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Gonji: The Deathwind Trilogy by T. C. Rypel

Gonji: The Deathwind Trilogy by T. C. Rypel

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oie_1919231MrGw3CJVDrift back in time to the eighties when swords & sorcery was preparing to die, at least as a force in fantasy publishing. Where once Andrew Offutt and Lin Carter as well as Robert E. Howard packed the shelves of your local B. Dalton, they were about to be crowded out by the rise of the Tolkien clones. Exciting authors like Charles R. Saunders who were leading S&S down new paths would see their heroic fiction production curtailed by sales numbers that didn’t meet publishers’ expectations.

Today, technological advancements have paved the way for the return of ancient adventurers. The internet has allowed old and new fans to find each other and connect with writers to create a camaraderie of creators and consumers. Quality print-on-demand publishing, e-books, and small presses using those tools have led to the resurrection of several heroes, including Saunders’ own Imaro and Dossouye. Another of those revived heroes is T. C. Rypel’s Gonji, a half-Japanese, half-Scandinavian warrior first introuduced thirty years ago, wandering the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains in search of a mysterious force known as the Deathwind.

When T. C. Rypel delivered his first novel to Zebra Books back in the early eighties it was over thirteen-hundred pages long. While that’s nothing peculiar these days, back then it was seen as unprecedented and Zebra’s response was to break it up into three distinct books. Rypel’s titles for the resultant three volumes were Red Blade from the East, The Soul Within the Steel, and Deathwind of Vedun. Zebra decided to take Rypel’s third title and reassign it to the first book, then re-title the last two Samurai Steel and Samurai Conflict. Their changes provide a hint of what the publisher had in store for the books.

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New Treasures: Bone Dance by Emma Bull

New Treasures: Bone Dance by Emma Bull

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Bone Dance Emma Bull-smallI’m not all that familiar with the fantasy of the 90s. That’s the decade I graduated, got a job, got married, had three kids… and my leisure reading time fell to zero. Things got better after the year 2000 as life settled back into a routine, but when I look back at the major publishing events of that decade, things are still kinda fuzzy.

Fortunately, I’m not the only person working at Black Gate. In fact, I’m surrounded by annoying young people who first discovered fantasy in the 90s, and devoured everything on the shelves. I can’t walk to the water cooler without overhearing them go on and on about the books that first turned them into fantasy fans. And the more I listen, the more I realize that they’re talking about Emma Bull.

Emma Bull is not a prolific writer. Her first novel War for the Oaks made a huge splash in 1987; it was followed by Falcon (1989), Bone Dance (1991), Finder (1994), The Princess and the Lord of Night (1994), Freedom and Necessity (1997, co-written with Steven Brust) and Territory (2007). I finally decided it was time to find out how someone can win over an entire generation with half a dozen fantasy novels, and figured I’d start with Bone Dance.

Sparrow’s my name. Trader. Deal-maker. Hustler, some call me. I work the Night Fair circuit, buying and selling pre-nuke videos from the world before. I know how to get a high price, especially on Big Bang collectibles. But the hottest ticket of all is information on the Horsemen — the mind-control weapons that tilted the balance in the war between the Americas. That’s the prize I’m after.

But it seems I’m having trouble controlling my own mind. The Horsemen are coming.

Bone Dance was nominated for a ridiculous number of awards — the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and even the Philip K. Dick Award. It was originally published in paperback by Ace in May, 1991, with a typical 80s art by Jean Pierre Targete, who looked like he was trying to paint Corey Hart on the cover. It was reprinted in a handsome trade paperback edition by Tor/Orb Books on July 7, 2009, and this cover has much more of a YA feel — and a new subtitle: “Fantasy for Technophiles.” Bone Dance is 317 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback, or $7.99 for the digital edition. I bought a discounted trade edition at Amazon for just $6.40 — copies are still available if you act fast.

C.S.E. Cooney’s “Martyr’s Gem” Acquired for Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014

C.S.E. Cooney’s “Martyr’s Gem” Acquired for Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014

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The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014We were very pleased and proud to hear reports this morning that editor Rich Horton has acquired C.S.E. Cooney’s novella “Martyr’s Gem” for his annual collection, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014.

Yay!! Drinks are on us!1

“Martyr’s Gem” was originally published in Ann Leckie’s online magazine GigaNotoSaurus in May of last year. Giganotosaurus publishes one longish fantasy or science fiction story every month, including the Nebula nominees “All the Flavors” by Ken Liu, and “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers” by Katherine Sparrow. If you can’t wait for the book, you can read the complete “Martyr’s Gem” here.

There’s a marvelous animated excerpt narrated by Ms. Cooney, “The Epic of Shursta Sharkbait,” here. Sara Norja at Such Wanderings pretty much summed up our feelings when she said:

It’s a gorgeously written story with characters that jumped off the screen and will linger in my mind for a good while, I suspect. The island culture she’s created is fascinating and vibrant. Sharks and gemstones! Bantering, loving sibling relationships! A society where men and women are pretty equal! An interesting oral storytelling culture and stories-within-stories! I love pretty much everything about this novella. Go forth and be immersed!

It’s fairly unusual for a 19,000-word novella to make it into a Year’s Best volume, so this is something to celebrate. Rich Horton’s volumes are our favorite Year’s Best anthologies out there; the 2014 edition is due in May. We covered the 2013 edition here.

We published C.S.E. Cooney’s novella “Godmother Lizard,” which Tangent Online called “a delightful fantasy… [it] entranced me from the beginning,” and the sequel “Life on the Sun” — which Tangent called “bold and powerful… this one captured a piece of my soul. Brilliant.”

1. Must be of legal drinking age. Must realize we’re joking. Offer not valid outside the continental U.S.A. Or anywhere that serves alcohol.

Vintage Treasures: The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

Vintage Treasures: The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

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The Witches of Karres-smallSo I tried to hit all the genre classics in my early days as an SF and fantasy reader, and I think I did a pretty fair job . Sure, I have a few gaps here and there, but overall I think I managed to read the ones that looked interesting.

With a few notable exceptions. I didn’t discover James H. Schmitz until relatively late, and I wasn’t able to lay hands on his most famous novel, Hugo nominee The Witches of Karres, until years after I heard about it. Considering that it’s been re-issued six times since its original 1966 publication, by Ace, Gollancz, Baen, and the Science Fiction Book Club, that’s either really bad luck or I’m not nearly as accomplished a collector as I like to think. I have a copy now, and I look forward to rectifying the situation.

Over the years I’ve read multiple brief synopses of the novel, but my favorite remains P. Schuyler Miller’s Analog review:

In the far future, Mankind has scattered among the stars, bred into peculiar forms and developed peculiar powers. Captain Pausert of Nikkeldepain makes the serious mistake of rescuing three little Witches of Karres from their overwrought owner. There follows espionage, piracy, assorted forms of mayhem, and a freewheeling galactic war that nobody knew was in progress. You will, in the process, encounter such things as Worm Weather, klatha hooks, and a vatch to end all vatches… not to mention grik dogs and Nartheby Sprites and Sheem Robots.

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Margaret St. Clair, Andrew Offutt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Margaret St. Clair, Andrew Offutt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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The Green Queen Margaret St Clair-smallI think I’ve read — and written — more about Gygax’s Appendix N in the last year than I have in the past three decades.

I’m not sure why there’s been such a recent surge of interest in a relatively short addendum to a 1979 gaming volume, to be honest, but I credit James Maliszewski. He’s examined Appendix N more diligently than any other fan writer, with several intriguing articles on his popular gaming blog Grognardia over the years.

Those include “My Appendix N” (from May 8, 2009), in which he answered the question “What fiction has influenced your campaigns, play styles, and writings?”; “Appendix N 2.0” (June 28, 2010), which reviewed the more extensive list of recommended books Gygax compiled thirteen years after the publication of the DMG, for his 1992 fantasy RPG Mythus Magick; and “Appendix N, 1981 Edition” (June 15, 2011), examining the fantasy authors “whose works are relevant to D&D,” as cited by the authors of What is Dungeons & Dragons?

Perhaps most fascinating, one of James’ earliest articles on the subject was “Addendum to Appendix N,” (November 25, 2008), in which he published Gygax’s answer to the question “How would Appendix N change if you’d written it in 2007 rather than 1979?”:

The fact is that I wouldn’t change the list much, other than to add a couple of novels such as Lanier’s second Hiero yarn, Piers Anthony’s Split Infinity series, and the Disc World books.

I would never add other media forms to a reading list. If someone is interested in comic books and/or graphic novels, they’re on their own.

I think it’s probably safe to say that James has been the king of Appendix N scholarship for the past five years. (Read the complete text of Gygax’s original Appendix N here).

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Revisiting A.B. Mitford’s The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai

Revisiting A.B. Mitford’s The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai

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The 47 Ronin-smallTwo weeks ago I reviewed the film 47 Ronin, which Universal Pictures labeled a flop only a day after its U.S. release.

At that point the picture had earned about $85 million worldwide. That take has now increased to $116 million (according to BoxOfficeMojo), still well shy of its $175 million budget. Whether or not Universal’s premature announcement doomed the film, it’s now clear they weren’t wrong about its ultimate fate.

While browsing the remainder tables at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I stumbled on a curious title: The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai, by A.B. Mitford. I assumed it was a guerrilla tie-in; a cheap reprint timed to capitalize on the release of the movie. Except it was published nearly two years ago, in 2012, and there’s nothing cheap at all about the beautiful design, with striking endpapers and gorgeous color art on nearly every page.

I was right about at least one thing though: it is a reprint. It was originally published as Tales of Old Japan in 1871, one of the very first tomes to bring tales of Japanese monsters to Western shores.

Algernon Bertram Mitford was a British diplomat who later became Baron Redesdale. He developed a keen interest in Japanese folk tales while serving as attaché to the British delegation in Japan from 1866 – 1870 where, among other things, he witnessed the dissolution of the last feudal Japanese military government — the Tokugawa shogunate, ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa clans at Edo Castle — and the founding of a modern nation-state under Emperor Meiji.

Mitford was writing at a time when Japan was beginning to open to the West for the first time, less than 20 years after American Commodore Matthew Perry infamously sailed into Tokyo Bay with modern steam ships and explosive shell guns, gave the Japanese two white flags, and told them to hoist the flags when they wanted him to cease shelling the city and surrender. Perry forced the opening of Japan with the Convention of Kanagawa, and Mitford, writing a decade later, is a textbook case of white-guy-stupid, especially in how he’s perpetually surprised that the Japanese don’t greet Westerners with open arms and a bottle of warm saki.

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Gifts From the Godfather of Space Opera: The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four

Gifts From the Godfather of Space Opera: The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four

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The Collected Edmond Hamilton Volume Four-smallCancel all my appointments! My copy of The Reign of the Robots, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four arrived today.

Edmond Hamilton is my favorite pulp writer, and has been ever since I encountered his work in Isaac Asimov’s seminal anthology Before the Golden Age. I talked about my early affection for Hamilton — and my frustration at being unable to find some of his most acclaimed early space opera — in my Vintage Treasures piece on The Best of Edmond Hamilton last fall.

At the time I wrote:

While some of Hamilton’s shorter fiction was reprinted over the years, both Cities in the Air and The Universe Wreckers, and much of the longer work which made him famous, was available only in the early pulps in which they first appeared.

Stephen Haffner finally rectified this in 2011 with his The Collected Edmond Hamilton volumes, which gathered at last all of Hamilton’s early pulp work in archival quality hardcovers (thanks Stephen! I owe you one).

When I wrote that, only three volumes of The Collected Edmond Hamilton were available, covering Hamilton’s work from his very first story “The Monster-God of Mamurth” (from Weird Tales, Aug 1926, gathered in The Metal Giants and Others), through “World Atavism” (from Amazing Stories, Aug 1930, collected in The Universe Wreckers.)

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You Can’t Get There From Here

You Can’t Get There From Here

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The Charwoman’s Shadow Unicorn-smallAre Fantasy and SF the genres of travel? I think so. With the exception of brilliant pieces like Julie Czerneda’s recent Turn of Light – where the whole story takes place in one remote valley – most Fantasy novels, and a great many SF novels, involve travel or journeys in a significant way.

The Odyssey, with its hero’s encounters with Cyclops, gods, witches and other monsters, was probably the first fantasy story of any length. Nowadays we tend to think of “epic” as having something to do with scale, but all literature originally designated by that term involved a journey.

LOTR is the most obvious, and likely the most influential example of the modern Fantasy journey, but there are others.  Lord Dunsany’s The Charwoman’s Shadow, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter, offer shorter travels, but predate Tolkien. We’ve seen quite a few more recent examples, such as  Elaine Cunningham’s Winter Witch, Tanya Huff’s The Silvered, and Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, in which the journey forms the backbone and structure of the novel.

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Vintage Treasures: Br-r-r-! edited by Groff Conklin

Vintage Treasures: Br-r-r-! edited by Groff Conklin

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Br-r-r Groff Conklin-smallYou’ve got to admire an editor who titles his anthology Br-r-r-! You just know it caused fits with distributors, book sellers, librarians and other folks who alphabetize books for a living.

Mind you, Br-r-r-! was Conklin’s 21st science fiction anthology, and I figure by that point you’ll do anything to break up the tedium a bit. It was released in 1959; by 1964 he was so desperate for new topics he was putting out books like Great Detective Stories About Doctors (um, what?). He eventually produced 44 anthologies, before (presumably) going crazy and locking himself in a lighthouse.

In any event, Br-r-r-! looks like a terrific collection, starting with that striking and original Richard Powers cover. Put that cover on a phone book, and I still might choose to read that over a lot of other stuff on the shelves in 1959. Just sayin’.

Here’s the back-cover text. If this doesn’t bring you back to the classic era of 1950s monster movies, then your education is seriously lacking.

B R R R R ! — you’ll shudder when you meet:

THE MONSTER WORM that took 200 years to come up from the depths of the damned — it hated mankind!
THE BEETLE FROM HELL whose stinger brought slow, excruciating death — its evil eyes held the promise of something even worse!
THE LIVING CORPSE that commanded a graveyard. It sentenced a mortician to the bubbling bowels of hell!

And in “Legal Rites,” Isaac Asimov relates the fascinating — and gory — story of a blood-dripping specter fighting for its right to haunt a house. Asimov flavors pure horror with a unique brand of fantastic humor.

These are some of the blood-curdling, heart-pounding messengers of horror to be found in these bloodstained pages of evil!

Just for the record, the pages in my copy are not actually bloodstained. Or evil.

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Observations: The Two Towers Movie

Observations: The Two Towers Movie

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The-Lord-of-the-Rings-The-Two-Towers-poster-smallLast week I wrote about The Fellowship of the Ring movie, and this week I follow up with the sequel, The Two Towers.

One of the first things I noticed about this film was the short, choppy sequencing of scenes. This mainly occurred in the first hour, and it made for a slightly disjointed viewing experience.

The movie picks up right where Fellowship left off, starting with a gorgeous panorama shot of snow-capped mountains. Then we relive Gandalf’s fall from the bridge of Khazad Dum, but this time we get to see more of his battle with the Balrog, which is sheer awesomeness.

The perspective switches (get ready for a lot of this) to Frodo and Sam, tired and lost, as they make their way through the razor cliffs of Emyn Muil. We see that the Ring is getting heavier for Frodo, who feels its pull more than ever before, and certainly more than old Bilbo ever seemed to exhibit (except for brief spells.) This wandering phase is rather dull until the arrival of Gollum, who has been following the hobbits with plans to steal back the Ring. They catch him in the act and truss him up with elven rope. Frodo decides to free Gollum in exchange for leading them to Mordor; Sam doesn’t trust him (with good reason).

I want to pause a moment here to say that the portrayal of Gollum by actor Andy Serkis is – without a doubt — the highlight of this movie. The Two Towers has always been my least favorite book of the trilogy, sometimes tedious in its depression, but Gollum elevates this movie to being almost as good as the first one. A vicious little beast who can turn so sweet and cute, he is a masterstroke of acting and CGI genius.

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