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Future Treasures: New Cthulhu 2 edited by Paula Guran

Future Treasures: New Cthulhu 2 edited by Paula Guran

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New Cthulhu 2-smallLast month I did a quick survey of Prime Books, looking at 24 volumes in their recent catalog. And an impressive lot it was, too (and trust me when I tell you, after 20 years in this industry, I don’t impress easily.)

One of the more intriguing books in their catalog was Paula Guran’s anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, which my kids bought me for my birthday last year (Isn’t that sweet? I have children who give me anthologies of Lovecraftian horror to celebrate my birth. Just nod and agree, it’s better for everyone.) It contained no less than 27 Cthulhu Mythos tales, all written this century, including stories from Neil Gaiman, Charles Stross, Marc Laidlaw, Laird Barron, Paul McAuley — and even Michael Shea’s chilling novelette “Tsathoggua,” first published right here at Black Gate.

So I was very pleased to see that a follow up volume, New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird, with stories from Laird Barron, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan, John Shirley, Simon Strantzas, Helen Marshall, Michael Shea, Carrie Vaughn, Charles Stross and many others, is on the schedule for later this month.

Here’s the book description:

Many of the best weird fiction writers (and creators in most other media) have been profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos H.P. Lovecraft created eight decades ago. Lovecraft’s themes of cosmic indifference, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history – written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread – are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. A few years ago, New Cthulhu : The Recent Weird presented some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction from the first decade of the twenty-first century. Now, New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird brings you more eldritch tales and even fresher fiction inspired by Lovecraft.

And here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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West of January, Probably Near the Middle of Wednesday

West of January, Probably Near the Middle of Wednesday

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Duncan WestA few weeks ago I was talking about Dave Duncan’s series The Great Game, and that led me to reread his brilliant 2002 novel West of January.

West of January is science fiction that doesn’t, at first, seem to have any science in it. The story is an odyssey, narrated in first person by the main character, Knobil , who tells the tale of his life, from his childhood as part of a herdmaster’s family on the great plains, through to his days as an old man, teaching the young.

Knobil is expelled from his family at puberty and vows revenge on the intruder who murdered his father and mother. While he never completely loses sight of this objective, circumstances take him on a journey through most of the other societies on the world of Vernier, from the Sea People, the Miners, the Traders, and even the Angels in Heaven. It becomes apparent that this world is not Earth, and that while it is suitable for human habitation, its rotation and relationship with its sun causes a cyclical and catastrophic climate change which necessitates the virtual rebuilding of civilization each time.

West of January is a testament to just how important point of view can be. As in the best fiction of any kind, Knobil doesn’t explain anything to the reader that he takes for granted himself – though he might explain things that he knows to his young listeners:

The angels define the world by strips – twelves strips running north and south, seven east and west. The names of these are very old, given by the firstfolk. It is a sensible arrangement with only nineteen words to be learned. Any place can be located by reference to this grid. The west of January is but one example. Geographical features can be named also, like the March Ocean or the Wednesday Desert. This is much easier than remembering an endless arbitrary list, and much more practical when a forest may soon become a desert, or a desert ocean.

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New Treasures: Old Venus, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

New Treasures: Old Venus, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

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Old Venus-smallI think my favorite book of the year (so far) is George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s new anthology, Old Venus, which imagines Venus just as the pulp writers of old: a steamy, swampy jungle planet with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation.

Old Venus is a follow-up to Old Mars, a tribute to “the Golden Age of Science Fiction, an era filled with tales of interplanetary colonization and derring-do.” It includes brand new fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Paul McAuley, Joe Haldeman, Eleanor Arnason, David Brin, Garth Nix, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian McDonald and many others. Russell Letson at Locus Online offers an enthusiastic review, saying:

In the introduction, co-editor Gardner Dozois writes that he and George R.R. Martin were looking for a return to the ‘‘heyday of the Planetary Romance,’’ when ‘‘the solar system swarmed with alien races and civilizations, as crowded and chummy as an Elks picnic…’’ These 16 stories, mostly of novelette length, aspire to resuscitate not only the obsolete, imaginary planetology of Old Venus, but the iconography and tropes that filled the pulp adventure stories once set there: the rain-soaked frontier outback where questionable characters meet in roughneck saloons before setting out to find abandoned temples or lost cities, guided or preyed upon by aquatic or amphibious natives, pursued by hungry local fauna, and perhaps tempted by exotic-erotic possibilities…

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Vintage Treasures: Sheila Gilluly’s Greenbriar Trilogy

Vintage Treasures: Sheila Gilluly’s Greenbriar Trilogy

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Greenbriar Queen-small The Crystal Keep-small Ritnym's Daughter-small

Sheila Gilluly had a brief career as a fantasy writer. She published two trilogies in the late 80s and early 90s, and has produced nothing else for the last 20 years. But I’ve always been curious about her Greenbriar Trilogy — composed of Greenbriar Queen (1988), The Crystal Keep (1988), and Ritnym’s Daughter (1989) — mostly because of the beautiful covers (click the images above for bigger versions). I’ve tried to identify the artist, but the art is uncredited in my copies, and so far an internet search has been fruitless.

Greenbriar Queen opens in a pretty dark place, with the Dark Lord’s reign about to begin, the heroes scattered, the king dead, and a traitor on the throne. If you like high stakes and desperate battles, The Greenbriar Trilogy might be for you.

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Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

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Legolas_portrait_-_EmpireMagBut first, I’d like to ask readers a very important question:

Do Tolkien’s Elves have pointy ears?

This came up after my last post, in which I wondered why Anderson and Tolkien (and many other fantasy writers) agree that elves are tall and have pointy ears. After reading this, Frederic S. Durbin contacted me to say,

Does Tolkien ever say that the elves have pointed ears? To my knowledge, he never does. Please correct me if I’m wrong! This is a bone I had to pick a few years back, when some writer somewhere described hobbits as having “hairy toes and pointed ears.” I think this misconception about Tolkien’s elves and hobbits has come from artwork. Artists need to have a way of making magical races look different from humans, so they go for the ears. We need Spock to look different from humans in a cheap and easily-reproducible way from day to day in the studio, so we give him pointed ears. People have been seeing illustrations of pointy-eared elves and hobbits for so long that they’ve begun to believe Tolkien described them that way. I don’t think it’s true. (Again, I’m willing to stand corrected if someone shows me a passage!)

So there you have it, folks! Please help! Is there a passage anywhere in Tolkien’s writings that suggest that Elves (or even Hobbits) have pointy ears?

And now let’s turn our attention to Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet.

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Future Treasures: Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries, edited by Stephen Jones

Future Treasures: Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries, edited by Stephen Jones

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Dark Detectives-smallWe have a tradition here at Black Gate of respecting supernatural detectives.

Let’s face it, they don’t get much respect anywhere else. But who else is going to defend the Earth from the forces of darkness? Usually without a salary, decent pension, or bennies of any kind. We’re not sure why they do it, but we’re glad they do.

Later this month Titan Books will publish Stephen Jones’ anthology Dark Detectives: An Anthology of Supernatural Mysteries, which collects classic tales of occult detectives, including a John Thunstone tale by Manly Wade Wellman, a Titus Crow story by Brian Lumley, a Solar Pons novella by Basil Copper, and a Carnacki novelette by William Hope Hodgson — as well as brand new tales of intrepid investigators of the unknown by Kim Newman, Brian Mooney, Jay Russell, Peter and Tremayne.

Here’s the description.

CRIMES OF TERROR AND DARKNESS

In the battle between good and evil, the supernatural investigators form the first line of defense against the unexplainable. Here are eighteen pulse-pounding tales featuring uncanny sleuths battling against the weird, written by Clive Barker, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper, Neil Gaiman, William Hope Hodgson, Brian Lumley, Brian Mooney, Kim Newman, Jay Russell, Peter Tremayne, and Manly Wade Wellman.

Featuring the entire ‘’Seven Stars” saga by Kim Newman, pitting the Diogenes Club against an occult object with the power to ultimately annihilate mankind!

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Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

Legion from the Shadows by Karl Edward Wagner

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oie_9192021nLnODdJxFor those raised in this day of pure unadulterated Robert E. Howard texts, it may interest you to learn that once upon a time a flourishing industry of pastiche publication existed. There were only so many Howard stories to satisfy hordes of swords & sorcery fans, so the powers that were created more. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the masterminds as it were, behind the pastiche industry were either greedy exploiters of Howard’s legacy or passionate fans who saw the need for further Howardian adventures. As a fan myself at the time, I was quite happy to buy and read a lot of them. Most weren’t better than alright but they scratched an itch.

De Camp (who fiddled mercilessly with Howard’s own short stories) and Carter wrote some of the weakest pastiches. For all his involvement with Howard’s fiction, de Camp never seemed to understand its nuance and why it worked. By education he was an engineer, and the need for things to be logical and systematic undermines his fiction. Carter, sadly, just didn’t have the talent to mimic the writer whose work he loved so dearly.

Unknown Swedish author, Bjorn Nyberg wrote The Return of Conan (1957). Decades later famous authors such as Poul Anderson and Andrew Offut tried their hands at the game. Howard Andrew Jones wrote a good piece on the pasticheurs a while back. Eventually a critical mass of fans and academics rose up, rightly so, to decry the inferior copies — and really, most were — of Howard’s creations.

There’s one Conan pastiche novel I remember truly liking: The Road of Kings (1979) by Karl Edward Wagner. It was good; equal parts dark and exciting. You can read Charles Rutledge’s review from a few years back here.

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New Treasures: Cannonbridge

New Treasures: Cannonbridge

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Cannonbridge-smallJonathan Barnes is the author of The Domino Men and The Somnambulist, two supernatural thrillers set in Victorian London that garnered a lot of attention. In his third novel, a researcher discovers something has gone wrong with history when he uncovers a lie carefully planted among the greatest works of English fiction…

Flamboyant, charismatic Matthew Cannonbridge was touched by genius, the most influential creative mind of the 19th century, a prolific novelist, accomplished playwright, the poet of his generation. The only problem is, he should never have existed and beleaguered, provincial, recently-divorced 21st Century don Toby Judd is the only person to realize something has gone wrong with history.

All the world was Cannonbridge’s and he possessed, seemingly, the ability to be everywhere at once. Cannonbridge was there that night by Lake Geneva when conversation between Byron, Shelley and Mary Godwin turned to stories of horror and the supernatural. He was sole ally, confidante and friend to the young Dickens as Charles laboured without respite in the blacking factory. He was the only man of standing and renown to regularly visit Oscar Wilde in prison. Tennyson’s drinking companion, Kipling’s best friend, Robert Louis Stevenson’s counselor and guide — Cannonbridge’s extraordinary life and career spanned a century, earning him a richly-deserved place in the English canon.

But as bibliophiles everywhere prepare to toast the bicentenary of the publication of Cannonbridge’s most celebrated work, Judd’s discovery will lead him on a breakneck chase across the English canon and countryside, to the realization that the spectre of Matthew Cannonbridge, planted so seamlessly into the heart of the 19th Century, might not be so dead and buried after all…

Cannonbridge was published by Solaris Books on February 10, 2015. It is 272 pages, priced at $9.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: The Chronicles of Corum by Michael Moorcock

Vintage Treasures: The Chronicles of Corum by Michael Moorcock

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The Chronicles of Corum-smallI need to read more Michael Moorcock.

I discovered Moorcock in the late 70s with An Alien Heat, the first novel in a trilogy featuring Jherek Carnelian and the Dancers at the End of Time. I discovered Elric shortly thereafter. But the other incarnations of his famous Eternal Champion — including Jerry Cornelius, Dorian Hawkmoon, and Corum — managed to escape me. Lately, however, I’ve been growing increasingly intrigued by The Chronicles of Corum, partly triggered by Fletcher Vredenburgh’s comments in his review of the entire series, “The Shout of a Young Man Who Finds the World a Complicated Place: The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock.”

Most preferred the morose albino, Elric, of doomed Melniboné. Dressed in black armor, wielding the evil soul-drinking sword Stormbringer, and riding a dragon — I totally get it. A few liked Dorian Hawkmoon von Koln and his adventures across post-apocalyptic Europe and America better. Personally, I did and still do enjoy the two trilogies about Corum Jhaelen Irsei, last of the Vadhagh. Steeped in Irish myth and a gloomy Celtic miasma, I think they’re the most intense and beautiful books in the series.

The two trilogies Fletcher’s talking about are The Swords Trilogy, which gathered the first three Corum novels, and The Chronicles of Corum, which collects the last three. I frequently find these books referred to as perhaps Moorock’s most enduring works. Here’s Tor.com writer Tim Callahan, quoted from as part of our Appendix N series, in “Andre Norton, Michael Moorcock and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D“:

I read The Swords Trilogy and The Chronicles of Corum early, and they made an impact. They exploded inside my mind in a way I have never forgotten… I didn’t really feel like I tuned into Elric until halfway through the first reprint volume, when we get the four novellas of Stormbringer…

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Self-published Book Review: Transgressions by Phillip Berrie

Self-published Book Review: Transgressions by Phillip Berrie

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here. I’ve run short on books that I’ve received in the past year, so anything new has a good chance of being reviewed.

TransgressionsTransgressions by Phillip Berrie introduces us to the elderly wizard Wamzut, who has a problem. His body was destroyed in a mysterious attack in the Golden Void, the space between worlds, and the only thing that’s kept him tethered to his world is his psychic refuge. He’s in need of a body, and the only one available is that of a young half-Alfaren woman named Attina, whose soul has vanished. With limited options, Wamzut takes the opportunity afforded him and starts a new life, calling herself Sarina.

The fact that Attina’s body is half-Alfaren is in some ways more important than it being female. While Wamzut tries to adapt to being female, she hides the fact that she is Alfaren using magic. Alfaren, who are sometimes, but rarely, called elves in the book, are not common, and while there doesn’t seem to be a specific prejudice against them, they’re considered an oddity. Attina’s half-Alfaren nature is particularly well suited to magic, though, as she collects particles of it in her skin. It’s implied that this may give Alfaren enhanced physical abilities, but Wamzut is mostly interested in using it as a reservoir of magic. I was disappointed that Attina’s history wasn’t explored further. What was she doing in Ilbarsis, the city where Wamzut has been the court wizard for decades? What estranged her from her Alfaren father? The novel raised those questions, but never pursued them.

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