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New Treasures: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

New Treasures: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

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The Golem and the Jinni-smallI always find it interesting when mainstream publishers like Putnam, Harper, and Grove Press decide to publish a fantasy novel. Usually they do it badly, producing something that both fantasy fans and the general public scorn. Every once in a while they hit a home run, though — as Pocket did with Mark Helprin’s Winter Tale, for example, one of the most cherished fantasy novels of the 80s, or Grove Press accomplished just last year with G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen, which won the World Fantasy Award in October.

So I was intrigued enough to plunk down 15 bucks for Helene Wecker’s first novel, The Golem and the Jinni, a literary fantasy that blends Jewish and Arabian folklore in a tale of a chance meeting between two mythical beings in turn-of-the-century New York. The reviews have been kind, and it seems to be achieving a measure of early success.

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.

Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker’s debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.

The Golem and the Jinni was published by Harper Perennial on December 31, 2013. It is 512 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $10.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Vintage Treasures: Night Monsters by Fritz Leiber

Vintage Treasures: Night Monsters by Fritz Leiber

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Night Monsters-smallNight Monsters is an interesting case study in book collecting, as least for me.

It was originally published in 1969 as part of an Ace Double set, with a moody but otherwise fairly unremarkable cover by Jack Gaughan (see below). The subtitle Ace put on the collection was “A new collection of the weird, the wonderful, and the macabre,” which was certainly accurate, if a little pedestrian.

I bought a copy 25 years ago. Never read it. It shared a spine with Leiber’s early novel The Green Millennium (here’s John Schoenherr’s cover, just because I have a thing about uploading paperback covers), which I found a little more interesting. To be honest, after a few years I kinda forgot about the book on the back side of The Green Millennium.

Fast forward to early 2013. I’m surfing eBay and I stumble on a copy of Fritz Leiber’s Night Monsters, a Panther paperback published in the UK in 1975. I have no immediate recollection of a Fritz Leiber collection called Night Monsters, but that’s not necessarily a big deal; it could be a re-titled version of one of his collections I do remember.

What is a big deal is that I recognize the cover artist. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s the work of the great Bruce Pennington, who provided some of the finest covers for Black Gate, for BG 12 and BG 14.

I’m a huge Pennington fan. Part of it is simple gratitude — the man was enormously gracious to me when I called him up in 2007, hoping to buy the rights to two of his paintings. He had no idea who I was, calling him from America with nothing more than high spirits and a meager budget. He very politely asked to see “a copy or two” of my little magazine, before making up his mind.

Twenty-four hours later I had two sample issues in the mail bound for England, with an enthusiastic hand-written note telling Bruce how much I admired his work. About a month later I received a marvelous letter from him, saying he had been very impressed with the issues, and that he would be delighted to provide us the art we wanted — and at the price I had offered.

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Life Underground

Life Underground

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manfrommarsI suppose it’s only natural that I’d consider the decade of my formative years – the 1970s – to have been the “perfect” one in which to grow up. I have little doubt that those whose childhoods encompassed the ’80s or even (Merritt forfend!) the ’90s may feel the same way. They’re wrong, of course, at least if you were the kind of kid who enjoyed hearing tales of the weird, the strange, and the occult. The 1970s were alive with such nonsense, from Bigfoot to ancient astronauts to the Loch Ness Monster, not to mention The Exorcist, In Search Of, and The Night Stalker. And let us not forget that the decade also saw the popularization, through books and movies and television, of the watered-down Theosophy of the New Age movement. In retrospect, it all makes sense if you look at the ’70s as a ten-year hangover in the aftermath of the various counterculture movements that spread like wildfire during the 1960s.

For a lot of adults living at the time, it probably wasn’t pretty, but, for me, as a child with a sense that there was more to the universe than what we saw everyday, it sure was fun. Though far more skeptical today, I still retain a keen interest in such oddities, as well as the sense – or is it merely the hope? – that I was not wrong in my youthful intuition that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Like Fox Mulder, “I want to believe,” even if I find it increasingly hard to summon up the credulity necessary to do so. Perhaps that’s why, even as I scoff, I nevertheless retain a more-than-grudging admiration for men and women who do believe, often in the face not merely of seemingly contradictory facts, but also of social ridicule, ostracism, and abuse.

That probably explains why I’ve long been intrigued by “the Shaver Mystery,” which first burst upon the world in the form of the story “I Remember Lemuria,” published in the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories. The story purports to be an ancient, first-person account (preserved in “thought records”) of an advanced subterranean civilization that once existed on Earth and whose remnants continue to have intermittent – and often unpleasant – contact with the surface.

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Win a Copy of M. Harold Page’s The Sword is Mightier and Blood in the Streets

Win a Copy of M. Harold Page’s The Sword is Mightier and Blood in the Streets

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The Sword is Mightier-smallIt’s January 7th already and we haven’t given away any books this year. Time to fix that.

Here at Black Gate, we like to reward faithful readers with the finest in free fantasy and that tradition continues this month with the exciting Scholar Knight novels of M. Harold Page: The Sword is Mightier and Blood in the Streets. Here’s the description for the first, The Sword is Mightier:

The blade sheared through padding, collar bone, ribs, and came out the other side. Head, arm and shoulder thudded to the ground. The remainder of the corpse still stood, sheared torso like a bucket of steaming offal.

England AD 1454, the chaotic eve of the Wars of the Roses.

Jack Rose would rather be a scholar than a knight. However, when a brutal landowner steals his family estates and plans to evict the tenants, Jack must take up the sword and win back his inheritance by force of arms. As he wades through increasingly lethal encounters, it becomes clear that War is in his blood. Now he must decide who he really is…

How do you enter to win? Simple — just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com, using as the subject the name of the first Master Strike in the German School of Fencing (we’ll even give you a clue: it’s “Zornhau”), and we’ll enter you in the drawing.

Entries must be received by Friday, January 31, 2014. One lucky winner will win both books. The winner will be contacted by e-mail and books will be delivered in digital format.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Terms and conditions subject to change. Not valid where prohibited by law. Eat your vegetables. And good luck!

Inkjetlings Round eTable: Jackson’s Desolation of The Hobbit?

Inkjetlings Round eTable: Jackson’s Desolation of The Hobbit?

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smaugThis week Frederic S. Durbin, Gabe Dybing, and I discuss our impressions of Peter Jackson’s latest film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The conversation is a casual and meandering one among friends, although I have tried to group observations under distinct topics. In keeping with the informal nature of the exchange, I have used our first names.

First Impressions (and a link to a completely different review)

FRED: It’s a lot of fun. I was surprised in this one by the extreme departures from the book . . . so this one felt to me like I was watching really well-done fan fiction. But if you can accept that, the movie really is entertaining. It’s fun seeing the characters and settings. I’ll hold off saying any more until I’m sure you guys have seen it.

GABE:  It was a lot of fun, but it certainly will be interesting to talk about. How about you, Nick? Are we waiting for you to see it?

NICK: I finally did get to The Desolation of Smaug — Mel and I arranged a date night and saw it together. She is a HUGE fan of the LOTR movies, but with this film, she feels that something is just off. I found it an enjoyable spectacle, with the caveat that in tone it is very little like Tolkien.

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Terror in the Heroic Age: Lovecraft and Culbard’s At the Mountains of Madness: A Graphic Novel

Terror in the Heroic Age: Lovecraft and Culbard’s At the Mountains of Madness: A Graphic Novel

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At the Mountains of Madness Culbard-small“At the Mountains of Madness” is one of my favorite Lovecraft tales. It was originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories; I was first exposed to it through the brilliant audio adaption from Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, which I listened to during a snowy commute through lonely back highways in Illinois in the winter of 2010. Marvelous stuff.

So in November, I was very intrigued to read James Maliszewski’s review of a recent comic adaptation by I.N.J. Culbard. Here’s James:

In 124 pages, Culbard succeeds in re-telling one of Lovecraft’s best tales in a fashion that’s both engaging and true to its source. That’s harder than it sounds…

Culbard deftly pares the story down to its essentials, in terms of action, dialog, and exposition. The story thus moves along at a fairly brisk pace, something that cannot be said of the novella, love it though I do. Second, the artwork, which, to my mind, recalls Hergé’s Tintin series, contributes greatly to a sense of narrative motion, which is vitally important in an adaptation of a long and complex story like this one. Furthermore, the artwork suits the subject matter perfectly, recalling as it does (at least to me) stories of late 19th and early 20th century exploration in the still-dark corners of the globe… Even though I already knew the plot intimately, I found Culbard’s strong, clear, almost innocent, illustration style gave it new life, something I didn’t think possible.

Sold! I especially enjoyed James’s description of artwork that recalled “stories of late 19th and early 20th century exploration in the still-dark corners of the globe.” I asked for the Culbard’s graphic novel version for Christmas and my lovely bride was kind enough to deliver.

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Mark of the Cloven, Part 1: Cripples’ Deluge

Mark of the Cloven, Part 1: Cripples’ Deluge

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Mark of the Cloven 1Mark of the Cloven is a nine-part illustrated novel set in the narrative world of Jiba Molei Anderson’s Horsemen series. The premise is that the ancient gods of Africa have set out to make their presence known in the world again. To this end, they have taken a sort of benign possession of seven human beings, not so much controlling their actions as giving them access to their forms and abilities. Basically, seven mortals are granted the powers of gods and use these powers to become superheroes. Of course, the existence of superheroes all but demands the equal presence of supervillains; chief among these villains are the Deitis and their superhuman children. At the start of this story, the seven god-blessed mortals are already well-known in this world; their influence has affected drastic social changes, resulting in Africa ascending to the dominant world superpower, as the United States falls into a new Depression.

Part one of this story opens with Djenaba, a doctor struggling to keep people alive in the remnants of Detroit, being asked by one of the god-mortals to help a boatload of refugees escape to Canada (in this world, America’s border patrols are focused on keeping people in, not out). In her aspect as water goddess Yemaya, Djenaba is guiding the rusted-out boat to the Canadian shore when she is attacked by three offspring of the Deitis, code-named Strain, Clarion, and Crate. All three of them are handicapped in some way, but Djenaba/Yemaya doesn’t underestimate them for long, because each has found a way to counter his or her handicap, turning weakness into strength. What follows is a series of fight scenes where our heroine struggles not only to stay alive, but also to protect the refugees (and even her three attackers).

The superhero comics came to prominence in the late 1930s, during the Great Depression. By setting the series in a new Depression, Jiba Anderson and Jude Mire evoke the very core of the superhero myth: the dream of having the power to make the world a better place. As a doctor, Djenaba is already in a position to improve the lives of others. We see just enough of her efforts at the story’s beginning to know that it is, essentially, a losing battle. As the quasi-goddess Yemaya, she has more power, but also attracts new problems in the form of supervillains. It goes back to the narrative device that keeps most superhero comics spinning their creative wheels indefinitely: all that great power only brings great obstacles that force the hero to exert more effort simply to maintain the status quo.

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New Treasures: Old Mars, Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

New Treasures: Old Mars, Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

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Old Mars-smallI heard George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois were doing a new science fiction anthology about Mars and I thought, “Eh, Mars. It’s just no fun anymore. Too bad they don’t write stories about Mars the way they used to — like Clark Ashton Smith’s brilliant “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” or Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore’s fabulous tales of decadent civilizations and inscrutable alien mysteries. No one has that much imagination any more. Bah! I think I’ll go yell at the kids to get off the lawn.”

Then Old Mars finally arrived and it thawed my mean old heart. Martin and Dozois have rallied some of the finest writers in the industry — like Michael Moorcock, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian Mcdonald, Howard Waldrop, Matthew Hughes, Phyllis Eisenstein, and many others — to write brand new tales of Mars in the classic pulp tradition. Here’s the marvelous book description:

Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Heinlein’s Red Planet. These and so many more inspired generations of readers with a sense that science fiction’s greatest wonders did not necessarily lie far in the future or light-years across the galaxy but were to be found right now on a nearby world tantalizingly similar to our own — a red planet that burned like an ember in our night sky… and in our imaginations.

This new anthology of fifteen all-original science fiction stories, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, celebrates the Golden Age of Science Fiction, an era filled with tales of interplanetary colonization and derring-do. Before the advent of powerful telescopes and space probes, our solar system could be imagined as teeming with strange life-forms and ancient civilizations — by no means always friendly to the dominant species of Earth. And of all the planets orbiting that G-class star we call the Sun, none was so steeped in an aura of romantic decadence, thrilling mystery, and gung-ho adventure as Mars.

Join such seminal contributors as Michael Moorcock, Mike Resnick, Joe R. Lansdale, S. M. Stirling, Mary Rosenblum, Ian McDonald, Liz Williams, James S. A. Corey, and others in this brilliant retro anthology that turns its back on the cold, all-but-airless Mars of the Mariner probes and instead embraces an older, more welcoming, more exotic Mars: a planet of ancient canals cutting through red deserts studded with the ruined cities of dying races.

Martin and Dozois may well have produced my dream anthology. You don’t know how thrilled I am to see this kind of open-hearted embrace of the genre’s pulp roots from a major publisher.

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Vintage Treasures: Sorcerer’s World by Damien Broderick

Vintage Treasures: Sorcerer’s World by Damien Broderick

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Sorcerer's World Damien Broderic-smallI think of Australian science fiction author Damien Broderick chiefly as a modern writer. He got a Locus Award nomination back in May for his non-fiction book Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 (edited with Paul Di Filippo), just as an example, and Rich Horton reported on his brand new three-volume survey of the vintage UK SF magazines Science Fantasy, New Worlds, and Science Fiction Adventures (all written with John Boston) for us in March.

So I admit I was a little surprised to find one of his books tucked away in a collection of vintage 50s and 60s paperbacks I purchased online a few weeks ago. Sure, it was published right at the tail end of those decades (1970) and it was his first novel. But Sorcerer’s World made me realize that Broderick has been contributing steadily to the field for well over four decades — and shows no signs of stopping.

Through the Time Barrier

Klim Xaraf, son of a nomadic chief, awoke from his monumental fall to find himself the prisoner of time — trapped a thousand years in the future. Around him was a dying world. Its incredible power sucked by necromancers through a hole to the past… its cities preserved in stasis, awaiting his liberation, or their final doom.

Yet Klim could neither meet this world’s challenge, nor conquer the wizards of his own, until the powers primed him for the battle. For with their knowledge, they would erase his memory and plunge him in a nightmare training ground… where all the wonders of tomorrow were the forgotten souvenirs of an ancient yesterday.

Ah, for the days when fantasy novels had characters named “Klim Xaraf.” These days, everyone sounds like a D&D character, rather than an extra from Krull. Broderick wrote a few other fantasy novels, including The Dreaming Dragons (1980), The Black Grail (1986), and The White Abacus (1997), but nowadays he’s chiefly known for his science fiction, especially Striped Holes (1988), Godplayers (2005), K-Machines (2006), and Transcension (2007).

Sorcerer’s World was published in October, 1970 by Signet. It is 144 pages, originally priced at 60 cents. It has never been reprinted, and there is no digital edition. See all of our recent Vintage Treasures here.

You Can’t Go Home Again . . .

You Can’t Go Home Again . . .

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A princess of mars-smallLast week I talked about my Window Theory of Emotional Response and I got some responses from people telling me about some books and films they’d encountered after the window had closed for them – and one or two who talked about works they’d loved once, but no more. Works where the window had once been open and was now closed.

It was pretty clear that I wasn’t talking about stuff we merely liked, or thought well of, but rather stuff that changed the world for us. Where the earth moved, the stars realigned and our understanding of the world was either fundamentally reordered or fundamentally approved.

We all know you can’t go home again. You’re not going to be able to relive that feeling of shock and awe, that feeling that the world just re-oriented itself, by rereading the book that did it for you or re-watching the movie or the TV series. Sometimes it happens that revisiting Parnassus leads us to feel it’s just a hill in Greece.

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