Editor’s Blog – Page 119

Subterranean Magazine Spring 2011 Now Available

Sunday, April 3, 2011 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The 18th online issue — and 25th issue overall — of one of the genre’s leading publications, Subterranean Magazine, is now available.

Subterranean is published quarterly. It appeared in print for seven issues before switching to the current online format in Winter 2007. It is presented free online by Subterranean Press, and is edited by William Schafer.

The contents of each issue are unveiled gradually. So far available in the Spring 2011 issue are:

“The Crawling Sky”, a weird western by Joe R. Lansdale (originally published in Deadman’s Road)
“Show Trial”, a post-WWII fantasy novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“The Crane Method”, by Ian R. MacLeod
“The Fall of Alacan”, by Tobias S. Buckell, which returns to the setting of his novella The Executioness (which also shares a setting with Paolo Bacigalupi’s Nebula-nominated novella The Alchemist).
“Water to Wine” by Mary Robinette Kowal, the prose version of a long novelette originally written for the audio anthology Metatropolis.

Coming up: Mike Resnick’s latest escapade featuring Lucifer Jones, plus the usual reviews and non-fiction.

The cover this issue is by Edward Miller. The complete issue is here.

The Dying Earth RPG Available Again

Saturday, April 2, 2011 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Pelgrane Press has announced that one of my favorite role playing games, The Dying Earth, is available again after several years in limbo.

The Dying Earth is, of course, based on the famed fantasy books by Jack Vance, including The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel’s Saga, and Rhialto the Marvellous. The RPG was written by Robin Laws, John Snead, and Peter Freeman, and originally published by Pelgrane Press in 2001.

I’ve never actually played The Dying Earth role playing game. It appeared after I moved from Ottawa to Chicago and left my gaming group behind, and before my three children stopped throwing the dice at each other and got old enough to game with. So why is one of my favorites?

Because there’s plenty to enjoy about The Dying Earth RPG, even if you never use the rules to guide your dice arm. The support materials were superb, especially the accompanying magazine, The Excellent Prismatic Spray — whose contributors numbered Gary Gygax, Robin D Laws, Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Keith Baker, and many others — and which published seven fat issues before following the game into limbo.

Much of the content of the magazine and the additional support material were written in studied imitation of Vance’s witty and erudite style, and made terrific reading.

Who knows why the game was out of print for so long? A licensing issue, most likely. But it’s finally back, and Pelgrane has wasted no time gearing up the presses again, releasing the first new supplement in several years: Beyond The Mountains of Magnatz by Ian Thomson, a picaresque series of adventures for Cugel-level characters:

You may have thought your adventurous rogues trapped in the barren north until the sun went dark. But no, the former Lords of Cil are on the move again. The adventurers must evade becoming victim to the ancient menace of Magnatz in the sinister town of Vull, progress through greater and lesser challenges, both natural & magical, as they struggle across the savage mountains, explore strange hospitality in the valley of the mighty Pharesm, and survive lands populated by an army of basilisks, before winning free to the civilized lands of the east.

Our recent coverage of Pelgrane Press includes:

When the End of the World is a Mercy Killing: Cthulhu Apocalypse for Trail of Cthulhu
Mythos Expeditions for Trail of Cthulhu
Experience the Epic Madness of Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu
June Page XX Available — get the latest Pelgrane Press News
Accretion Disk for Ashen Stars
The Justice Trade for Ashen Stars
Some Mysteries You Don’t Want to Solve: Exploring Dead Rock Seven for Ashen Stars
Out of Space for Trail of Cthulhu
Ashen Stars by Robin D. Laws
The Dying Earth Role Playing Game

The Dying Earth RPG is a 192-page hardcover priced at $29.95. Beyond The Mountains of Magnatz is a 96 page PDF, and sells for $9.95. Both are available at the Pelgrane Press website.

See all of our recent Games coverage here.

Malcolm McClinton sells a Cover to Kobold Quarterly

Thursday, March 31, 2011 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Malcolm McClinton, who painted the cover for Black Gate 13 and has been doing interior art for us since Black Gate 10, has sold another cover to Dungeons & Dragons magazine Kobold Quarterly.

The cover, Golden Dragon, pictured at right, will be on the fall issue. Concerning the piece, Malcolm says:

Most of the time I find that Asian dragons seem too cartoonish and almost comical in their deception and I was really excited to try and bring one to life in a way that captured them in a more living realistic way. Any one that knows my intrepid boarder collie Lilly, might instantly recognize her influence on the piece.

You can read more details and see more samples of Malcolm’s terrific art at his blog, Hanged Man Studios.

Kobold Quarterly is celebrating their 5th Anniversary this year. The magazine, edited by Wolfgang Baur, was created to focus on open design, and now fills the niche once occupied by Dragon and Dungeon magazines, both now sadly defunct.

The latest issue, Winter 2011 , is the 16th, and is the launch issue for the new Midgard campaign setting. It features official Paizo magic items for Golarion, the Pathfinder world and setting for Howard Andrew Jones’ novel Plague of Shadows, Harem Assassins feats and spells for Pathfinder, Potion Miscibility rules for 4th Edition D&D, the Ecology of the Gearforged for the Midgard campaign, an interview with gaming legend Robin Laws, Monte Cook’s column, the return of popular Dungeon Magazine author Willie Walsh with a humorous mini-adventure, plus a sneak peek of the Northlands sourcebook with a beer run among the Thursir Giants — two complete Pathfinder mini-adventures. The issue is 76 pages with a cover price of $5.99, and you can order it in PDF format here.

Malcolm’s last cover for Kobold Quarterly was Issue 13, in Spring 2010. Their website is here.

Pathfinder Tales: “The Walkers from the Crypt” by Howard Andrew Jones

Thursday, March 31, 2011 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

pathfindertales_360 Howard Andrew Jones’ four-part story “The Walkers from the Crypt” has now been posted in its entirety at The Pathfinder Tales site at Paizo.com:

Elyana had no time to waste educating the young bard. There were but a few minutes left before the hounds would reach them.

She’d caught sight of the animals almost a half hour ago as she and her four companions fled across the grasslands of southern Galt. The seemingly inexhaustible hounds had slowly gained on their horses, and the party had finally picked out a rise from which to make a stand.

Vallyn gazed apprehensively out at the wedge-shaped formation of hounds sprinting forward through the high grass. “How can they keep running like that?”

“They’re dead,” Arcil said in his low, smooth voice. “They need neither breath nor rest.”

Pathfinder Tales are complete short stories set in the detailed world of Golarion, home to the Pathfinder role playing game. Novels released under the Pathfinder Tales brand include Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross, Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham, and Plague of Shadows by our own Howard Andrew Jones. Pazio has also begun presenting complete tales set in the same setting on their website — including pieces from Monte Cook, Ed Greenwood, Dave Gross, Richard Lee Byers, and others.

“The Walkers from the Crypt” features the continuing adventures of Elyana, Vallyn, Stelan, and other characters from Howard’s new novel Plague of Shadows, in a complete standalone adventure. Read more about Plague of Shadows here.

You can read Part One of “The Walkers from the Crypt” here, and all four parts are now available at Paizo.com.

Diana Wynne Jones (1934 – 2011)

Monday, March 28, 2011 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Diana Wynne Jones, author of dozens of fantasy books including Howl’s Moving Castle, Archer’s Goon, Hexwood, and Dark Lord of Derkholm, died on Saturday, March 26, 2011.

The first Diana Wynne Jones novel I ever bought was Howl’s Moving Castle, in 1986. Everyone at the science fiction bookstore where I shopped — the House of Speculative Fiction, in Ottawa, Canada — was talking about it, and Pat Caven the owner pressed it into my hands. It was by no means the last.

Jones studied English at St Anne’s College in Oxford, where she famously attended lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis before she graduated in 1956. She began her writing career with plays, and had three produced in London between 1967 and 1970.

In 1970 she switched to prose with her first novel, Changeover, a comedy marketed for adults. She began writing for young adults with her second book, Wilkins’ Tooth (1973, published in the US as Witch’s Business), and never looked back.

Although Jones is widely admired as a YA fantasy writer, she had a surprising range. Perhaps my favorite of her books is The Tough Guide To Fantasyland (1996), a hysterical tourist guide which skewers dozens of fantasy clichés as it catalogues the common places, weird items, people, governments, and situations readers are likely to encounter as they journey through a typical fantasy novel.

Her later novel Dark Lord of Derkholm (1999), set in a Fantasyland which steadfastly adheres to the conventions she described, is seen by some as a conceptual sequel to The Tough Guide.

Jones was nominated — and won — numerous awards in her lifetime. Her novel Archers Goon was nominated for a World Fantasy Award; The Tough Guide To Fantasyland was nominated for both a Hugo award and a World Fantasy Award, and Dark Lord of Derkholm won the 1999 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. The same year she won the Karl Edward Wagner Award in the UK.

She received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007, perhaps the highest honor our field has to offer.

Her novels have enjoyed extended life in other media: Archer’s Goon became a BBC television serial in 1992, and Howl’s Moving Castle was famously adapted as an animated feature by Hayao Miyazaki in 2004.

Jones continued to work until late in life, publishing her last novel, Enchanted Glass, last year. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, and died on March 26, 2011.

Inheritance by Christopher Paolini to be Released November 8

Thursday, March 24, 2011 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

I share a lot of books with my kids. I have two sons, ages 15 and 13, and an 11-year-old daughter. As you can imagine, they have a wide range of tastes. It’s uncommon for two to enjoy the same book (or series), and virtually unheard of for all three to agree. They couldn’t even agree on Harry Potter – my youngest two enjoyed the books, but my oldest turned up his nose.

The solitary exception is Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle. All three have devoured every book in the series, and all three have been clamoring for more.

For years. The first novel, Eragon, famously completed when when Paolini was only 19, was released in 2002. My oldest, Tim, read it first, and immediately started asking me when the next one was coming out.

Eldest arrived in 2005, and by then Tim’s brother Drew had read the first one. Within two weeks of Eldest‘s publication date, both of them were asking me to check Amazon.con for news of the third. Brisingr landed in 2008, and by then (of course) my daughter had leaped enthusiastically on the bandwagon.

It’s now been almost three years that I’ve put up with endless questions about the arrival of the fourth book (the most recent was last Saturday. Man, these kids do not give up). So it was with considerable relief that I saw news articles this week about the fourth and final volume, Inheritance, scheduled for release by Knopf Books on November 8, 2011. Thank. God. I thought I was going to be pestered about this book until retirement.

You’re on your own for a plot summary, or any further details. I’m already tired of hearing about this book, and I first heard about it yesterday. Read all about it on Paolini’s website Alagaesia.com, or better yet ask a nearby teenager. They’re sure to have all the details.

New Treasures: Who Killed Science Fiction? by Earl Kemp

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

In 1960, only 34 years after the launch of Amazing Stories, the first true science fiction magazine, fan Earl Kemp mailed a set of questions to 108 SF writers, editors, artists and fans. 71 responded, including Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Hugo Gernsback, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Silverberg, John W. Campbell, Horace Gold, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and many others. The questions were:

1) Do you feel that magazine science fiction is dead?
2) Do you feel that any single person, action, incident, etc., is responsible for the present situation? If not, what is responsible?
3) What can we do to correct it?
4) Should we look to the original paperback as a point of salvation?
5) What additional remarks, pertinent to the study, would you like to contribute?

Kemp published the results in his one-shot fanzine SaFari Annual #1 in 1960. Only 125 copies were printed, and it instantly became a collector’s item. A candid dialog on the flaws and fate of the genre between most of its brightest lights, Who Killed Science Fiction? achieved near-legendary status in the SF community, and SaFari Annual #1 won a Hugo Award in 1961 based on that sole issue.

…

Happy 80th Birthday, William Shatner!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

My fellow Canadian William Shatner turns 80 today.

For much of my life I watched him, in his role as Captain Kirk, help program Americans to accept Canadians as their leaders. Made things a lot easier when I moved to the U.S. in 1987 to finish my Ph.D, let me tell you. Not to mention numerous D&D games, in which elves (and anything else with pointed ears) immediately referred to me as “Captain.”

It did not, unfortunately, make picking up girls easier. For which I blame fellow Canadians Dan Aykroyd, Mike Meyers, and especially Jim Carrey. Doofus.

Anyway, back to Shatner. The Great One was born on March 22, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec. He had a starring role in Roger Corman’s 1962 film The Intruder and numerous appearances in film and television, including the classic Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” for The Outer Limits. In 1964 he guest-starred with Leonard Nimoy in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Project Strigas Affair.” I’m serious — check it out. Shatner plays a pest exterminator, and Nimoy a sinister-looking assistant Balkan diplomat. It’s sort of like watching the Trek episode “A Piece of the Action,” if you’re drunk enough.

From 1966 to 1969 Shatner was cast as James T. Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise, in the role that defined his career, and made things easier for a generation of Canadians living in the U.S. He reprised the role in Star Trek: The Animated Series from 1973 to 1974, and in seven Star Trek feature films between 1979 to 1994. He was a lead in the popular Boston Legal, currently stars in the CBS comedy $#*! My Dad Says, and has a cameo in the upcoming Horrorween.

Happy Birthday, William Shatner! You are a god among men.

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction in the Golden Age

Friday, March 18, 2011 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

James Van Hise, renowned comic and pulp expert and editor of The Rocket’s Blast ComicCollector magazine, has compiled a terrific collection of non-fiction articles from the dawn of the science fiction pulp era.

Science Fiction in the Golden Age arrived in the mail a week ago, and I’ve been mesmerized by it ever since. It gathers articles, letters, interviews, advertisements and artwork that appeared in pulps, fanzines and other sources between 1908 and 1955, including a H. G. Wells piece in a 1908 issue of Cosmopolitan speculating about life on Mars – with four illustrations, all reproduced here in color – a 1938 report on John W. Campbell’s plans as the new editor of Astounding Science Fiction, a review of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Galactic Patrol from 1950, a report from “Inside the Graf Zeppelin” from Science & Invention (1929), and a lot more.

Authors include Hugo Gernsback, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Thomas Sheridan, and Ray Bradbury, and the vintage art from pulps and fan magazines includes classic work by Frank R. Paul and others, as well as unused art intended for the first edition of The Skylark of Space. I particularly enjoyed the house ads for magazines and novels, including Amazing Stories and Otis Adelbert Kline’s The Planet of Peril.

This is clearly a labor of love from someone who spent years reading and gathering literary gems and curiosities from some extremely rare sources, including Air Wonder Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Scientifiction, Fantasy Review, Boys Magazine, Writers Digest, Fantasy Advertiser, and many other pulps and fanzines. The only criticism I have is that the page numbers in the TOC are rather useless, given that most of the magazine isn’t paginated.

Science Fiction in the Golden Age is the first in a planned series, although since this one came out in May 2005 and no new volumes have followed, I’m not sure about the state of those plans. Volume One is 160 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 (side-stapled) with full color front and back covers by Frank R. Paul. I bought mine from the author on eBay for $20; additional copies are still available.

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

Thursday, March 17, 2011 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Man, 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.

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