Browsed by
Category: Books

Howard Andrew Jones on How Captain Kirk Led Me to Historical Fiction

Howard Andrew Jones on How Captain Kirk Led Me to Historical Fiction

Comments 0 Comment

captain-kirkMan, that Howard Andrew Jones is, like, everywhere.

Today he’s at Tor.com, writing about how James T. Kirk led him on a many-year mission to explore strange new worlds of historical fiction:

I’d read that Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry had modeled Captain Kirk after some guy named Horatio Hornblower. I didn’t think I’d like history stories, but I sure liked Star Trek, so I decided to take a chance. Once I rode my bicycle to the library and saw how many books about Hornblower there were, I figured I’d be enjoying a whole lot of sailing age Star Trek fiction for a long time to come.

Of course, it didn’t turn out quite like that. Hornblower wasn’t exactly like Kirk, and his exploits weren’t that much like those of the Enterprise, but they were cracking good adventures. Thanks to my own curiosity but mostly to the prose of the talented C.S. Forester, my tastes had suddenly, and accidentally, broadened beyond science fiction… I no longer thought of historical fiction as a strange, untouchable world, and as I grew older I tried more and more of it, sometimes because a period interested me and sometimes just because I liked a cover or a title. That’s how I found the work of Cecilia Holland, and it’s why I wasn’t afraid to try out a book by Harold Lamb titled The Curved Saber after I was spellbound by Lamb’s biography of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general…

The complete article is here, and you can learn the mind-boggling details about Howard Andrew Jones month at Black Gate here.

Bradley Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo Released This Week

Bradley Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo Released This Week

Comments 1 comment

windsofkhalakovocover_smBlack Gate blogger Bradley Beaulieu’s first novel The Winds of Khalakovo was published by Night Shade Books on Monday. I asked him to tell us a little bit about it, and his influences:

Thanks for having me on Black Gate. It’s great to be able to talk to some of the fans of the magazine, because unlike other places where I often feel like a relative newcomer — a welcome guest, so to speak — here I feel at home. I feel like I’m among friends, like we’re all part of an extended family: those who love adventure – and epic-based fantasy. So I was excited about the chance to share the news about my debut novel, The Winds of Khalakovo, just released by Night Shade Books.

The Winds of Khalakovo is a story about Nikandr, the Prince of a Grand Duchy modeled loosely after Muscovite Russia. The Nine Duchies of Anuskaya have been beset by a decade-long blight, by a wasting disease that strikes commoner and royal alike, and by the Maharraht, a rebellious splinter group that wants nothing more than the destruction of the Grand Duchy and her people. While searching for a way to heal the islands, Prince Nikandr stumbles across a boy, a boy who has the power to break worlds, and he finds that the Maharraht are bent on using this boy to achieve their goals. But the boy also has the power to heal, and it falls to Prince Nikandr to unlock his secrets before the Maharraht can use him to lay waste to his home of Khalakovo.

…

Read More Read More

Howard Andrew Jones’ Plague of Shadows Now on Sale

Howard Andrew Jones’ Plague of Shadows Now on Sale

Comments 12 comments

Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, by Howard Andrew Jones. Coming February 2011Howard Andrew Jones’ second novel in two months officially goes on sale today:

The race is on to free Lord Stelan from the grip of a wasting curse, and only his old elven mercenary companion Elyana has the wisdom — and swordcraft — to solve the mystery of his tormentor and free her old friend before three days have passed and the illness takes its course. When the villain turns out to be another of their former companions, the elf sets out with a team of adventurers across the Revolution-wracked nation of Galt and the treacherous Five Kings Mountains to discover the key to Stelan’s salvation in a lost valley warped by weird magical energies and inhabited by terrible nightmare beasts. From Black Gate magazine’s managing editor Howard Andrew Jones comes a fantastic new adventure of swords and sorcery, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows is the third novel in the new line of Pathfinder Tales from Paizo. They are standalone tales set in the world of Golarion, home of the succesful Pathfinder role playing game; Plague of Shadows follows Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross and Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham.

You can order copies directly from Piazo, either individually or as part of their Pathfinder Tales subscription.

Steven Erikson finally gets a Bestseller with The Crippled God

Steven Erikson finally gets a Bestseller with The Crippled God

Comments 2 comments

the-crippled-godJustin Golenbock, publicist at Tor, tells us that Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God, the last book of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, will debut at #12 on the print bestseller list in the March 20 edition of The New York Times. It’s only the second time for Erikson — last year his previous novel barely made the list.

As Justin puts it:

Steven’s first novel, Gardens of the Moon, came out in 1999 to much fanfare…and flopped. We spent the next ten years and eight novels telling everybody and anybody who would listen that this was THE fantasy series to be reading, the best that no one knew about. The depth and breadth of its world, characters and cultures, its heartbreaking yet addictive story, and the level of pathos and philosophy embedded into every narrative layer is staggering. Erikson’s core fans knew; so many of our top-selling authors kept telling us, he’s the guy who deserves it more; yet it was on us to convince everyone else.

Then last fall, Steven’s ninth novel, Dust of Dreams, finally squeaked its way onto the NYT extended bestseller list, claiming the last spot at #35… and it was just this afternoon that we learned that the tenth and final novel in his Magnus opus will get the due he so richly deserves.

During his 2008 book tour Steven confirmed that he had signed to write six more Malazan novels; two trilogies, one of which would be a prequel to the main series, detailing the history of Anomander Rake and Mother Dark. He also plans six additional Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas, set in the same world.

Congratulations to Steven Erikson, Justin Golenboc, and Tor books on a job well done!

We Live In Small Worlds

We Live In Small Worlds

Comments 1 comment

neverknewTraveling around the world in eighty days is not only quite possible, but a leisurely journey. One could, on this trip, stop to smell the roses, perhaps do a little sight-seeing on an island or two, and pursue adventure in remote locations. Really, if one were pressed for time, anyone with a passport and a few plane tickets could circumnavigate the globe in about a week or two, depending on the flight paths of the planes.

Before planes, trains, and automobiles, I wonder at the size of the world. I think of all things not as objects divorced from the shifting perspectives of humanity, singular and solid and weighty, but as objects that are shaped primarily and inextricably from the experience of the object. To me, the moon is a slip of paper always out of reach until the day an astronaut landed upon it, becoming soil and sizable stone. To me, the woods and the wild places of the world are forever out of reach, an imaginary landscape where alien life forms like bears and monkeys inhabit the world according to my television screen, where men with cyclopean-eyed tentacles of cameras and wires carry our hyperreal lens into the forested hills beyond the suburbs.

My apartment, down to its tiniest detail, is in many ways a larger space, to me, than all of the Himalayas. What I experience and what I feel, are my life, and the objects and places that are physically present in that life are the ones that are larger to me than ones in the distant horizon, imagined and mythical in its telling, but not really impactful to me in a tangible way. I live in a world that’s defined by how far I can travel in about half a day. My parents’ house is about half a day away by car and plane. My sister’s house, as well. My fiancée lives about forty minutes by car, and together we explore the landmarks and points of interest between us. This is my whole world.

The point of all this is to say that in writing a world, the experience of that world is tied not to the size and shape of stones, hills, but to the experience of them.

…

Read More Read More

Rediscovering the Ubiquitous Donald F. Glut

Rediscovering the Ubiquitous Donald F. Glut

Comments 0 Comment

frank_kindleDonald F. Glut is best associated with his 1980 novelization of The Empire Strikes Back. Some may recall his name today if they are between the ages of 40 and 45 and the movie was a touchstone of their childhood. I was not yet nine years old when the film was first released and read and re-read the paperback over and over again at a time when Star Wars meant as much to me as The Clone Wars does to my kids. The difference was, at age eight, I already recognized the name Donald F. Glut and knew him for a mysterious individual to be respected and admired because he wrote everything I wanted to read.

I was an avid comic book junkie as a kid and adored classic horror and science fiction films of decades past like many that grew up in the 1970s. Donald F. Glut was not a name like Stan Lee or Roy Thomas or even Len Wein or Marv Wolfman that I associated with specific titles that I eagerly devoured each month. Glut appeared where I least expected to find him – which in his case was nearly everywhere.

1An early 1978 issue of Marvel’s Star Wars, a stray issue of Marvel’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Kull the Conqueror that somehow made it past my Mom and into my hands, an Incredible Hulk mini-storybook that I picked up at Woolworth’s – they all bore his credit as author. It didn’t end with comic books. In those days before the internet, libraries were treasure houses for information and non-fiction books on the Frankenstein Monster or dinosaurs that I pulled off the shelf with trembling hands were also from the pen of the amazing Mr. Glut.

…

Read More Read More

OF SECRET WORLDS INCREDIBLE: A Psychedelic Journey into Clark Ashton Smith’s Poetic Masterpiece

OF SECRET WORLDS INCREDIBLE: A Psychedelic Journey into Clark Ashton Smith’s Poetic Masterpiece

Comments 9 comments

smith2What a TRIP…

In the world of epic fantasy, poetry often gets a bad rap. In the world of legendary fantasists, one name that continues to be revered is Clark Ashton Smith. As one of the “big three” WEIRD TALES writers from the 1920s and 30s, Smith gained a reputation that rivaled that of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard for fantastic fiction. His superbly dark fantasies set in realms such as Zothique, Hyperborea, Atlantis, and Averoigne set a new bar for weird fantasy. With his lush language, poetic sensibilities, and lyrical style, he was a word-wizard of the highest caliber. Any scholar of classic fantasy is sure to sing Smith’s praises. He is certainly one of this author’s favorite writers (especially his Tales of Zothique, my favorite of all his story cycles).

However, Smith thought of himself first and foremost as a poet. He wrote weird fiction because it paid well (yes, there was a time when short stories paid well). The key to his dark genius is probably to be found in his thousands of stanzas of verse…his poetry seeped into his weird fiction and made his tales baroque and lyrical. Smith denied the archetype of the conquering hero…his main characters were more likely to meet hideous doom than to defeat the eldritch monsters they encountered. His wizards were diabolical megalomaniacs or hermetic iconoclasts who explored forbidden mysteries and unlocked terrible powers.

Smith’s greatest piece of verse is (arguably) the epic poem entitled THE HASHISH-EATER or THE APOCALYPSE OF EVIL. It is a phantasmagoric tour de force through jeweled realms of fantasy laced with cosmic horror. It is a masterwork of fantasy, but is usually overlooked in favor of his short stories. It is also probably my very favorite poem. Ever.

Rather than attempt to explain why the poem is so magnificent, I thought I’d simply present it here at BLACK GATE, one stanza at a time, with a paragraph of analysis/commentary between each stanza. For those who prefer to read the poem without annotations first, I recommend a visit to my favorite CAS tribute site The Eldritch Dark, where the entire poem is posted without comments or analysis: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/572/the-hashish-eater–or–the-apocalypse-of-evil

You may want to light some candles and put on a stick of incense…I suggest the heady aroma of jasmine…maybe some old Black Sabbath in the background. Now…let us begin our celestial excursion into the depths of darkest fantasy…let us delve without fear into the eerie depths of a gorgeous nightmare…let us travel stanza by stanza through Clark Ashton Smith’s greatest poem….

…

Read More Read More

Desert of Souls: A Review

Desert of Souls: A Review

Comments 6 comments

bgdesertDesert of Souls, by Howard Andrew Jones.
Thomas Dunne Books (320 pages, $24.99, February 15, 2011)

As I write this, I’m listening to Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon, because sometimes Yo-Yo Ma’s cello just does things to a girl, you know? Anyway, it seems appropriate, so I thought I’d share.

First of all: Spoiler Alert. Probably minor ones, but you never can tell with me, so if you don’t want to know a few plot points, some specifics of the characters, interesting quotes and structural ramblings, please do not read further.

Second of all: I met the author once four years ago and have corresponded with him a few times, so there’s that. I am not an unbiased reader. But this is a blogicle for Black Gate Magazine, after all, and as we’re having a month-long celebration of Howard Andrew Jones over here, I don’t really think anyone expects me to be neutral!

…Hurray!

Third of all: I confess that I’d never read a Dabir and Asim story – in Black Gate or elsewhere – before this debut novel, so I came to it with no thought more profound than, “What pretty colors the cover has!” and “ Oh, great, now I want a scimitar too!”

…

Read More Read More

Frank M. Robinson’s Legendary Pulp Collection for Sale

Frank M. Robinson’s Legendary Pulp Collection for Sale

Comments 2 comments

incredible-pulpsOne of the largest and most impressive pulp collections in the world is now for sale.

Pulp historian and author Frank M. Robinson, whose books on pulps include The Incredible Pulps, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines, and Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History, is selling his collection of nearly 10,000 pulps magazines. The sale will be conducted through John Gunnison’s Adventure House Auctions.

Adventure House has prepared a YouTube video showing a small sampling of the pulps in the collection, including Weird Tales, Spicy Mystery, The Thrill Book, Submarine Stories, Pirate Stories, and Doc Savage, here.

Highlights of the collection include rare pulps such as Ghost Stories, Miracle Science Fiction and Fantasy, Tales of Mystery and Imagination — and ultra-rare gems such as Gun Molls, Courtroom Stories, Saucy Movie Tale, Mystery Adventure, and the only only known copy of the June 1929 issue of Zeppelin Stories, which includes the near-legendary tale “Gorilla of the Gasbags.” 58 of the rarest issues in his collection are included in the MagazineArt Gallery (do a search on Frank M. Robinson).

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m glad the collection appears to be being kept together. But there’s no way I can buy it without winning a lottery.

I wonder if Patrick Rothfuss will offer to buy it for me.

Patrick Rothfuss Offers to help Nathan Fillion buy Firefly

Patrick Rothfuss Offers to help Nathan Fillion buy Firefly

Comments 3 comments

the-wise-manPatrick Rothfuss, whose second novel The Wise Man’s Fear was released last week, has published an open letter to Nathan Fillion in which he offers to assist the actor who played Captain Mal in his quest to buy the rights to Firefly:

Here’s the deal. My second book is about to come out. My publisher tells me there’s a decent chance of us selling a truly ridiculous number of copies. If this happens, I will have more money than I’ll know what to do with.

Except that’s not exactly true. I know exactly what I’d like to do with that money. I’d like to help you buy the rights to Firefly back from Fox…

Alone, all we can do is dream wistful dreams of Firefly’s return. Together, we are a team. We can gather others to our cause. With 20 or 30 of the right people, we could pool our resources and make this… happen.

You know where to find me.

Rothfuss’s first novel, The Name of the Wind, was released to wide acclaim in 2007. Both his novels are part of the Kingkiller Chronicles.

Fillion’s off-hand comment in his Feb 17 Entertainment Weekly interview (“If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly… and distribute it on the Internet”) has triggered enormous interest among fans who are hungry for any hope of the series’ return. Several fan efforts have sprung up to assist him, including helpnathanbuyfirefly.com.

It remains to be seen just how serious Fillion is, however (likely not very). Still, we can dream.

Rothfuss complete letter, published on his blog, is here.