Editor’s Blog – Page 65

New Treasures: Burnt Black Suns by Simon Strantzas

Friday, November 14, 2014 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Another interesting thing about exploring the Dealer’s Room at the World Fantasy Convention was meeting all these marvelous small press publishers, and discovering just how many delightful books they’ve produced. Hippocampus Press, whom I’m not really familiar with, had a table packed high with books by H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, S. T. Joshi, Wade German, Algernon Blackwood, William F. Nolan, Donald Wandrei, and Thomas Ligotti, as well as several copies of their journals, Dead Reckonings, Spectral Realms, and The Lovecraft Annual.

I had to try at least one. I was sorely tempted by John Langan’s collection The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and Clint Smith’s Ghouljaw and Other Stories. But the one I eventually settled on was Simon Strantzas’s most recent collection, Burnt Black Suns, mostly because I was drawn to the cover and the story descriptions on the back. Adam Nevill’s quote on the back cover (“In Burnt Black Suns Strantzas casts far into time and space to find the alien, and what comes back wriggling inside his net is ghastly”) didn’t hurt, either. The first story, “On Ice,” described as “a grim novella of arctic horror,” will be the story I read this weekend.

In this fourth collection of stories, Simon Strantzas establishes himself as one of the most dynamic figures in contemporary weird fiction. The nine stories in this volume exhibit Strantzas’s wide range in theme and subject matter, from the Lovecraftian “Thistle’s Find” to the Robert W. Chambers homage “Beyond the Banks of the River Seine.” But Strantzas’s imagination, while drawing upon the best weird fiction of the past, ventures into new territory in such works as “On Ice,” a grim novella of arctic horror; “One Last Bloom,” a grisly account of a scientific experiment gone hideously awry; and the title story, an emotionally wrenching account of terror and loss in the baked Mexican desert. With this volume, Strantzas lays claim to be discussed in the company of Caitlín R. Kiernan and Laird Barron as one of the premier weird fictionists of our time.

Burnt Black Suns was published by Hippocampus Press on May 1, 2014. It is 310 pages, priced at $20 in trade paperback and $6 for the digital edition. The Foreword is by Laird Barron. The cover art is by Santiago Caruso. Burnt Black Suns is available for half price on the Hippocampus Press website this month — check out their November specials here.

Can You Really Role Play on a Board?: Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords

Wednesday, November 12, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Fantasy board games have tried to capture the addictive nature of role playing for decades, but without much real success. In the past few years though, a number of dungeon-delving games have come close, including Descent, Talisman Fourth Edition, Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, Claustrophobia, and a few others. In his recent review of Paizo’s second Adventure Card Game Base Set, Skull & Shackles, Scott Taylor fingered another contender, this one from Paizo:

Of late Paizo had expanded their market with several new product lines, the most intriguing of which are their Boxed Set Card Games. These sets ingeniously combine card building with role-playing with table-top (Think D&D meets Magic the Gathering meets anything done by Fantasy Flight!) Indeed, it is an amazing breakthrough by the Paizo design team, and guess what, it actually works!

Bob Byrne was even more positive in his assessment of the first title in the series, Rise of the Runelords, in his August article on “RPGing with a board”

By far, the best board/card game I’ve found that emulates the role-playing experience is the Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords Adventure Card Game. The adventures get more difficult, you level up and the gear gets better. You maintain your items, spells, and levels from scenario to scenario through an entire Adventure Path, rather than start over each game play session. I’m sure I’ll post on that excellent game in the future.

While I wait impatiently for Bob’s full review, I went ahead and ordered a copy. It arrived a few days ago and, while I haven’t had a chance to play a full game yet (mostly because I haven’t figured out how to do that without tearing the shrinkwrap), it looks very promising indeed.

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2014 World Fantasy Convention: Sunday — World Fantasy Award Winners Announced

Monday, November 10, 2014 John ONeill Comments 28 comments

I was able to attend the World Fantasy Convention this year, for the first time since 2011, and I really had a terrific time. It was fabulous to attend all the panels, readings, parties, and events — and especially to re-connect with so many old friends, and make so many new ones. Years ago, Mark Kelly at Locus Online called World Fantasy “a reunion,” and I think that’s really the best description.

The highlight of the convention is the Sunday banquet, where the World Fantasy Awards were presented. The toastmaster for the event was the delightful Mary Robinette Kowal, who gave a highly entertaining speech about rejection, and the awards themselves were presented by Gordon van Gelder and David Hartwell. I sat at Table 25 with my new friends Amanda C. Davis and Matt O’Dowd, where we had a great view of the proceedings.

The World Fantasy Award itself is a cartoonish bust of H.P. Lovecraft sculpted by the brilliant Gahan Wilson (seen at left). It’s an extremely distinct award that honors the contributions of perhaps the finest American horror writer of the 20th Century. But using Lovecraft as the poster child for the awards has also caused some recent controversy (that surfaced twice during the proceedings.) I’ll get to that in a minute.

But first, the Awards themselves. This year’s winners of the World Fantasy Awards are:

Novel:

A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)

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Uncanny Magazine Issue 1 Now on Sale

Tuesday, November 4, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

With all the bad news swirling around genre magazines over the past few years, I can’t tell you how uplifting it is to celebrate the arrival of a brand new magazine — especially one as promising as this.

Uncanny is a bimonthly magazine of science fiction and fantasy, showcasing original fiction from some of the brightest stars in the genre, as well as reprints, poetry, articles, and interviews. The first issue, cover-dated November/December 2014, is on sale today. It contains new fiction by Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard, Max Gladstone, Amelia Beamer, Ken Liu, and Christopher Barzak, plus a reprint from Jay Lake. There’s also articles by Sarah Kuhn, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Christopher J Garcia, and a special Worldcon Roundtable featuring Emma England, Michael Lee, Helen Montgomery, Steven H Silver, and Pablo Vazquez. The issue also contains poetry by Neil Gaiman, Amal El-Mohtar, and Sonya Taaffe, and interviews with Maria Dahvana Headley, Deborah Stanish, Beth Meacham on Jay Lake, and Christopher Barzak.

If that’s not enough, the magazine’s staff has also produced two stellar podcasts. Episode 1, released today, features the Editors’ Introduction, Maria Dahvana Headley’s “If You Were a Tiger, I’d Have to Wear White” and Amal El-Mohtar’s poem “The New Ways” (both read by Amal), as well as an interview with Maria conducted by Deborah Stanish. Episode 2 (coming December 2) will contain an Editors’ Introduction, Amelia Beamer reading her story “Celia and the Conservation of Entropy,” Sonya Taaffe’s poem “The Whalemaid, Singing” (as read by Amal El-Mohtar), and an interview with Amelia conducted by Deborah Stanish.

Uncanny was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign that had over 1,000 backers and raised over $36,000 (surpassing its goal by over $10,000.) The magazine is available for purchase as an eBook in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats. If you’re the type of buyer who needs to sample things first, the website features free content that will be released in two stages — half on November 4 and half on December 2.

Uncanny is published and edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas. The first issue is priced at $3.99; order directly from the website. The cover is by Galen Dara.

Michael Bishop on Tom Hanks’ Story in The New Yorker

Sunday, November 2, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Michael Bishop, Nebula Award-winning author of No Enemy But Time, Ancient of Days, and Philip K Dick Is Dead, Alas, has posted a brief review of Tom Hanks science fiction story in The New Yorker magazine.

Yes, Tom Hanks has a story in The New Yorker. And yes, it’s science fiction. It’s titled “Alan Bean Plus Four.” Yes, the Tom Hanks who played Forrest Gump and Captain Phillips. Look, just read what Michael said.

I read it with some initial skepticism. Sure, Hanks is an Academy Award-winning actor, but can he write?

Well, yes, he can. This tale works at the level that Hanks shoots for, and the prose, pointedly colloquial and science-savvy, shows him to have a fine command of 21st-century English as well as of current cultural, social, and technological innovations. I really like it.

You can read the complete story online here. There’s even an audio version on the same page (read by Tom Hanks. How cool is that?).

Read Michael Bishop’s complete comments on his Facebook page.

See a 1942 Pulp Magazine Rack in All Its Glory

Sunday, November 2, 2014 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

The Shorpy Historic Picture Archive, a terrific photo blog which posts vintage high-definition pics from the 1850s to 1950s, has posted an absolutely gorgeous picture of a 1942 magazine rack, crammed to overflowing with pulp magazines, slicks, comics, and much more. It’s a reminder of what newsstands were like in the heyday of the pulps. Visible in the (much reduced) image above are Astounding, Planet Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Future, Fantastic Adventures, and nearly a hundred others.

What’s truly unusual about this image is that it’s in color. The original image, however, is black and white — the finished product was hand colorized after nearly a year of painstaking detective work, matching the pulp images in the racks (sometimes barely visible) to actual covers. See the complete tale of the research involved here, and see the astounding high-resolution original (all 4.2 million pixels) here.

Get a Dozen E-books for Just $1.99 Each from Harper Voyager

Wednesday, October 29, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Harper Voyager has announced a special Halloween sale: a dozen urban fantasy, science fiction, and horror ebooks are on sale for $1.99 or less.

Titles on the list include novels from Vicki Pettersson, Nick Cole’s Soda Pop Soldier, The Stolen by Bishop O’Connell, Katherine Harbor’s Thorn Jack, Jack Heckel’s Once Upon a Rhyme, and additional suitable Halloween fare.

Also included is the excellent anthology Ghosts By Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense, edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers, containing seventeen all-new stories from Peter Beagle, James Morrow, Sean Williams, Gene Wolfe, Garth Nix, Jeffery Ford, Robert Silverberg, and others. This one’s well worth your attention, and at $1.99 you can’t go wrong.

The sale is for a limited time only — presumably until at least Halloween — so be sure to move quickly.

See the complete list of available titles here.

Robert Silverberg on Cannon Propulsion in Space

Wednesday, October 29, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

In my Sunday article on The Art of The Original Science Fiction Stories magazine, I called out the bizarrely goofy February 1959 cover (right), illustrating “Delivery Guaranteed” by Calvin M. Knox (Robert Silverberg). It’s the kind of gonzo image that only could have fit on a 1950s science fiction digest; but I was dying to know if Bob’s story actually had an intrepid couple piloting a cannon-powered wooden raft in space, and how the cover came about. Bob was gracious enough to answer; here’s what he said:

I often worked with Ed Emsh to produce cover/cover story combos for [editor Robert] Lowndes. Ed would come into the office with an idea, I would wrap a plot around it, Ed would go home and paint a picture, and I would write the story. It was Ed who thought a cannon might be sufficiently Newtonian to provide reaction mass in space; I agreed in delight, and that was how “Delivery Guaranteed” happened. (Randall Garrett sometimes wrote cover stories too, and one time Ed turned in a painting showing the drive room of a spaceship, with his signature, EMSH, on the base of the biggest gizmo. Randy promptly dubbed the gizmo “the Remshaw Drive” and made it clear that the four visible letters were part of the manufacturer’s label.)

I also asked about the cover of the November 1955 issue, illustrating Clifford D. Simak’s “Full Cycle,” which was re-used on the March 1959 issue of Double-Action Detective and Mystery Stories. (See the full article for details.)

In the case of the Simak/Silverberg story, Bob Lowndes was just being thrifty toward the end of the life of his magazine group, and recycled that Simak painting to use with my story in his crime mag a couple of years later.

Read the complete article here. And thanks to Robert Silverberg for being gracious enough to solve those mysteries for us!

Loot The Tomb of Horrors in Style in Conquest of Nerath

Tuesday, October 28, 2014 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

When I lived in the dorms at the University of Illinois in the early 90s, it wasn’t unusual to see students clustered around tables in the lobby, playing Axis & Allies. The game took up an entire table and there were always a few spectators. Axis & Allies was a massive game, with a truly epic feel, and in the decades since its release, it has seen many versions — 19 last time I counted.

I’ve often wondered why there was no fantasy equivalent to Axis & Allies: a fast-playing game on a massive scale, pitting nations against each other across an imposing map. Sure, there have been a few ambitious attempts from small companies, but most fell down on the production side of things. Axis and Allies wasn’t just huge in scope — the whole game was huge, with hundreds of sturdy components, a beautifully detailed 40-inch folding map, and simple yet elegant rules. Even the box was humongous.

In 2011, Wizards of the Coast released Conquest of Nerath, a Dungeons & Dragons board game that pits four nations against each other in a desperate struggle for total supremacy. I probably would have overlooked it, if it hadn’t been for this rave review by Scott Taylor in July of that year:

In all my years of gaming, and all the games I’ve played, I’d yet to find something in the same realm of awesome as [Axis & Allies] until I sat down to play Conquest. Simply put, this game is an instant classic, a pure gamers paradise that mixes the very best of thirty years of game development into a single cohesive unit. What A&A was as a Risk upgrade, so too is Conquest to everything before it.

I was very excited by Scott’s review, and promised myself I’d buy a copy as soon I could. I finally acted on that promise earlier this month and, after spending some time with the game, I’m very pleased to be able to say that Scott was not off in his assessment.

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Backing my First Kickstarter: Scott Taylor’s The Folio

Sunday, October 26, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Okay, technically Scott Taylor’s The Folio isn’t the first Kickstarter campaign I’ve ever backed. I think that was probably Grim Dawn, the computer RPG from the creators of Titan’s Quest. Plus the Veronica Mars movie. But I only did those because my kids begged me.

So, yeah, I think Scott’s The Folio may be the first campaign I’ve backed on my own. It hasn’t been hard to stay away from Kickstarter so far… there’s been plenty of intriguing projects that have tempted me but, between eBay and Amazon, I already have enough high tech platforms draining my finances, thank you very much. As a collector with poor impulse control, it’s been safest just to stay away entirely.

What’s so magical about The Folio that’s undermined years of careful self-control? Well, first, there’s its creator, Scott Taylor. Scott’s been blogging at Black Gate for many years, and he was a contributor to the print magazine before that. Scott is enormously talented, with five published novels to his credit, not to mention the highly acclaimed shared-world anthologies Tales of the Emerald Serpent and A Knight in the Silk Purse, which he published and edited.

I’ve wondered for years what Scott could do if he focused his considerable talents on the gaming industry, but with The Folio, he has surpassed even my high expectations. The Folio is an ongoing adventure module series using 5th Edition mechanics, adapted to multiple genres.

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