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The Constant Tower by Carole McDonnell

The Constant Tower by Carole McDonnell

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oie_92323565jFPqCc4When I started my blog (Swords & Sorcery: A Blog), one of my goals was to force myself to read new fantasy. I knew I’d get bored pretty quickly if all I did was write about books and stories I’d read many times. As a fan, it’s too easy to allow oneself to get comfortably caught up in a cycle of reading and rereading the same old dusty stack of Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock. My newer go-to books include Norton, Saunders, and Wagner, but most of their books are still between thirty-five and fifty years old.

Like any other person writing, I also wanted people to read my work. Another article about “Queen of the Black Coast” or “Adept’s Gambit” out in the universe was going to bore most readers as much as it would me while writing it. This meant finding my way back into the thicket of current heroic fantasy, which I’d stopped reading a long time ago.

Turns out I picked about the perfect time to start reading heroic fantasy again, as there was an exciting revival taking place. One discovery I made was Milton Davis and the tremendous efforts he was making to write and publish sword & soul stories. My interest was piqued by the idea that someone was doing something different in the genre, not just regurgitating the same heroic fantasy tropes that have been done to death.

When I went from looking at the amazing cover of his and Charles Saunders’s anthology Griots and actually reading the contents (reviewed at my site), I was hooked. Other than Davis and Saunders, I didn’t recognize any contributors to the collection. Several really grabbed me, but the story that I liked best was “Changeling,” a tale of daughterly duty and sibling jealousy by Carole McDonnell.

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New Treasures: Dead Man’s Hand edited by John Joseph Adams

New Treasures: Dead Man’s Hand edited by John Joseph Adams

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Dead Man's Hand John Jospeh Adams-smallJohn Joseph Adams is having a good year.

Back in April, he was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor, Short Form (his seventh nomination), for his work as editor of Lightspeed, Nightmare, and anthologies like The Apocalypse Triptych.

That’s not his only triumph this year — far from it. His popular anthology Robot Uprisings (co-edited with Daniel H. Wilson) was released on April 8, and the special Women Destroy Science Fiction issue of Lightspeed has just arrived, and is being recognized as a landmark issue.

But the JJA project I’ve most been looking forward to this year is his original anthology of Weird Western tales, featuring brand new stories from Alastair Reynolds, Joe R. Lansdale, Tad Williams, Seanan McGuire, Tobias S. Buckell, David Farland, Alan Dean Foster, Jeffrey Ford, Laura Anne Gilman, Fred Van Lente, Walter Jon Williams, and many more.

Dead Man’s Hand was published by Titan Books on May 13. It is 409 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Read more details — and the complete book description — in my April 13 Future Treasures post.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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A Monster Index for Shub-Niggurath, Cthuhlu or Azathoth: A Review of Lovecraft’s Monsters

A Monster Index for Shub-Niggurath, Cthuhlu or Azathoth: A Review of Lovecraft’s Monsters

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Lovecraft’s Monsters-smallI love H. P. Lovecraft. Moreover, I think he is the foremost horror and weird writer of all time! I’m not going to attempt to defend that claim here other than to say that I personally love his writing style (purple prose and all), his creatures, his gods, his mood setting — all of it! Thus, as I’ve said in another review, I’m pretty much a sucker for any book advertised or alluded to as “Lovecraftian.” It should be no shock then that I bought the recent anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters.

This book is edited by the multiple award-winner SF&F editor Ellen Datlow. Datlow typically compiles her anthologies around certain themes. The title Lovecraft’s Monsters should thus be fairly self-explanatory. But in detail, each story in this volume contains a monster that is from, similar to, or inspired by one of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories.

New to Lovecraft and his monsters, you say? Ever wonder who Shub-Niggurath, Cthuhlu, or Azathoth are? Ever curious as to what shoggoths, “deep ones,” or the Hounds of Tindalos are? Wonder no longer! There is a helpful “Monster Index” compiled in Lovecraft’s Monsters, by Rachel Fagundes, that introduces all such beasties. Besides identifying which stories within Loveccraft’s Monsters contain these creatures, the index also points to where they are first found in Lovecraft’s original stories.

I should also point out that this is a very attractive book with creepy illustrations throughout provided by John Coulthart. In fact, there is one illustration for each story and poem (Gemma Files provides two poems here). Coulthart’s work provides the cover illustration as well. These are nice little extras not usually offered in anthologies.

But of course no anthology is worthwhile without some good stories. And thankfully Lovecraft’s Monsters does not disappoint. There are some very well-known authors here, including Neil Gaiman, Joe Lansdale, Caitlín Kiernan, Elizabeth Bear, and Laird Barron. Most of the stories are reprints, including some older works such as Karl Edward Wagner’s. But with the exception of one story, I had never read any of these tales before.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: When Elric of Melnibone Came to 221B Baker Street

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: When Elric of Melnibone Came to 221B Baker Street

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Moorcock_DorsetLodgerWell, not quite. That title was just to grab your attention. But Elric’s creator did set a tale at London’s most famous address, 221B Baker Street. And it’s a pretty ‘normal’ Holmes tale; which you might not expect from the guy who created Stormbringer.

I enjoyed Fletcher Vrendenburgh’s post last week on Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. I devoured the tales of Corum, Hawkmoon, Erekose, and of course Elric in my middle-school years.

Being a Dungeons and Dragons player, these books were awesome. I think I even used Rackhir the Red Archer in a game. If you’ve not read  significant parts of that saga, your fantasy education is lacking.

Moorcock’s work encompasses much more than just the Eternal Champion tales. I’m a Christian and I was fascinated by the premise of The War Hound and all the World’s Pain (an excellent read: the sequel, not so much).

I even wrote a paper on the idea for a high school religion class. That got me an invite to see the teacher, a priest, after class.

Back in 1995, Moorcock wrote “The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger” as a privately printed chapbook which he let friends of his, who were opening a hotel on Dorset Street, give away to their first guests.

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Self-Published Book Review: Pyre by R. B. Kannon

Self-Published Book Review: Pyre by R. B. Kannon

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

While the cover is beautiful, I’m pretty sure Ember never wore anything remotely like that outfit anywhere in the novel.
While the cover is beautiful, I’m pretty sure Ember never wore anything remotely like that outfit anywhere in the novel.

This month’s self-published book is Pyre by R.B. Kannon. Set in a desert land reminiscent of ancient Egypt, it tells the life story of Ember, scion of a ruined people.

When Ember was a small child, her mother locked her inside an ancient, abandoned temple to die. She did this because Ember is cursed. Her people have no dreams or visions, no hope or desire or love. They sacrificed those things to a long forgotten demigod. But Ember is different—she not only has those ordinary traits of humanity, her mere presence disturbs the dreamless sleep of her people, bringing them unwanted dreams and nightmares. So she was locked away in the temple, but she was not alone. The Voice was there, a demonic presence who bonds with her and frees them both.

At first, Ember is taken in by Azarus, the eunuch satrap of the province, who teaches her to read and write not only the common language, but also the ancient glyphs that cover the ruins littering the countryside. Years later, when Azarus is killed by the Emperor’s unfavored son, she flees, returning first to her own people, then falling in with prostitutes and bandits, before finally coming back to the temple, where she challenges the Voice to seek redemption not just for herself, but for her fallen people.

The strongest part of Pyre was the prose. The first person narration has a lyrical quality, filled with descriptions rich with dream-like imagery, slipping effortlessly between reality and Ember’s own dreams. Ember herself is strong and determined, qualities which initially drew the Voice to her. The Voice, on the other hand, is cynical and mocking. He accompanies Ember more out of curiosity and boredom, and his own chance at freedom and survival, than because he has any interest in her welfare.

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Want to sell SF and Fantasy? The Only Book You Need is Bud Webster’s The Joy of Booking

Want to sell SF and Fantasy? The Only Book You Need is Bud Webster’s The Joy of Booking

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The Joy of Booking-smallI’ve written here a few times about my adventures as a bookseller. Like that time a buyer found a rare Harry Dresden first edition in our $1 box at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. Or when I sold Jo Walton an Eric Frank Russell paperback she never knew existed. Or the weekend Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge,  Donald Crankshaw, Peadar Ó Guilín, Rich Horton, and I sold books together at the World Science Fiction convention

Or what happened when an attractive young woman picked up a copy of a Philip K. Dick paperback at Dragon*Con, and I stupidly said “Hey there — are you a fan of Dick?”

But despite all those years selling vintage SF paperbacks, I’m still very much a newbie. Especially compared to the legendary Bud Webster, who has made a vocation of buying and selling SF and fantasy books for decades, at conventions all over the country.

He’s collected anecdotes from a lifetime of selling SF, and packaged them up with excellent advice to aspiring booksellers on things like Managing Your Stock, Obtaining Stock, and When to Sell, in a single extremely useful and highly entertaining volume: The Joy of Booking, published in 2011.

Full exposure: Bud was the poetry editor for Black Gate, back when we had a print edition, and he’s also written a few articles for us on (what else?) bookselling and vintage books, such as “Selling Your Books Ain’t as Easy as it Looks,” “What I Do and Why I Do It,” “What I Do It With,” “Holding History,” and “Talk to Any Squids Lately? In Space, I Mean?.”

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New Treasures: New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran

New Treasures: New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran

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New Cthulhu-smallMy birthday was last month, and one of the gifts my children bought for me (my children! That’s sweet. And a little disturbing) was Paula Guran’s 2011 anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird. Yes, I do realize the book is very nearly three years old and a bit long in the tooth to be a “New Treasure,” but I’m still so touched that my kids got me a Cthulhu anthology that I’m going to overlook it.

Anyway, it’s a fine addition to any Cthulhu library. It reprints 27 Cthulhu Mythos tales from the 21st Century, including contributions from Neil Gaiman, Kim Neuman, Charles Stross, Marc Laidlaw, Laird Barron, Paul McAuley, William Browning Spencer, Holly Phillips — and even Michael Shea’s chilling novelette “Tsathoggua,” published online here at Black Gate. Here’s the book description.

For more than 80 years H.P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gaming. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history — written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread — remain not only viable motifs, but 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.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction — bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters – eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

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Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Two

Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Two

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4b19b9961e944_71847n861809-superdicklib_3The strongest scenes in Bulldog Drummond (1920) are the ones that show off Sapper’s strengths as a humorist. While it has since become commonplace to see Bondian heroes tossing off quips while being menaced by an unfailingly polite villain, it hardly compares to the way Hugh Drummond handled himself in similar scenarios. Drummond regularly displays a self-deprecating humor when it comes to his features and his intellect, yet his ability to needle villains by refusing to treat them as a serious threat displays an intelligence and understanding of the criminal mind that provides a constant source of amusement to the reader.

Drummond may start off as an independently wealthy and very bored veteran of the First World War seeking adventure, but the character soon transforms into the head of a gang of vigilantes determined to right wrongs as they see fit. He and his gang view meting out justice without resorting to the law as their right as recently demobilized soldiers. The wartime ability to kill without fear of criminal punishment continues into their clandestine civilian activities, although they take the precaution of hiding behind masks and hoods to protect their identities when doing so.

Drummond’s gang includes his fellow World War I veterans Algy Longworth, Peter Darrell, Ted Jerningham, Toby Sinclair, and Jerry Seymour, as well as New York police detective Jerome Green. Later dubbed The Black Gang, the vigilante squad was clearly inspired by Edgar Wallace’s bestselling Four Just Men series. The secret war they wage is aimed squarely against the forces of socialism and communism to an extent that was matched only by Harold Gray’s original version of Little Orphan Annie. The anti-foreign sentiments in the first book are rooted in the perceived threat of foreigners altering the course of England’s political identity and economic status.

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Future Treasures: The Return of the Discontinued Man by Mark Hodder

Future Treasures: The Return of the Discontinued Man by Mark Hodder

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The Return of the Discontinued Man-smallI hear good things about these Burton & Swinburne adventure novels by Mark Hodder.

The series opened with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Sept. 2010) and The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man (March 2011). Come on, you have to love them just for the titles. Book #3, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, arrived in January, 2012, and #4, The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, in July of last year. In regards to that last book, Steampunk godfather KW Jeter noted, “Mark Hodder vaults to the front of the new steampunk writer’s pack.” Time for me to jump on board now, I think.

SPRING HEELED JACK IS JUMPING BACK!

It’s 9 p.m. on February 15, 1860, and Charles Babbage, the British Empire’s most brilliant scientist, performs an experiment. Within moments, blood red snow falls from the sky and Spring Heeled Jack pops out of thin air in London’s Leicester Square. Though utterly disoriented and apparently insane, the strange creature is intent on one thing: hunting Sir Richard Francis Burton!

Spring Heeled Jack isn’t alone in his mental confusion. Burton can hardly function; he’s experiencing one hallucination after another-visions of parallel realities and future history. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him about… what?

When the revelation comes, it sends Burton and his companions on an expedition even the great explorer could never have imagined-a voyage through time itself into a twisted future where steam technology has made a resurgence and a despotic intelligence rules over the British Empire!

The Return of the Discontinued Man will be published on July 8, 2014 by Pyr Books. It is 339 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.

Welcome To The Club

Welcome To The Club

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BW TalesEvery now and then I get reminded that there’s a whole group of people out there who think of Isaac Asimov as a mystery writer. It’s not that they don’t know he’s a famous SF writer, it’s just that they’re familiar with his work through the pages of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Asimov wrote “main stream” mystery novels, of course, such as Murder at the ABA, or A Whiff of Death, and SF mysteries like Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun (known along with others as The Robot Novels). But it’s his Ellery Queen stories that fit the topic I’ve been talking about for the last few weeks, the bar story.

A quick review: bar stories are a series, using as a framing device the setting of a bar or a club. A group of people are “regulars” and tales are told. These are not usually the same thing as stories set in bars, but the lines can blur a bit.

Asimov’s tales are club stories, in that while drinking is definitely going on, the setting is, in the case of the Black Widowers, a dinner club’s private dining room, and in the case of the Union Club, the club library.

The Black Widower stories nod in the direction of Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart in that the characters belonging to the club are based on real people – in fact, they’re based on a real club of which Asimov was a member, called The Trap Door Spiders. The real-world club was started by Fletcher Pratt and if you’d like to have a complete list of the “real” members, as well as finding out which “fictional” member is which, have a look here.

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