This is one of my favorite pieces of art. I found it ages ago at thewallpaper.co.
Good morning, Readers!
I had an argument with a friend the other day, and it’s kind of stuck in my throat a bit. Permit me to indulge myself and get all my thoughts around the issue out. It always helps to write it out. You’re all basically my therapists.
Jokes aside, the argument centered around the idea that not everyone can (as in should) be a writer. He says not, I say absolutely they can, and should if they so desire.
Now, this isn’t an argument about whether people have the time or the will to become writers. That is a separate issue. If the assumption is that they want to, then they absolutely can, and absolutely should.
His argument was something around talent, that just because someone can string a few sentences together, it doesn’t make them writers. Their story ideas may be garbage. They may not be able to spell all that well. They can’t adequately turn what’s in their head into something understandable on the page.
You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)
Fans of my writings here at Black Gate (both of you!) know that John D. MacDonald is my favorite author. And I think he’s one of the best in any genre. So today, I’m going to talk a bit about two times that Mickey Spillane, millions-selling author of Mike Hammer, entered into the JDM story.
THE ENDORSEMENT
Especially before the success of his Travis McGee series, MacDonald was “looked down at” during his time because his books were paperback originals. It was rare that he received reviews or high-profile comments. His work sold, but critics ignored it, or dismissed it with a sneer.
Many of his books were published by Fawcett, part of the (still-collectible) Gold Medal paperback line. His first novel, The Brass Cupcake (more on that below) came out in 1950. It was followed in 1951 by Murder for the Bride, Judge Me Not (Hammett-esque and one of my favorites), Weep For Me, and the science fiction novel, Wine of the Dreamers. Which leads us to 1952’s The Damned.
Ralph Daigh, editorial director at Fawcett, let Mickey Spillane read a set of galleys for The Damned. After I, The Jury, in 1947, every other crime writer out there wished he had Spillane’s sales. When the writer came back in to Daigh’s office and returned them, he said, “That’s a good book. I wish I had written it.”
Daigh was a good book man and he wrote it out on a piece of paper and asked Spillane to sign it, which the latter did. And that endorsement was prominently displayed on the cover of the book when it came out. Spillane’s agent, editor, lawyer (possibly even his pool guy) contacted Gold Medal and said that Spillane didn’t endorse books, and they had to take that quote off of the cover
Unintimidated, Daigh told them all that he had Spillane’s signature, dated, to back it up. They went away. MacDonald remained a fan of Spillane’s.
The book sold two million copies and MacDonald was continuing to hone his novel-writing ability and increasing his sales. The Damned is as packed full of tension (leading to an explosion) as any book I can remember reading.
Fantasy readers, like those who dwell together here at Black Gate, are long familiar with notions of heroes and the heroic. Each of us might have our own ideas about what makes a hero, but we would likely find common ground in a discussion of the matter.
That being said, is there any doubt our world today is in need of heroes? Heroes do continue to exist in our entertainment, but often enough they are flawed or irrelevant or humorous to the point of being more pastiche than worthy of admiration. Obviously there are examples of the upstanding hero, yet they seem few and far between compared to our increasing occupation with the deranged or the out-and-out vile. It seems we are more often rooting for the fellow behind the hockey mask or clown makeup than we are for the character who boldly steps forward to set things right in a dark world. Too often our heroes seem to stand alone, if they stand at all.
Rogue Blades Foundation is here to stand with those heroes, real and fictional, and to stand for all things heroic. Rogue Blades Foundation (RBF) is a non-profit publisher of heroic fiction and heroic-related non-fiction.
Fans of Sword & Sorcery literature might find the name of RBF sounds somewhat familiar. The reason for this is RBF is the not-for-profit sister to Rogue Blades Entertainment (RBE), a for-profit publisher of S&S material for more than a decade now. The goals of RBF and RBE are slightly different, thus it made sense to separate the two. RBF will focus upon larger impact projects that would generally be beyond the scope of RBE’s capabilities and intent.
The Fan Activity Achievement Awards, or FAAN Awards were founded in 1976 by Moshe Feder and Arnie Katz. Created to highlight writing in fandom, they differed from the Fan Hugos in that they were voted on specifically by fanzine fans. The original awards were presented at various convention. Following the 1980 awards, the awards were on hiatus until 1994 and have been presented each year since, with the exception of 1996. Harry Warner, Jr. won the last of the original run of FAAN Awards for Best LoC Writer. He won the first award and also won the award in 1979. The category wasn’t revived until 1998, when it was called Best Letterhack and Warner won the first two. Following his death in 2003, the category was renamed the Harry Warner, Jr. Memorial Award.
Harry Warner, Jr. was known as “The Hermit of Hagerstown,” for his dislike of attending fannish events. He rarely attending science fiction conventions, only agreeing to be the guest of honor at Noreascon I in 1971 when he was promised tickets to attend a Boston Red Sox game. When the first FanHistoriCon was run by Peggy Rae Pavlat (later Sapienza), Joe Siclari, and Bruce Pelz and Hagerstown was selected as the location for its proximity to Warner, Warner refused to attend. Richard Lynch worked with Warner to arrange to bring small groups of attendees over to Warner’s home to allow them to meet him.
The Hugo Award was first presented at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention (sometimes called Philcon II), held in Philadelphia from September 5-7, 1953. The awards were not perceived as an annual event at that time and, in fact, no awards were presented the following year. They were presented again in 1955 and have been presented annually since. Although a #1 Fan Personality Award was presented in the first year, to Forrest J Ackerman and a Best Actifan was awarded to Walt Willis in 1958, the Best Fan Writer Award wasn’t created until 1967, when it was won by Alexei Panshin and has been awarded ever since. The Hugo Awards are nominated and voted on by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention. Bob Shaw won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer Award twice, in 1979 and 1980. He was also nominated for the Best Short Story award in 1967 and the Best Novel award in 1987. In 1980 the Hugo Award was presented at Noreascon Two in Boston, Massachusetts on August 31.
The Doc Weir Award was established in 1963 in memory of Arthur Weir. Selected by the membership of Eastercon, the award is presented to individuals who are seeing as making a significant contribution to fandom who have largely gone unrecognized. The first Doc Weir Award was presented to Peter Mabey. The award takes the form of a silver cup with names of early winners engraved on the base. The cup comes with a presentation box which has plaques on it that contain the names of the winners since the cup’s based was filled. A new box was created by John Wilson in 2019. The winner is responsible for having their own name engraved and running the following year’s voting process.
The Curse of the Snake is the Guy Boothby title I have been waiting years to read. I previously covered the five books in his Dr. Nikola series as well as his 1899 novel, Pharos the Egyptianfor Black Gate. Boothby is an author whose works have fallen into relative obscurity, but his influence was quite pervasive. A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, he turned out works that stand up well against their more celebrated efforts. Most importantly, the influence of Dr. Nikola is felt heavily upon Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu series and the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Boothby’s great flaw was that he was a prolific author of serialized novels who made no effort to correct inconsistencies when his works were published in book form. This hurt his reputation and, along with the speed with which he produced new works, unfairly suggested he was little more than a hack.
In 1931 the Mid-Continent Petroleum Company was hot stuff. Its 6,000 Diamond dealers owned the upper Midwest and could found as far south as Oklahoma, not surprising since it was the biggest employer in its home base of Tulsa. NevrNox Ethyl gasoline, the company boasted, provided the highest mileage of any product on the market. Mid-Continent was cutting edge, both in the science behind their formulations and in the way they presented them. 1931 was the year it pioneered a new type of service station, one that was to take over the field in the 1940s. Mimicking the modernistic International Style, that first Supulpa, OK, station had expanses of plate glass set in unpainted aluminum frames and walls of vitrolite, a black structural glass.
I’m sure many of you by now have heard of the sudden controversy that erupted around Canadian horror/speculative fiction publisher, ChiZine. The story has been picked up by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware. You always know it’s bad when Writer Beware gets involved. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the situation, good for you. Stay that way if you can. If you insist on knowing it all, I can recommend a great round-up by High Fever Books (here). Start at the bottom and work your way up through the updates.
It’s bad.
For the most part, there has been an outpouring of support for those affected; the authors who were not paid, and the former staff who were so atrociously abused. As with all controversies, however, there have been a number of bad takes. The worst has come from an editor by the name of Stephen Jones, who had this to say:
My friend Sherlock Holmes, with whom I shared lodgings and adventures, had already breakfasted and was slumped in his favorite chair when I descended to our sitting one room one November morning. From the discarded newspapers strewn about the floor, I knew that he had failed to find one of those interesting crimes which so intrigued him.
Shortly after hearing my footsteps on the stairs, Mrs. Hudson arrived with fresh coffee, some fish left over from the previous night’s meal, devilled kidneys (which Holmes despised), bacon and toast. As Holmes had rather churlishly replied to my greeting, I set to breaking my fast.
After the dishes had been cleared away and I was settled in my own chair, sorting through the post, I held a letter out towards him. “Here’s one for you, Holmes. From a “Jarvis Pendragon, DC.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “What does ‘DC’ stand for?”
He broke through the malaise enough to negligently wave a hand. “Who knows? Pray, read it. Perhaps it will enliven this otherwise intolerably boring morning.”
I have mentioned before in these recountings of Sherlock Holmes’ cases, that humility is not a trait for which he has much admiration. On more than one occasion, he has identified modesty not as a virtue, but as a distortion of the truth. And I have excluded many of his own statements about his powers of observation and deduction that were quite the opposite of ‘humble.’
Of course, his belief in his talents and abilities, which he had honed to razor sharpness, were justified. But, as his roommate, companion, and if I may add, useful assistant, on his adventures, his self-aggrandizement could be more than a trifle wearying.
So, it was with some amusement, as I was to discover, that I read aloud his letter.
But first, he forestalled me with an upraised hand. “Be not so hasty, Watson. What can you tell me from an inspection of the envelope?”
I turned it over in my hands slowly, my eyes scanning the surface for any clues or hints.
“Brighton postmark. Common envelope. Careful handwriting on the address. Clearly legible. I see nothing else of note, Holmes.”
He shook his head in disapproval, but said nothing.
I’ve been meaning to write a review of Degenesis, the doorstop of a post-apocalyptic RPG from the “there has to be a story behind that name for your company” SIXMOREVODKA creative team for a while now. The main problem holding me back is that I haven’t played it yet with people, just dinked around testing things. Luckily, John’s editorial standards enjoy a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to old friends, and let ye who have not passed judgement on a game without playing it cast the first stone.
There’s another reason I feel safe recommending this beast. The art alone is worth the purchase of the slipcased two-volume edition of rules Katharsis and worldbook Primal Punk (Retailing at USD “If you have to ask you can’t afford it”). I’ve never seen a game with this level art throughout. Page after page of imagery usually reserved for a couple of splash pages in most game books.
What is this world? Refreshingly, it’s set in Europe and North Africa five hundred years after a 2073 meteor storm changed the face of the world (called the “Eshaton” but I think they meant “Eschaton”). Maybe the year is a hat tip to Fallout, I dunno, but Earth went through hundreds of years of cloudy hell and now there are a few hints of a Renaissance for a radically altered world. To make matters worse, the meteors brought with them a spore-like form of life called “Primer” that is radically altering flora, fauna, and us. Humans who have been taken over by the Primer (the process is generally called Sepsis) eventually become Psychonauts or Abberants, two names for the same deadly syndrome. Some of the spores carrying the primer have been deactivated or neutralized for use in drugs called Burn, because if thousands of years of human history have proved anything, it’s that people will try to get high by any means necessary. A final existential confrontation of homo sapiens vs homo degenesis is building.
