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Welcome To The Commonwealth: John Myers Myers’ Silverlock

Welcome To The Commonwealth: John Myers Myers’ Silverlock

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Silverlock Ace paperbackLast week, I was talking about L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Compleat Enchanter and it occurred to me that one of the great pleasures of that work is encountering familiar myths, persons, and fictional events in a new guise and from a new perspective. It’s also a bit intimidating, from the point of view of a writer, to realize just how thoroughly de Camp and Pratt had to know their source materials.

It doesn’t take very long to go from these thoughts to the great masterwork of this type, John Myers Myers’s Silverlock. On the surface, the book tells the story of  A. Clarence Shandon – re-christened Silverlock due to a white streak in his hair —  on his journey of self-discovery after being shipwrecked on the shores of the Commonwealth.

It doesn’t take long, in fact he’s still in the water,  for the well-read person to begin to find a certain quality of familiarity in the narrative, to figure out that Shandon has made landfall in the Commonwealth of Letters. From the very first, every  person he meets, every place he goes, everything that happens to him, alludes to some piece of literature. Every single person, place, or thing. What adds to the pleasure is that Shandon himself has no idea of what’s happened to him. His degree is in business administration.

Now this might strike you as a bit overwhelming, or even a bit tedious, but it isn’t. Shandon himself, without being aware of it,  provides the key to enjoying the book:

At times the mind works on two levels at once, and it was so with mine on this occasion. Half of it was giving itself gleefully to the moment, while the other half was revolving a new idea. What had impressed me was that this friar was well-informed and had a lot of fun out of that fact alone…  I glimpsed the concept that to know a thing for itself could be a source of joy. Take the song we were bellowing. It was easy to appreciate, but I would have had more chuckles out of if I had known, as the others did, about the personages involved.

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Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Four – “The Third Round”

Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Four – “The Third Round”

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510+vaEqotL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_20974339Sapper’s The Third Round (1926) marked a return to the more humorous tone of the first book in the series. Not only the humor, but the premise of that initial book is invoked with the decision to again build the plot around a spunky female whose doddering old father has fallen prey to heinous villains. All trace of The Black Gang (1924) and its doom-laden paranoia over England likewise falling prey to a communist revolution has been removed. In its place we have Hugh Drummond once again eager to escape the boredom of everyday life and engaging in comical banter with friends and foes alike.

The starting point for the adventure this time is the impending nuptials of Algy Longworth, Hugh’s old friend who has finally been reduced to the silly ass familiar from the stage play and film adaptations. The catalyst for Algy’s descent into idiocy is his having fallen head over heels in love to the extent that he now horrifies his friends by reciting poetry. So serious is his obsession with the girl of his dreams that he has become a literal walking disaster shunned by all who know him.

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The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers

The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers

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oie_843719JA9UJcX8I have loved the work of two-time World Fantasy Award-winning and two-time Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Tim Powers ever since I read The Anubis Gates (one of the foundational works of steampunk) back in 1984. Since then, I’ve been equally thrilled by a number of his other books, including The Stress of Her Regard, his tale of artists and vampiric monsters; Last Call, about the search for the Fisher King in Las Vegas; and Three Days to Never, involving time-travel, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin.

Every few years I feel the pull to revisit his third novel, The Drawing of the Dark (1979). It’s a swords & sorcery adventure set in 1529 and climaxing during Suleiman the Magnificent’s siege of Vienna.

Briefly, The Drawing of the Dark is about the adventures of Brian Duffy, an aging soldier of fortune who encounters a stranger with an offer of employment at just the time circumstances require him to flee Venice.

The old man who’d hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.

“Sit down, please,” he said, waving at the chair.

“I don’t mind standing,” Duffy told him.

“Whatever you prefer.” He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. “My name is Aurelianus.” Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off. “And what is yours?”

Duffy blinked. “What?”

“Oh! I’m Brian Duffy.”

Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. It began popping and smoldering, and Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.

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New Treasures: Flight of the Golden Harpy by Susan Klaus

New Treasures: Flight of the Golden Harpy by Susan Klaus

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Flight of the Golden Harpy-smallI picked up a copy of Susan Klaus’s debut novel over the weekend, and so far have been intrigued. It’s romantic fantasy dressed up as science fiction, in which a young woman returns to the jungle planet of Dora, where long ago she was saved by a male harpy with beautiful golden coloring. But the human colonists of Dora treat harpies like dangerous animals and hunt them like wild game.

This morning, I read a guest post by Klaus at SF Signal, where she reveals that Flight of the Golden Harpy was inspired by an encounter with Brad Pitt while she was an extra on Oceans Eleven:

The guy wasn’t a disappointment… Brad is even more gorgeous in person. After 12 hours of gawking and drooling, I learned he was also a nice, down-to-earth guy. But his looks and personality had nothing to do with my book dedication or why he’s my main man and character in my books. It came from how Brad was treated when he first walked on the set. The extras immediately mobbed him. He smiled, signed their autographs, and [posed] for their little cameras, desperately trying to appease the crushing crowd. It was sad. Even on a closed set, he was smothered and harassed. Going out in public must be a nightmare for him. Sure he’s handsome and has fame, and fortune, but is it worth a hectic stressful life with the press and fans constantly stalking and pursuing him like wild game…

I drove home and realized that good-looks can have drawbacks, especially in his case. That night I started writing my fantasy about a jungle planet with the point of view of the beautiful winged harpies, half-bird, half-human creatures that can’t understand mankind or why humans hunt and kill them for their wings that become mounted trophies on a wall. I gave Brad Pitt credit because he inspired the story, and the novel is also dedicated to our vanishing wildlife.

Flight of the Golden Harpy was published by Tor Books on June 17, 2014. It is 400 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Murder By Decree

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Murder By Decree

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That hairy fellow is director Bob Clark

Thanks in large part to Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Per Cent Solution (book and film), Sherlock Holmes had a revival of popularity in the mid seventies. This resulted in an under-appreciated British-Canadian big-screen effort, Murder By Decree.

The most famous detective had tackled the most famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in 1965’s A Study in Terror. Originally conceived as a sequel to Christopher Lee’s under-achieving Sherlock Holmes & The Deadly Necklace, John Neville played a solid Holmes, though saddled with Donald Houston’s doofus of a Watson.

A bit lurid, it’s a good Holmes film, though promoted to appeal to Adam West’s very popular ‘Batman’ TV show crowd (“Here comes the original caped crusader”).

The Ripper File was a book based on Jack the Ripper, a BBC miniseries in which two popular TV detectives investigated the Jack the Ripper case. That miniseries introduced Joseph Sickert and his royal conspiracy theory (later turned into Stephen Knight’s book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution) to the world.

Director and producer Bob Clark (whose next film, improbably, would be Porky’s) built his story around The Ripper File. There are several variations of the royal conspiracy theory and Murder by Decree changes some (but not all) of the names and follows one of them.

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Self-Published Book Review: Destiny’s Heir by Casey Neumiller

Self-Published Book Review: Destiny’s Heir by Casey Neumiller

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Destiny's Heir CoverIf you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

Casey Neumiller’s Destiny’s Heir is the first book of a planned epic fantasy series. Like most novels starting off a series, a goodly portion is spent introducing the characters and the world. For centuries, Letale’s kings have ruled with the guidance of the Magi, who both advise the king and, when necessary, combat the servants of the Dark One. But a few decades ago, a new king assassinated the old line and declared the Magi outlaws, flipping the theology by declaring that the Aethir whom the Magi serve is the Dark One and the former Dark One is the Light One. It seems odd how easily most people accept this, but there are enough real world examples of a paradigm shift in belief systems that I don’t consider it too unbelievable.

The story follows two parallel plot lines, that of the Magi apprentice Arraya and that of the thief Ben, alternating between them for each chapter. From Ben’s point of view, this is a heist story. He and his friends, Zeke and Corin, have been asked by the leader of their guild in Jepitsa to assist in stealing one of the most valuable items in the kingdom, the queen’s crown. There is no actual queen, so the crown’s kept in storage, where it can be easily claimed by a clever thief with the right items, which Ben, Zeke, and Corin spend most of the novel attaining.

Corin, however, has some doubts about the guild-leader Allen. She thinks he means to make off with the crown while leaving the rest of them to take the blame, doubts which Ben is unable to put to rest.

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Future Treasures: The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi

Future Treasures: The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi

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The Causal Angel-smallTwo years ago, Matthew David Surridge posted a review of The Quantum Thief, the first novel in Hannu Rajaniemi’s far future adventure trilogy. We focus on fantasy at Black Gate, but the magical and baroque setting Rajaniemi created seemed more science fantasy than SF and it caught my attention. Here’s how Matthew summed up the book:

Centuries in the future, Jean le Flambeur is a master thief, imprisoned in a virtual-reality jail: every day he makes choices, and dies, and is reborn. Until he’s freed by a violent woman named Mieli from the edge of the solar system, and taken to Mars. There, he must regain old memories he locked away from all possible recovery when he was literally a far different person than he is now. A youthful detective, hi-tech superheroes, and posthuman intelligences are waiting to complicate his task, which seems to have ramifications on an interplanetary scale…

It’s primarily, I think, within a lineage that goes back at least to Arthur C. Clarke, fusing precise language and dramatic plots with a sense of the sublime clothed in scientific theory… it also plays with another lineage, older than sf, one at least as old as Robin Hood: the righteous outlaw thief.

The second volume, The Fractal Prince, was published in hardcover in November 2012. I just received a copy of the third (and final?) volume: The Causal Angel, which goes on sale next week. The blurb promises this volume contains “the ultimate fates of Jean, his employer Miele, the independently minded ship Perhonnen, and the rest of a fractured and diverse humanity flung throughout the solar system.” Sign me up.

The Causal Angel will be published by Tor Books on July 15th. It is 292 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Kekai Kotaki.

Kirkus Looks at The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I – IV

Kirkus Looks at The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I – IV

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The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 4-smallOver at Kirkus Reviews, Andrew Liptak continues his thorough and excellent survey of vintage science fiction with a look at one of the most important anthology series in the history of the genre: the four-volume Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Here he is on the first volume:

The book appeared as a hardcover in 1970 under the title The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Times, chosen by the members of the science fiction writers of America. Silverberg, in the introduction, described the anthology as “nearly definitive an anthology of modern science fiction stories as it likely to be compiled for quite some time.” The book sold well, and sold out within a year. Doubleday sold the rights to Avon Books, which published a paperback edition in July 1971; it would go through dozens of printings in the coming decades. In 1971, it placed first in Locus’ annual poll for best Anthology/Collection…

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes 1 & 2, are perhaps the finest SF anthologies of the 20th Century and even today they serve as a superb introduction to the genre for modern readers. (The only comparable books I can think of are The Hugo Winners, Volumes I and II, edited by Isaac Asimov.) I dearly love my Avon paperback editions, which are sturdy and well-read.

Read the entire article here. Or have a look at some of Andrew’s previous articles, including:

Kirkus Looks at Astounding Science Fiction
Kirkus Looks at Galaxy Science Fiction
Kirkus Looks at Donald A. Wollheim and the Ace Double
Kirkus Looks at The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Gnome Press
Kirkus Looks at Andre Norton’s Young Adult Novels

New Treasures: The Volunteer by Peadar Ó Guilín

New Treasures: The Volunteer by Peadar Ó Guilín

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The Volunteer Peadar O Guilin-smallPeadar Ó Guilin’s first novel, The Inferior, was published to wide acclaim in 2008. Bookfetish called it “Absolutely incredible… An exhilarating read, highly recommended and an incredible first novel in what is going to end up an incredible career.” My son Tim devoured it in less than 24 hours and insisted I let him know the instant the sequel was available.

It took four long years, but The Deserter, the second novel in what’s now known as The Bone World Trilogy, arrived in 2012. And now the concluding volume in the series is finally available. Thank God — maybe now Tim will finally stop pestering me.

Everyone in the human tribe of ManWays knows their world is about to end. They are shattered from the constant attacks of their enemies and even the Roof above their heads is on the verge of collapse. But just when their doom seems certain, word reaches them of a land free of all enemies. Humans are said to live there, but their leader is Stopmouth, the Chief’s own brother and the vilest of traitors. Can Chief Wallbreaker lead his entire tribe across the wasteland the world has become? And will enough of them survive the journey to avenge themselves on the man who kidnapped his beloved wife, Indrani? The Volunteer is the thrilling conclusion to the story that began with The Inferior and continued with The Deserter. Praise for The Inferior:… “This is one of those ‘aw-crap-I’m-gonna-be-reading-until-the-sun-comes-up’ type of books.” —The Book Smugglers

Peadar’s most recent story for Black Gate was “The Dowry.” He first appeared in the pages of our print version with “The Mourning Trees” (Black Gate 5), followed by “Where Beauty Lies in Wait” (BG 11) and “The Evil Eater” (BG 13), which Serial Distractions called “a lovely little bit of Lovecraftian horror that still haunts me to this day.”

Peadar’s most recent book was Forever in the Memory of God and Other Stories, which Sarah Avery called “old-school weird fiction, Clark Ashton Smith style.”

The Volunteer was published on June 10, 2014. It is 296 pages, priced at $9.99 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the Kindle edition. Check it out — or start with the first two volumes, still available.

Mark Lawrence and the Prince of Fools

Mark Lawrence and the Prince of Fools

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Mark Lawrence-smallI’d been wanting to talk with the talented Mark Lawrence about his writing process for a long time and the occasion of his release of Prince of Fools (not to mention the wining of a certain prestigious award) seemed like as good a justification as any. Mark kindly answered all of my questions in detail. I hope you’ll find them as interesting as I did.

Howard Andrew Jones: Congratulations on winning the David Gemmell Legend Award. What was the ceremony like?

Mark Lawrence: Thanks, it was the only award I’ve ever been interested in winning, so it was very gratifying to do so!

I couldn’t tell you what the ceremony was like. I’ve only been further than ten miles from my hometown once in the last ten years. My youngest daughter (10) is very disabled and I’m needed to look after her. Even when we have carers in I still need to be around to lift her. So getting away is very difficult indeed. Add to that the fact that I was sure I had zero chance of winning!

I do know the event was held at the headquarters of the Magic Circle in London which is a very nice venue and it was well attended. My agent received the award on my behalf. I would loved to have been there.

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