure on Film: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

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Hogfather DeathHaving been all but dared, following my rather critical summation of The Color Of Magic (2008), to view a subsequent Pratchett adaptation, Hogfather (2006, made for TV), I confess I embarked on this quest with great trepidation, especially when I learned the production team responsible was essentially identical to that assembled for Color.

However, I am happy to report that Hogfather is a much superior effort. First, the comedy is spot on. Second, the concept of assassinating Santa Claus (or whatever) is fine dramatic fodder. Third, the film continually asks questions that we (the viewers) really want answered.

Questions such as, who is this Susan woman who looks like Keira Knightley (but turns out to be Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery), and why exactly is she posing as a monster-fighting governess, when it’s perfectly clear she’s some sort of extremely powerful something or other –– and when do we get to find out what?

Great art has been made from less.

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Yes, The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs Really Is That Good

Yes, The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs Really Is That Good

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Mucker First EditionI spent last year on an extended trip to Mars exploring Edgar Rice Burroughs’s fantastical version of the Red Planet. But after reviewing all eleven books in the Barsoom series, the time had arrived to return to Earth and the early phase of ERB’s career. Spending too much time with the final sputterings of Burroughs’s Martian stories, when much of his talent was ebbing, has a strong depressive effect. Let’s relive the enthusiasm of youth. Or middle age, in the case of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yeah, he was a late bloomer.

So, on the centennial of its writing, I land back on Earth with one of ERB’s grubbiest, most “realistic,” and finest works of adventure, The Mucker.

The Mucker and its closely entwined sequel written two years later, The Return of the Mucker, have long held high positions in the canon of ERB’s work — but only for enthusiasts. The general reading population, who might pick up a few Tarzan books or go through the first three Martian novels, has scant familiarity with this oddly titled work. Perhaps it’s the strangeness of the name “Mucker” — is this about the adventures of a sewer worker? — or simply that it doesn’t belong to one of the author’s famous franchises, but the book usually inspires shrugs of ignorance when brought up, mixed with measures of curiosity. Of all Burroughs’s novels, this is the one about which I get the most inquiries: “Hey, is that ‘Mucker’ thing worth reading? I’ve heard good things, but I just never got around to it.”

Let me answer the question for everyone who has asked or planned to ask: Yes, The Mucker (and its sequel) is good. Actually, superb. Burroughs gathered all the conventions from the stories and novels of the first fifteen years of pulp writing, most of which are unreadable today, and condensed them into a rollicking action yarn with fistfights, shipwrecks, cannibals, sword duels, a lost civilization, kidnappings (and not just of women), street brawls, piracy, and prizefighting. And he wrapped this all around one of his most interesting heroes, a man who goes from an alley thug without an ounce of sympathetic qualities (aside from questionable criminal “honor”) to a reformed hero in a tangled love tale.

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Speculate! Interviews Howard Andrew Jones

Speculate! Interviews Howard Andrew Jones

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bones-of-the-old-ones-contest-win11Gregory A. Wilson and Bradley P. Beaulieu interview Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones for episode 65 of Speculate!, the Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans.

We kick off 2013 with an interview of author Howard Andrew Jones, who writes both original world novels and books set in Paizo‘s Pathfinder universe, adding to our ever-growing list of speculative fiction authors who enjoy gaming almost as much as they enjoy writing! We cover the influences on Howard’s work (including an abiding interest in 1,001 Arabian Nights), his fascination with the short story writer and novelist Harold Lamb, and the differences between writing an original world book like The Bones of the Old Ones and a shared world book like Plague of Shadows.

The interview covers a lot of ground — everything except, apparently, Howard’s growing herd of horses.

Gregory A. Wilson’s first novel, The Third Sign, was published by Five Star Press in 2009, and Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo and The Straits of Galahesh were published by Night Shade Books. Next episode, they talk about the state of the field with Michael Stackpole and Matt Forbeck.

Listen to the complete 38-minute podcast here.

Black Gate Online Fiction: “A Princess of Jadh” by Gregory Bierly

Black Gate Online Fiction: “A Princess of Jadh” by Gregory Bierly

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Princess of Jadh2Naome Amryth, Priestess of the Sea, battles the inevitability of dark prophecy — and worse things — in Gregory Bierly’s heroic adventure, a sword & sorcery tale in classic pulp style.

Pink dawn was on the mountains when Naome saw the first of the flying creatures. It paid her no notice, but flew on with speed along the curve of the coastline, toward Jadh.

Suddenly the sky was filled with the thump of fell wings. The grotesque creatures were some sort of winged baboon, but not like any seen on Earth. Each was as large as a horse, and great ram horns curled down from the crown of their massive foreheads. Savage yellow fangs overhung the jaws of these demons. The baboons flew with stupid purpose, ignoring one another and Naome’s boat as they rushed toward Jadh.

It was the most terrifying vision Naome had ever beheld. Nausea overcame her as she wondered if these hellspawn were searching for her. Thousands of baboon demons croaked overhead and Naome began to sense her doom, and that of Jadh, which she knew lay at the end of their mindless journey.

The last of the croaking horrors disappeared into the south. She trembled and wept, and then reversed course, paddling hard. She knew she would be late, far too late to give warning to her father and sisters. A demon host was coming to Jadh, and it was her fault entirely.

Greg Bierly is a climatologist, professor of geography and director of the honors program at Indiana State University. This is his first fiction sale.

You can see the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by E.E. Knight, John R. Fultz, Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, here.

“A Princess of Jadh” is a complete 13,000-word swords & sorcery novelette offered at no cost, with original art by Rachel Patterson.

Read the complete story here.

Oz’s Alembic: A Brief Introduction

Oz’s Alembic: A Brief Introduction

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DSCN0009
Photo taken by author at House on the Rock in Spring Green, WI

Hello, fellow connoisseurs of fantasy and horror, and welcome to the first installment of my yet-to-be titled Sunday blog. In a much earlier time of my life (and sometimes it seems like another life altogether), I was a youth pastor with aspirations to be a full-time preacher (for those who know me and are chuckling right now: yes, believe it or not), so perhaps it’s fitting that I’m on Sunday; this is my Sunday sermon.

In coming weeks, I’ll be jawing about everything from obscure fantasy comics (e.g. Arak, Son of Thunder) to the origin of seminal Dungeons and Dragons monsters (rust monster, anyone?) to the latest Hollywood blockbusters. My interests, even when limited to the boundaries of the fantasy genre, are broad.

But for this first installment, I’d like to share the perspective I bring to these topics. I’ll also share — briefly — my credentials, but I’ll keep that short and sweet, because too often that can devolve into sounding like you’re tooting your own horn (as my wife would say), which is why — a little insider fact of the trade here — most authors’ bios are in third person even though they’re usually written by the author.

My tastes always have been rather eclectic, but with fantasy and horror consistently predominant. My imagination is attracted to the peculiar slant, the odd angle, the ghost lurking in the corner of the dusty room. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were my early masters, and E.A. Poe and E.R. Burroughs. Later, H.P. Lovecraft pulled up a seat at the table, and R.E. Howard and T. Powers (all right, Tim. Enough with the initials!). And many others, from Hayao Miyazaki to Joss Whedon.

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