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The blog posts of Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones and Editor John O’Neill

Vintage Treasures: The Bantam Giant Novels of Lawrence Schoonover

Vintage Treasures: The Bantam Giant Novels of Lawrence Schoonover

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golden-exile3Who the heck is Lawrence Schoonover?

I had no idea. At least until I found myself in an unexpected bidding war for a beautiful collection of Bantam Giant paperbacks on eBay, including two by Mr Schoonover: The Golden Exile and The Burnished Blade (cover here).

Don’t know much more about him. I’m sure a trip to Wikipedia would tell me lots about Schoonover but, really, his covers tell me pretty much everything I need. Apparently he wrote big fat adventure novels featuring dudes with swords, exotic settings, and women who had little use for clothing. I’m a fan.

And it certainly doesn’t hurt that his novels were published as Bantam Giants.

There’s just something about the Bantam Giants that really brings out the collector in me. If you’re any kind of paperback aficionado, you know what I’m talking about.

The first Bantam Giants appeared in 1951, during the tenure of the legendary Ian Ballantine. I don’t believe they were numbered separately from Bantam’s usual sequencing, which makes cataloging them somewhat problematic, but their ranks included James Michener, Emile Zola, Harold Robbins, Sinclair Lewis, Robert Wilder, C. S. Forester and many, many more.

Some of the best literature of the 20th Century appeared in paperback as Bantam Giants, such as Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men and Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

They also included a superb assortment of classic adventure novels from Rafael Sabatini, Thomas R. Costain, John Masters, John Dickson Carr, and even some dude named Lawrence Schoonover.

If you're the one who outbid me for this eBay lot, you should be ashamed of yourself.
If you're the one who outbid me for this eBay lot, you should be ashamed of yourself.

There was also a smattering of science fiction and fantasy, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Ray Bradbury’s classic anthology The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories, John Collier’s Fancies and Goodnights, and novels by Bradbury and Jerry Sohl.

I think a large part of the appeal of Bantam Giants is their sheer size. They promise a lot of reading for your 35 cents. And dang, they look good don’t they? Just check out that beautiful eBay lot at left (click for bigger version.)

‘Course, I’d know a lot more about Schoonover if I’d just managed to win that damn auction. Since I didn’t, I was forced to hunt down virtually every single title in the set individually on eBay. I finally managed to complete that daunting task late last week. It’s okay, I’m sure the kids didn’t really need that college fund.

And before you ask which I’m going to read first, I think that should be fairly obvious. I’m curious about all of them, but before anything else I have to find out just what the Great Folly of that young lady in the bottom right is.

Even though I think I have a pretty good idea.

This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Games at Amazon.com

This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Games at Amazon.com

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underdarkI keep sitting down at my computer to write Black Gate blog posts, and then spending all my time browsing Amazon.com.

I used to think Amazon would never replace brick and mortar bookstores, “because you can’t browse books online, you know.” Shows you what I know. Amazon has turned online browsing into an art. These days I browse in my jammies with my iPad, both feet on the back of the couch.

I need to reclaim some of these lost hours by pretending I’m doing something useful. Get your feet off the couch and mow the lawn!, my wife says. Can’t, working on a blog post, I tell her. And pass me that blanket, my toes are cold.

Which brings us nicely to this week’s list of discount SF and fantasy titles at Amazon.com, compiled through countless hours of diligent research by your faithful scout. Don’t thank me, glad to do it. At least until the damn lawn stops growing.

In the spirit of the excellent recent gaming posts, this week I’ve been shopping for discount game titles. I’ve found more than a few — including the splendid D&D supplements Underdark, Death’s Reach, and Demon Queen’s Enclave from Wizards of the Coast, and the excellent computer RPG Mount & Blade.

As long as we’re talking about computer games, I slipped in some of my recent favorites: the popular RPG Neverwinter Nights 2 Gold, the complete Dawn of War collection, the space empire sim Sword of the Stars Ultimate Collection, the new-generation platform game Trine, space fighting sim X3: Terran Conflict 2.0, and the criminally overlooked action RPG Titan Quest Gold.

All these titles are eligible for free shipping on orders over $25.

Many of the discounts we told you about last week are still available; you can see that list here.

All Hail the Barbarian Prince

All Hail the Barbarian Prince

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barbarian-prince-256One of the great things about having a blog is that you get to celebrate all things cool. Books, movies, comics, games… if it keeps you up late at night, after your spouse has gone to bed wearing lingerie and a disappointed look, it’s usually worth at least a few paragraphs here.

Of course you need to take things a little more seriously when talking about the real classics, the enduring masterpieces that define our very culture. And that goes double when we turn our attention to the supreme achievement of Western Civilization, the pinnacle of some three billions years of planetary evolution, Arnold Hendrick’s Barbarian Prince.

Howard Andrew Jones did just that in his splendid post Return of the Barbarian Prince this week. It’s a terrific article and interview, capturing much of the fun of this sublime solo mini-game, except for his obvious lies about being able to win.

You can’t win at Barbarian Prince. The game is an existential commentary on the nihilistic underpinings of modern evolutionary thought. I thought that was obvious. All games end in ignoble death, usually in the form of a starving goblin tribe that beats you to a pulp and steals your fur-lined booties.

Listen, I’ve owned the game for nearly 30 years. Spent many evenings rolling dice and moving my lead miniature around the little map, befriending elves and exploring ancient crypts, and I have never won. Barbarian Prince is the beautiful girl I lusted after in high school.  She hangs out and flirts like a Vegas show girl, but there’s no way she’s going out with me.

At least I’m in good company. The distinguished John C. Hocking has never won the game. None of my friends have ever won. Only my false friends like Howard, who called last week to tell me he won a game on the first turn. Dude, if you’re going to fib, at least make it believable.

Well, the good news is that now you can experience the timeless agony of Barbarian Prince for yourself. Now you too can spend your evenings cursing up a blue streak and throwing the map across the room. The original Dwarfstar boxed edition is unspeakably rare (most copies were destroyed in a blind rage, presumably), but you can download the complete game here, and Todd Sanders’ new revised version is available here.

Howard tells me he’s mailing me a deluxe copy of the revised Sanders version, hand-made with carefully crafted components, which I anxiously await. Maybe a little of his luck will rub off on me. Maybe I’ll discover he’s adjusted the rules to make the game winnable. Maybe Todd’s revisions will clarify things just enough to lead me to victory. Or maybe there’s another tribe of starving goblins in my future, waiting to take my last copper piece and turn my skull into a drinking cup.

Time will tell.

M.A.R. Barker, Nov 3 1929 – March 16, 2012

M.A.R. Barker, Nov 3 1929 – March 16, 2012

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manofgoldWhile I was at the games auction at Gary Con on Sunday, Luke Gygax solemnly paid tribute to those industry giants we lost in the last year, including Jim Roslof and Jean Wells, both early and influential TSR employees.

But I was startled when Luke added that M.A.R. Barker, the grand old man of role playing, had died last week at the age of 82.

M.A.R (Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman) Barker is not particularly well remembered today. He wasn’t especially prolific as an author, with five novels to his credit — the last three published by obscure small press publishers. But everyone who paid attention to TSR in the heady early days of role playing knew M.A.R. Barker, the creator of Empire of the Petal Throne and the fantasy world of Tékumel.

Barker created Tékumel in the decades from 1940 to 1970. Wholly unique, Tékumel was a science fantasy setting inspired by Indian, Middle Eastern, Egyptian and Meso-American mythology, a world colonized by humans and alien species some 60,000 years in the future. Perhaps most intriguing, Tékumel was largely free of Tolkien’s influence as it was well established long before the publication of The Lords of the Rings — the only major RPG setting of the 20th Century that could make that claim.

In the early 1970s Barker met one of the original Dungeons & Dragons playtesters, Mike Mornard, and was introduced to the game. It didn’t take long to realize the potential of the D&D ruleset, and he quickly adapted it for his own use and self-published Empire of the Petal Throne in 1974. One of his occasional players was D&D co-creator Dave Arneson, who called Barker his favorite Game Master — and EPT his favorite RPG.

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Gary Con IV Report

Gary Con IV Report

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gary-con2Yesterday I drove up to Lake Geneva, the birthplace of Dungeons and Dragons, for Gary Con IV, the annual gathering in honor of Gary Gygax, the father of role-playing games.

I really enjoy Gary Con. In both locale and tone it’s very much what I imagine the earliest GenCon gaming conventions — which took place in Lake Geneva over thirty years ago — were like.

Just like the early GenCons it’s small and very friendly, with a focus on vintage gaming and first edition D&D/AD&D, with many early TSR employees and industry giants from that era in attendance.

Just a few of the distinguished guests this year included Basic D&D boxed set author Frank  Mentzer; Knights of the Dinner Table creator Jolly Blackburn; author and Dragonlance co-creator Margaret Weis; long-time TSR employee Mike Carr, author of In Search of the Unknown and many others; Troll Lord Games CEO Stephen Chenault; classic AD&D artists Jeff Easley and Jeff Dee; founding Dragon editor Tim Kask; KenzerCo chief David Kenzer; Metamorphosis Alpha creator Jame M. Ward;  Snit’s Revenge creator Tom Wham; Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 co-creator Skip Williams, and many others.

One of the marvelous things about small conventions, of course, is that it’s possible to talk to the guests — unlike big cons where they are usually mobbed.

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New Treasures: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction

New Treasures: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction

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wesleyan-anthologyWow. This may be the finest SF anthology I’ve ever seen. It’s certainly the best I’ve come across in many years.

Editing an anthology — especially a reprint anthology — is a delicate balancing act. You want to include the very finest stories you can, of course. But you’d prefer not to fill your book with tales your readers have seen a dozen times over.

I’m not sure I’ve seen a book that manages this as well as The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction. Starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (published 1844) and ending with Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” (2008) it spans 164 years of science fiction publishing, including some of the finest SF stories ever written — Edmond Hamilton’s “The Man Who Evolved” (1931), James Patrick Kelly’s “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995) — alongside dozens I’ve never read. Virtually every major SF and fantasy short fiction writer of the last 164 years is represented, from H. G. Wells, C.L. Moore and Stanley Weinbaum to Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, Gene Wolfe and Charles Stross.

The Wesleyan Anthology has a grand total of six editors, which tells you right off the bat it’s an academic endeavor targeted at libraries and school curriculum. All six are editors for Science Fiction Studies, DePauw University’s long-running critical journal, and they do a fine job of introducing the tales. Now, academic anthologies like this usually don’t appeal to me. They typically devote a considerable page count to proto-SF of the late 1800s or early 1900s, and that stuff puts my feet to sleep.

Not this time.  By the fifth tale we’re already into the 1930s, and the editors pay proper respect to both the Golden Age of SF — the Campbell authors of the 1940s like Asimov and Simak — and the earlier pulp writers of the mid-30s such as Hamilton and Leslie F. Stone. They’ve even plucked some tales from the pulps that I’ve never heard of, and that takes some effort.

I first laid eyes on The Wesleyan Anthology at Wiscon last year when SF author Richard Chwedyk showed me his copy with some wonder and amazement. Alice bought me my copy for Christmas, and I’ve been slowly (very slowly) making my way through it. The Wesleyan Anthology is $39.95 for 787 pages in trade paperback, and is published by Wesleyan University Press. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

March/April Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

March/April Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

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mar-apr-2012-fsf-coverI think I’m a little late with this one, as this issue has maybe been on sale for a few weeks. Tisk, tisk. That’s what one little game auction will do to you.

Well, time to catch up.  The March/April issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, for those of you who haven’t read it already, is packed full of great stuff, including a brand new novelette by the incredible Peter S. Beagle, and short stories from Robert Reed, Steven Utley, Richard Bowes, Geoffrey Landis, Robert Walton and Barry N. Malzberg, C.S. Friedman, and a lot more. Here’s the complete fiction TOC:

NOVELETS

  • “Electrica”  – Sean McMullen
  • “Twenty-Two and You”  – Michael Blumlein
  • “Greed”  – Albert E. Cowdrey
  • “Gnarly Times at Nana’ite Beach”  – KJ Kabza
  • “Olfert Dapper’s Day”  – Peter S. Beagle

SHORT STORIES

  • “Repairmen”  – Tim Sullivan
  • “One Year of Fame”  – Robert Reed
  • “The Tortoise Grows Elate”  – Steven Utley
  • “The Queen and the Cambion”  – Richard Bowes
  • “Demiurge”  – Geoffrey Landis
  • “The Man Who Murdered Mozart”  – Robert Walton and Barry N. Malzberg
  • “Perfect Day”  – C.S. Friedman

The amazing Lois Tilton has already reviewed the complete issue at Locus Online. Here’s what she says about Beagle’s contribution, “Olfert Dapper’s Day”:

Dr Dapper, of no real medical degree, is forced to flee to the New World when his various frauds are revealed to the authorities of Utrecht. In the wilderness, among the comfortless Puritans, he has no alternative but to pose as a medical practitioner. Yet despite himself, he finds wonders and miracles in the wilderness.

A fine and moving fantasy. The author’s voice is quite engaging and his protagonist undergoes a memorable metamorphosis.

The cover price is $7.50, for a thick 258 pages. Cover artist this issue is David A. Hardy. More details at the F&SF website, including the complete text of book and film reviews by Charles de Lint, Chris Moriarty, Paul Di Filippo, and Lucius Shepard. We last covered F&SF here with the January/February issue.

A Time Capsule from 1983

A Time Capsule from 1983

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space-gamer-66Last month I wrote a lengthy blog post about Sword & Sorcery, a lavish fantasy board game published by SPI over three decades ago. In the comments section the topic soon turned, as it often does with us old-time gamers, to TSR’s purchase of the bankrupt remnants of SPI in 1983. Christian Lindke, a long-time reader, had some particularly astute observations:

While it is easy to blame TSR for what they did to SPI — and they deserve a lot of blame — one should keep two things in mind. First, when they purchased SPI it was in dire financial straights and would likely not have survived. Second, they had hoped to keep SPI’s staff, but those staff members refused to work for TSR — for varied reasons — and left to form the Victory Games studio over at Avalon Hill… A massive resurgence of publishing of SPI games happened under Lorraine Williams. We would never have seen the SPI monster TSR World War II game, or Wellington’s Victory, Sniper (including BugHunters), let alone the 3rd edition of DragonQuest…

There is an excellent issue of Fire and Movement, printed by Steve Jackson Games, that goes over the purchase of SPI.

I asked Christian if he could track the issue down, and he did more than that. He wrote an extensive and excellent blog post on the topic, and in a good bit of investigative reporting he tracks down a series of articles in Steve Jackson’s Space Gamer magazine that reveal more extensive details.

But it was this bombshell at the bottom of Christian’s article that I personally found much more startling.
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Spring in Illinois brings… Auction Fever

Spring in Illinois brings… Auction Fever

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Some of the science fiction and fantasy games up for bid at the Spring Games Plus auction (click for humungous version)
Some of the science fiction and fantasy games up for bid at the Spring Games Plus auction (click for supersize version).

Games Plus in Mount Prospect, IL, is the finest games store in the Chicago area. Every spring and fall they hold a fabulous games auction.

Now, I don’t use that word lightly. I’ve been to some terrific games auctions in my time, starting with CanGames in Ottawa in the early 80s, then the friendly auctions at WinterWar in Champaign, IL where I was a grad student in the 90s.

And of course, for sheer quantity of items on offer, nothing beats the legendary GenCon auction, held over multiple days in Indianapolis every August.

But if you really, really want that rare gaming item, bidding against hundreds of hard core gaming fans from across the country at GenCon is a sure way to pay top dollar for it.

For real bargains, you need a small local auction. And I’ve never found one friendlier or more rewarding than the twice-a-year event at Games Plus, which is attended by perhaps a hundred gamers and collectors from the Chicago area.

It’s spread across four days and includes thousands of games of virtually every vintage and description, sorted into four categories. Occasionally I drop by Friday night for the Historical Games, especially when I’m on the hunt for hard-to-find Avalon Hill or SPI titles. But usually I save up for the main event: the Saturday Fantasy and Science Fiction auction, which starts at 10:00 a.m. and runs until early evening.

Knowing my lack of control in the past, my wife Alice gave me a strict budget this year. I was not to return home with more than $200 of auction loot. So you can imagine my measured apprehension when my winnings were totaled and the auctioneer handed me a bill for $1,667.75.

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Keep up with the Black Gate Staff with the BG Staff tag

Keep up with the Black Gate Staff with the BG Staff tag

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bg-patty-claire
Two members of the Black Gate staff, having more fun than you.

How is it that we have so much fun here at Black Gate? How are we so well connected to the very heartbeat of modern fantasy? How is it that so many incredible and exciting people stop by every month, to guide you towards the literature, art and music that will change your life?

Don’t look at me. I have no idea either.  I just pay the bills, and shut down the parties when the police show up.

But you don’t need me to tell you. The talented and rambunctious staff of Black Gate magazine bare all their secrets right here each week. And to help you keep up, I’ve finally added a BG Staff tag to the Categories section of our navigation menu at left.

What’s a BG Staff tag? You’re not paying attention, are you? You just drop by once a week hoping Scott Taylor will post more pics of near-naked redheads. All right, look. See that narrow column on the left, with the Search box at the top? About halfway down the page is a CATEGORIES section. That’s how we sort the thousands of blogs posts we’ve done here at Black Gate. Now you can just click “Art of the Genre” and ogle all the art you want, without all those pesky posts about books and stuff. You’re welcome.

And right below that link is the new BG Staff tag. It collects about 250 articles from the last few years covering news, interviews, and embarrassing personal revelations from the people behind Black Gate, including the many authors, artists and editors who’ve contributed to our pages over the years. It’s your one-stop-shop to discover the latest books from Devon Monk, John R. Fultz, Martha Wells, James Enge, Jonathan L. Howard, Harry Connolly, Peadar Ó Guilín, C.S.E. Cooney, Shawn L. Johnson, Rich Horton, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others.

You’ll find all the news about Ryan Harvey’s Writers of the Future Award; Harry Connolly on making his first book trailer with a hot model; how Howard Andrew Jones introduced C.S.E. Cooney to C.L. Moore; Bud Webster’s advice on book selling; which Black Gate author reached #1 on Amazon sales list; which BG staffer interviewed his own daughter, and a road trip to clone a woolly mammoth.

All that plus numerous convention reports, book excerpts, reviews, award news, self-publishing advice, agent hunts, first novel sales, online comics, zeppelins, and sadly even a few obituaries. It’s the entire circle of life here at Black Gate. Enjoy.