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Magic Realm Lives Again

Magic Realm Lives Again

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DIGITAL CAMERAMagic Realm, designed by Richard Hamblen and released by Avalon Hill in 1979, is adventure fantasy role-playing wrapped up in a board game. No surprise, given the time. It has a complexity rating of 9 on Avalon Hill’s 10-point scale, is loaded with chits, and has a rule book approaching 100 pages of two-column small print.

In modern parlance, Magic Realm has crunch. And all that crunchy goodness is now available for free on your computer.

Before we examine the computer version, let’s have a look at the basics of play. There are sixteen characters for players to choose from in Magic Realm. Most of the usual tropes are covered: White Knight, Black Knight, Amazon, Wizard, Elf, Dwarf, etc.

Players choose their own victory conditions, setting goals of Gold, Fame, Notoriety, Usable Spells, and Great Treasures. They travel roads, caves, hidden paths and secret passages that stretch across the twenty tiles making up the board, and you’re not likely to see the same board configuration twice.

The exploration element is handled well. Goblins and dragons both show up on a tiles with caves, but until you get to a tile and hear a howl or roar, see the ruins or smell the smoke, you don’t know if goblins, dragons, neither, or both live there.

And knowing is critical. The White Knight can probably take a dragon, but a group of goblins will overwhelm him. The Amazon, on the other hand, can’t scratch a dragon with her starting equipment, but she can usually work her way through a half-dozen of the weakest goblins. (The Elf doesn’t care either way, as he can run away from both.)

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Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Part 2: The Fritz Leiber Novelization

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Part 2: The Fritz Leiber Novelization

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Tarzan Valley of Gold Novel CoverTarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)

By Fritz Leiber, from a Screenplay by Clair Huffaker

I have never watched a movie and then immediately felt an urge to “Read the Jove Paperback” (or whatever publisher released the tie-in). Movie novelizations are marketing after-thoughts and I think most readers pick them up as after-thoughts as well. A wanderer in a bookstore might spot a paperback copy of Blockbuster Film You Kinda Enjoyed and think to herself, “Hey, this might be a fun airplane read.”

But there aren’t as many bookstores to wander in these blighted times and with the gap narrowing between the time of a film’s release and its DVD/Blu-ray popping up in the impulse item rack of the supermarket, the niche genre of the novelization has entered a slow death cycle. Fewer big tent pole movies are getting the prose treatment.

I’ve read more than my sane share of novelizations, the majority from Alan Dean Foster because Alan Dean Foster rocks (he even responded to my review of his Clash of the Titans novelization). But with Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, I found myself for the first time in the peculiar reverse position of wanting to see a movie because of the novelization.

The reason: Fritz Leiber.

The idea of one of the Grand Masters of speculative fiction, an icon of sword-and-sorcery, penning any genre film novelization is delicious. And penning a Tarzan novelization … that’s the colored sprinkles on top of the chocolate doughnut. Novelization or not, it’s a Fritz Leiber Tarzan book.

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“A Great Place to let Your Imagination Run Wild:” Joe Bonadonna Reviews Rogues in Hell

“A Great Place to let Your Imagination Run Wild:” Joe Bonadonna Reviews Rogues in Hell

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Rogues in HellI’ve always been a fan of the shared-world universe of Thieves World. It’s sword and sorcery at its best: character-oriented, with great plots and stories. Janet Morris has been editing and writing stories for her Heroes in Hell shared-world universe for quite some time now, starting with Heroes in Hell in 1986.

The most recent volume, the twelfth, was Lawyers in Hell (2011, co-edited with Chris Morris). And now, continuing with the series, she brings us Rogues in Hell, which IMHO is the best of the lot.

I love the whole concept behind the series, the cultures, inhabitants and levels of Hell. It’s quite a cool concept, and for writers this is a great place to let your imagination run wild. And I like the use of historical, legendary, and mythic characters.

My favorite of the 22 stories that comprise this anthology is “Colony,” by Bruce Durham. It’s a solid read: well-told, with great momentum to keep things moving and fun, crackling dialog, and prose that engages all the senses. Here, General James Wolfe has recently been resurrected — and once again finds himself in Hell, aboard a Satanic ship searching for an island not unlike Skull island.

The tale is told with plenty of action and humor, and never once breaks that magic spell that keeps you inside the story.

“Which Way I Fly,” by Janet Morris, is a very complex tale, and quite hard to describe. It’s a two-fold story, with Lysicles, an Athenian general, seeking revenge against Alexander of Macedon. With Lealaps the dog, guardian hound of Zeus, Lysicles joins with Xenophon the mercenary, and their demon allies in an epic battle in Hell.

The other part of this story involves Irkalla, Queen of Arali, and her son, Ninazu, who is of the winged Eshi, and is Prince of Ki-Gal. The plot revolves around the Royal House of Demons, and Erra and the Seven Sibitti, the sons of Heaven and Earth, the weapons of the gods who terrorize the dead.

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The Opposite of the Uncanny: Wonder and The Night Circus

The Opposite of the Uncanny: Wonder and The Night Circus

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The Night Circus‘Magic’ is an elastic metaphor. Among its many possible uses is that of a descriptor for something that happens in performance, especially live performance: the magic of an actor possessed by a character, the magic of a given moment invested with wonder and remaining in the memory, though inevitably passing away. The magic of stage magicians isn’t in the sleight-of-hand; it’s in the effect on the audience. The related magic of the carnival — the amusement park, the theme park — is a kind of second-person secondary-world magic. You are there. You are in a conjured fantasyland. A circus, in this reading, isn’t about the stink of animals or the scutwork of putting up tents and preparing performance spaces; it’s about the feeling the show tries to inspire. It is, potentially, for some, a venue for magic — transient, susceptible to thinning, but capable of generating wonder.

Which brings me to Erin Morgenstern’s 2011 novel, The Night Circus. Set in the years leading up to and just after the start of the twentieth century, it tells the story of a kind of duel between two magicians, fought by proxy through talented pupils. Both pupils are recruited at a young age, and brought up to compete in the contest knowing nothing about the nature of the duel, not the rules, not how to win, not even who their opponent is. But this much swiftly becomes clear to them: the scene for the contention will be a fantastical circus, Le Cirque des Rêves, travelling through the great cities of the world.

We follow the story through the eyes of both contestants: Celia, the circus’s magician, and Marco, who assists the (non-wizardly) man who puts the circus together — Marco doesn’t travel with Le Cirque des Rêves, but plans tents filled with magical effects. The duel, Marco and Celia soon realise, is based around rival performances: each striving to outdo the other in creating wonder, therefore building a circus, incidentally filled with other performers and obsessed fans, dedicated to art. As the story moves easily back and forth through time, we also get several other perspectives on events, brief chapters constructing an artful, patterned plot that resolves nicely at the climax. The highly-worked plot mirrors the highly-worked nature of the book. The writing aspires to elegance, sometimes perhaps too obviously, relying too much on single-sentence paragraphs, but always displaying a striking visual imagination.

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Vintage Treasures: The Color Out Of Time by Michael Shea

Vintage Treasures: The Color Out Of Time by Michael Shea

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The Color out of TimeI had a hard time deciding whether a book from 1984 qualified as vintage or not.

Then I realized that back in 1984, Ronald Reagan was still in his first term as president. A little checking also showed that the Nr. 1 song in September 1984 was “Missing You” by John Waite and the top film was Ghostbusters.

The final proof that 1984 can be considered vintage is that I was 23 years old back then. So, yeah, I figure that a book from 1984 qualifies as vintage.

So back in 1984, I stumbled across The Color Out of Time at one of our two bookstores in Newark, Ohio. (As added trivia, Newark is the real world counterpart of Gary Braunbeck’s haunted town of Cedar Hill, the fictitious setting for many of his stories). Anyway, this book was especially special back then, as Cthulhu Mythos-themed fiction was scarce. It wasn’t the thriving sub-genre that it is today. So when you found some you grabbed it, paid for it, and then ran like hell to get home and start reading.

Color is one of my favorite Mythos-related books, and it won’t be leaving my collection any time soon. Its rarity on the collectors market shows that those who have it aren’t in any rush to get rid of it. To me, that says a lot about the quality and re-readability of a book.

Michael Shea is one of those rare writers who don’t have a high output, but everything they do produce is of extremely high quality. I’ve been a fan since the 1970s, when I first read A Quest for Simbilis way back in junior high school.

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Pathfinder RPG: Fey Revisited

Pathfinder RPG: Fey Revisited

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FeyRevisitedMagic permeates fantasy settings, but even in these realms, there is a type of creature that typically embodies these magical forces in a more fundamental way than anything else. I am speaking of the ubiquitous fey, creatures who are often depicted as being born of magic .

Now many of the major fey races have been collected together into the Pathfinder Campaign Setting supplement Fey Revisited (Paizo, Amazon). The fey creatures in Pathfinder are natives to the First World, which was the gods’ first draft of reality, and as such they have only a tenuous grasp on mortality … and, often, on morality, for that matter.

The timing on this supplement is extremely good for me personally, since I’m running a campaign that is set in the Pathfinder world of Golarion, in Nirmathas. The forest in Nirmathas, the Southern Fangwood, currently has a situation going on where there’s a fungal disease that infects only fey. So having a sourcebook that outlines various different types of fey is extremely useful.

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Adventure on Film: Merlin

Adventure on Film: Merlin

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shot08Bad films reek, and at a distance, too.

Bad Arthurian films have a special odor all their own. John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981)  may be a mess, but it’s a glorious mess, chaos of the highest and noblest order; in retrospect, it smells remarkably sweet.

Sadly, where Excalibur rises above both its Wagnerian grand guignol and its elaborate and intentional eccentricities, the mini-series Merlin (1998) sinks beneath a morass of imitative, careless, and flashy choices. It’s like a pretty stone chucked into dark and thankless waters: for an instant, on its way down, it glimmers. And then, blessedly, three hours later, it’s gone.

The star-studded cast is jaw-dropping. A film that boasts John Gielgud, Miranda Richardson, James Earl Jones (voice only), Isabella Rossellini, Rutger Hauer, Billie Whitelaw, and Helena Bonham Carter shouldn’t be a failure –– such an outcome shouldn’t be possible –– but as with so many popular music albums featuring a glittering luminati of “guest stars” and “collaborators,” star power proves to be yet another form of lead weight. Without the grace of good storytelling and with far too many overwrought effects, even the best actors on the planet prove to be nothing more than celluloid cannon fodder.

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Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews Circle of Enemies

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews Circle of Enemies

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Circle of EnemiesCircle of enemies cover
By Harry Connolly
Del Rey (320 pages, mass market first edition August 2011, $7.99)

And so we come full circle. Circle of Enemies is the final novel in the Twenty Palaces series as it stands, and in some ways the most crowded with monsters, sorcery, and mysteries. If it has one major flaw, it’s that it whet my appetite for a sequel that will likely never be written.

The action moves south from the Pacific northwest hamlets of Child of Fire (my review here) and Game of Cages (review) to the sun-scorched sidewalks and shadowy mansions of Los Angeles, as Ray revisits the life he lived before his stay in prison. One of his old friends from his carjacker days — a woman named Caramella — arrives in Ray’s Seattle room with a cryptic message: “You killed me, Ray.” After delivering it, she vanishes into thin air.

Magic — and all the horrors that accompany it — have found Ray’s old crew. He drives south to his old stomping grounds in Los Angeles to find his old allies and save them before the Twenty Palaces society arrives to wipe them out. The world is once again in danger from a predator with the potential to annihilate all human life, one hapless victim at a time.

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New Treasures: Titan

New Treasures: Titan

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Titan Avalon HillThere are classic fantasy games and there are classic fantasy games. Jai Kamani and David A. Trampier’s Titan, a massive game of conflict between mythological armies of ogres, unicorns, griffons, and other creatures, was perhaps the most ubiquitous fantasy game of my youth. There were copies everywhere, tucked under arms at gaming conventions and on the shelves of department stores.

Titan was first published in an ultra-rare first edition in 1980 by tiny Gorgonstar, Inc. It was later made a hit by Avalon Hill, and remained in print for nearly two decades until Avalon Hill was sold and ceased operations in 1998. After that, copies of the most popular fantasy board game of the 80s and 90s gradually became harder and harder to find.

I remember getting my boys excited about Titan by nostalgically telling tales of epic battles between behemoths, dragons, and trolls. They clamored to play it.

I’d never owned Titan, but that’s not a problem in the age of the Internet. I found a pristine copy on eBay and hung on during a spirited bidding war. 90 bucks later, it was on my kitchen table.

Still in the shrink wrap.

It was perfectly preserved. My boys stood at my side, ready to go, anxious to throw down some dice, and experience some of that legendary Titan action. To shred the shrink and punch out counter sheets that had staunchly stood fast for over twenty years. My hands gripped the game, hesitating.

I couldn’t do it.

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The Best New Sword & Sorcery of the Last Twelve Months

The Best New Sword & Sorcery of the Last Twelve Months

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stormbringerMy name’s Fletcher Vredenburgh and I blog and yammer on the Internet (and comment here on Black Gate) as the Wasp. When Dale Rippke’s super-informational swords & sorcery site Heroes of Dark Fantasy went dark, I wanted to create a site to fill that void, but I wasn’t sure what shape it would take.

Initially, Swords & Sorcery: A Blog was going to be dedicated solely to classic heroic fiction. I figured I would just re-read and write about the books I already knew and loved, like Death Angel’s Shadow or Stormbringer, and that would be enough.

Then I discovered I was living in the midst of a S&S revival. Spurred by magazines like Black Gate and fueled by authors like James Enge and Howard Andrew Jones, new stories at least as good as anything from the genre’s heyday in the seventies were being created.

That led me on a hunt for anything new in S&S. I quickly learned that for every Enge or Jones, there were a dozen writers regularly gracing the electronic pages of numerous online magazines.

For what I now wanted, which was to get a sense of what was going on down on the ground and then convey that to any readers I might have, the standout publications were Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, edited by Adrian Simmons, David Farney, and William Ledbetter and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited and published by Scott H. Andrews.

For over a year now I have continually struck genre gold in both magazines.

Over the past year of reviewing, I’ve read thirty stories from HFQ and BCS. Re-reading my reviews, I was struck both by how many of the stories I liked, and how many I recalled in detail. In fact, there was only one story I actively disliked. There was straight up no-holds-barred swords & sorcery, techno-fantasy, some chinoiserie, and an Arthurian tale thrown in for good measure.

I went out looking for heroic fantasy, and was rewarded instead with an antidote for all the monstrously long and never-ending series weighing down Barnes & Noble’s shelves.

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