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A Review of The Witches of Karres, by James H. Schmitz

A Review of The Witches of Karres, by James H. Schmitz

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witches-karres-aI decided to review The Witches of Karres mostly because I remember seeing some sequels, written by different authors, as James H. Schmitz died in 1981.

I’m not surprised; The Witches of Karres feels like it should have been a series all along. The setting seems designed for multiple adventures. The book itself is less a space opera than a space operetta — it never takes itself too seriously — but it’s still distinctly an adventure story, not a straight-up comedy.

Captain Pausert is a decent and friendly man, perhaps a touch too in love with his notion of himself as a square-jawed space adventurer. For instance, we find out quite early in the book that he faked a log entry about a desperate fight against pirates when he actually just spent a few hours blowing up asteroids — partly to test his ship’s guns, partly for the fun of it.

Still, he can’t resist helping someone in trouble, especially when that someone is an apparently helpless teenage slave girl. Despite the anti-slavery laws of his native planet, he’s quickly maneuvered into buying her, then her two younger sisters.

Pausert may be a bit bumbling at this point in the story, but he’s not quite stupid; he notices that the slave-owners are extremely eager to sell, and that there’s something slightly off about the three girls.

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War, Peace, and Fantasy

War, Peace, and Fantasy

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War and PeaceIn one of my first posts here, I mentioned that I was hoping to figure out what it is, exactly, that I like about fantasy fiction; what it is I get from fantasy that I get nowhere else.

I found myself thinking about that question a fair bit over the past couple of weeks. I was reading a 1500-page novel about a world-shaking clash of armies, a prose epic whose subjects ranged from the politics of high society to battles shaped by cavalry charges, and which presented a struggle against a would-be world conqueror viewed by some as divinely gifted and by others as a Satanic force of utter chaos.

It wasn’t a fantasy, though. It was War and Peace.

I found myself fascinated by how much Tolstoy’s great novel (Tolstoy claimed the book wasn’t a novel, in a formal sense, but the term fits better than any other) looks like an epic fantasy — even while feeling like nothing of the sort. Why is that? Why is something that seems so close to fantasy in form so different in actuality?

Obviously it’s a different kind of book. Obviously Tolstoy was aiming at something — many things — quite different from an epic fantasist. But what sort of things? How do they determine the feel of the novel?

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New Treasures: The Secret History of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle

New Treasures: The Secret History of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle

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secret-history4This book has been sitting on my desk since I bought it from Jacob Weisman, publisher of Tachyon Publications, at Wiscon. My desk isn’t all that big, so every time my to-do list topples over, or I tell the kids to get rid of the copies of Titan Quest and, I dunno, maybe get some homework done for a change, there it is.

The problem with these anthologies is that they’re my weakness. They suck me in. I can resist the novels because, you know, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. But the anthologies… they’re just harmless diversions, right? And when I sit down to finally get that Goth Chick post formatted for Sue, or clear out a few hundred ageing e-mail from the Black Gate in-box… well, one quick story first can’t hurt. And when the kids find me in the big green chair it’s two hundred pages later.

So, maybe I peeked at this one a bit.  Probably when I should’ve been answering that e-mail you sent me in August. But you’d understand if you had a copy of The Secret History of Fantasy in your hot little hands like I do.

Peter Beagle, who’s been conducting something of a one-man revolution in short fantasy over the last decade himself, has compiled a terrific collection of modern fantasy — the oldest stories here, Robert Holdstock’s “Mythago Wood” and Stephen King’s “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” are from 1981 and 1984, respectively.  The book includes some of the most acclaimed fantasy tales in the intervening decades, including Steven Millhauser’s “The Barnum Museum,” Terry Bisson’s “Bears Discover Fire,” Neil Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples,” Jeffrey Ford’s “The Empire of Ice Cream,” and stories from Michael Swanwick, Jonathan Lethem, Maureen F. McHugh, Gregory Maguire, T.C. Boyle, and more.

There’s also an intro from Beagle, as well as two long essays, “The Critics, The Monsters, and the Fantasists,” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and “The Making of the American Fantasy Genre,” by David G. Hartwell.  Taken together, it’s an impressive package.  And a highly distracting one — take my word for it.

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Available October 2010

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Available October 2010

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claire-254Our own C.S.E. Cooney has sent us some good news about her latest fiction extravagana:

The Big Bah-Ha is a novella by yours truly, coming out at Drollerie Press in October 2010!!! It is a post-apocalyptic katabasis story, complete with kiddie gangs, slingshot battles, strange clowns, Tall Ones, and one very dead (very brave) child protagonist.

No, I didn’t know what a “katabasis story” was either.  Thank God for Wikipedia, which tells me “Katabasis is a descent of some type. Katabasis may be a moving downhill, a sinking of winds, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld.” Oooh, now I get it.

The Big Ba-Ha is a macabre post-apocalyptic fairy tale, a rollicking fantasy of a band of near-feral children who brave a plague-ridden landscape on a desperate quest. To rescue one of their own, they will ally with the monstrous and enigmatic Flabberghast — who arrived only after the world ended and eats the bones of the dead — and penetrate the mystery of Chuckle City, home to ravenous packs of balloon aminals, murderous Gacy boys, and the elusive Gray Harlequin. The Big Ba-Ha — it’s The Goonies meets The Road Warrior, perfectly suited for both ordinary children and gifted adults, and one of the most original fantasies I’ve read in a long time.

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The Weather: Part Art, Part Science, and Part… Magic?

The Weather: Part Art, Part Science, and Part… Magic?

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poison-study2Predicting the weather is an art and a science… yes, really, it’s a science, believe me. I spent four years at Penn State University learning chemistry, calculus, physics, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics to earn my Meteorology Degree – I should know.

Did that transform me into a great forecaster? Er…no. So I must have relied more on my artistic side, right? Er… no again. Good thing for the masses of people that might have relied on me to forecast their daily weather that I decided to go into environmental meteorology, and work with air quality and air pollution instead. Did you hear that sigh of relief? I did.

Eventually, I ended up changing careers and becoming a writer (long story, but it involves boredom, rage, despair, dissatisfaction, and sex… you really don’t want to know, trust me). But it seems my initial love of weather and storms wouldn’t just die quietly.

No, it found ways into my writing without my conscious consent. My first book, Poison Study, has a very rare weather phenomenon that my one friend (a meteorologist that can forecast – imagine that!) has been the only person to recognize.

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Reconsiderations: The Book of The Dun Cow and The Book of Sorrows

Reconsiderations: The Book of The Dun Cow and The Book of Sorrows

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The Book of the Dun CowOne of the characteristics of a great book is that you can go back to it at different times in your life and get different things out of it. But then sometimes the reverse happens: you read a book before you’re ready. If you’re lucky, though, the book hangs around in the back of your mind, and eventually you pick it up again and find out what you weren’t able to grasp the first time around.

When I was in elementary school, someone gave me a copy of The Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. I read it, but I didn’t particularly appreciate it. Many years later, I bought another copy, and was much more impressed. I also understood why I didn’t care for it as a child. Not long ago, I found a copy of the sequel The Book of Sorrows. Reading the books together I was impressed again.

The books are an animal fantasy, set when “the earth was still fixed in the absolute center of the universe. It had not yet been cracked loose from that holy place, to be sent whirling — wild, helpless, and ignorant — among the blind stars. And the sun still traveled around the moored earth, so that days and nights belonged to the earth and to the creatures thereon, not to a ball of silent fire. The clouds were still considered to flow at a very great height, halfway between the moon and the waters below; and God still chose to walk among the clouds, striding, like a man who strides through his garden in the sweet evening.”

Humans have not yet been made, and the world is inhabited by animals, who talk and think. And they have a purpose, which is to act as Keepers against Wyrm, the evil that dwells in the heart of the earth and wants to ruin all creation. It is the connection between the animals — their community — that keeps Wyrm from rising. The two books describe two particularly vicious assaults by Wyrm against his keepers, and what happens to the animals as a result.

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Jennifer Rardin, April 28, 1965 — September 20, 2010

Jennifer Rardin, April 28, 1965 — September 20, 2010

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oncebitten2Jennifer Rardin, author of the Jaz Parks series of contemporary urban vampire novels, died unexpectedly at the age of 45 on Monday, Sept. 20.

Her first novel, Once Bitten, Twice Shy, was published by Orbit Books in October 2007. It was followed by Another One Bites the Dust, Biting the Bullet, Bitten to Death, One More Bite, and Bite Marks.

The seventh volume in the series, Bitten in Two, will appear in November, and the eighth and final book is scheduled for June, 2011.

Rardin’s death took her fans by surprise.  Her most recent blog post, three days before her death, is upbeat and filled with details of her trip to Kenosha. Her obituary does not list a cause of death.

Rardin was born in Evansville, Indiana and lived in Robinson, Illinois. She leaves behind a husband and two teenage children.

More information can be found on her online bio and the Jaz Parks Wikipedia entry.

Not-So Short Fiction Review: Prospero Lost

Not-So Short Fiction Review: Prospero Lost

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prospero-lost2Prospero Lost, by L. Jagi Lamplighter
Tor (448 pages, $7.99, June 2010)

Prospero Lost is the first book of a trilogy and the first published novel by L. Jagi Lamplighter, whose name I assume is not a pseudonym,  though it sounds as if it could be a character in her own book.  As you might gather from the title, the story has something to do with what many critics perceive as Shakespeare’s alter ego in his final play, The Tempest, while also somehow involving hell and rebellious offspring given the  allusion to Milton’s Paradise Lost. What you might not expect is just about every fantasy trope you can think of, including (I kid you not), Santa Claus.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Lamplighter is married to John C. Wright, who also favors the everything-including-the-kitchen sink approach to fantasy and manages to make it work. In many respects, Lamplighter’s book reminds me of Wright’s Chronicles of Chaos series which deals with the foibles of family relationships among seeming humans possessed of fantastical natures. Of course, the root of this is Greek/Roman mythology in which imperfect gods irrationally vie among each other out of jealously, envy, egotism or other petty and irrational motivations.  They are, in other words, normal human beings dressed up in magical togas.

According to Lamplighter, the inspiration for her novel’s fantasy world  stemmed from a roleplaying game.

Somewhere in the early Nineties, John and I were invited to play in a roleplaying game run by a friend. He was a new moderator for us, so I decided to write a short story demonstrating what my character could do, so there would be no misunderstandings. For my character, I picked Miranda, the daughter of the magician Prospero from Shakespeare’s Tempest, only in the game, Prospero would turn out to be one of the magicians in the game background…We only played in that game a few times, but I liked the character and the story I had written.

Miranda is the narrator and focus of the novel (indeed, the overarching title of the trilogy is Prospero’s Daughter) and Prospero remains totally off-stage.  He is lost, and Miranda is trying to find out what happened to him.

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Blogging Alex Raymond’s FLASH GORDON, Part Three: “Tournaments of Mongo”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s FLASH GORDON, Part Three: “Tournaments of Mongo”

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tournaments-big-little“Tournaments of Mongo” was the third installment of Alex Raymond’s FLASH GORDON Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally printed between November 25, 1934 and February 24, 1935, “Tournaments of Mongo” picked up the storyline where the second installment, “Monsters of Mongo” left off with Dr. Zarkov being knighted by Vultan for saving the Hawkmen’s sky city from crashing to the ground.

Before Vultan can host Flash and Dale’s royal wedding, Emperor Ming and his daughter, Princess Aura arrive with Ming’s air fleet demanding Flash be handed over. Of course, Aura wants Flash for herself while her father wants to see him dead. Vultan invokes the ancient rite of tournament to determine Flash’s fate and Ming heartily agrees, certain it will mean the Earthman’s doom.

The obvious change beginning with this strip is that Alex Raymond’s artwork is being granted more space than before as Raymond decreases the strip from nine equally-sized panels to a more inventively designed seven panels to better showcase his stunning artwork which was steadily growing in both complexity and sophistication.

Raymond began to move away from word balloons in each panel to more formal narrative in small print at the top or bottom of the panel, often relegated to a single corner. This allowed Raymond to concentrate on majestic paintings depicting Mongo’s people and wildlife in all their glory.

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A Review of The House of Dead Maids

A Review of The House of Dead Maids

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house-dead-maidsLast week I was contacted by Barbara Fisch at Blue Slip Media, who’s been recommending and sending review copies to me for nearly fifteen years. Barbara had flagged The House of Dead Maids by Clare B. Dunkle (author of the Hollow Kingdom trilogy), just released in hardcover from Holt, as of possible interest to Black Gate readers. And from her description, it sounded like she could be right:

The House of Dead Maids is billed as a prelude to Wuthering Heights, as it features a character who will come to be known as Healthcliff. The novel is a scary blending of Yorkshire lore and Bronte family history. The child (Heathcliff) is already a savage little creature when Tabby Aykroyd arrives at Seldom House as his nursemaid. The ghost of the last maid will not leave Tabby in peace, and her spirit is only one of many. As she struggles against the evil forces that surround the house, Tabby tries to befriend her uncouth young charge, but her kindness can’t alter his fate.

The real task, as always, was matching the ideal reviewer with the book… a bit more of a challenge for a 151-page book with an eleven year-old narrator, I grant you.

As luck would have it, I happened to have an eleven-year old reader in the house, who innocently picked up the book the day it arrived.  I know when the stars have aligned, and sat down with a notepad and pen to interview her minutes after she finished reading The House of Dead Maids.

We’ll call this young reader “Tabitha,” because of what happened when her mother found out I was going to use her picture and real name on the Internet.

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