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October Short Story Roundup

October Short Story Roundup

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GdM13_500x375Things were a little thin on the ground for swords & sorcery this past month. Only  Grimdark Magazine crossed my radar this month with new tales of adventure, and three out of three in the latter publication weren’t S&S.

Grimdark Magazine #13 is packed with three stories and the usual spate of interviews, reviews, and commentaries on the subject of grimdark. If anyone will ever convince me that grimdark is a real, definable sub-genre and not just a marketing ploy, it will be the magazine’s editor, Adrian Collins. His choice of stories and non-fiction is solid and consistently presents grimdark as something far more than just gory rape and murder. In his magazine, there’s room for much subtlety and nuance.

The non-fiction is the usual magazine mix of good and poor. Though I disagreed with much of what he said, I enjoyed the interview with Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wyld. Deborah A. Wolf has a fun article titled “How to Land a Rockstar Agent in Ten Excruciating Steps.”

Normally, I don’t write much about magazine’s non-fiction, but article in particular needs to be pointed out. In “Barbarians or Philosophers?,” Matthew Cropley and Victoria Bridgland make an argument that grimdark readers are a more discerning group than those who prefer more traditional fantasy. It’s more complex than that, drawing on things said by authors, as well as psychological studies, but that’s its general conclusion.

In the debate between those who love grimdark, and those who hate it, there is, I’ll concede, some evidence for either side. For those who claim that grimdark fans read because they enjoy the thrill that comes with depictions of violence, there’s some research, as noted above, to back this up. However, there seems to be much more recent evidence that supports grimdark fans gaining a deep fulfillment and enhanced personal well-being by engaging with grimdark fantasy. The dark and violent aspects of grimdark help it reflect the human condition in all its complex glory, whereas heroic fantasy is limited to an idealized portrayal of good and evil. Lack of material rewards and the unfairness and violence of grimdark worlds mirror our own, and help us see that the true rewards in life are increased wisdom and understanding of the nature of reality. Grimdark fans like the sub-genre because its anti-heroes share their high regard for justice and righteous vengeance, and that disposition means that the violence common to grimdark doesn’t detract from deep engagement with exploration of humanity, in all its glorious shades of grey.

I could spend an entire post unpacking the various claims made in that statement, but I’ll skip it that today. Suffice it to say, I disagree with most of what they say. Much of what passes for “increased wisdom and understanding of the nature of reality” is no more than easy cynicism and affected world-weariness. The only time I find humanity reduced to “shades of grey” is when I deliberately choose to filter out all the other colors of the spectrum.

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Mage: The Hero Denied #3

Mage: The Hero Denied #3

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Mage 3And so the story starts moving, just as the reviews and Internet buzz for this series begins to die down. Seriously, I’ve noticed how promotion for comic books tends to really ramp up with issue 1, but fades almost immediately afterward, as if no one might be tempted to pick up issue 3 if they hadn’t already read issues 1 and 2. Generally, by the time the last issue of a series shows up, the attitude among a lot of comic fans is “Oh, are they still publishing that thing?”

So you probably didn’t hear that issue #3 of The Hero Denied came out on Wednesday, but it did and it was good. Of course, some readers have probably been put off by the slow pacing of this story. For example, the first four pages are just Kevin talking to his son, Hugo, about the nature of magic while they walk around a car and then get inside it. And it turns out that my earlier theory was correct and these attacks are taking place in a parallel world just beside the “real world.” And while Kevin insists that his abilities aren’t hereditary, the fact that Hugo is able to slip into this parallel world would suggest otherwise.

The next six pages concern two Gracklethorn sisters, Aleksi and Sasha, visiting a mission in search of the Fisher King. As established in the very first Mage series, the Fisher King can assume any shape, but that shape will always appear crippled. I get that this is supposed to show how ruthlessly they’re pursuing their quarry, but it still seemed a bit implausible that these creatures were able to murder two people in a mission in the noisiest, sloppiest manner possible without anyone else noticing. On the other hand, Matt Wagner does a nice understated job of demonstrating Sasha’s powers of persuasion.

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Weird Sea Adventures: A Review of the Archipelago Kickstarter Reward Magazine

Weird Sea Adventures: A Review of the Archipelago Kickstarter Reward Magazine

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First there was the Weird Tale, which hit the mark. Then there was the Weird Western, which hit the mark for many, but not all. Now there is the Weird Sea…

The advent of Archipelago came to my attention on Black Gate via Brandon Crilly’s post post earlier this year, which included some cool art and a teaser story – “The Ur-Ring” by Charlotte Ashley.

As a longstanding fan of maritime literature, specifically the Richard Bolitho stories by Alexander Kent (pseudonym of Douglas Reeman) and C.S. Forrester’s Hornblower stories, my ears figuratively pricked up when I saw Brandon’s article. Maritime adventure combined with fantasy… what more could one ask? Hmm, a Cylon Base Star perhaps, but we won’t go there…

For those who haven’t read Brandon’s original post, the basic premise of Archipelago is that of a Shared World, where people from earth’s 17th century have come across various ocean based portals to another world. To quote the Kickstarter:

Four hundred years ago, when control of the world came to depend on naval power as never before, a courageous few set off on journeys of discovery and conquest that would alter the fates of nations in ways no-one could imagine.

But once they’d sailed the seven seas, what if they found another?

ARCHIPELAGO is a historical fantasy serial with multiple new episodes appearing every month. Imagine a blend of Moby Dick, Pirates of the Caribbean, Master & Commander and Game of Thrones — with Lovecraftian monsters lurking beneath the surface!

Looking at the Archipelago Kickstarter it became evident that they did not require a massive contribution, more just seed funding to get their project going. The rewards were interesting, insofar as one could — as was a common practice way back in the British military establishment — purchase a commission. The difference being that instead of buying a rank in the navy, one could purchase a custom mention in a future story, which I thought was pretty cool. As they state it:

Archipelago isn’t just about storytelling, though. Readers will have the opportunity to influence events as the adventure develops, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes devastating.

I was hooked and proceeded to participate in the Kickstarter.

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October Is Hammer Country: Twins of Evil (1971)

October Is Hammer Country: Twins of Evil (1971)

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twins_of_evil_posterI loitered in the early ‘60s for my first two Hammer movies of October. Now it’s time to shift to a different era in the fortunes of the British studio that redefined Gothic cinema: the sexy, violent, and financially troubled early 1970s. Hammer Film Productions didn’t make it out of the decade, releasing their last film in 1978, but this period of independent producers and escalating R-rated material left behind some enjoyable decadence. Twins of Evil is late-period Hammer sexploitation with a basic high concept: sexy twin vampire girls! But the film ends up far better than the exploitation lure would lead you to expect. A good portion of this success has to do with Peter Cushing delivering a top-tier career performance as basically an aging, less tolerant Solomon Kane.

By 1970, the close-knit Hammer family was scattering. The in-house producers had left, so chairman James Carreras turned to outside producers. A small company called Fantale Films, consisting of producers Michael Fine and Harry Styles and writer Tudor Gates, brought Hammer a proposal to film Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novella “Carmilla.” This led to a loose trilogy of films about the Karnstein clan: The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire (both 1970) and Twins of Evil. Filled with nudity and overt lesbianism — at least in the first movie — the Karnstein series was a hit for Hammer at a time when the studio struggled to keep up with changing tastes in horror.

Twins of Evil is nebulously a prequel to the first two Karnstein films, showing how Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) became one of the undead when he raised the vampire of sixteenth-century Countess Mircalla (Katya Wyeth) from her tomb. The heart of the story, however, is the Brotherhood: a band of puritan crusaders under the leadership of the fanatic Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing). The Brotherhood executes suspected witches and devil worshippers across Karnstein’s domains, although they cannot touch the count himself.

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In 500 Words or Less: An Advance Review of the The Nine by Tracy Townsend

In 500 Words or Less: An Advance Review of the The Nine by Tracy Townsend

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The Nine Tracy Townsend-smallThe Nine (Thieves of Fate #1)
By Tracy Townsend
Pyr (400 pages, $17.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, November 2017)

As an emerging author, I know that even once I land that coveted debut book deal, that’ll be the point when the real work begins. Completing a novel is one thing; afterward there’s the terrifying and unpredictable world of promoting the book and hoping that it does well enough that you can write a few more.

If my first novel is even half as good as Tracy Townsend’s The Nine, I will be well on my way.

Imagine a world where science and theology have been woven together, so that people believe not just in God, but in God the Experimenter, a rational entity controlling a world of Reason. Sort of like what the Enlightenment philosophes wanted – not to disprove God through science, but to show just how brilliant His world is by discovering more of its intricacies. Then imagine that God isn’t just observing His creation, but specifically testing nine individuals and recording everything they do, as a measure about whether His experimental world is a success. I’m not a religious person, but I’d be lying if I said that thought didn’t terrify me.

That’s the crux of The Nine, which explores a sort of steampunk world with just a hint of the magical, where people have electricity and gunpowder but tree- and ogre-like creatures coexist with humans (sort of) and people worry that magic might actually be real (until Reason proves otherwise!)

It’s an intricate and beautiful world that comes together slowly, but what really drew me in was the characters. For example, you have Anselm, the borderline cat burglar turned businessman and crime lord, who calls his lover Rare “kitten” in a way that’s almost a cliché – until he nicknames the young street urchin Rowena “cricket.” At first I thought he was following the same pattern of, well, lechery … but over time I realized Anselm was more honorable than I thought.

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Hit That Word Count! Reading The Fiction Factory by William Wallace Cook

Hit That Word Count! Reading The Fiction Factory by William Wallace Cook

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Street_&_Smith_book_department_in_1906

Street & Smith was one of the many publishers Cook worked for.
This is their book department in 1906, at the height of Cook’s career.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been studying the careers of hyperprolific authors. No study of the field would be complete without looking at the life of William Wallace Cook. Around the turn of the last century his work was everywhere — as serialized novels in newspapers, as dime novels, and later in hardback books. We wrote everything from boy’s fiction to romance to mystery to science fiction.

His two most enduring books, however, and really the only two that are still read today, are both nonfiction. The first is Plotto, a plot outline device that allows you to link up various plot elements to create a virtually infinite variety of stories. It’s on my shelf but I have yet to try it. The other is The Fiction Factory, in which he describes his early years breaking into the writing business in the 1890s and his climb to steady success in the early years of the 20th century. Despite having been written more than a hundred years ago it remains useful and inspiring reading for any aspiring or professional author.

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A Tale Most Gruesome and Bonkers: Dark Ventures by T.C. Rypel

A Tale Most Gruesome and Bonkers: Dark Ventures by T.C. Rypel

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oie_1743327PKGNf2XuAside from his own terrific swords & sorcery tales, the thing I’m most grateful to Joe Bonadonna for is hipping me to the Gonji stories of T.C. Rypel. For those unfamiliar with him, Gonji is a half Viking, half Japanese warrior, cast out of Japan and in search of his destiny across a monster- and sorcery-ravaged Europe. His epic struggle against malign magical powers are told in a series of five novels: Red Blade from the East (2012), The Soul Within the Steel (2013), Deathwind of Vedun (2013), Fortress of Lost Worlds (2014), and A Hungering of Wolves (2014). The novels (reviewed by me at the links) are dense works of remarkable storytelling, filled with deeply memorable characters and complex worldbuilding. Now, appearing for the first time, is a collection of shorter works called Dark Ventures (2017).

Before I start telling you about the book, let me be up front: I consider Ted Rypel a friend, and I was privileged to read a pre-publication version of the new book’s central novella, “Dark Venture.” Ted loved my description of the story so much he used it as a blurb on the back cover:

People will not know what hit them when they read “Dark Venture.” It’s one of the most exciting (and gruesomely bonkers) swords & sorcery stories I’ve had the pleasure of reading.

I meant those words when I first wrote them a couple of years ago, and I stand by them today.

Dark Ventures opens with the short story “Reflections in Ice.” It’s an expanded and revised version of the first chapter of the novel Fortress of Lost Worlds. In it, Gonji and his companions, having survived the events of the first three books, are making their way across the Pyrenees Mountains in response to a summons for their aid. Slowly they are being killed, stalked by unseen and supernatural hunters:

The ghostly army comes again the next night, and the next, pursuing when we flee, retreating when we advance. Two more men are savagely slain by unerring bowshot, despite all caution and hastily fashioned defensive shielding. To wheel and engage them is to encounter mocking laughter from that effulgent bank of nothingness they inhabit. To run or take a stand is to be subjected to more casual slaughter, as if we are mere game; more sudden chilling eruptions of screaming and gouting blood, under the assassins’ uncanny aim.

As his party is whittled down to fewer and fewer members, Gonji is forced higher and higher into the mountains in search of refuge, but finding only more horrors. “Reflections” is a dark tale that is suffused with a sense of impending death, and becomes increasingly despair-filled and claustrophobic with each step forward.

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October Is Hammer Country: The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

October Is Hammer Country: The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

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curse-of-werewolf-movie-posterOn the second week of October, Hammer Films gave to me … one Oliver Reed werewolf, and I guess that’s all I need.

By 1961, the Gothic horror machine at Hammer Film Productions had unleashed Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy. Now partnered with Universal International and free to use the studio’s classic monsters, it was inevitable that Hammer tackled The Wolf Man next. Universal, however, purchased the rights to Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris and asked Hammer to adapt that. Instead of a Hammerized version of the tragedy of Lawrence Talbot, we got a much different type of lycanthrope movie, The Curse of the Werewolf. Which is fine, because The Curse of the Werewolf is pretty darn great. Director Terence Fisher and the production team working out of Bray Studios were in peak form, and Oliver Reed, in his first starring role, ripped ferociously into a part so suited to his talents that it feels like the start of a comedy bit.

There was no feasible way for Hammer to make a straight adaptation of The Werewolf of Paris on a $100,000 budget. Producer Anthony Hinds was stunned when he first read the novel to discover epic scenes of warfare and street fighting in the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. With no money to hire a screenwriter, Hinds took on the job himself, using the writing pseudonym “John Elder” for the first time, and looked for a way to squeeze a werewolf script into the budget. One cost-saving maneuver was relocating the story from nineteenth-century France to eighteenth-century Spain so the movie could be shot back-to-back on the sets for The Rape of Sabena, a Spanish Inquisition movie co-financed with Columbia. Hammer chairman James Carreras canceled The Rape of Sabena because of concerns raised by the British Board of Film Censorship, but the sets were already built, so The Curse of the Werewolf continued ahead with the Spanish setting. It would also run into grief with the BBFC; considering some of the sexually violent content, it’s amazing The Curse of the Werewolf made it through production while the Inquisition movie never got off the blocks.

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Old School Steampunk: Reading The Steam Man of the Plains (1883)

Old School Steampunk: Reading The Steam Man of the Plains (1883)

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In the days before television, movies, or even pulp magazines, readers who wanted exciting fantastic fare read dime novels. This style of popular literature lasted from about 1860 to 1930, before the pulps finally killed them off. In those 70 years, countless series and titles were published — mysteries, Westerns, historical dramas, romances, and even steampunk.

Yes, steampunk goes right back to the age of steam. I recently read one of the most popular titles, the 1883 edition of The Steam Man of the Plains, published by the Five Cent Wide-Awake Library, a series directed specifically at adolescent boys. You can read it online at Northern Illinois University’s excellent online collection of dime novels.

Warning: spoilers follow!

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Modular: A First Look at Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game

Modular: A First Look at Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game

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256 New COREBOOK Mockup
Clearly a labor of love

Yes, you read that right!

Elite Dangerous, the current incarnation of the granddaddy of all immersive video games, now has its own tabletop roleplaying game, and I’m sitting here with a review copy.

The problem with the video game is that, even with the new ability to land on airless worlds and trundle around in AFVs, it’s essentially space exploration on the radio. You don’t get to land on the worlds with interesting cultures and brawl with gangsters or tread the mean streets, or avoid being the main course at a barbaric religious ceremony. A tabletop roleplaying game has the potential to supply those missing experiences. But does the franchise really need its own game? (As you’ll see, “Yes, actually.”)

EDRPG 256 Book Spread 1
Well written, beautifully illustrated

Frankly, I half-expected Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game (EDRPG) to be a cynically put together I can’t believe it’s not Traveller-lite (please don’t send round lawyers with pulse lasers) with a detailed trade mini-game. Instead I found myself reading what’s clearly a labor of love that emulates a different corner of the Star Punk genre, and does so with an emphasis  — in the core rules — on what you do when you’re not trading. It’s also loaded with material pitched for beginner GM’s, but — again in the core rules — assumes some familiarity with the computer game; not disastrous, but  confusing if you haven’t played Elite seriously in four decades (I’m told there will be free material on the website to help with this).

Given Elite Dangerous has 2-3 million players, and a cult of enthusiasts who enjoy the “shared” part of “shared escapism,” Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game promises to be an instant modern classic. It’s a good thing, then, that the game mechanics are elegant, but more refined than innovative, which is what you want in something obviously intended as a workhorse to support happy years of sandbox gaming.

Let me unpack some of that.

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