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Goth Chick News: Outpost 13 – A Very Early Peek at a New Film from Pirate Pictures

Goth Chick News: Outpost 13 – A Very Early Peek at a New Film from Pirate Pictures

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image010Welcome to the Cool Kids Club; you’ve officially arrived.

How do I know?

Because uber-edgy indy film maker Wyatt Weed (Pirate Pictures) has decided that Black Gate is where he wants to leak a little insider information about his upcoming sci-fi release, Outpost 13.

I’ve seen an amazing secret clip which I can’t share just yet, but allow me to assure you that snotty posers would never be allowed this kind of access.

I begged, pleaded and finally promised Wyatt that I’d send him my personal copy of Black Gate 15 (hey John, you’re not going to charge me for a replacement copy are you?) and he agreed to sneak us a little information about the project, along with some production stills.

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This Page is Half Empty: The Five Horsemen of Literary Apocalypse

This Page is Half Empty: The Five Horsemen of Literary Apocalypse

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428px-durer_revelation_four_riders1Right now, as I type this — and as you read it — I’ve got a new manuscript half done. For a writer, this is sort of like me saying that at this very moment I’m not wearing anything under all of my clothing. Well, duh, most people are thinking, while trying to not involuntarily imagine me naked. For writers, the thought continues, there’s always the current project.

The process of forging the first draft is much like any other relationship between the mind and the will. Romance, for instance. There’s the initial flare of interest, the slower “getting to know you” stage, and a much longer “I know you, now” period. These are all easy to navigate, because they are exciting and interesting. They are effortless, and writers know the feeling of a Work-In-Progress crush.

But this infatuation period cannot last. While in it, there’s always the potential that your feelings are mercurial, diaphanous dream-fluff that make no sense when you try to go deeper. To your shock, you realize that perhaps your burning love isn’t the stuff of ages, but mere puppy love. Your ardor has brought you no glamour, but instead made those around you somewhat uncomfortable, hoping, for your sake, that it will all end soon without you getting hurt too badly.

Am I just a puppy-lover? you find yourself asking.

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Art of the Genre: The DM Screen

Art of the Genre: The DM Screen

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When it comes to RPG art, there’re certainly a good number of pieces that will stick out in player’s minds for any number of reasons. Some of us remember images we based characters off of, some fell in love with representations of beautiful women, and others used specific books so much that the cover images turned into old friends.

The beginning of everything great in a gamer's life
The beginning of everything great in a gamer's life

Still, I believe that there is one particular set of RPG images that wedge themselves heavily in the mind of ALL gamers, and those are found on the reverse side of DM Screens. I don’t care what generation or edition of the game you’ve played, as a player you’ve spent countless hours staring at the art on those screens.

Truly, even if you’re not an ‘art guy,’ you’ve managed to study details in the images on those screens you’d never have noticed otherwise. The characters depicted are memories burned into your subconscious like a kind of Pavlovian conditioning, even a glance at those images giving rise to the urge to game no matter how many years you’ve been away from the table.

I started playing D&D Basic, which of course had no screens, but when I met my oldest gaming friend, Mark, I was introduced to a DM’s screen for the first time and the rest is history.

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Vincent N. Darlage reviews Age of Cthulhu: Death in Luxor

Vincent N. Darlage reviews Age of Cthulhu: Death in Luxor

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gmg7001coverlargeIf you’re in the mood for some good horror encounters with the dark forces of the Great Old Ones, then the new Age of Cthulhu line from Goodman Games may be of interest.  Vincent Darlage reviewed the first installment in this set of game modules. (Links to other Cthulhu resources at the bottom of this post.)

Age of Cthulhu: Death in Luxor

by Harley Stroh
Goodman Games (48 pp. Softcover, $12.99)
Reviewed by Vincent N. Darlage

This time, intrepid investigators are on the hunt for things man was not meant to know in Egypt, rather than Arkham or Dunwich – a nice change, so far as I’m concerned. A Lovecraftian horror is locked beneath Luxor in Egypt, and is unleashed, bringing with it a new era of darkness that will blast all of mankind, unless the intrepid player characters can stop it. The adventure is heavily focused on investigation, not on combat, which was nice to see.

The finding of the clues and the free-form nature worked well for me; Luxor doesn’t seem to railroad the players much, if at all. I especially liked the investigation summary on page four. The summary goes through each scene and lays out in a few sentences what is revealed and where it leads. For a free-form adventure, this is essential as it details which scenes have which clues. More adventures need to do things like this. …

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A Review of City of Bones by Martha Wells

A Review of City of Bones by Martha Wells

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city-of-bonesCity of Bones by Martha Wells
Tor Books (383 pages, hardcover, June 1995)

It’s always fun to find a fantasy book that isn’t based on medieval Europe. City of Bones, by Martha Wells, is advertised as a story which draws on the Arabian Nights, and it does not have genies and magic lamps, but certainly brave thieves and dangerous deserts. It also contains a little bit of steampunk and a post-apocalyptic element.

Our hero Khat is a relic dealer, which is to say, a shady and unlicensed archeologist-for-profit. It seems that long ago, the world was wetter and cooler and more hospitable, and artifacts from that time have great value — not to mention, very occasionally, magic powers. Now, most of the world is covered by a rocky desert called the Waste. Khat is a krisman, a hardy marsupial humanoid who is well-adapted to the Waste, but reviled in most cities. Charisat, where he lives, may be one of the richest trading cities in the world, but it’s a cruel and hierarchical place.

Khat and most of the people he knows are noncitizens, and they take it for granted that they have very few rights. They aren’t even permitted to use “real” money, just tokens that serve the same purpose. Khat and his associates are very careful never to speak of buying artifacts; they barter for them. Even using the word “buying” could bring the Trade Inspectors down on them, and if the Trade Inspectors take them away, they won’t be coming back.

This tension between the powerful and the powerless is one of the driving forces of the story. When Khat is hired by a Patrician to help explore a nearby ruin, he takes it as read that he’ll probably be betrayed. It only becomes worse when he realizes that the Patrician is actually a Warder, a law enforcer who uses sanity-destroying magic. Khat becomes more and more involved in events, but he never entirely trusts any of his companions, even fellow relic dealer Sagai, his long-time partner. His paranoia is at least partly justified.

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The Meta-Reality of Fandom

The Meta-Reality of Fandom

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Did I say I was an unapologetic geek? My wife, Amber, offered our son to a dragon at GenCon!
Did I say I was an unapologetic geek? My wife, Amber, offered our son to a dragon at GenCon!

I’m an unapologetic geek. I don’t just watch genre shows and read genre books, I immerse myself in them. The ones that stay with me, that I actually decide to devote myself to, linger with me, becoming part of the fabric of my internal world, the thought processes that help me deal with the mundane levels of reality. I analyze these cultural components, trying to pick them apart to figure out why the events unfolded the way they did and, more importantly, what I can learn from it. (For an example, consider how I found an excuse to talk about Thor on my Physics blog, using the film as a lesson in how to be a good scientist.)

Black Gate is also dedicated toward this sort of exploration, publishing not just fantasy fiction but also thoughtful commentary on the genre, in both the magazine and also on this blog. (At this point, I feel the need to point out Aaron Starr’s recent excellent post “The Gods Never Urinate,” which is an exceptional case of this.) Even on our Twitter feed, @BlackGateDotCom, we try to share as much of this sort of material as we can.

But let’s really think about what’s going on here. The genre of science fiction and fantasy, more than any other, reflect upon the fundamental nature of reality. They can do this literally, metaphorically, or (when at its best) in complex combinations of the two. So you have reality, and then you have the genre literature which is reflecting upon that reality.

And the truly motivated fans don’t just read the literature. Remember, the word “fan” comes from “fanatic.” If you don’t obsess at least a little bit, you aren’t a fan, you’re just someone who likes the show or the book. Fans go a step further, and we reflect upon the genre. We reflect in our own minds, and through the written word, both online and in print, in podcasts and vidcasts, and in person at gaming stores, comic shops, bookstores, conventions … or, let’s be honest, any time more than two of us are in contact with each other. The depth of the analysis can vary widely, of course, but that reflection on the genre is the defining trait of fandom.

Fandom is the process of reflecting upon the reflection of reality. …

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Black Gate 15 PDF Version Now Available

Black Gate 15 PDF Version Now Available

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bg-15-cover2The PDF version of Black Gate 15 is available for immediate purchase from our online store.

BG 15 is $8.95 in PDF for a single copy, and is also available as part of a two-issue subscription ($16.50) or four-issue subscription ($29.95). For print subscribers the cost is even lower: just $4.95 for a single PDF, and $8.50 for a two-issue sub.

All those with an existing PDF subscription have now been sent a unique download link. If you have a PDF sub and have not yet received one, contact us at sales@blackgate.com.

BG 15 is another massive issue: 387 pages of fiction, reviews, and articles. It contains 22 stories, totaling nearly 152,000 words of adventure fantasy. An intrepid prince conducts a daring raid to intimidate a sinister monarch in “An Uprising of One,” by Jamie McEwan. Three brothers undertake a dangerous voyage to find a new god for their village in Rosamund Hodge’s “Apotheosis.” And two skilled soldiers find that a simple delivery for a necromancer is never simple in “A Pound of Dead Flesh,” by Fraser Ronald.

Plus the sequel to “The Beautiful Corridor” (BG 13) by Jonathan L. Howard, a lengthy excerpt from the blockbuster Dabir & Asim novel The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones, and new fiction from Harry Connolly, John C. Hocking, John Fultz, Vaughn Heppner, Darrell Schweitzer, Michael Livingston, Frederic S. Durbin, Chris Willrich, Maria V. Snyder, and many others!

In our non-fiction features Mike Resnick looks back at the best in black & white fantasy cinema, Bud Webster turns his attention to the brilliant Tom Reamy in his Who? column on 20th Century fantasy authors, Scott Taylor challenges ten famous fantasy artists to share their vision of a single character in Art Evolution, and Rich Horton looks at the finest fantasy anthologies of the last 25 years. Plus over 30 pages of book, game, and DVD reviews, edited by Bill Ward, Howard Andrew Jones, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones — and a brand new Knights of the Dinner Table strip.

The complete Table of Contents for the issue is here.

A Strange Horizon Worth Viewing

A Strange Horizon Worth Viewing

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sh_headI’ve sometimes bought a book without knowing anything about it because it had a cool cover. Similarly, I’ve been drawn to read a story because of a cool title.

Case in point is  “Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984)” by Grant Stone over at the May 9 edition of the weekly Strange Horizons webzine. The protagonist has fallen in love with an alien newly escaped from a government holding facility in Rosewell (where else?) during the aforesaid Orwellian year. The pair are on the run from grey-suited, mirrorshaded  agents who want the alien back because the captured extraterrestrials are essential to some sort of Cold War research project; at the very least, the government doesn’t want the Soviets to get ahold of them. To try to get back home, the alien is trying to jerry rig a communications device from television and cassette recorder parts, the nod to ET phoning home no doubt intentional. As you might expect, the scenario is that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you, even if they are trying to protect you. What you might not expect is that a kind heart sometimes comes from the sources you might think the most alien.

Sometimes you can’t judge a book by its cover, or a story by its title. In this case, you can.  A “strange horizon” worth viewing.

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part One

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part One

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1-11tomb_of_dracula_2Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula is beyond question the finest horror comic series ever produced – a fact made all the more amazing when one considers that since the original series ended, none of the many revivals (even those with the original’s classic creative team) have succeeded in bottling lightning a second time. Much of the success of the book is down to the surprisingly literate scripts by Marv Wolfman and the stunning artwork by Gene Colan and inking by Tom Palmer. However, Wolfman did not come aboard until Issue 7 so this first installment in an ongoing series looking at this influential comic will focus on the first six issues of a title undergoing the pangs of development.

Roy Thomas deserves the credit for bringing this series to life. It was Thomas who convinced Stan Lee that the loosening standards of the Comics Code Authority and renewed interest in the occult could make an ongoing horror comic featuring Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire count the runaway success of 1972. The Comics Code Authority came into being in the 1950s as a reaction against crime and horror comics as a result of the rather disturbed fantasies of Dr. Frederic Wertham. His 1954 study, Seduction of the Innocent imagined underage sex between Batman and Robin and convinced countless parents that juvenile delinquency was as much to blame on comic books as it was Rock ‘n’ Roll. The fact that Wertham’s book revealed more about himself than the actual content of comic books was lost on parents, whether over-protective or neglectful, who were quick to latch onto an excuse for why the post-war nuclear family was struggling. The result was the neutering of comic books for nearly twenty years and a ban on crime and horror as entertainment suitable for children.

Prior to The Tomb of Dracula, most comics companies would have turned the character into a misunderstood superhero. Marvel already had one of those with Morbius, the Living Vampire, but The Tomb of Dracula was determined to prove as revolutionary to Marvel as Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. Both titles were far more adult and, at the outset anyway, far removed from Marvel’s established continuity. They were gambles that paid off in an era when Marvel deserved to call itself The House of Ideas.

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