New Treasures – Page 201

Courtney Crumrin Volume One: The Night Things

Monday, April 23, 2012 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Far back in the mists of time (March 2002, if you want to be picky), I picked up an intriguing black and white independent title at my local comic shop. It was Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things #1, written and drawn by Ted Naifeh and published by Oni Press.

The first few pages featured cold and uncaring parents, a spooky house, young bullies, sinister night creatures, and a protagonist who was clearly an aspiring criminal and juvenile delinquent. Before the end of the first issue, young Courtney Crumrin had trapped a goblin and forced it to cruelly devour one of her school mates, bones and all.

Man, this was just what I was looking for. I brought it home and read it to my three children, and they immediately clamored for more.

More is what they got. Over the next few years Naifeh produced over a dozen issues following Courtney and her Uncle Aloysius, a powerful warlock who reluctantly teaches her magic. Courtney’s adventures involved the helpful (but hungry) goblins Butterworm and Butterbug; Boo & Quick, talking neighborhood cats who assist the young aspiring witch; a local Coven of witches and warlocks who frequently turn to Aloysius for help with dread problems; night things from the Twilight Kingdom — including The Dreadful Dutchess, Courtney’s friend Skarrow, and The Twilight King — and the terrible Tommy Rawhead, a giant hobgoblin feared by the Coven, and everyone else.

The various issues of Courtney Crumrin were collected into four handsome trade paperbacks, followed by the short-lived spin-off series Courtney Crumrin Tales in 2005. But that was all, and fans were left waiting while Naifeh turned to other projects, like Polly and the Pirates.

The long drought ended two weeks ago with the arrival of Courtney Crumrin Volume 1: The Night Things, the first hardcover edition of Courtney Crumrin. More importantly, it’s also the first time the issues have appeared in color, and the newly colorized pages look terrific. Volume One reprints the first four issues with special bonus material including sketches and covers of all four issues. The second volume, Courtney Crumrin & The Coven of Mystics, reprinting the next four issues in color, is due Aug 29, 2012.

Courtney Crumrin is one of the finest comics produced in the 21st Century. Don’t miss the opportunity to have these early issues in a handsome permanent edition. Courtney Crumrin Volume One: The Night Things is 144 pages in hardcover; it is published by Oni Press for $19.99.

More than a decade after I read them the first issue at bed time, all three of my children are still ardent Courtney Crumrin fans. But they’ll have to wait for this volume, because Dad wants to read it first.

Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England: Cthulhu By Gaslight

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Contrary to what you may read, it’s not all about Barbarian Prince and First Edition AD&D after hours here at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters.

No, sometimes during our friendly evening gatherings we just sit around and reminisce about great gaming sessions of old. I played a bit of Call of Cthulhu in my day; so much so that it’s probably my second favorite RPG (right behind AD&D).

Together with a few close friends I trekked down my fair share of fog-shrouded New England back alleys, trying to sound like Sam Spade while deftly making perception checks and shining feeble torchlight on things better left unseen.

Good times, good times. Except for the failed sanity rolls, of course, and the frequent times I was forced to crumble up my character sheet while Brian Muir, our game master, described how my character was dragged off to the asylum, screaming in wordless horror. Sometimes I wonder how I stumbled into this hobby.

But mostly what I remember about Call of Cthulhu was that Chaosium had hands down the best packaged adventures on the market. Seriously, they were epic. Larry Ditillio’s globe-spanning Masks of Nyarlathotep is still considered the high water mark for RPG adventures in the 1980s, and Keith Herber’s Spawn of Azathoth won the Gamer’s Choice Award for Best Role Playing Adventure in 1987.

Beyond the Mountains of Madness, an enormous 438-page masterwork from Charles and Janyce Engan, commands outrageous collector’s prices today (copies are currently selling at Amazon.com for $555 — and up), and that’s not even the most sought-after. That distinction belongs to Horror on the Orient Express, a fabulous boxed set released in 1991 which sold out quickly and has never been reprinted.

But it was William A. Barton’s Cthulhu By Gaslight that was always my favorite.

…

New Treasures: The Library of America’s A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes

Monday, April 16, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

So yeah, I saw John Carter. And I liked it. Liked it enough that I went twice, actually. Been a while since I did that.

Still looks like it’s going to be the biggest box office bomb of the year, but these things happen. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie. And let’s face it — it’s helped introduce a whole new generation to the classic science fantasy of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

And not just all those young punks playing video games who don’t read books anymore. I’m talking about a great many supposedly well-read science fiction and fantasy readers who never bothered to give ERB the time of day.

People like, y’know, me. For instance.

Sure, I’m fairly well read in SF and fantasy. And I have a (nearly) complete set of Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books in paperback, picked up here and there at garage sales because I liked the covers. But Burroughs just never really appealed to me in my youth, and I never bothered to read them.

I loved the colorful action-adventure of the great pulp serials, but the mid-1930s was about as far back as I went. Give me Asimov, van Vogt, Clifford D. Simak, Charles Tanner, H.P. Lovecraft. But if you appeared before they did — if your name was H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or Edgar Rice Burroughs, for example — then you were just old.

Well, it’s never to late to correct past mistakes. Especially when The Library of America is making it easy with two beautiful keepsake volumes celebrating the centenary of Burroughs’ most famous creations: Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter of Mars.

…

New Treasures: Alaya Johnson’s Wicked City

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Yeah, pretty much the last thing I expected to distract me this week was yet another urban fantasy featuring a kick-butt female protagonist and a city overrun by vampires.

In my defense, the city is Prohibition-era Manhattan and our protagonist Zephyr Hollis, newly arrived from the ranches of Montana, isn’t a vampire hunter but a socially conscious teacher who’s not above mingling with men — and the Others, otherworldly creatures that include vampires — in discreet speakeasies. The quirky setting and fine attention to detail intrigued me, but it was the engaging narrator that kept me reading. The novel is Wicked City by Alaya Johnson, and it was this jacket copy that first hooked me:

It’s summer in the city and most vampires are drunk on the blood-based intoxicant Faust. The mayor has tied his political fortunes to legalizing the brew, but Zephyr Hollis has dedicated herself to the cause of Faust prohibition — at least when she isn’t knocking back sidecars in speakeasies.

But the game changes when dozens of vampires end up in the city morgue after drinking Faust. Are they succumbing to natural causes, or have they been deliberately poisoned? When an anonymous tip convinces the police of her guilt, Zephyr has to save her reputation, her freedom and possibly her life. Someone is after her blood — and this time it isn’t a vampire.

In a New York City populated by flappers and vampires, debutantes and djinn, it’s best to watch your back. You never know what’s lurking in the shadows.

It’s too early to tell if the novel is going to live up to its early promise, but so far indications are good. Wicked City goes on sale today; it is available in hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books, at $25.99 for 306 pages.

New Treasures: Warhammer 40K: A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns on Unabridged Audio

Sunday, April 8, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

When I drove my son Tim to Blue Lake Fine Arts camp in Michigan last summer, during the five hour drive we listened to Steve Lyons’ The Madness Within and Sandy Mitchell’s Dead in the Water, both 65-minute audiobooks in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

And boy, they were great. Both were extremely polished, with professional readers and solid production values, including subtle sound effects and rousing music.

Best of all they were terrific stories — especially the Ciaphas Cain tale Dead in the Water. Commissar Cain is a rogue with no interest in heroics of any kind, but an enviable talent for getting out of sticky situations. When he’s posted to Archipelaga, a feral ocean world slowly being pacified by the Imperium, he soon finds himself investigating the mystery of a missing squad, and facing a dangerous and unknown enemy.

Cain’s an engaging and frequently very funny protagonist, and the story was the perfect length. After that I was on the hunt for more audiobooks from Black Library.

Last week my wishes were granted. In fact, they were exceeded in spectacular fashion: with the arrival of unabridged audio adaptations of two seminal works in The Horus Heresy cannon: A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns, both New York Times bestsellers.

…

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six

Thursday, April 5, 2012 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

In the days of my halcyon youth (no, I’m not 100% sure what that word means either, but I’ve always liked it), I used to look forward to the Year’s Best SF collections from Terry Carr, Lin Carter, and Donald Wollheim. I was still being introduced the riches of the field, and those Best Of volumes were a terrific shortcut to discovering the finest writers out there.

In our modern times this tradition is carried on by Rich Horton, David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, Gardner Dozois, and the talented Mr. Jonathan Strahan, who’s now up to his sixth volume of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year.

I’ve found his past collections excellent, and this year looks to be no exception. Here’s a peek at the contents:

An ancient society of cartographer wasps create delicately inscribed maps; a bodyjacking parasite is faced with imminent extinction; an AI makes a desperate gambit to protect its child from a ravenous dragon; a professor of music struggles with the knowledge that murder is not too high a price for fame; living origami carries a mother’s last words to her child; a steam girl conquers the realm of imagination; Aliens attack Venus, ignoring an incredulous earth; a child is born on Mars…

For the sixth year in a row, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan has collected stories that captivate, entertain, and showcase the very best the genre has to offer. Critically acclaimed, and with a reputation for including award-winning speculative fiction, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is the only major “best of” anthology to collect both fantasy and science fiction under one cover.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six is published by Night Shade Books. It is 606 pages for $19.99 in trade paperback, with a cover by Sparth. Buy it online from one of my favorite book sellers, Mark V. Ziesing at Ziesing.com.

New Treasures: The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction

Friday, March 23, 2012 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Wow. 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.

New Treasures: The Scar by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

It’s been a big week for games. The long-awaited (by me) Lords of Waterdeep has finally landed, and my man Andrew Jones tells me it rocks. Plus, I’m still processing loot from my prolonged auction insanity at last weekend’s game orgy.

Of course, this is the week that some terrific new novels arrive in the mail, courtesy of the top publishers in the industry. When they say no rest for the wicked, they’re talking about me specifically. Bastards.

So let’s get to it. If I can only pick one book to draw your attention to this week (because I’m spending the rest of my time stacking gaming loot in the basement), it would have to be The Scar, by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko.

Why The Scar? ‘Cause it’s so damn cool, that’s why. First is that eye-catching Richard Anderson cover, which said Put down that copy of Cosmic Encounter and pay attention to me, O’Neill, in a commanding Russian accent. Then it leaped on my desk and did a cool Cossack dance.

The Scar is the first English translation for Sergey and Marina Dyachenko, the popular husband and wife team who have achieved tremendous success in Russia. They’ve received eighty literary prizes for excellence, and The Scar won the “Sword in the Stone” award for best fantasy novel from 1995-1999.

Here’s the blurb:

Reaching far beyond sword and sorcery, The Scar is a story of two people torn by disaster, their descent into despair, and their reemergence through love and courage…

Egert is a brash, confident member of the elite guards and an egotistical philanderer. But after he kills an innocent student in a duel, a mysterious man known as “The Wanderer” challenges Egert and slashes his face with his sword, leaving Egert with a scar that comes to symbolize his cowardice. Unable to end his suffering by his own hand, Egert embarks on an odyssey to undo the curse and the horrible damage he has caused, which can only be repaired by a painful journey down a long and harrowing path.

This looks like the remedy I’ve been looking for, to all the similar-looking urban fantasy volumes piling on my shelves recently. Kudos to Tor for looking far and wide to bring the finest in fantasy to American shores. I’m looking forward to digging in to this one. Check out the book trailer here.

When the Cover Blurb is the Kiss of Death

Sunday, March 18, 2012 Darrell Schweitzer Comments 2 comments

Down to the Bone by Justina Robson (Pyr, 2011) is book five of the Quantum Gravity series, so it must represent some sort of success. The first blurb on the back cover tells all, or maybe more than all:

“This isn’t SF for SF readers. This is SF for a generation raised on anime, manga, and MMORPGs.” — Ain’t It Cool News.

Presumably MMORPGs are some sort of role-playing game.

But seriously, have you ever seen a blurb which so explicitly told a large section of the potential buying public to go get stuffed? This (not to judge the actual book, which I have not read) is clearly marketed as post-literate SF for people who do not much read books.

I have never seen a blurb before which so firmly told me, “No, do not buy this one. You won’t like it.” Maybe I should appreciate the publisher’s honesty.

Is this suicide or a canny marketing strategy? Is the author cringing, or laughing all the way to the bank?

I don’t doubt that Justina Robson books sell admirably. There’s a kick-ass heroine with a pointy thing on the cover. It’s part of a generic series. Just what the market wants. It is very likely that the post-literate audience is in the majority now, and will rule mainstream publishing.

What I am remarking on is how explicitly the blurb tells me (and, I suspect, most long-term genre readers) to go away. Most blurb copy attempts to convince everyone that this is a great book they must have. This one comes right out and says that it is not SF for people who read SF or who are part of any literary culture.

Such breathtaking honesty.

Darrell Schweitzer’s last article for us was Selling SF & Fantasy: 1969 Was Another World.

New Treasures: Allen K’s Inhuman Magazine #5

Monday, March 12, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Allen Koszowski is almost supernaturally talented.

I first hired him more than a decade ago, when I was desperate to find an artist who could capture the eldritch horrors of Edmond Hamilton’s classic “The Monster-God of Mamurth,” a tale of ancient desert ruins and unlucky explorers from the August 1926 Weird Tales, which I reprinted in Black Gate 2. Allen’s work for Cemetery Dance, Whispers, and Weird Tales convinced me he was the guy.

He delivered three knockout pieces of art (see the first here). And the envelope they arrived in was stuffed with additional pieces which he offered for free. It was remarkably generous, and I was glad I was able to hire him again for Black Gate 3.

Since 2004 Allen has been publishing his own horror magazine, Allen K’s Inhuman Magazine. Every issue he assembles the top names in dark fantasy and horror, and he handles the art for each story personally.

The results have been consistently excellent, but with Issue 5 Allen has outdone himself. This issue Centipede Press has taken over production, and the magazine looks better than ever. To showcase other artists Allen has added a gallery, highlighting the Lovecraft Mythos work of Randy Broecker, Bob Eggleton, Jill Bauman, David Carson, and others, although Allen still handles the cover and interiors. Click on the image at left to get a closer look at his cover art for this issue.

This issue features fiction by Michael Shea, Darrell Schweitzer, Tim Curran, Tim Waggoner, James S. Dorr, Christopher M. Cervasco, John Pelan, and many others. The magazine is huge — 208 pages! — and copiously illustrated. It is perfect bound for the criminally low price of just $6.95, which makes it the single best buy you’ll hear about all week.

My thanks to my buddy Chris Cervasco for tipping me off that the magazine was available. Like many beautiful and precious things, copies can be hard to come by. I bought mine from the excellent online seller The Overlook Connection, who still have most issues in stock. There’s also ordering information on Allen’s website.

Support an excellent magazine, and discover a terrific source of quality dark fantasy. It’s a win-win. Buy your copy today!

Black Gate

Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Browsed by
Category: New Treasures