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Faces in the Mirror

Faces in the Mirror

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John Bellairs died in 1991, well-known and well-respected as a writer of odd, gothic mysteries for children; the sort of writer who can come up with books called The House With a Clock In Its Walls or The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, and make them live up to the evocative promise of their titles.

magic-mirrors2But Bellairs was more than that. He was also a first-class fantasist, whose one book for adults, The Face in the Frost, is something unique. Written before his tales for children, on its publication in 1969 it was described by Lin Carter as one of the three best fantasies to have appeared since The Lord of the Rings.

Recently, NESFA Press (NESFA stands for the New England Science Fiction Association) reprinted The Face in the Frost in a volume that also includes the surviving fragment of its uncompleted sequel, The Dolphin Cross, and two of Bellairs’ earlier works, Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly. The resulting book, Magic Mirrors, is unconventional but perhaps essential.

The Face in the Frost is no epic quest, nor is it grim dark fantasy, though a superficial description makes it sound like it could be either: It’s a tale of two elderly and slightly bumbling wizards faced with a mysterious darkness that’s threatening everything they know, and the journey they must take to unriddle what it is and how to stop it.

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Gen Con 2010 Reflections

Gen Con 2010 Reflections

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Kung Fu Fighting gameNow that Gen Con is done, it’s time to offer up some final thoughts, experiences, and, of course, games.

Art Show

One of the best areas to walk around at Gen Con is the art show. This is always fun for me, because I honestly don’t follow artists that much, so sometimes I stumble upon someone really famous whose work I’ve never seen before or who I’ve never heard of. Unfortunately, since the artwork is the artist’s main product, I really can’t reproduce it here without getting into all kinds of messy copyright issues. Fortunately, what I can do is link to the websites of some that I found most enjoyable:

Still More Games

While I covered some fun pulp roleplaying games in yesterday’s post, I didn’t get around to talking some fun games of other types. One publisher that I’d like to discuss is Slugfest Games, which has a wide assortment of card and board games which have a pulp feel to them. The one that I demoed this year was Kung Fu Fighting, a card game in which you play a series of karate moves.

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Gen Con – Day 3 Update

Gen Con – Day 3 Update

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Saturday was my last day at Gen Con, and it will be missed … at least for another year. Tomorrow, I’ll post a bit more in the way of reflections, but for now, let me cut straight to some of the games that I came across.

hollow-earthPulp Adventure Roleplaying Games

For gamers who lean toward pulpy goodness (which I imagine includes many Black Gate readers), there are a lot of great options out there.

One of the best games available for pure pulp action is the Hollow Earth Expedition game (reviewed in Black Gate #12), which is sort of like Indiana Jones meets Journey to the Center of the Earth meets Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow … with some other craziness thrown in. You really can’t go wrong with a setting that conveniently allows apemen, dinosaurs, Nazis, ninjas, sorcerers, zeppelins, and mad scientists to intermingle.

Since the original release of the game there are now two hardcover supplements available: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth and Secrets of the Surface World. Starting in fall of this year, the creators are planning to begin releasing a series of PDF adventure modules, which they refer to as the “Perils” because they’ll have names like “Perils of Morocco” and “Perils of Brazil” … and, perhaps, if we should be so lucky, “Perils of Scranton.” These PDF modules should be available through DriveThruRPG when they are finally released. In 2011, however, the word is that they’ll be releasing a Revelations of Mars sourcebook … so keep your eyes open for that, lovers of planetary adventure settings!

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Gen Con 2010 – Day 2

Gen Con 2010 – Day 2

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Author Nick Valentino demonstrates his steampunkiness, and his new novel, Thomas Riley.

Steampunk is vividly on display at Gen Con this year, which makes sense, based on the popularity of novels such as Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (a Hugo finalist) and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. The industrial revolution of technomagick from the Privateer Press campaign setting of the Iron Kingdoms also shows us what steampunk can accomplish.

More game systems seem to be embracing it, like in some of the new supplements for the Victoriana RPG (a game I’ll be reviewing in the next issue of Black Gate) and the growth of weird science-based pulp games like Hollow Earth Expedition. Heck, even Disney is getting into the steampunk spirit. (Not surprising given all the times which, as Scott Westerfeld pointed out, they’ve dipped into steampunk in the past). In a recent posting on his blog, Bowing to the Future, science fiction author and editor Lou Anders discussed the growth of the steampunk sub-genre. It seems like there’s hardly a “best of” list out there which doesn’t contain at least one steampunk title.

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Supernatural Reality: Stoker’s Dracula Hidden in Plain Sight

Supernatural Reality: Stoker’s Dracula Hidden in Plain Sight

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stoker1Most literary criticism of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is limited to treating the work as one of the more blatant examples of Victorian sexual repression. A few more adventurous critics are eager to play Freudian detective and speculate what the book reveals about the author’s possible sexual feelings for Sir Henry Irving or his alleged serial infidelity with East End prostitutes.

Rare is the literary critic who looks at the recurring theme throughout the book of the difficulty modern man faces in accepting the supernatural as reality.

From its first page to its last, this is what Stoker is most interested in shaping his story around. The book has become so ingrained in our culture that millions who have never read it have absorbed the gist of the plot from the past century of adaptations, rip-off’s, and parodies in film, television, theater, and books.

This is part of the reason why the concept is missed, but the greater reason is the one Stoker illustrates time and again in his book – we deliberately ignore what we can’t comfortably explain.

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Gen Con 2010 – Day 1 Update

Gen Con 2010 – Day 1 Update

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Water Street Bridge entertains people as they head into the Exhibition Hall at Gen Con 2010. A comely wench sells CDs.
Water Street Bridge entertains people as they head into the Exhibition Hall at Gen Con 2010. A comely wench sells CDs.

Gen Con is packed full of entertainers, in one form or another, but some of the most visible are the singers. There aren’t many of them, but they do stand out … mostly because they’re playing musical instruments.

In this case, it was the musical stylings of Dan the Bard and Water Street Bridge, carefully positioned in the high traffic areas right outside of the Exhibition Hall. Dan the Bard seems to be taking a page from the Old Spice Guy promotional playbook, as his business card indicates that he is “Now accepting commissions for songs about characters and campaigns!” Now you, too, can have your half-elf bard

Dan the Bard entertains at Gen Con
Dan the Bard entertains at Gen Con

While the entertainment is great, it doesn’t look like any of the big media guests show up until tomorrow. Sorry, no Wil Wheaton or “The Guild” cast members today … although at one point, I did believe that I passed Mo Rocca in a hallway. (And, it turns out, I may very well have been right. From his Twitter feed, @MoRocca said, about 7 hours ago  “At #GenCon in Indianapolis. Far more authentically nerdy than ComicCon. That’s a compliment.”)

This gave me an opportunity to head into the Exhibition Hall and poke around the periphery a bit. I was able to check in with a couple of old friends from last year.

First, I talked with the folks over at the Shard RPG to see what fun they had coming. It turns out their game of Eastern mythology-based anthropomorphic animals (it’s a lot cooler than that just made it sound, honest) is going strong, and they’re expecting to have their new supplement, Magic and Martial Arts, out by Christmas. Their own website doesn’t even have this information yet, they said, but they had a preliminary copy of the book available. It looks like it will really expand the possibilities of the game in great ways.

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Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

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image004Fresh off my movie frenzy of the last few blog entries, I felt it was time to unplug for a least a week and pick up what looked like the most interesting of the new book releases to find their way first to the Black Gate front office, and then to the underground bunker of Goth Chick News.

With the summer interns finally packing off to their respective institutes of higher learning, I am back to actually getting my mail — as opposed to having it pillaged by a pack of over-hormoned neophytes who snag anything with a girl on the cover. Thus I felt fortunate that this particular new release made it to my mail slot.

On July 27th, prolific author Kelley Armstrong released the 11th book in her Women of the Otherworld series, Waking the Witch. Narrated by twenty-one year old witch Savannah Levine, who readers will recognize from her appearances in prior stories, Savannah is eager to prove herself not only as a sleuth, but as a storyteller in her own right.

And though it is first and foremost a mystery, Waking the Witch is chock full of enough supernatural beings to satisfy the most devout occult enthusiast, though I am almost relieved to say; no vampires to be found. And really, haven’t we all had enough at this point?

Readers like me who haven’t read the prior books, will be intrigued enough by the many hints of multiple back stories to head out in pursuit of the first ten in the series; while devotees will be thrilled with the continuing saga that was born in 2001 with Kelley Armstrong’s first book in the series, Bitten.

I was honored to have recently discussed the books as well as the creativity behind them with Ms Armstrong herself.

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And Gen Con Begins

And Gen Con Begins

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gen-conAfter a hectic morning, my wife and I finally made the 45-minute drive into Indianapolis with our littlest, 8.5-month old Gideon. (The elder, 5-year old Elijah, will be joining us tomorrow.) Parking was crazy, but we found a spot finally and made our trek over to the convention center that is the home to Gen Con, the best four days in gamig (self-proclaimed).

This is the first year that Gen Con has offered free wi-fi access, but it’s not cooperating with my laptop too well, so this will be a short post. A lengthier post, with accompanying pictures will come later in the day, possibly in the evening when I get home to my computer.

In the meantime, follow my Tweets on the event (my iPad TweetDeck App seems to connect fine) at @azjauthor.

ON WRITING FANTASY: The Plot Thickens

ON WRITING FANTASY: The Plot Thickens

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elric-storm1“Plot is what the characters do
to deal with the situation they are in.”
     — Elizabeth George

“The beginning of a plot is the prompting of desire.”
     — Christopher Charles Herbert Lehmann-Haupt

“Character is plot, plot is character.”
     — F. Scott Fitzgerald

What happens next?!?

In this third installment of an ongoing series I’d like to talk about the role of “Plot” in Fantasy Fiction. (Previous installments covered Originality and Style.)

On the surface, Plot sounds extremely simple. And it can be. But what is it exactly? Basically, it’s nothing more than What Happens. Plot is a series of events that follow one another in a logical order. Although sometimes that order can be intentionally mixed up to create more dramatic tension (ala Tarantino’s PULP FICTION). There is an art to writing a good plot, to being original, to rising above the recycling of “stock plots” and tired formula.

So what is the secret of writing a great plot? One word: CHARACTER.

Fitzgerald said it best: “Character is plot, plot is character.” This is a sentiment Alan Moore also echoed in his writings about the craft of writing. Another way of saying this is that Characters Will Follow Their Desires. When you have a well-imagined setting all you have to do is drop some well-imagined characters into it and let ’em go. Like scientists dropping mice into a little maze. What do the mice want? The cheese at the end. So they run and run and run until…Voila!…they solve the maze and get the cheese. (Or run themselves to death, if the story is a tragedy.)

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Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

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action-1ABC News is reporting that an American couple in the South, who have asked to remain anonymous, discovered a copy of Action #1 while clearing out their home in preparation for a foreclosure sale. 

It’s not clear if the couple immediately knew what that had.  They did have the presence of mind to contact an expert, Stephen Fishler, who brokered the record-breaking $1.5 million sale of a copy in March of this year.

Action #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, is perhaps the most valuable comic in existence, and certainly one of the rarest. It appeared in June 1938, and while millions of copies were printed, only a handful are known to still exist in good condition.

The comic was part of a stash of old magazines and old comics the couple found as they were searching for boxes in the basement and preparing to move. Although Fishler reports he was initially dubious, he quickly became convinced when the couple texted him a photo.  He took the comic to the San Diego Comic-con in July for a valuation.

The comic was appraised at “Very Good” (5/10 on the strict comic grading scale), which is exceptionally high for a 72 year-old comic.  It is expected to net $250,000 or more when it goes up for auction through ComicConnect on August 27th.

As for the couple, ABC News reports that Fishler had to make a series of calls to the bank to convince them to hold off on the foreclosure while the auction goes forward.

Reports that a house down the street that discovered two dozen copies of Youngblood #1 in the basement was immediately bulldozed, have not yet been confirmed.