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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Tarzan at the Earth’s Core

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Tarzan at the Earth’s Core

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tarzan-at-the-earths-core-first-edition-j-allen-st-johnYou’ll believe a Stegosaurus can fly!

In the time I’ve written about Edgar Rice Burroughs for Black Gate, only once have I examined one of his Tarzan books. That was eight years ago. This lack of Tarzan representation isn’t because I dislike the character. A number of the early Tarzan adventures rate among my favorite Burroughs novels, and I’ll defend Tarzan of the Apes as one of the twentieth century’s Great Books. But since there’s more information available about Tarzan than any other Burroughs series, my literary adventuring was more interesting when it stayed in hinterlands of ERBiana.

However, it’s a thrill to have the ape-man swing in through the side door during one of my series retrospectives. Let’s welcome Tarzan onto the stage of Pellucidar. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Sagoths of all ages … it’s crossover time!

Our Saga: Beneath our feet lies a realm beyond the most vivid daydreams of the fantastic … Pellucidar. A subterranean world formed along the concave curve inside the earth’s crust, surrounding an eternally stationary sun that eliminates the concept of time. A land of savage humanoids, fierce beasts, and reptilian overlords, Pellucidar is the weird stage for adventurers from the topside layer — including a certain Lord Greystoke. The series consists of six novels, one which crosses over with the Tarzan series, plus a volume of linked novellas, published between 1914 and 1963.

Today’s Installment: Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929–30)

Previous Installments: At the Earth’s Core (1914), Pellucidar (1915), Tanar of Pellucidar (1929)

The Backstory

Although most of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels occur in the same universe, linked through the author’s fictional surrogate version of himself, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core is the only point where a character from one series leaps to another as the protagonist. It’s the fourth Pellucidar novel and the thirteenth Tarzan novel — full crossover achieved for the first and last time in the ERB canon.

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The Gestation of Cape and Cowl: Thoughts On Jess Nevins’ The Evolution Of The Costumed Avenger

The Gestation of Cape and Cowl: Thoughts On Jess Nevins’ The Evolution Of The Costumed Avenger

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The Evolution of the Costumed AvengerThough he’s written short stories and three self-published novels, Jess Nevins is likely best known as an excavator of fantastic fictions past: an archaeologist digging through the strata of the prose of bygone years, unearthing now pieces of story and now blackened ashes of some once-thriving genre long since consumed and built over by its lineal successor. Across annotated guides (three to Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, one to Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham’s Fables) and self-published encyclopedias (of Pulps and of Golden Age Superheroes with Pulp Heroes soon to come, as well as 2005’s Monkeybrain-published Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana) Nevins has reassembled old pieces of fantastika, indicating direct influences on modern writing and establishing directories of almost-forgotten story. He’s one of the people broadening the history of genre, in his books, and in articles such as his pieces for io9 on the Victorian Hugo Awards that never were.

Now he has a new book about the development of the superhero and what came before. The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger is subtitled The 4000–Year History of the Superhero, and delivers what it promises. Much that has fallen into obscurity is brought to light in this book. Precedents are unearthed. Archetypal forms are catalogued. But more than that, and perhaps more valuable, known things are recontextualised. Four thousand years of the Western heroic tradition, if not of Western literary tradition, are here imagined in a new way: as prologue to the coming of the superhero. The superhero, lately so central to popular fiction on page and screen, here finds a new apotheosis as the lens through which all preceding heroes are to be perceived. As the end-point of evolution.

And that’s fair enough. That’s what a history often does, foregrounding its subject, putting it at the centre of things. Nevins does his job well, writing in a style that’s academic in its rigour and its careful references to other scholars, while avoiding the jargon and convoluted syntax that mars much academic writing. His prose is clear, yet dense with information, moving quickly while constantly introducing new facts and new ideas. Given the vastness of his subject the book’s quite brief and indeed perhaps too brief: barely 300 pages, though those (like me) who relish discursive and tangential footnotes will appreciate the further 50 pages of endnotes. Nevins’ research is excellent throughout, particularly in the chapters covering the last two or three centuries. As is perhaps inevitable I have some questions and some doubts; most of them revolve around the way that Nevins defines the book in its opening chapter, and around the concluding chapters where Nevins presents a brief history of post–Golden Age superheroes. But The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger is clearly a success, not just an entertaining book but one vital for its field; a work that provides much food for thought to any reader with an even marginal interest in its subject.

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The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett

The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett

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Secret of VentriloquismA lot of the reviews of this collection compare Jon Padgett to Thomas Ligotti, which is fair, since Jon Padgett has been the long-time moderator of the Thomas Ligotti fansite, ligotti.net, and one of the stories takes its title directly from a Ligotti story. But the big question that potential new readers will likely have when reading those reviews is “Who the hell is Thomas Ligotti?”

So. Thomas Ligotti himself has been called a successor to H.P. Lovecraft (yeah, the Cthulhu guy), but that’s not really accurate. Where Lovecraft dealt with the horrors of the unknowable, Ligotti deals more with the horrors of pointlessness. Where Lovecraft’s stories would end with the protagonists killed or driven mad by eldritch horrors, Ligotti’s stories were more likely to end with those protagonists actually joining forces with the darkness. Pick up Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe, Noctuary, and Teatro Grotesco for some truly next generation horror.

Basically, Thomas Ligotti’s horror fiction differs from anything else you’ve read because he places his philosophy front and center in these stories. And while that philosophy (which is sort of nihilistic, but not exactly) won’t resonate with a lot of readers, he has developed a dedicated fan base over the last thirty-five years. One of those fans is Jon Padgett.* And Ligotti’s horror philosophy lives on in the debut collection of stories from this author.

It begins with “The Mindfulness of Horror Practice,” which is more of a thought experiment than a story. Basically, the author walks you through an exercise to place you in the right frame of mind to read the remainder of his collection. It’s quite telling that the collection DOES NOT end with a second primer detailing how to get yourself OUT of this state of mind.

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Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 41, Nos. 3 & 4 (March/April 2017)

Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 41, Nos. 3 & 4 (March/April 2017)

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Asimovs 2017 3-4Asimov’s continues its 40th anniversary celebration with its March/April issue. Thirteen stories, half a dozen poems, and plenty of little asides about what the magazine means to the various contributors.

It begins with “Soulmates.com” by Will McIntosh, a story about love in the digital age which reads like it was meant to be charming, but came off rather creepy. Both characters behave like vengeful stalkers at different points in the story and it all got tied up far too neatly, with the one of the characters essentially “hacking” all of the problems away.

Next up is “Number Thirty-Nine Skink” by Suzanne Palmer. The story concerns a robot designed to colonize an alien world by producing perfect duplicates of various Earth lifeforms and dispersing them across the planet’s surface. The robot continues with this project, despite most of the colonization crew leaving and the only human who stayed behind dying. On top of the robot coping with the concept of loneliness, there are also some native lifeforms that object to a robot that mass-produces invasive species. This one’s a bit tricky to follow at first as the reader figures out what’s going on. The cover art by Tomislav Tikulin depicts a scene from this story.

Next up is “Three Can Keep a Secret …” by Bill John and Gregory Frost. Strip out the mimic suits and space travel and what you’ve got is a basic caper story in which a professional assassin is hired by two separate clients to kill one another. Like the best capers, the solution is right there in plain sight, but not obvious until the story’s end.

“The Ones Who Know Where They Are Going” by Sarah Pinsker is less of a science fiction piece and more of a thought experiment on the virtues of sacrifice.

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Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement

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Astounding Science Fiction April 1953-smallOnce upon a time, there was a strand of science fiction called hard science fiction, dedicated to the exploration of scientific puzzles and more-or-less accurate studies of the physical sciences. The roots of this strand would seem to lie in the technology-focused stories of Jules Verne. Sometimes there’s an adventure involved (Larry Niven’s Ringworld), sometimes not so much (Robert Forward’s Dragon’s Egg). Whatever the type of story, in hard sf it was the science that occupied center stage. One of the foremost practioners of this style of science fiction was Hal Clement (1922-2002).

Hard science fiction still exists, obviously. Cixin Liu, Vernor Vinge, and Greg Bear are all writing science-heavy stories. Now, though, there’s less of the puzzle-solving variety, and a greater emphasis on exploring the effects of science on people and society. Larry Niven won a Hugo for the story “Neutron Star,” which hinges on its hero understanding how tides work. I’d be curious if anyone’s written a story like that in the last ten or twenty years. In his overview of The Best of Hal Clement, John O’Neill examined the possible causes for the decline in popularity of hard sf.

Clement published his first story, “Proof,” in 1942, while still an astronomy student at Harvard. After the Second World War (during which he flew 35 bombing missions as a B-24 pilot and co-pilot) he taught astronomy and chemistry at Milton Academy for many years. His first novel, Needle (1950), the story of a symbiotic space detective, was written in response to William Campbell’s claim that a true sci-fi mystery couldn’t be written. His third novel, and today’s subject, Mission of Gravity (1954), is an exemplar of hard science fiction at its diamond-hardest.

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A Wonderful Fantasy Novel for Young Adults: Protected By the Falcon by Erika M Szabo

A Wonderful Fantasy Novel for Young Adults: Protected By the Falcon by Erika M Szabo

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Protected by the Falcon-small

Erika M Szabo is both a prolific author and artist, and owns Golden Box Books Publishing Services. Her numerous children’s books, such as MeToo, The Annoying Little Sister, A Basketful of Kittens, and Look, I Can Talk with My Fingers, are delightful and very successful, and many of them have been translated into Spanish.  A nurse by profession, she has written Healing Herbs for Nervous Disorders and Keep Your Body Healthy.

She also writes Young Adult Fantasy, such as Chosen by the Sword — Book Two in her series The Ancestors’ Secrets — and The Curse. A friend of mine recommended I connect with Erika and hire her to do the book cover for my Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent, as well as the interior design and layout, formatting and all the technical details that go along with publishing a book. Well, I linked up with her on Facebook and we got to talking, and right away I knew we were on the same page, no pun intended. So I sent her my manuscript, and she started working almost immediately. She even revised and polished up the original map I drew for Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser.

While Erika went to work almost immediately, I purchased her Protected by the Falcon and started reading. I had never read a Young Adult Fantasy before (unless you want to count The Hobbit and the Harry Potter series.) Needless to say, as evidenced by this review, her novel was not what I was expecting. Indeed, it was a surprising pleasure to read because it was written and told so differently and in so many ways from the fantasy I usually read. Plus, Erika gave me something in her novel that will always keep me reading: believable characters I can relate to, care about, and even hate. I’ve even read a few of her children’s books, too. So let me tell you a little bit about Protected by the Falcon, and why I liked it. (By the way, Erika works hard and she works fast, too!)

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The Complete Carpenter: The Fog (1980)

The Complete Carpenter: The Fog (1980)

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the-fog-blu-ray-coverIn my John Carpenter career retrospective, I’ve now crossed the Rubicon: moving past the director’s most famous and successful film and entering the 1980s, a decade his movies helped define and often looked far beyond … frequently to their initial box office detriment.

The decade opens with Mr. Carpenter in a slight quandary: when you just made the most profitable independent movie of all time (a record unbeaten until The Blair Witch Project more than twenty years later), there’s going to be a bit of pressure for the follow-up. Carpenter stuck with the horror genre for his next film, although a much different type than the realistic slasher of Halloween. Taking inspiration from classic ghost stories, the vengeful corpses of EC Comics, and a trip to Stonehenge, Carpenter and producer Debra Hill came up one of the best low-budget horror elevator pitches: magical fog brings pirate leper ghosts to unleash their wrath on a small seaside town. Yep, pirate leper ghosts.

The Story

Antonio Bay, a sleepy coastal Northern California town where nothing happens, is preparing to celebrate its hundredth anniversary of being a sleepy coastal town where nothing happens. Then everything starts to happen at once when the ghosts aboard the Elizabeth Dane, a leper colony ship that sank near Spivey Point a century ago (timing!), slosh ashore in a shroud of thick, luminescent fog. It turns out Antonio Bay was founded on a double-cross that tricked the leper colony out of their gold and lured their ship with false beacons into wrecking on the shoals. The murderous specters and their pointy fishing tools make a mess out of the lives of folks in Antonio Bay, including lighthouse keeper and radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), the anniversary event organizer Mrs. Williams (Janet Leigh), a hitchhiking artist (Jamie Lee Curtis), and a priest who’s discovered the dreadful truth about the town’s history (Hal Holbrook).

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Space Viking by H. Beam Piper

Space Viking by H. Beam Piper

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Analog November 1962 Space Viking-smallOver the past three-and-a-half years, I’ve written thirty-eight short story roundups (covering about 200 short stories) and one-hundred book reviews for Black Gate. The vast majority of what I’ve read has been swords & sorcery. As much as I love the stuff, I’m getting a little tired and I need to take a break. Not from reviewing, mind you, but S&S. A major point of reviewing was to get myself to read more, and I want to keep that up, but I need some variety.

With the encouragement of our esteemed editor, John O’Neill, I’m going to start by focusing on the science fiction books I devoured in my younger days, as well as some classics I missed the first time around (I just started Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity). Books by C.J. Cherryh, Gordon Dickson, and Poul Anderson are among the first I’m thinking about reviewing. I hope we all have fun with this, and I’m looking forward to reading everybody’s own recollections about these works. So come along, and let’s get started with one of the foremost novels of the well-loved SF writer, H. Beam Piper: Space Viking (1963).

H. Beam Piper (1904-64) didn’t publish his first story until 1947. Until his death at his own hand, he published nearly thirty more stories and ten novels. Most were science fiction, but he also wrote several mysteries, and was a member of the Mystery Writers of America.

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The Valley of Gwangi Finally Reaches Blu-ray Because I Mistakenly Said It Never Would

The Valley of Gwangi Finally Reaches Blu-ray Because I Mistakenly Said It Never Would

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valley-of-gwangi-frank-mccarthy-posterDuring my years of writing for Black Gate, I’ve repeatedly pointed out certain films aren’t available on Blu-ray or DVD … only to discover after I post the article that said films are already scheduled for a release. This happened again three weeks ago when I mentioned that the only Ray Harryhausen film still unreleased on the Hi-Def format was The Valley of Gwangi. I dug myself in deeper by predicting we wouldn’t see one for years because of how slowly Warner Bros. moves with its catalogue titles.

Yet here I am in possession of a Blu-ray from Warner Archive of The Valley of Gwangi and writing about it. Maybe I should start making gloomy declarations about the Blu-ray chances of other favorite movies, just to invoke the intervention of the muse who controls home video releases. (Melpomene, I believe.)

Everyone who loves movies probably has a specific film that seems as if it were made just for them. A Ray Harryhausen stop-motion giant monster in a Western? That’s what I call Ryan Harvey Niche Marketing. The only way The Valley of Gwangi could be more targeted to me is if 1) the monster was Godzilla, 2) Peter Cushing was one of the stars, and 3) Sergio Leone directed it. However, if such an event actually occurred, the shockwaves would’ve knocked Earth from its axial tilt and annihilated civilization. Perhaps it’s for the best we stopped at “Ray Harryhausen giant monster Western.”

Although The Valley of Gwangi has some of the flaws found in other Ray Harryhausen-Charles H. Schneer films (workmanlike direction, some stilted performances), it’s still one of the greatest dinosaur movies ever made, in the same league as One Million Years B.C. and Jurassic Park. Is Jurassic Park overall a superior movie? Yes, but in terms of creative dinosaur action, The Valley of Gwangi competes. The only dinosaur movie that ranks higher than these is the original King Kong.

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Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 132, No. 3 & 4 (March/April 2017)

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 132, No. 3 & 4 (March/April 2017)

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f&sf 132 3-4Full disclosure before we start this review: one of the contributing authors is a friend of mine, so take that part of the review with a grain of salt.

The issue starts with “Driverless” by Robert Grossbach, one of those “what if machines came to life” stories told in a near-future where driverless cars dominate the roadways. A few decades back, this would have been nothing but fanciful storytelling, but with recent advances in both artificial intelligence and driverless technology, it might actually be a problem that we have to deal with in the years to come.

“The Toymaker’s Daughter” by Arundhati Hazra takes a common story idea of toys magically coming to life and follows it through the real world consequences.

“Ten Half-Pennies” by Matthew Hughes is the first story in what promises to be an ongoing series about a wizard’s apprentice (the next story is actually advertised as set to appear in the May/June issue). Here we see a bullied child grow into a collection agent and then wizard’s apprentice, all the while maintaining his own moral code. Both the characters and the magic system are well-defined in this piece about honor and debt.

“The Man Who Put the Bomp” by Richard Chwedyk is the next novella in his award-winning Saur series. The basic premise is that miniature talking dinosaurs are designed by a genetic research firm and sold as pets. When problems arise with the saurs, production is discontinued and surviving saurs are relocated to shelters. The series concerns one such shelter and the wonderful assortment of odd characters (both saur and human) who live there. I’ve been listening to Richard Chwedyk read these stories for years and it’s impossible for me not to hear his voice in my head when I’m reading them. Not only do we learn about the man who put the “bomp” in these saurs, but we find out why they should never be placed behind the wheel of an automobile (the cover art by Bryn Barnard should give a hint as to how badly it can go). I’m seriously waiting for a collection of all these stories to appear somewhere and will keep you posted when it happens.

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