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Robert E. Howard: Anatomy of a Creative Crisis

Robert E. Howard: Anatomy of a Creative Crisis

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kull-a“Beyond the Sunrise” is the unofficial title afforded an unfinished Kull story that did not see print until over forty years after the author’s death. Its significance is due largely to the fact that it was the first of four widely differing attempts to continue the Kull series following the publication of both “The Shadow Kingdom” and “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” in Weird Tales in 1929.

Robert E. Howard starts the story off with a bored Kull sitting on his throne listening to a rather dull tale of the Valusian noblewoman, Lala-ah who has run off with her foreign lover leaving the nobleman she was promised to waiting at the altar. The barbarian king’s pride is piqued once he learns the foreigner insulted him behind his back. He then readily agrees to lead a posse to retrieve the noblewoman and restore his and his nation’s honor.

I was about as enthusiastic as Kull when I first started the story and thought the Atlantean was acting like a childish oaf for getting his nose out of joint just because a foreigner called him a sissy when he wasn’t around to defend himself.

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Goth Chick News: The Woman in Black

Goth Chick News: The Woman in Black

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image0041Anyone who has been reading these entries with any regularity knows that the word “minimalist” will never be used in the same sentence with my name. I seem to be visually starved, needing to be perpetually surrounded by interesting if not strange things to look at. This can easily be proven by the fact I cohabitate with a voodoo doll collection and three German Shepherds.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to Halloween.

I mean, you’ve probably heard people comment on over-the-top Christmas decorations, but I doubt you’ve heard anything but awe-struck admiration for someone who’s gone nutty with their front yard zombie display.

Or maybe my neighbors are just trying to be nice.

In any case, it’s rather odd for me to tell you that one of my all-time-favorite books, which then made it to the top of my theater list — and will eventually, I hope,  make it to my top ten movie list — is anything but visually cluttered. Speaking at least for the book and the play, The Woman in Black derives its horror from its simplicity, and that’s really what a classic fright is about, isn’t it? It’s why no blood-splattered, psychopath training film like Saw or Hostel will ever be as scary as the scare that gets in your head.

Back in 1983, author Susan Hill wrote the tale of a young lawyer summoned to settle the affairs of the deceased Alice Drablow, who had lived on a remote English estate cut off from the mainland during high tide (sounds awesome so far, right?) As he pieces together Alice’s tragic life, the lawyer begins to uncover a tragic family secret and its horrifying guardian, the Woman in Black. It’s a premise just simple enough to make your skin crawl.

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Anthopology 101 dives into classic SF Anthologies

Anthopology 101 dives into classic SF Anthologies

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anthopology-101aSF author Bud Webster informs us that his book Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies, is now available from The Merry Blacksmith Press. Bud tells us:

Anthologies are the core samples of science fiction.  Through their pages, we can not only follow the growth of the genre from its very beginnings, but we can also study the past’s visions of the future.

As author of the always-fascinating Past Masters column, which examines the forgotten work of some of the finest SF and fantasy writers of the 20th Century, Bud should know.

This is one of the most intriguing titles I’ve come across in a while, and I’m really looking forward to getting a copy in my hot little hands.

The book includes an introduction from Mike Ashley, and collects 25 of Bud’s “Anthopology 101” columns  that originally appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction, Chronicle, SFWA Bulletin, and other fine publications.

For anyone else with an obsessive interest in these fascinating and beautiful relics of early science fiction and fantasy (I’m talking to you, Rich Horton), you’ll want to jump over to the Merry Blacksmith website, where they’re offering free shipping on Anthopology 101 until August 21.

Norman Spinrad on The Publishing Death Spiral, Part Two

Norman Spinrad on The Publishing Death Spiral, Part Two

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druid_king2In Part Two of his blog series on the Publishing Death Spiral (read Part One here), science fiction author Norman Spinrad, author of Bug Jack Barron, Child of Fortune, and The Iron Dream, talks about “My Own Death Spiral,” and seeing the cover art for his novel The Druid King the first time:

Knopf’s star art director… had taken photos of some gnarly twigs and photoshopped them into the letters of the book title.  Murky brown against black background, no other illo. Suck City in terms of rack pop. My heart sank when I saw it… To give you an idea of how bad the cover really was, when the book finally came out, Dona and I looked for it in the new books rack.  It wasn’t there! We couldn’t find it.  Major panic! We finally did. It turned out we had looked past it three times without noticing it.  And I was the author.

You can read the complete post, along with lively comments from Jerry Pournelle, Paul Riddell, and Knopf Art Director Chip Kidd, here.

Thank Goodness! Why Gatekeepers Will Always Be With Us

Thank Goodness! Why Gatekeepers Will Always Be With Us

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bglgSixteen of your US dollars. That’s what the latest (monster) issue of Black Gate has cost you in these days of fear and crumbling factories. It’s strange, isn’t it? You’ll spend all that money on a collection of fiction and game reviews when the internet is bursting with so much free content. If you go looking right now, you can find a million Sword & Sorcery stories out there that you wouldn’t even need to pirate: the authors, overcome in a delirium of generosity, are only too thrilled to supply them for free.

And it doesn’t stop with short-stories! There are more novels waiting for you online than any dozen people could read in a lifetime, along with plays, movie scripts, poetry…

Oh God. The poetry.

So, what’s stopping you? I’ll tell you what’s stopping me: I don’t want to be a slush reader. It is mind-rotting, eye-burning work that actually becomes worse the more of it you do. Like some sort of cumulative poison. And for every great story we read in the pages of Black Gate, there have been several hundred at least that would have had any sane person thinking more and more about drinking that bottle of bleach under the sink. Oh yes.

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A whole new meaning to “A Room full of Books”

A whole new meaning to “A Room full of Books”

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bookcellPrague-based artist Matej Kren has created a room made almost entirely of books. It is part of the city gallery of Bratislava.

The giant sculpture, called Passage, also uses mirrors and special lighting to create a “surreal chamber of texts.”

Kren is known for creating a series of gigantic book sculptures. Passage is part of a wider series called “Book cell” — structures and spaces built entirely out of thousands of books.

The photo at left remind us rather strongly of the brick house built by the third little pig (you know, the industrious one). No word yet on just how well it holds up to strong breezes and wolfish intruders.

Faces in the Mirror

Faces in the Mirror

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John Bellairs died in 1991, well-known and well-respected as a writer of odd, gothic mysteries for children; the sort of writer who can come up with books called The House With a Clock In Its Walls or The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, and make them live up to the evocative promise of their titles.

magic-mirrors2But Bellairs was more than that. He was also a first-class fantasist, whose one book for adults, The Face in the Frost, is something unique. Written before his tales for children, on its publication in 1969 it was described by Lin Carter as one of the three best fantasies to have appeared since The Lord of the Rings.

Recently, NESFA Press (NESFA stands for the New England Science Fiction Association) reprinted The Face in the Frost in a volume that also includes the surviving fragment of its uncompleted sequel, The Dolphin Cross, and two of Bellairs’ earlier works, Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly. The resulting book, Magic Mirrors, is unconventional but perhaps essential.

The Face in the Frost is no epic quest, nor is it grim dark fantasy, though a superficial description makes it sound like it could be either: It’s a tale of two elderly and slightly bumbling wizards faced with a mysterious darkness that’s threatening everything they know, and the journey they must take to unriddle what it is and how to stop it.

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Gen Con 2010 Reflections

Gen Con 2010 Reflections

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Kung Fu Fighting gameNow that Gen Con is done, it’s time to offer up some final thoughts, experiences, and, of course, games.

Art Show

One of the best areas to walk around at Gen Con is the art show. This is always fun for me, because I honestly don’t follow artists that much, so sometimes I stumble upon someone really famous whose work I’ve never seen before or who I’ve never heard of. Unfortunately, since the artwork is the artist’s main product, I really can’t reproduce it here without getting into all kinds of messy copyright issues. Fortunately, what I can do is link to the websites of some that I found most enjoyable:

Still More Games

While I covered some fun pulp roleplaying games in yesterday’s post, I didn’t get around to talking some fun games of other types. One publisher that I’d like to discuss is Slugfest Games, which has a wide assortment of card and board games which have a pulp feel to them. The one that I demoed this year was Kung Fu Fighting, a card game in which you play a series of karate moves.

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Gen Con – Day 3 Update

Gen Con – Day 3 Update

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Saturday was my last day at Gen Con, and it will be missed … at least for another year. Tomorrow, I’ll post a bit more in the way of reflections, but for now, let me cut straight to some of the games that I came across.

hollow-earthPulp Adventure Roleplaying Games

For gamers who lean toward pulpy goodness (which I imagine includes many Black Gate readers), there are a lot of great options out there.

One of the best games available for pure pulp action is the Hollow Earth Expedition game (reviewed in Black Gate #12), which is sort of like Indiana Jones meets Journey to the Center of the Earth meets Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow … with some other craziness thrown in. You really can’t go wrong with a setting that conveniently allows apemen, dinosaurs, Nazis, ninjas, sorcerers, zeppelins, and mad scientists to intermingle.

Since the original release of the game there are now two hardcover supplements available: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth and Secrets of the Surface World. Starting in fall of this year, the creators are planning to begin releasing a series of PDF adventure modules, which they refer to as the “Perils” because they’ll have names like “Perils of Morocco” and “Perils of Brazil” … and, perhaps, if we should be so lucky, “Perils of Scranton.” These PDF modules should be available through DriveThruRPG when they are finally released. In 2011, however, the word is that they’ll be releasing a Revelations of Mars sourcebook … so keep your eyes open for that, lovers of planetary adventure settings!

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Gen Con 2010 – Day 2

Gen Con 2010 – Day 2

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Author Nick Valentino demonstrates his steampunkiness, and his new novel, Thomas Riley.

Steampunk is vividly on display at Gen Con this year, which makes sense, based on the popularity of novels such as Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (a Hugo finalist) and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. The industrial revolution of technomagick from the Privateer Press campaign setting of the Iron Kingdoms also shows us what steampunk can accomplish.

More game systems seem to be embracing it, like in some of the new supplements for the Victoriana RPG (a game I’ll be reviewing in the next issue of Black Gate) and the growth of weird science-based pulp games like Hollow Earth Expedition. Heck, even Disney is getting into the steampunk spirit. (Not surprising given all the times which, as Scott Westerfeld pointed out, they’ve dipped into steampunk in the past). In a recent posting on his blog, Bowing to the Future, science fiction author and editor Lou Anders discussed the growth of the steampunk sub-genre. It seems like there’s hardly a “best of” list out there which doesn’t contain at least one steampunk title.

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