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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for the Creators of Outpost 13

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for the Creators of Outpost 13

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image001As you know, we here at Goth Chick News are great fans of the indy film industry and there’s nothing we love better than getting a peak behind the clapboard.  Well, there was that one intern who refused to watch any film that didn’t have a title soundtrack by Celine Dion, but oddly enough he got sent out to pick up a YooHoo for Scott Taylor on his second day and just never came back.

Funny that.

So you can imagine the excitement when Wyatt Weed (Pirate Pictures), Billy Hartzel and Corey Logsdon (State of Mind Productions) agreed to give Black Gate an exclusive look at their short film Outpost 13 before it launches into what will surely be an exciting journey.

Clearly recognizing a bandwagon headed down the yellow brick road of success, it was obvious the only thing to do was jump on.  But not before squeezing a little insider information out the boys on how they turned their creative imaginations into movie magic.

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Christopher Paul Carey on Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa

Christopher Paul Carey on Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa

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gods-of-opar2In July 2005, I was alerted to an amazing find: the partial manuscript and detailed outline to Philip José Farmer’s third Khokarsa novel had been located among the author’s files.

At the time, I was serving as editor of Farmerphile, an authorized, digest-sized magazine devoted to bringing into print rarities and previously unpublished material by Farmer, and so naturally I had been contacted by the magazine’s publisher, Michael Croteau, when the new Khokarsa material turned up.

I was a huge fan of the original two books in the cycle — Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) and Flight to Opar (1976) — considering them to be at the highest tier of Farmer’s adventure fiction, and it was with quivering fingers that I typed a reply to Mike’s email and requested a copy of the pages. When the photocopies promptly arrived, I was astounded. Here on an epic scale was the entire arc of what Farmer had planned for the third novel of the series, minus a few finishing touches where he had speculated on alternate courses for the story’s finale.

What’s more, the novel didn’t star Hadon, the duty-bound protagonist of the first two installments, but rather Hadon’s giant cousin Kwasin in all his larger-than-life stature — the wild, unrestrained antihero of the series, who was last seen on stage in Hadon of Ancient Opar, swinging his massive ax of meteoritic iron against impossible odds to give Hadon and his companions a chance to escape the forces of the power-hungry King Minruth.

It was a story that I instantly knew needed to be told — the conclusion to a trilogy for which Farmer’s fans had been waiting almost thirty years.

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New Treasures: R.A. Salvatore’s War of the Spider Queen

New Treasures: R.A. Salvatore’s War of the Spider Queen

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war-of-the-spider-queenAh, the lure of the fat fantasy novel. There’s really nothing quite like it.

Yes, I love short fiction and, by extension, I love short novels. But when you really fall in love with a book or series, nothing satisfies like a volume that weighs as much as a phone book.

Which is why I was delighted when two fat fantasy compendiums landed on my doorstep this week: R.A. Salvatore’s War of the Spider Queen, Volume I and Volume II.

These aren’t written by R.A. Salvatore.  You can tell because his name is in the title. R.A. Salvatore created the popular character Drizzt Do’Urden and has written nearly two dozen novels featuring the drow ranger, several of them best-sellers. War of the Spider Queen returns to Drizzt Do’Urden’s homeland, the Underdark, to spin a tale of a ragged band of four dark elves on a desperate quest to find Lloth, drow goddess and the demon Queen of Spiders, and save their subterranean city of Menzoberranzan and the entire dark elf race.

The two-volume War of the Spider Queen collects all six novels: Dissolution by Richard Lee Byers, Insurrection by Thomas M. Reid, Condemnation by Richard Baker, Extinction by Lisa Smedman, Annihilation by Philip Athans, and Resurrection by Paul S. Kemp. All were published between 2002 and 2005, with R.A. Salvatore overseeing the development of the entire series.

These are handsome and satisfactorily hefty volumes. I took them out and photographed them on the bricks of my front patio, so you can get a sense of their size. (Click on the image above to get a bigger version).

Volume I contains the first three novels; it is 1,074 pages for $15.95 in trade paperback. Volume II gathers the last three; it is 1,076 pages for $15.95. Both have cover art by Brom. They are published by Wizards of the Coast and are now available.

Art of the Genre: The Art of a Future Fallen

Art of the Genre: The Art of a Future Fallen

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Looks like all those A-bombs sure cleaned up the air... but they also left some strange mutations...
Looks like all those A-bombs sure cleaned up the air... but they also left some strange mutations...

I grew up under the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Perhaps I’m not a child who was taught to jump under their desk when the nuke hit like those of the 50s, but I watched and wondered as President Reagan threatened the Soviet Union with Star Wars and certainly found some perverted joy in watching moves like The Day After and Threads.

At one point, I was thoroughly convinced I’d die in a nuclear attack well before I ever had sex. It’s true, and I even broke down and admitted as much to my mother who assured me that would not be the case. Still, how could she know? Did she control the secret briefcase with the red button that launched mutually assured destruction like the President? I think not! But alas, doomsday never came… and once again mothers everywhere were proved wise in the face of their twelve year-old children.

Still, my fascination with that A-bomb only grew once I started playing D&D in the early 80s. By the time I had a functional relationship with the rules of the game, probably 8th Grade, I began crafting my own post-apocalyptic RPG called ‘Future Warrior’.

I very much wish I could share some of the covers for that game with you, but they’ve found their way into storage (a tragedy, I know). Still, I had a core rulebook and four distinct supplements for the game all under my first LLC moniker RST Hobbies, which is of course the reverse of TSR. (Note: RST are my initials, Roger Scott Taylor, which isn’t the only odd connection I have to TSR because I also share a birthday, July 27th, with Gary Gygax)

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Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Snow White and the Huntsman

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Snow White and the Huntsman

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snow_white_and_the_huntsman_posterSummer movies, like boxes of Crackerjacks (does anyone still eat those? I never see them for sale any more), come packed with surprises. And, like Crackerjacks toys, often they are lame surprises. Let-downs. Occasionally — and it usually happens only once per summer — the toy you dig out of the same-old same-old caramel and peanut glop is a Hot Wheels car with flame details and killer sci-fi spoilers that somebody in the Crackerjack plant accidentally dropped into the box while leaving hastily for a smoke break.

Snow White and the Huntsmen is one of those positive summer surprises. I hope it isn’t the last “Hot Wheels” shock of the season, but in the month-long lull that followed the boffo fun of The Avengers, I’ll take it and cling to it.

A high-fantasy film like Snow White and the Huntsman (the ampersand only appears on publicity material) should not be a hard-sell to Black Gate readers. But the marketing and trailers pushed hard to get the Twilight fan-base to show up, so fantasy lovers pegged it early on as “not for us.” But it is! The Twilight viewers will love it, but they’ll like it for the same reasons other viewers will: it’s a broad-appealing, well-constructed, marvelous-looking, fun fantasy romp.

And, if it were not for a major casting blunder, I could easily see myself adding Snow White and the Huntsman to my Blu-ray shelf the week it comes out. I still will purchase it, but a few months after its street-date when I can get a bargain on it used.

The unpleasant truth is the piece of miscasting is monumental: the first of the two title characters, the figure who gives her name to the legend. My dear Snow White. Played in a perpetual coma by Kristen Stewart.

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Announcing the Winner of Thunder in the Void from Haffner Press!

Announcing the Winner of Thunder in the Void from Haffner Press!

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thunder-in-the-voidThanks to all those who entered our contest to win a copy of Thunder in the Void, compliments of Haffner Press.

We asked our readers to submit the title of an imaginary Space Opera tale in honor of Henry Kuttner, whose imagination produced the stories in Thunder in the Void: “War-Gods of the Void,” “Raider of the Spaceways,” “We Guard the Black Planet,” “Crypt-City of the Deathless Ones,” the previously unpublished “The Interplanetary Limited,” and many more.

Here are the 13 finalists, as chosen by judges John O’Neill, C.S.E. Cooney, and Howard Andrew Jones:

“The Werehounds of Autumn Zero,” Daniel Eness
“Lamentations of a Dying Empire,” Mark Zuchowski
“Nightmare at Lightspeed,” Michael Rogers
“In the Clutches of the Gear-God,” Jason Thummel
“It Was Born In A Black Hole,” Dave Ritzlin
“Dark as a Nova, Slow as Light,” Martin PaweÅ
“Miss Manners and the Andromedan Royal Court,” Barbara Barrett
“Demon of the Farthest Star,” Ryan Rollins
“The Pirate Priestess of Pallas,” Mike Brown
“The Starfarers of Zaurak,” Shedrick Pittman-Hassett
“Vortex Raiders of Krygon-9,” Stephen Blount
“Purple Priestess of the Citadel of the Snake-Men,” Amy Farmer

After much discussion, pondering, and hand-to-hand combat, the judges managed to whittle the choices down to three finalists:

“It Was Born In A Black Hole,” Dave Ritzlin
“Demon of the Farthest Star,” Ryan Rollins
“The Pirate Priestess of Pallas,” Mike Brown

However, there can be only one winner — because we have only one copy of the book, and we forgot to come up with second prizes. So the judges were secluded until they managed to agree on a winner, and that winner is…

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Sean Stiennon Reviews Dark Jenny

Sean Stiennon Reviews Dark Jenny

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darkjennyDark Jenny
Alex Bledsoe
Tor ($14.99, trade paperback, 352 pages, April 2011)
Reviewed by Sean T. M. Stiennon

Readers new to Alex Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse series should brace themselves for culture shock, because while the book is set in a medieval world, all the characters have distinctly un-medieval names and mannerisms.  Be prepared for Gary, Eddie, Liz, and Angie to appear in the first few pages.  In keeping with their anachronistic names, all the characters speak in a modern conversational style.  Swords are referred to by make and model, like cars.

It’s a dramatic choice on Bledsoe’s part that will leave many readers feeling alienated, but I think it works.  The novels are hard-boiled crime fiction just as much as they are fantasy, and the casual style means that Bledsoe can give his hero Eddie a dry wit that requires no translation to be funny.  It also gives the story a freshness that the setting, which is your stand low-fantasy budget medieval, tends to lack.

For my part, I found that once I got past the anachronisms (first in The Sword-Edged Blonde, now in Dark Jenny), I was thoroughly captivated by the raw strength of Bledsoe’s writing and story-telling, and found myself with a book that seemed to stick to my fingers.

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The Best of Modern Arabian Fantasy, Part IV: C.A. Suleiman

The Best of Modern Arabian Fantasy, Part IV: C.A. Suleiman

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l_088dd4c6077242c28afe05231683df1d-300x
C.A. Suleiman (center) with his band, Toll Carom

I met C.A. Suleiman online as I was working on this Best of Modern Arabian fantasy series. While Colin is not the only person of Middle Eastern descent I’ve interviewed, he is the first to appear.

A writer, musician, and game designer, Colin has built many worlds and milieus, many of which are inspired and informed by his Middle Eastern heritage. It was fascinating to discuss modern Arabian fantasy with a modern Arab-American.

Read on to hear his thoughts on this increasingly popular subgenre.

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Yes, The New Yorker

Yes, The New Yorker

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the-new-yorker-science-fiction-issue2This week’s issue of The New Yorker (yes, The New Yorker!) is a science fiction issue, featuring fiction by Jonathan Lethem, Jennifer Egan, and Junot Diaz, among others.

Here’s the complete table of contents.  Now you can have your science fiction fix and feel literary about it at the same time.