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Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Seventeen – “Queen Desira”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Seventeen – “Queen Desira”

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queendesiragunqueendesira2“Queen Desira” was the seventeenth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between January 4 and June 14, 1942, “Queen Desira” gets off to a rollicking start with Colonel Gordon called to a meeting with the Defense Department in Washington DC. The US needs Dr. Zarkov’s ray beams for national defense (a subtle reference to the Second World War that the US had recently entered), but the radium shortage prevents the realization of the project. Flash and Zarkov convince the Defense Department to allow them to build a rocketship to return to Mongo to mine more radium. Flash tells Dale that he is going off on a secret mission, but cannot tell her where. Suspicious, Dale pays a visit to Zarkov and snoops around his house for clues. Confronting him with the truth, Zarkov admits their mission is to return to Mongo. Dale pleads with Zarkov to take her with him and he agrees to smuggle her aboard the rocketship in a trunk.

Reunited at last, Flash is overjoyed to have Dale with him once more. However, they experience electrical problems once in Mongo’s orbit and the rocketship is forced to crashland on the uncharted continent of Tropica. Zarkov is seriously injured in the crash. The three of them are soon taken captive by soldiers and come face to face with the exotic Queen Desira of Tropica. Don Moore expands Flash’s backstory a bit by making the renowned polo player a former college football star while Alex Raymond’s artwork is as stunning as ever. His depiction of Dale in this installment may be the most beautiful rendition yet. Desira is portrayed more in the tradition of H. Rider Haggard’s She or Edgar Rice Burroughs’ La of Opar rather than Raymond’s Princess Aura. Burne Hogarth’s run illustrating the Tarzan strip may be the only serious rival that Raymond had at this juncture. The artwork is absolutely gorgeous throughout.

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Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon

Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon

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bgthroneThrone of the Crescent Moon
Saladin Ahmed
DAW Hardcover (288 pp, $24.95, February 7th 2012)

So, I got Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon in the mail yesterday.

By dinnertime, after the longest bath in history (getting out would’ve meant stopping reading) and an afternoon of dissolute lounging (moving from my mattress would’ve meant stopping reading), I finished the thing. O the exclamations of delight! O the Facebook status updates!

It is quite possible, although I make no sworn confession, that I took up Throne in my own two hands, with its slick dust jacket – art by Jason Chan featuring dervish (complete with a two-pronged blade “in order to cleave right from wrong”), ghul hunter (with his blazing white kaftan that will not stain), Badawi warrior girl (awesome, green-eyed, growling, rude, and frickin’ Angel-touched too – which you have to like in a girl) and buncha vile bone ghuls with terrifyingly unsanitary teeth – and with this glossily just-read book spun ‘round and ‘round my kitchen, making noises that perhaps ought not to be approximated in print.

I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this novel.

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Goth Chick News: I’m Feeling a Little Anxious, If You Know What I Mean

Goth Chick News: I’m Feeling a Little Anxious, If You Know What I Mean

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image0022And the amazing movie news just keeps coming.

Okay, so maybe Hollywood is seeing the lowest ticket sales in their collective history and perhaps that has caused a lack of story-line creativity.

However, if we’re going to need to sit through some things more than once, at least money-guys know what keeps us coming back.

This is a fine example.

Today I am as thrilled as I ever get to report that after more than a 20-year hiatus, one of my favorite characters (and Goth Chick dream date) Beetlejuice is finally returning to the big screen.

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Michelle Muto talks Corpses, Deceased Protagonists, and Old Fashioned Piracy

Michelle Muto talks Corpses, Deceased Protagonists, and Old Fashioned Piracy

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pb092291-copyMichelle Muto has never properly observed Talk Like a Pirate Day, but can tell you how a human body decomposes. She managed to get that information out of city workers without having them turn her in to the police or psych ward. After a time with a large literary agency that decided, ultimately, that her work was too much like another client’s and thus they could not represent her, she took the plunge and became an indie writer, and I am so glad she did.

I discovered her first by reading five star review after five star review of her book, Don’t Fear the Reaper, and by the time I got around to reading it, knew immediately that I wanted to meet and get to know the author who wrote it. She kindly agreed to let me interview her.

Oh, and she should know how to talk like a pirate because she’s a direct descendant of William Howard. So it’s obvious right? Okay, maybe not. He was Blackbeard’s quartermaster.

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Art of the Genre: Remember folks, The Hobbit is a Children’s Novel!

Art of the Genre: Remember folks, The Hobbit is a Children’s Novel!

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Ok, so I’m reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, probably for the 4th time in my life. I mean, at this point, who isn’t reading it? With the new Peter Jackson film coming to theaters near you, anyone who loves the book is probably going back for another helping to refresh themselves as to why it made such an impact on their lives in the first place.

I’ve been following the Jackson blogs on the subject, seen the video footage and trailers, and am anxiously anticipating the release, but I can’t help wonder where the true ‘wonder’ went? You see, The Hobbit, for all intents and purpose is a YA novel, and no I’m not talking about stuff like Twilight or the last 5 Harry Potter books, but something more whimsical and genuinely fun.

Tolkien narrates The Hobbit, and that in itself creates a children’s magic in the tale as it distances you from the reality of it all and keeps everyone listening to it safe by an imagined fire and at the knee of a loving parent. He keeps the bulk of the tale light, and combat is reserved for times best suited to drive a point home while not featuring the violence of the scene.

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“Farewell to Tyrn” and Notes on Self-Publishing for the First Time

“Farewell to Tyrn” and Notes on Self-Publishing for the First Time

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farewell-to-tyrn-cover-500x667I’m taking a one-week break from Mars to do some shameless self-promotion, which I promise will be over quickly so I can regale you with a personal story. The Warlord of Mars next week, I promise.

I entered the realm of e-book publishing this week with my novelette “Farewell to Tyrn.” It is available for 99¢ at Amazon.com for the Kindle, and at Smashwords for all other e-reader formats (including vanilla plain text, which I find cool in a low-tech way).

“Farewell to Tyrn” is the second story released in my science-fantasy setting of Ahn-Tarqa. The first is my Writers of the Future-winning piece “An Acolyte of Black Spires.” Two more Ahn-Tarqa stories, “The Sorrowless Thief” and “Stand at Dubun-Geb,” are slated to appear in upcoming issues of Black Gate, so if you want to get a sense of the world, you can start with “Farewell to Tyrn.”

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Steampunk Spotlight: Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker

Steampunk Spotlight: Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker

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boneshaker3One of the most popular steampunk books of the last few years, Boneshaker (Amazon, B&N) melded some of the most popular genre elements of steampunk and the zombie apocalypse wave of fiction. In this review from Black Gate #15, I commented that the book was a little action-heavy, full of zombie chases that didn’t always translate well on the printed page. I compared it to a George Romero film … and it turns out that someone took that to heart, because it’s being made into a film. I don’t normally go to zombie movies, but I’ll definitely make an exception for this one, which may well be the most visually-stunning zombie film ever.

Boneshaker

Cherie Priest
Tor (416 pp, $15.99, 2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

Steampunk is traditionally set in a Victorian urban environment, with a veneer of gentility that covers a darker underbelly. And steampunk almost always includes airships (or at least flying bicycles)… often with air pirates in tow.

The weird west mythos, on the other hand, represents the frontier. While technology is usually central to steampunk, the weird west is often defined by some sort of monster (frequently zombies), but these elements can cross genres. The 1999 Will Smith film Wild Wild West featured a flying bicycle and a giant robotic spider, firmly placing it in the camp of steampunk by most accounts, but containing many weird west elements.

Boneshaker takes many of these staples, puts them in a blender, and sets to mix. It is set in a modified 1880’s Seattle, which has been walled off because a gas drifting out of the ground turns people into zombies.

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New Treasures: Armchair Fiction

New Treasures: Armchair Fiction

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girl-who-loved-deathI stumbled on the new line of Armchair Fiction science fiction and horror reprints late last year, and finally ordered a few in December.

Armchair claims they’re “dedicated to the restoration of classic genre fiction,” and they mean it. So far they’ve published 39 “Double Novels” — two short novels packaged together, modeled after the fondly-remembered Ace Doubles from the 50s and 60s — plus 15 single novels, and six short story collections.

Much of what they’ve publishing has been out of print for decades, including work from Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, Robert Sheckley, Mack Reynolds, Jerome Bixby, Keith Laumer, Edgar Pangborn, Richard S. Shaver, Robert A. W. Lowndes, Leigh Brackett, Raymond F. Jones, Poul Anderson, and many others.

When a vintage press is inclusive enough to reprint the work of Richard S. Shaver, author of the infamous “Shaver Mysteries,” you know they’re serious. Trust me.

I’ve been very pleased with the books I’ve received so far — they’re quality productions, probably print-on-demand, although POD has gotten so polished these days I can’t even be sure. They’re glossy paperbacks, with excellent cover reproductions (most taken from 50s SF magazine covers and Ace Doubles), about the size of a trade paperback, and reasonably priced at $12.95.

They have 15 new releases for Winter 2012, including fiction from Clifford D. Simak, Rog Phillips, Stanton A. Coblentz, Jack Sharkey, Edmond Hamilton, Frank Belknap Long, Don Wilcox, and other neglected science fiction and horror writers.

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Black Static #26

Black Static #26

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black-static-26Black Gate contributor Mark Rigney’s story, “The Demon Laplace,” inspires the cover art by Rik Rawling for the December 2011-January 2012 Black Static. A variation of the “be careful what you wish for” trope, Rigney’s protagonist, Alan, is a 27 year-old postal worker whose lackluster love life has him worrying that he’ll never find someone to settle down with or, worse, he’ll settle for whoever might come along.  Then he meets mercurial Michael Wish (ostensibly short for Wyczniewski), a postal colleague of Alan’s who is taking a break from grad studies in statistics.  Michael in Hebrew means “he who is like god” and who better than a god to grant wishes; unless, that is, the god is really a devil.

Further complicating the picture is whether mathematics can actually predict future behavior (if you aren’t familiar with Laplace’s equation, Google can explain it for you).  After a series of what could be clever parlor tricks, an initially dubious Alan comes to invest god-like powers in Michael when the prediction that Alan will marry the next woman he talks to comes true.

The question is does it come true because Michael actually can predict the future or is it because Alan is so thorough convinced of Michael’s prestidigitation that he acts to make it true? Knowing, or at least believing, that someone can foretell future events leads to Alan’s obsession with finding out what he should do next. Problem is, Michael disavows that he was really doing anything more than “messing” with Alan:

“You little jackass. You want what really happened. Fine. When we met, sorting mail? That was a break from grad school–statistics,yes, probability curves — but I was halfway through my thesis, I was bored stiff, and I needed some kind of inspiration. Turns out what I needed was a live. unsuspecting subject. And there you were, a walking tabula rosa, just going with the flow…You fell for everything I said, hook, line and sinker. There. Is that what you came to hear?

4081Problem is, that’s not what Alan came to hear. Which results in tragedy (you are reading a dark horror magazine so why would you expect anything less?) that may, or may not, have been easily foreseen.

In your future I see some interesting reading ahead.

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Sixteen – “Return to Earth”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Sixteen – “Return to Earth”

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fg6fg5“Return to Earth” was the sixteenth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between July 6 and December 28, 1941, “Return to Earth” is the first storyline following the conclusion of the Mongo storyline that had carried the strip through its first seven years. The journey back to Earth takes six days. Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov crash land in the Atlantic Ocean and are picked up by a US Navy Destroyer. Rather than receiving the heroes’ homecoming they anticipated, they find they are treated with suspicion. The government fears that they might be Fifth Column agents of the totalitarian Red Sword regime (Alex Raymond’s commentary on 20th Century Fascism) whose aggression has led to a Second World War.

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