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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Eight – “The Shrine of the Seven Lamps”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Eight – “The Shrine of the Seven Lamps”

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sifanmys2hand-original3“The Shrine of the Seven Lamps” was the eighth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on April 21, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 30 – 33 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The Shrine of the Seven Lamps” picks up the story five months after the events related in the previous installments. This narrative gap proved fortuitous for those who have helped to keep the characters alive after Sax Rohmer’s passing by affording continuation authors an opportunity to craft additional titles set during the classic early years of the series. Dr. Petrie begins the account having concluded settling the estate of a recently-deceased relative. Petrie is returning to London by rail and happens to share a berth with a beautiful and mysterious Eurasian girl. Everything about his silent traveling companion – her eyes, her skin, her perfume – leave Petrie intoxicated. Tellingly, the woman’s beauty and unique eyes evoke memories of both Petrie’s beloved Karamaneh and the insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. The overpowering mental force Petrie feels invading his mind and fighting to master his will likewise recalls the Devil Doctor. While Petrie feels an understandable sense of relief when this fascinating woman departs the train with her silent and menacing African servants, the reader is positive that Petrie has not seen the last of her.

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Goth Chick News: Just When I Thought It Would Be a Slow News Week…

Goth Chick News: Just When I Thought It Would Be a Slow News Week…

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image0044This time of year is always a bit slow around the Goth Chick News room.

The interns have all gone home for the holidays to convince their parents that working here isn’t the harbinger of a career spent flipping burgers.  The staff is woozy from several days of celebrating and let’s face it; reporting too many stories about projectile vomiting eventually gets old, even for me.

And with the Western world taken over, temporarily at least, with a general feeling of happiness and good will, news of the Goth Chick variety is pretty scarce.

So just when I was about to give in to a bout of shameless self-promotion by presenting you with a “Goth Chick’s Best of 2011” recap, the Brits came through.

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Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part Two, Angus McBride [1931-2007]

Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part Two, Angus McBride [1931-2007]

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It’s the day after Christmas here in L.A. as I write this, the office quiet, but I felt like going in anyway and getting some work done. Perhaps it was because yesterday, after a wonderful feast of turkey, potatoes, and all the fixings, I took a walk with the family three miles from my home out onto the Palos Verdes peninsula. This walk, in seventy degree temperatures with a slight easterly breeze and done in shorts and a T-shirt, held an immense amount of physical beauty.

With a cloudless azure sky, and a tranquil ocean all the way to the mountainous shadows of Catalina Island, the channel is was an epic vista. Still, what strikes a writer’s soul is often the movement of it all, the flights of pelicans looking like pteranodons sailing at eye level as you walk atop the hundred foot bluffs that drop into the whitewater curls of water churning below. If you look down into the kelp fields further out from the breakers you can spy the blazing orange Garibaldi, the state fish of California, as they shine under the waves amid the deep green strands, and further out into the endless blue go the whales.

Gray’s this time of year, majestic and high breaching, they spew mist into the air in pods traveling south, their monstrous tales fully lifted from the waves before plunging down once more into the depths.

It’s a stirring event, these migrations, and as I went home I couldn’t help but think about my next article and how the artist I’d be featuring had first seen and been moved by similar events, this time humpbacks, off the western cape of South Africa.

This gift of nature, and having shared his life between England and Africa, helped shape an artist who transitioned from full-time historical military drawer to the role of visionary painter in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

So, today I bring you the next part of my argument as to why the Middle-Earth Role Playing game is the most beautiful RPG ever made.

PART TWO:

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The Natural History of Unicorns

The Natural History of Unicorns

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natural-history-of-unicornsThe Natural History of Unicorns (2009)
By Chris Lavers

Some book titles can grab you across a room and demand your money. Such was the case with The Natural History of Unicorns, which I discovered not in a bookstore, but in a curio shop in San Francisco specializing in . . . actually, I have no idea what the store was really selling, except that it was next to the Pirate Supply Store (no joke, this exists, although principally to fund a writing workshop in the back) and the excellent science-fiction and fantasy bookstore Borderlands. A bit of both stores rubbed off onto this one, and so in the midst of taxidermy snakes was this book promising to tell me the Natural History of a fantasy animal. Immediate sell.

Well, almost immediate. I did check to see that the book was not crazy pseudo-science making the claim that the fantasy version of the unicorn was real and scientists were refusing to admit the truth. But the book appeared to be exactly what I wanted: a multi-discipline exploration of the development and evolution of the unicorn legend.

On the surface, the unicorn is the simplest of fantastic creatures: a horse with a single horn jutting from its forehead. Of course something like that might exist! There are plenty of horned hoofed animals, a unicorn isn’t much of a stretch.

But the unicorn carries a trainload of baggage behind it: a symbol of spirituality and Christianity, emblem of British royalty, symbol of virgin purity, a creature in roleplaying games, icon of New Age thinking, and decoration on a third-grade girl’s wall. The unicorn is indeed, as legend has often claimed, tough to hunt and harder catch.

Chris Lavers, a lecturer in natural history at the University of Nottingham, writes in a friendly, humorous style that feels like an Oxford professor during the off-hours entertaining guests around the fire with brandy in ample supply. In places, Lavers seems to channel Avram Davidson and his Adventures in Unhistory, although not quite as obtusely or wittily. (Davidson’s book has a chapter on unicorns, by the by.) The book makes for fast nonfiction reading, although Lavers does go off on a dull detour from his topic in the center of the book, occasionally relies too heavily on long quotations, and fails to explore an important avenue of unicorn history that I hoped to learn more about.

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Osprey Adventures

Osprey Adventures

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teutonic-knightWhat if one day you woke up and found yourself in charge of a publishing imprint?

You had financial backing, the support of an experienced production and marketing team, and a wide-open remit. You also had the weight of a lot of expectation.

Well, about a month ago, this happened to me.

My name is Joseph McCullough, which some of you may recognize from Black Gate. At various times I have worked as an author and an assistant editor for the magazine, and I continue to be a fan and supporter.

I have also recently been made the Project Manager for Osprey Adventures, an imprint of Osprey Publishing.

I mentioned my new position to John O’Neill, and he kindly invited me to write a series of blogs about my experiences in the publishing world, and my trials and tribulations as I attempt to bring some new, fun, semi-fantasy books to market.

For those who don’t know, Osprey Publishing is arguably the most famous publisher of military history in the English language.

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Some Xmas Cheer from Apex Magazine

Some Xmas Cheer from Apex Magazine

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cover-kindleThis month’s Apex Magazine features E.E. Knight’s essay on holiday-themed movies, with a couple of odd picks. Other things you might want read after finishing your gift wrapping (or your bah-humbumbing) include fiction by Christopher Barzak, Sarah Monette and Michael Pevzner’s first professional sale.  Poetry by Sandi Leibowitz and F.J. Bergmann and an interview with Jennifer Pelland.

This and more of the Lynne M. Thomas edited on-line publication can be found here.

Whether you believe in Santa or not, happy holidays.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Ki-Ming”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Ki-Ming”

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hand-pyramid4hand-original2“Ki-Ming” was the seventh installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on March 3, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 27 – 29 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“Ki-Ming” starts off with Dr. Petrie burning the midnight oil one night working on his account of his and Nayland Smith’s recent exploits which he has entitled, The Si-Fan Mysteries. Petrie notes that Smith has gone to the theater for the night with visiting friends from Burma. Like Poe’s anonymous narrator of “The Raven,” Petrie is disturbed by a repeated tapping at his window for which he fails to discover the origin. Throwing the window open, Petrie peers down into the street and hears the tapping now coming from the front door. Rushing downstairs without puzzling over why his late visitor has not rung the doorbell, he stops to arm himself. He throws open the door and steps into a trap as a pair of dacoits lie concealed on either side of the door and a third (having entered through the open upstairs window) has followed him downstairs. Petrie is quickly bound and a bag filled with hashish is tied over his head.

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The Night Before Christmas at Black Gate

The Night Before Christmas at Black Gate

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christmas-at-black-gate

Twas the night before Christmas, with manuscripts read,
The staffers at Black Gate all crouched in their beds.
The cell phones were silent, not one keyboard clicked,
And all there played possum, awaiting St. Nick.

Good children slept soundly, with wish letters written,
Sure Santa would make with that puppy or kitten.
But the staffers at Black Gate were naughty it’s said
So they set up an ambush for Santa instead.

But what had they done, what virtues did lag,
That Santa would shun them and keep all their swag?
And drive them to hatch such nefarious ploys,
Such as waylaying Santa and snatching his toys?

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21 Questions for Ty Franck

21 Questions for Ty Franck

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Ty Franck being hugged by Jen Taylor
I first met Ty Franck online, then in person at LosCon, and we’ve been friends ever since. He blames me for a lot of things that have happened in his life, but the truth is he warps the forces of space, time, and luck to create his own mini-universe with its own rules, as you’ll see from the interview below. My story of Ty that I think gives the most accurate impression of the kind of guy he is, is one he’s probably tired of hearing me tell. But it bears retelling.

Years ago he was held up at gunpoint at his workplace, after hours. Gangsters broke in, cut the phone lines, and tied up both him and another woman who was working late. Ty managed to keep talking to get the gangsters off guard, and then when they left the room, his coworker untied him and he used the company’s internet (which wasn’t connected to the phone lines) to message another office, who in turn called 911.

Yes, this is a true story, but I haven’t gotten to the most unbelievable part yet. After the police arrived and sat Ty down for questioning. The dialogue went something like this:

“What can you tell us about your attackers?”

“Well, they were armed with a Glock 40.”

“So you know guns, then?”

“No, not really.”

“But you know Glocks?”

“No.”

“So how do you know it was a Glock 40?”

“Because they were holding it about here-” Ty mimes having a gun held to his forehead “-and you could read it on the side. It said, Glock 40.”

Ty would be my first choice of friend to have around during the zombie apocalypse. I call dibs.

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Art of the Genre: What came first, the writer or the artist?

Art of the Genre: What came first, the writer or the artist?

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As I walked into the office today Ryan Harvey was talking Avengers with Kandi at the front desk, a figurine of Captain America in his hand and a smile on his face. Now, for any of you who don’t know, Cap isn’t my favorite super hero. I’m not saying I dislike Cap, but when it comes to heroes, and the Avengers in particular, my personal hero is Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.

Ryan, for his part, can’t stand Iron Man, so the office is often a place of contention between the two heroes, and with this new movie coming out the debate has been taken up a notch.

Still, there’s an interesting note about both heroes, and that is the depth in which people are vested in them. Comic book characters, by their very nature, should inspire people to both discuss and enjoy what lies beneath the costume even more than what happens while the person is in it.

Some might argue that comics are about the art, and there have been times when this was abundantly true, but the hard reality is that at their core it’s really the story that matters. In the world of comics, everything America knows and loves about its heroes was the creation of a writer, the art involved that helped galvanize their place in our subconscious a simple technicolor window-dressing that was added later to an already solid foundation, or so I would contend.

Walking by Ryan, I lifted his Captain America figure from his hand, unceremoniously dumped it in the trash, and then went into my office to write the beginnings of a tale I hope you’ll all find interesting. Now granted, I’m biased here, but since no one jumped up to storyboard this particular piece, it will have to stand on the words alone [although there are pictures… there are always pictures, because John O’Neill once told me that if you want readers for your blog you need to include lots of images because people love them… go figure.]

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