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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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Future Treasures: Accretion Disk for the Ashen Stars RPG

Future Treasures: Accretion Disk for the Ashen Stars RPG

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Ashen Stars Accretion Disk-smallI’ve covered a great many role playing games here over the past few years. But I think it’s safe to say that none of them has captured my imagination the way Pelgrane Press’s Ashen Stars has.

A space opera set in a war-ravaged perimeter where civilization retains only the most tenuous hold, players take the roles of licensed mercs who make a living as as freelance law enforcement on a rough-and-tumble frontier called “the Bleed,” where humans and half a dozen alien races peacefully co-exist…. usually. The Mohilar War that very nearly destroyed the governing Combine is over, and the Combine is in no shape to govern the Bleed. Instead it is forced to depend on on loosely-authorized bands like the players to maintain peace, keep a lid on crime, and investigate odd distress signals from strange corners of space.

Pelgrane Press continues to support the game with regular PDF releases, and so far had published two thick adventure compilations in print: The Justice Trade and Dead Rock Seven, both of which were excellent. Later this year they plan to release the first rules supplement, Accretion Disk, packed with new character options, six new playable species, new options abilities (like zero-g martial arts), new weapons, and equipment, new contracts for your players, and twelve new hostile aliens.

An Accretion Disk forms around massive bodies in space. Gravity drags in random objects and debris, spinning them around and bringing them in closer and closer, faster and faster, hotter and hotter, until something explodes.

It holds true for stars and black holes – and for politics and crime, too. And let’s face it –- you’re the ones who are going to be standing in the path of that explosive release. Better get ready.

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New Treasures: Jazz Age Cthulhu by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey

New Treasures: Jazz Age Cthulhu by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey

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Jazz Age Cthulhu-smallI like these Innsmouth Free Press folks. They’ve done some impressive work recently, including Nick Mamatas’ collection The Nickronomicon, Love & Other Poisons by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and the anthology Future Lovecraft — not to mention the ongoing Innsmouth Magazine, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, which has produced fifteen issues so far.

Jazz Age Cthulhu is a handsome paperback containing three brand new novelettes inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, set against the background of the Roaring Twenties, by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey.

Journey to Kansas City, the “Paris of the Plains,” a city of glamor and sin where cults, secret societies and music intermingle. Visit Assam, India, where a British dilettante wakes up one morning covered in bruises and welts, with a dead man in her bed and no memory of what happened in the last 24 hours. Her only clue is a trashed invitation to the exclusive Black Ram Club. Relax on the resort island of Pomptinia, an Italian enclave of wealthy socialites, expats and intellectuals. But beware — the sea conceals dark secrets.

We last covered Innsmouth Free Press with their anthology Sword & Mythos, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. We covered Jennifer Brozek’s collection Apocalypse Girl Dreaming back in October, and her heroic fantasy anthology Shattered Shields, co-edited with Bryan Thomas Schmidt, in September.

Jazz Age Cthulhu was published by Innsmouth Free Press on December 15, 2014. It is 146 pages, priced at $10 for the trade paperback and just $3.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures posts here.

Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin on Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin on Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

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The Buried Giant-small2Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled), is one of the most acclaimed novelists in the English language. His newest novel, The Buried Giant, is already generating intense interest — and debate — among fantasy fans. Witness two very different reactions… the first, from Neil Gaiman, writing in The New York Times:

This is a novel about an elderly couple going from one village to the next, set in a semi-historical England of the sixth or perhaps seventh century… Saxons and Britons live side by side in a post-Arthurian twilight, in a mythical time of ogres, sprites and dragons — most of all the dragon Querig, who dominates the second half of the book…

The narrative tone is dreamlike and measured. There are adventures, sword fights, betrayals, armies, cunning stratagems and monsters killed, but these things are told distantly, without the book’s pulse ever beating faster… Enemies are slain, but the deaths are never triumphant. A culmination of a planned trap for a troop of soldiers, worthy of a whodunit, is described in retrospect, once we already know what must have happened… this is, at its heart, a book about two people who are now past all adventure.

Gaiman’s review of the novel is largely positive, although he admits his “inability to fall in love with it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, in contrast, has harshly criticized the book — and especially the author’s clear disdain for fantasy.

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Vintage Treasures: Horrors in Hiding edited by Sam Moskowitz with Alden H. Norton

Vintage Treasures: Horrors in Hiding edited by Sam Moskowitz with Alden H. Norton

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Horrors in Hiding-smallHorrors in Hiding is the second in the trilogy of anthologies Sam Moskowitz edited for Berkely in the early 70s, and the only one we haven’t covered. The first was Horrors Unknown (1971), and the last (and the final anthology Moskowitz ever produced) was Horrors Unseen (1974).

It’s also the only one co-edited with Alden H. Norton, a noted anthologist in his own right, who co-edited four books with Moskowitz, including The Space Magicians and Ghostly By Gaslight (both in 1971).

I like Vincent Di Fate’s cover, which is moody and very striking. Although it’s awfully purple, and a little puzzling if you stare at it too long. (Is that dude eating a rock?)

The blurb on the back is short and to the point:

WARNING: Lock your doors before unleashing Horrors In Hiding. Ten grim and gruesome tales of the macabre guaranteed to chill your blood and shatter your nerves.

I count only nine stories, but let’s not be picky. They are grim and gruesome, and that’s what matters.

Moskowitz was a die-hard pulp fan, and half the stories within — those by Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth and Ray Bradbury — are culled from pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Strange Stories. The rest — by Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry, John Kendrick Bangs and Nathaniel P. Babcock — are much older.

As usual, Sam wrote fascinating and detailed introductions — author appreciations, really — for each story, and his love and knowledge of the field shine through. Sometimes I think Moskowitz produced these anthologies just so he’d have an excuse to talk about his favorite writers.

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New Treasures: Monstrous by MarcyKate Connolly

New Treasures: Monstrous by MarcyKate Connolly

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Monstrous-smallNow this looks like a cool book.

Monstrous, the debut novel from MarcyKate Connolly, features a city under the sway of dark magic, a mysterious curse… and a girl with bolts in her neck, who was built to defeat the curse and rescue the inhabitants of Byre. You can read the first 72 pages online, at the HarperCollins Web Sampler.

The city of Bryre suffers under the magic of an evil wizard. Because of his curse, girls sicken and disappear without a trace, and Bryre’s inhabitants live in fear. No one is allowed outside after dark.

Yet night is the only time that Kymera can enter this dangerous city, for she must not be seen by humans. Her father says they would not understand her wings, the bolts in her neck, or her spiky tail — they would kill her. They would not understand that she was created for a purpose: to rescue the girls of Bryre.

Despite her caution, a boy named Ren sees Kym and begins to leave a perfect red rose for her every evening. As they become friends, Kym learns that Ren knows about the missing girls, the wizard, and the evil magic that haunts Bryre.

And what he knows will change Kym’s life.

Reminiscent of Frankenstein and the tales of the Brothers Grimm, this debut novel by MarcyKate Connolly stands out as a compelling, original story that has the feel of a classic.

Monstrous was published by HarperCollins on February 10, 2015. It is 432 pages, priced at $16.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.