Browsed by
Category: Blog Entry

Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune by Frank Herbert

Comments 13 comments

oie_3171159srWv2GrQIt’s been called the greatest science fiction novel of all time. Maybe, maybe not, but it’s one of the best I’ve ever read. Published all the way back in 1965, it’s the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. The first half of Dune made its debut as “Dune World,” starting in the December 1963 Analog. The second half, “The Prophet of Dune,” began in the January 1965 issue.

I read Dune for the first time in 1981, at the age of 14. From the very first pages I was hooked.  I was house sitting for my grandfather, and the only things I had to do were let the dog out and feed her and myself, and that meant I barely put the book down all day. Like Dune’s hero, Paul Atreides, I was wondering what the heck is a gom jabbar? Who are the Bene Gesserit? What is melange? My dad’s paperback, at 544 pages, is one of the longest books I’ve read in a single day (beat only by Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara).

I’m not sure what triggered it, but something called out from the depths telling me it was time to reread Dune again. The last time (which was the fourth time) I read it was nearly 20 years ago. A friend wanted to get into science fiction, so a few of us started rereading the classics and tossing them his way. Among the books I revisited were Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and The Gods Themselves, Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama, Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky, and Herbert’s Dune.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Comics (and Potentially You) Get Dragged…

Goth Chick News: Comics (and Potentially You) Get Dragged…

Comments 7 comments

Black Gate Goth Chick News ComicCon 2017

Sometimes, horror-related or not, a story is just too good not to share.

With the Chicago Comic Con still a few weeks off, the GCN staff has been glued to our screens watching all the going’s on at the mother-of-all cons, the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC for you cool kids) which wrapped up last Sunday.

Like any comic con, when you get this many people with this much…uh…passion together in one place, there are bound to be shenanigans. However the big surprise this year didn’t come to us courtesy of an over-enthusiastic cosplayer after too many adult beverages mixed with Red Bull, but instead from what has become a consistent player on the stage of WTF…the airline industry.

After gaining infamy from their “aggressive” removal of a passenger from a flight earlier this year, United Airlines prevented passengers leaving the SDCC via San Diego International, from carrying comic books in their checked baggage.

No, I’m not kidding.

…

Read More Read More

A Tale of Two Robert E. Howard Biographies

A Tale of Two Robert E. Howard Biographies

Comments 14 comments
Dark Valley Destiny The Life of Robert E. Howard-small Blood & Thunder The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard-small

Not so long ago, in a galaxy really close by (in fact, our galaxy), there was a tale of two biographies of the same writer. This is how the story goes. Or at least, this is what I have gathered.

Once upon a time there was a Jedi-in-training (also known as a sci-fi writer) who, tempted by the Dark Side of the Force, figured out that he could make quite a bit of money in the fantasy genre. Tolkien was selling like gangbusters at the time, so why not? Robert E. Howard (REH), a long dead Golden Age pulp writer, had all of that Conan stuff just lying around begging to be exploited utilized. So off to work the Jedi went.

But, in pursuing this decades-long venture, said sci-fi writer unfortunately and eventually went completely over to the Dark Side — full Sith Lord territory. In time, by his own reckoning, he became the de facto spokesperson for what counted as canonical Conan. And further, as a self-made REH authority, he published his own biography of Howard. The Force was strong with this one.

Fortunately though, so the tale goes, the Force eventually balanced out. A small but growing band of Jedi — fully committed to the Light Side — fought vigorously against this Sith Lord, trying to demonstrate who the true REH actually was. In time, the evil Sith Lord was defeated, and died of natural causes. But the task of undoing his dark damage against REH’s legacy would take years. And eventually a very able Jedi warrior would come along and write a new REH biography that would, among other things, hopefully undo all the damage done by the first bio.

…

Read More Read More

July Short Story Roundup

July Short Story Roundup

Comments 0 Comment

CaptureAs the dog days begin, my mind has been prodded back to swords & sorcery by a few things. The most important one was the the return to the fray of Charles R. Saunders, creator of the heroes Imaro and Doussouye. Just the other day, he announced the start of a new blog, Different Drumming. If you are not familiar with Saunders and his superb body of work, go at once and check out his site.

The next thing, while not exactly S&S, was that I learned the final volume of R. Scott Bakker’s Aspect Emperor series, The Unholy Consult, is about to be published. For all my issues with it, it is one of the few contemporary series that has held my interest past the first book or two.

There have also been some fun discussions among various wags over on Facebook about what a list of good introductory books to the genre would look like. I suspect it won’t be long before I’m lifted entirely from my S&S doldrums and return to reading and reviewing the stuff on a regular basis. Until then, there will still be short story roundups. Like this one.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #65 provides the publication’s usual two new stories. I like both well enough, but neither qualifies as actual S&S. The definition of “what is swords & sorcery?” has been done to death by divers hands and on numerous stages, but suffice to say there should be action and at least a touch of the dark and macabre. This issue’s two stories contain neither of those things.

“Then Will Die Your Pain,” by Tom Crowley, consists of the reflections of Konsler, an aged soldier now serving as the attendant to a knight of unclear pedigree.

Sir Garner isn’t a proper knight, just as I’m not a proper squire. There are no knights where Garner comes from, but everyone in the company calls him Sir. And of course I’m too old to be a squire. The other mercenaries say to me, “You’re gonna die out here, grandpa.” They’re probably right. I just need to finish my job first, and I’m writing this in case I don’t.

…

Read More Read More

Microsoft Xbox One vs PS4 Pro

Microsoft Xbox One vs PS4 Pro

Comments 3 comments

m-xboxonexps4pro

“War, war never changes.” It’s a quote that opens the Fallout series of video games, and is often used to describe the video game console business.

The console wars, it’s been called. Since the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, many different companies have entered this war. Each competing for games enthusiasts time and money. Each promising to be the absolute best console to experience the joy of playing, and to increase player immersion in the game.

At this year’s E3 video game conference, Microsoft unveiled its newest video game console in its war with Sony. It’s a mid-cycle update to the Xbox One called the Xbox One X, positioned to compete with Sony’s mid-cycle update to its PS4, the PS4 Pro.

…

Read More Read More

Read To Me

Read To Me

Comments 6 comments

Illuminated pageIn case I haven’t mentioned it before, my brother owns the last independent bookstore in Kingston, Ontario. Which goes to explain why it’s was only this week that I bought a Kindle. For the first time in my life, I’m reading in a different way.

Reading, and its broader form story-telling, has been around as long as history, and it’s been changing and evolving all along, with new ideas and new technologies.

Some think the first stories were told by shepherds sitting around on hillsides watching sheep. As exciting as sheepherding can sometimes get (wolves anyone?) there’s considerably more leisure time in this occupation than there is in farming, or fishing. The shepherds would come down from the hillside and tell their stories to the people in the village, and the marketplace storyteller was born. Or so reasons this particular school of thought.

What happened to the marketplace storyteller? Well, memorizing all of Homer et al (in case there were requests) and learning how to recite them in an entertaining way is really hard work. Then you have to come up with your own, original stories, or really, you’re nobody. You have to put literally years into learning all you need to know, and then you have to sit somewhere telling stories and hoping that people will pay you for it. If you’re very good, someone may become your patron and keep you on retainer to tell stories for them and their guests.

…

Read More Read More

El Castillo de San Gabriel in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

El Castillo de San Gabriel in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Comments 1 comment

20170630_113454

The fort as seen while approaching along El Puente de Las Bolas,
“the Bridge of the Balls.” Cannonballs, that is.

As I mentioned my last post on Lanzarote’s Piracy Museum, Spain’s Canary Islands are dotted with historic forts. As a stopover on the way to and from the New World, these islands off the west coast of Africa naturally became a target for piracy. Every port had at least one fort to protect it.

…

Read More Read More

The Best of Cordwainer Smith, edited by J. J. Pierce

The Best of Cordwainer Smith, edited by J. J. Pierce

Comments 3 comments

Do not read this story; turn the page quickly. The story may upset you. Anyhow, you probably know it already. It is a very disturbing story. Everyone knows it. 

from “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal”

oie_18116595RsWNL8gWhere to begin with Paul Linebarger, aka Cordwainer Smith? Son of a lawyer with ties to the Chinese Revolution of 1911, and godson of Sun Yat-sen, Linebarger, before World War II, was a professor of Eastern Studies at Duke. During the war, he served in the US Army and helped set up the first psychological warfare unit, and became an advisor to Chinese president Chiang Kai-shek. After the war, he was recalled to service to advise the British during the Malayan Emergency, and American forces during the Korean War. Later, he would serve in various intelligence capacities, calling himself “visitor to small wars,” though he avoided Vietnam, thinking it was a bad situation all around. Somehow, between the year 1950 and his death in 1966, he found the time and energy to create one of the most original, complex, and strange science fiction universes.

As part of their “Best of” series, Ballantine published The Best of Cordwainer Smith in 1975, edited by J. J. Pierce. I picked it up in around 1984 at the Forbidden Planet in Manhattan, based on something I’d read recommending the story “Scanners Live in Vain.” Strange as I found it, “Scanners” was nothing compared to the mad, almost hallucinogenic stories that followed it. It contains twelve of of his most important stories, all set in the future history which he called the Instrumentality of Mankind. The Instrumentality is the group of supremely powerful humans who rule over humanity.

Cordwainer Smith (as I’ll call him from now on) first appeared in 1950 with the publication of the story “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950). Its frenetic start warns readers they are in for something strange.

Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg was broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the mirror. Only then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice, even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred to have him write.

“I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch It’s my worry, isn’t it?”

Foremost from this opening is the word cranch. What can it possibly mean and why must Martel do it?

…

Read More Read More

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

Comments 0 Comment

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman 4 - Black Gate interview

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Photo by Liz Duffy Adams

June was a big month for interviews at Black Gate. Our top articles were interviews, and our roving reporter Joe Bonadonna placed two in the Top Ten — a lengthy conversation with Author T.C. Rypel (the Gonji series) at #2, and a free-wheeling conversation with two editors of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Adrian Simmons and David Farney, at #8. And the #1 article for the month was Elizabeth Crowens’s enchanting conversation with the First Couple of Fantasy, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman.

Rounding out the Top Five for the month was our report on the ongoing back issue sale at Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog magazine (still one of the best bargains in the industry), a Vintage Treasures piece on the 80s fantasy paperbacks of E. Hoffmann Price, and Nick Ozment’s think-piece “When Fantasy and Theology Collide: Some Thoughts on Satan.”

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Forget Virtual Reality, Let’s Do This

Goth Chick News: Forget Virtual Reality, Let’s Do This

Comments 2 comments

Alien War

Some years ago while wandering around London in the evening, I had the very lucky pleasure of coming upon the grand opening of a new attraction called Alien War. Being an avid fan of the Alien franchise and having no idea what I was walking into, I allowed the realistically dressed interstellar marines manning the sidewalk outside, to convince me to check it out.

What I experienced for the next 20+ minutes would almost certainly require me to sign some sort of liability waver if it existed today; but it was such an unbelievable adrenaline rush that I queued up to do it twice more that night.

As I have nothing to compare it to in recent memory, I was happy to find several YouTube clips. Including the one below, which gives you an idea of what I’m talking about.

…

Read More Read More