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Art of the Genre: Art of Anthologies

Art of the Genre: Art of Anthologies

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Stephen Hickman brings the Man-Kzin Wars to life as a beautiful anthology produced by Larry Niven
Stephen Hickman brings the Man-Kzin Wars to life as a beautiful anthology produced by Larry Niven

I’m not really sure if this can be classified at ‘art’, but certainly there is an art to the creation of anthologies. I mean, for all intents and purpose, Black Gate is an anthology, the scope and size of these new issues making it more a book than a magazine.

John O’Neill, our venerable editor, has done a fantastic job of giving his readers both the feel of an anthology while also being committed enough to each story as to provide wonderful art with it. That artistic contribution, in my opinion, is something that helps define what Black Gate is trying to do, and although the art direction in each issue’s very essence isn’t held to a single vision, the coherence of the product is still maintained in the highest quality.

Black Gate also weaves a thick quilt of characters within its pages, the repeated inclusion of certain authors allowing stories and characters to build, grow, and foster a relationship with a reader that many contemporary anthologies can’t produce. I’ve seen reviewers try to knock this, but in the end several have come around to indicate that John’s repeated choices are one of their favorite pieces of the magazine.

The art of the short story in its very nature is a simple entertainment, a microcosm of imagination that I fear is too often read like a teaser trailer found before your main attraction at the local Cineplex. In them we are often required to be told rather than shown a story, and I’m reminded of the musky depth of Don Lafontaine’s voice when I’m provided back story inside stories of already limited words… his signature opening ever echoing in my brain… ‘In a world where…’

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Tattoos and Fantasy! Proposal!

Tattoos and Fantasy! Proposal!

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This one's mine. It's a frikkin JESTER! With wings! And a TAIL! It has a story. What's yours? (Art by Rebecca Huston.)
This one's mine. It's a frikkin JESTER! With wings! And a TAIL! It has a story. What's yours? (Art by Rebecca Huston.)

Dear Fantasy Writers,

Pretty soon I (and an Editing Wizard of my acquaintance) will be putting together a thing for Black Gate (possibly an article, possibly a short documentary-type-thingy for YouTube) about Fantasy writers and their tattoos. I know some folks view their ink and its significance as intensely personal. If this is the case with you, please ignore the rest of this message.

But if you are a published Fantasy writer, and have an image on your skin that you want to share, and a short paragraph about it, I’d love to see it!

I’d want a jpg of the image (high resolution) and, if at all possible, a voice clip of the story — from GarageBand or whatever. If not a voice clip, then a written paragraph would definitely suffice.

I’d also want a short bio about yourself and where we might find your published work. We’d link to it in the article-portion of this project. (I see it as both an article and documentary. It’s all still coming together in my own head.)

If participating in this Black Gate YouTubementary shenanigans interests you, I’d love to have your files by August 1st. This thing’ll probably be several months in the making, and we may not a.) get enough material or b.) get too much to use all of it — but whatever happens, I’d update all participants as we make progress.

So! Ideas? Hail and Well-Mets? Flagrant Compliments? “Absolutely want in!”s? Then write to me at claire(at)blackgate(dot) com

Thank you!

ScrumBrawl: Fantasy-Based Sports Goodness

ScrumBrawl: Fantasy-Based Sports Goodness

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scrumbrawlI’ve always been fascinated by the attempts of gaming companies to turn athletic sports into board games. Fascinated, but not quite intrigued enough to play one, until now.

Some of the most notable of these efforts seem to have historically come when a successful wargaming miniature company has reached its apex and is looking for a new product. (More on this below the fold.)

ScrumBrawl is a sports-based game that doesn’t fall into this category, not least because it is the introductory effort by newcomer VicTim Games. Instead of trying to leverage existing products and success, they’re using this game as their springboard into the marketplace and, I must say, it’s a good effort. It also uses cards instead of miniatures, which is part of the reason why the game goes for nearly half the price of some of the more established competitors.

Overall, the game is extremely enjoyable and easy to get into, with a minimal amount of fuss … and cost. If you can get over the lack of miniatures, and are looking for a quality game, this is a product you would do well to look into.

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Black Static #23

Black Static #23

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3451The June-July 2011 Black Static cover features a still from the film Agnosia and a crop of the artwork by Riki Rawling for V. H. Leslie’s story “Time Keeping.”  Here’s the opening paragraph:

Monday, 11:29 am

Time waits for no man. But Howard wasn’t just any man and Time would wait if it had to. Howard didn’t like to keep it waiting if he could help it. In fact, the only time he had kept time waiting was June 5th 2006 and that was only for 5 minutes and 45 seconds while he, agitated and bewildered, ran through darkened streets back to his flat, then around his workshop hastily setting in motion the mechanisms to resume it once more.

Other fiction for this bimonthly dark horror magazine includes “For Their Own Ends” by Joel Lane, “Electric Dreams” by Carole Johnstone, “Hail” by Daniel Kaysen, and contest winner “The Harvesting of Jackson Cade” by Robert Davies.

You can subscribe to the print version here, or the electronic edition here; there’s also a special discounted rate for a joint subscription to both Interzone and Black Static.

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Eight

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Eight

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tod-38tod-39The Tomb of Dracula #38, “Blood-Rush” continues the more light-hearted vein for the series with the change of setting from London to Boston as the comic relief characters of the Woody Allen-inspired Harold H. Harold and the ditzy bombshell Aurora Rabinowitz set out to score some blood so that Harold’s house guest, Dracula doesn’t die. The scene shifts to Dr. Sun’s Boston headquarters where he is monitoring, via closed circuit television, a meeting between Quincy Harker, Rachel Van Helsing and Frank Drake. The issue ends with Dracula, Quincy, Rachel and Frank captives of Dr. Sun and his murderous henchman, Juno with the unlikely duo of Harold and Aurora setting out to rescue the vampire who has promised Harold an interview so that he can meet his publisher’s deadline.

Issue #39, “The Death of Dracula” is highlighted by a gripping battle between Dracula and Juno. The hook-armed Chinese assassin seems to have stepped right out of Marvel’s Master of Kung-Fu series. The move to include offbeat comic relief supporting characters also seems influenced by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy’s acclaimed series. Both titles were unique for Marvel for eschewing the superhero formula and offering surprisingly modern updates of what were considered tired and perhaps exhausted literary properties (Dracula and Fu Manchu, respectively). Dracula is killed by Juno with a spike through the heart. The villainous henchman then uses a flame thrower to cremate Dracula on the spot. Quincy, Rachel, Frank and their new acquaintances, Harold and Aurora manage to escape Dr. Sun’s headquarters and alert the military to his scheme for world domination. The issue fades out on the maniacal Dr. Sun observing their meeting with the military, improbably via his ubiquitous closed circuit cameras, as the talking brain in a fish tank gloats over his seeming omnipotence.

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Goth Chick News: Time To See More Dead People

Goth Chick News: Time To See More Dead People

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image0101Believe me, fighting off the urge to be snarky every time I read something about Slasher Films is an exercise in self control.

If you recall, back in January I told you about the Guns ‘n Roses guitarist “Slash” who had just announced the launch of his new horror movie production company with a very cheesy name.

This had all the elements that make for a good rip on how running around looking like a rock and roll version of Son of Svengoolie doesn’t automatically mean you can make a palatable scary movie. However, before I was able to launch into a truly hardy, sarcastic tirade I was struck by the seemingly intriguing story lines that would be the first few big screen releases.

Maybe, just maybe this was going to be good after all.

Originally, Slasher Films announced four new projects; Nothing to Fear, Theorem, The Other Kingdom and Wake the Dead, billed as a film version of the graphic novel by Steve Niles who also happens to be Slash’s business partner.

This week we learned which of these concepts are going to become reality first.

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Art of the Genre: The Black Company

Art of the Genre: The Black Company

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Kerdark grabs a chance at the original Black Company cover
Kerdark grabs a chance at the original Black Company cover

In 1984 author Glen Cook published The Black Company. In 1990, my freshman year in college, this book was passed to me by a person on my dorm and I spent the next decade following the exploits of the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar.

Now, as a storyteller myself, the book resonated with its rather unique concept, that it was actually a tale written by the Company annalist as he continued the four hundred years of written tradition the company had laid down since its came out of the distant south.

This is a military book, although cast in a fantasy setting. To that point, there are wizards present, although all of them are seemingly either competent illusionists or powerful necromancers. You don’t see any fireballs or lightning bolts, and the craft of a medieval military is kept up in rather precise fashion as the Black Company moves from what I would perceive as northern Europe, through Africa, and finally ending up someplace in India.

It’s a fantastic tale, one so well crafted that I’m actually floored even today when I remember a three-book long twist that had me shaking my head and calling for Cook to be given a Hugo. If you haven’t read the series, I certainly suggest it, even if the first book is over twenty-five years old and what was acceptable for publication then is much different than today. I still think these books hold water and are well worth your time, but on to the reason I assume you’re here, the art.

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Estate Your Business Part II: A Writer’s Guide to Organizing a Literary Estate

Estate Your Business Part II: A Writer’s Guide to Organizing a Literary Estate

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cemetery-smallFirst of all, let me say hello and introduce myself. I’m an author of about half a dozen published short stories, one of which has just come out from Black Gate. I also, once upon a time, went to law school and for six years I worked as an attorney, first at a large firm, and then as a solo practitioner in northern New Mexico. I did real estate, contracts, and estate planning.

Northern New Mexico is crawling with writers and their kin and given I was active in the writing community it naturally followed that I did quite a few literary estate plans. I have since gone inactive in the bar, moved to London, and had two children who don’t ask me a lot of legal questions to keep me on my toes (yet), so please don’t rely on this post for hard and fast legal advice. I can, however, provide some general guidance about literary estates, what they are and how you get one.

What happens if I don’t have a literary estate?

That has already been answered on this site in Bud Webster’s illuminating first Estate Your Business post. In it he documents his hard work on the SFWA Estates Project, and all I can add is, don’t bank on there being a Bud Webster on the planet when you pass on. With a few simple precautions you can keep your body of work available to publishers, and thus available to earn money after your death, without a saintly individual like Bud burning up the phone lines to find whomever inherited your copyrights.

Bud explained what happens when you don’t have a literary estate, and I hope he convinced you to get one.

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You Don’t Need to See Cars 2 to Watch the Brave Trailer

You Don’t Need to See Cars 2 to Watch the Brave Trailer

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Pixar has maintained such an amazing line of success with their mixture of intelligent adult themes and child-pleasing action and characters in their CGI films, that the studio’s turn toward sequels hit me in the face with the great massive gauntlet of disappointment. I did enjoy Toy Story 3, but it was nowhere near the level of brilliance of my trifecta of Pixar favorites: The Incredibles, WALL·E, and Up. And when I found out that the follow-up for Toy Story 3 would be a sequel to Cars, easily my least favorite Pixar film so far, the massive gauntlet of disappointed almost pounded me head-first down into the soil.

Cars 2 is the first Pixar film ever to have critics turn against it. The Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator has given the movie a “Rotten” rating, currently holding at a morose 33% positive, a sad first in Pixar’s history. It seems the best I’ve heard about the movie from viewers is, “Eh, my kids liked it.” Considering the steep prices for the 3D screenings — which are the only screenings available at my local theater — this may end up being the first Pixar movie I skip in theaters, and wait for the Blu-ray.

There is one temptation, the trailer for Pixar’s next films, a non-sequel heroic fantasy set in Scotland: Brave.

But now the trailer is on line, so never mind. This looks not only like a return to form for the company, but a step into territory they’ve never explored. In particular, this is the fairy tale and fantasy world that we often associate with the classic Disney films of the Golden Age. But Pixar’s take looks sharper and harder than that, although I only have this trailer, plus posters and artwork to go on. But the mystic and Celtic, adult fantasy feel of this trailer is breathtaking — I can hardly wait to see what the company does with this setting and its fiery red-haired heroine. There will be comedy, but as director Mark Andrews told Entertainment Weekly, expect something fitting the bold declaration of its title: “What we want to get across is that this story has some darker elements. Not to frighten off our Pixar fans — we’ll still have all the comedy and the great characters. But we get a little bit more intense here.”

And it does appear intense. That final bow-shot to the camera? Sign me up!

If you want something else to hold you over, Entertainment Weekly has some beautiful concept art.

Also behold the thrilling teaser one-sheet (full sized!):

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The Dream-World of Lud-in-the-Mist

The Dream-World of Lud-in-the-Mist

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Lud-in-the-MistHope Mirrlees’ stunning 1926 novel Lud-in-the-Mist begins with the following epigraph:

The Sirens stand, as it would seem, to the ancient and the modern, for the impulses in life as yet immoralised, imperious longings, ecstasies, whether of love or art, or philosophy, magical voices calling to a man from his “Land of Heart’s Desire,” and to which if he hearken it may be that he will return no more — voices, too, which, whether a man sail by or stay to hearken, still sing on.

It’s a quote from the classical scholar Jane Harrison, who was Mirrlees’ close companion at the time Mirrlees was working on Lud-in-the-Mist. It’s a perfectly chosen introduction to the book. It sets out the themes, and to an extent the method, which Mirrlees used: the conflict between instinctive desires and the conscious will, that tries to repress those desires and establish a social harmony — all symbolically realised through the imagery of myth and fantasy.

The sirens sang to Odysseus, who had himself lashed to his mast to hear their song while his crew went about their duties with their ears stopped up with wax. Apollonius of Rhodes says that they also sang to the Argonauts, but that their song was overcome by Orpheus, and the sirens threw themselves into the sea and became rocks. And I will note here, for reasons that should become clear later, that Apollonius also says that only a little later the Argonauts came to the garden of the Hesperides, in the far west, where the golden apples of Gaea had been kept, a marriage gift for Hera, until Hercules had took them as part of his labours.

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