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Weird of Oz Revisits Fighting Fantasy

Weird of Oz Revisits Fighting Fantasy

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0426111757Rogue Blades Entertainment continues to put out fine new projects — though, I lament, with far less frequency than in days of yore.

Also in those days of yore (about two years ago, to be precise), for a brief, shining, halcyon period of time (a few months, to be precise), RBE hosted a website that ran regular blogs under the banner “Home of Heroics.” It was my good fortune to be invited into HoH’s stable of bloggers, and I made a couple contributions before that heroism-vaunting home vanished like the fabled city of Xanadu. I only got in two or three posts, mind you, because I was on a monthly rotation rather than the weekly slot I enjoy here on Black Gate.

One of those posts that I wanted eventually to follow up on was an account of my experience revisiting Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. My report touched off similar nostalgic reminiscences from several readers.

Since, as far as I can tell, the material that ran on HoH is no longer accessible, I’d like to use this St. Patrick’s Day edition of Weird of Oz to resurrect that post here — with an eye to reviewing other single-player gamebooks down the road.

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Red Sonja 14

Red Sonja 14

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Red Sonja 14 coverSo this issue begins with Red Sonja walking through an unnamed town at night, minding her own business. Not sure how small the town is or how late, but on page one, we see only one other person on the street and he’s sleeping on it. I’ve probably mentioned before in these reviews that I find the preponderance of unnamed towns and unnamed demons to be a bit annoying, especially coming from Roy Thomas, who’s fairly knowledgeable about all things Hyborian. Seriously, just make up a name for the town or use a real city name. No one’s going to check.

Watch. Evanston. Red Sonja’s walking through Evanston, trying to forget her beloved Suumaro (the mommy-fixated boy-king who treated his wives like slaves and wanted Sonja to join his harem – what a catch). Now let’s move along.

So Red Sonja is just minding her own business, which is pretty much all the invitation anyone seems to need to bother her. She’s approached by a glowing nobleman named Gonzallo (see, no one cares that it’s a stupid name), who offers to pay her a diamond if she’ll act as his bodyguard for a few hours. When she asks why he’s glowing, he dismisses the question by saying that he’s eccentric.

The diamond looks real, so Red Sonja lets herself be hired. The first thing Gonzallo does is guide her to his gondola (oh, so they’re in Venice) and his requisite deformed gondolier, Karon. As the three of them make their way through the canals of (Venice? Evanston? Lower Aquilonia?), Sonja notices the surroundings have begun to change and soon they’re moving through an underground canal. The chamber is lit faintly by phosphorus, just enough for Sonja to see an iron gate rising up out of the water to block the way they’d come.

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If, July 1961: A Retro-Review

If, July 1961: A Retro-Review

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Worlds of If July 1961-smallI’ll get back to Cele Goldsmith’s magazines soon enough, but I happened to grab this issue of If, so it’s up next. This issue comes from very late in H. L. Gold’s official tenure as editor – Frederik Pohl became editor (officially) with the first issue of 1962. (I believe it’s generally regarded that Pohl was editor in all but name for some time prior.) During this period, the cover and spine read only If Science Fiction, though the title page still had “Worlds of” ambiguously placed, so that one could read it either If: Worlds of Science Fiction or Worlds of If Science Fiction.

The cover is by Dember, called “Operation Overlook,” not illustrating any story. (It’s a depiction of a manned satellite orbiting Earth, apparently watching for rocket launches and the like.) Interiors were by Wood, Larry Ivie, and West, and someone unidentified in one case. (Sometimes the illustrator was credited, sometimes I could read the signature, and in one case there was no signature and no credit.) There’s also a page called IFun, with two single panel comics, by Wagner.

Advertisements include the ubiquitous Rosicruans, U. S. Savings Bonds, and some in-house ads. Other features include Science Briefs, a puzzle, and a brief article about the Wendigo, by Theodore Sturgeon (on the masthead as “Feature Editor.”) There is also an attempt to start (restart?) a letter column, to be called Hue and Cry, though this single page only briefly quotes a letter from one Lawrence Crilly, requesting a lettercol.

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Weird of Oz: Scooby Meets Buffy (a Postscript)

Weird of Oz: Scooby Meets Buffy (a Postscript)

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scooby-dooLast week’s post was prompted by a term I used fleetingly in my review of the new Scooby-Doo series two weeks ago: “post-Buffy.” Rather than go off on a tangent explaining what I meant by that in the midst of discussing Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, I promised any interested readers that I would devote a whole column to this concept of “post-Buffy” in my next installment.

So last Sunday I posted “Weird of Oz Considers Postbuffyism,” primarily to reflect on how Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) influenced later television.

Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_CoverartWhat caught me off guard was the pushback I got to my assessment of Buffy and its significance in television history. Of course, one or two people questioned the merits of the series itself — that’s okay; some people just don’t dig Buffy. Others asserted there were earlier series already using narrative innovations to weave multiple plot threads over several seasons, which I did acknowledge — my premise was not that Buffy was the first, only that it generally has been one of the most influential.

But then one commenter brought up a series that gave me pause: The X-Files. Here was a series to which much of what I said regarding Buffy could also apply, and which has arguably been as influential on genre television. This prompted me to formulate a response that itself grew into a post-script or a sequel to the original post, but before I get to that I’d like to take a moment to tie the last two posts more closely together: to explain why the new Scooby-Doo series got me to thinking about Buffy in the first place.

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Vintage Treasures: Shadows of Yog-Sothoth

Vintage Treasures: Shadows of Yog-Sothoth

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Shadows of Yog SothothLast week I wrote about the death of Lynn Willis, the legendary editor at Chaosium, who gradually became the mastermind behind Call of Cthulhu, one of the finest RPGs ever made. While at Chaosium Lynn helped write and edit no less than 54 Call of Cthulhu books and supplements like Cthulhu by Gaslight, as well as a host of other board games and products, including Arkham Horror, RuneQuest, Thieves’ World, King Arthur Companion, Stormbringer Companion, Carse, Tulan of the Isles, Atlas of the Young Kingdoms, and dozens more.

In honor of Lynn, I dug around this week to find those products that first captured my attention all those years ago. They weren’t hard to find, as they still occupy a place of pride in my collection.

When Sandy Peterson’s Call of Cthulhu was first released as a boxed set in 1981, the entire industry took notice. Here was the first truly appealing contemporary (or, at least, semi-contemporary) role playing game, which drew on the horrifying cosmic milieu and fabulous bestiary of none other than H.P. Lovecraft. It was an instant hit. But by itself, Call of Cthulhu was just a fascinating oddity. It wasn’t until Chaosium released Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, A Global Campaign to Save Mankind a year later that we realized what the game was truly capable of.

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is an epic, self-contained campaign which first introduced role players to the kind of play demanded by CoC. Players who treated Cthulhu and his minions as simply big D&D monsters, chubby creatures ready to be harvested for their experience point value, were in for a rude awakening.

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Oz Fluxx – A Great and Powerful Card Game

Oz Fluxx – A Great and Powerful Card Game

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ozfluxxA while back, the classic card game Fluxx got a makeover in an edition that merges the game with a classic film. This certainly isn’t its first makeover for Fluxx, nor even the first time it’s merged with a classic film (there is a Monty Python Fluxx, for example), but given that Oz: The Great and Powerful is hitting theaters today, the version of Fluxx I’m going to talk about is Oz Fluxx (Amazon).

If you’ve never played Fluxx, here are the basics:

  • The game continually changes, as players use Rule and Goal cards to modify every aspect of the game.
  • Rule cards can modify the number of cards drawn, number of cards played in a turn, overall hand size, and pretty much any other asp
  • Goal cards redefine the objectives needed to win.
  • Keepers are cards you keep in front of you. Most Goals involve getting a certain combination of Keepers in play to win. Examples from this game include “The Artificial Heart” and “The Cowardly Lion.”
  • Creepers (which are a type of card not in the original edition of Fluxx) are sort of negative Keepers, which get stuck in front of you and prevent you from winning … unless the Goal in play requires the Creeper as a condition of victory. Examples include “The Wicked Witch of the East” and “Angry Trees.”
  • Action cards allow other actions, such as drawing extra cards, getting cards out of the discard pile, stealing or trading Keepers and Creepers, and so on.
  • Surprise cards can be played either during your turn or on your opponents’ turn, to throw an even bigger wrench in your opponents’ expectations.

Probably the best way to get a feel for the game play is to watch this episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop game on the YouTube channel Geek and Sundry, in which Wheaton and his friends play Star Fluxx. This edition of the game is based upon science fiction classics, most notably (and unofficially) Star Trek, although I believe there are some non-copyright-infringing shout-outs to Doctor Who and other classics as well.

But, back to Oz Fluxx …

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Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1950: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1950: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction December 1950It is clear from this issue’s editorial that Galaxy was beginning to invade newsstands and draw quite a following. And they were doing it by seeking reader participation in structuring the magazine the way readers wanted it.

That, and by attracting great writers. In fact, editor H. L. Gold announced that they had raised their pay rates “to the highest in science fiction… We want the best and are prepared to pay for it.” Let’s see how the fiction in this issue shapes up.

“Second Night of Summer” by James H. Schmitz – On the planet Noorhut, Grimp welcomes his grandmother as she makes her annual summer return to the village. Like the rest of the villagers, he’s unaware of a scheduled attack on the planet – one that would wipe out all life as it has on other worlds. Grandma Wannattel is actually an agent sent to thwart the attack, but she can only do so with Grimp’s help; he may be the only one able to sense the precise moment of the attack.

This story hasn’t deteriorated at all over time. It succeeds because it avoids cultural references and stock characters of that time. This was my favorite tale of the issue.

“Judas Ram” by Sam Merwin, Jr. – Roger Tennant lives in a furnished home with a harem of women. Imprisoned by fourth-dimensional beings, Roger and the women are the only humans captured from Earth.

They’re forced to breed through implanted desires, but their minds remain clear; they hate the beings and, to some degree, one another. But there is no choice for them, and the beings train Roger like a dog, teaching him their powers so that he might return to Earth to aid them in capturing others.

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Tarzan-on-Demand: Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure on DVD from Warner Archive

Tarzan-on-Demand: Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure on DVD from Warner Archive

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tarzans-greatest-adventure-posterI’ve discovered a way to merge my recent posts about the manufacture-on-demand DVDs of The Bermuda Depths and The Last Dinosaur with my long-running Edgar Rice Burroughs posts. Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, the 1959 live-action film now available from Warner Archive, also gives me a reason to go back to talking about Tarzan for the first time since I reviewed Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”.

Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan in twelve movies from 1932 to 1948. But Weissmuller’s departure from the role didn’t bring a halt to the series. It soldiered on, switching around studios and distributors (it had already flipped from MGM to RKO during Weissmuller’s tenure) for two more decades. Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney, and Mike Henry all played the Lord of the Jungle for at least two films each, and then the movies segued into the television series starring Ron Ely, who would later play another famous pulp hero in George Pal’s unfortunate Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze in 1975.

Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure arrived in the middle of this second stage of the jungle adventures and marked a major shift in style. Producer Sol Lesser left the series, and his replacement Sy Weintraub decided to revamp Tarzan with a “New Look.” Actually, it was more of an “Old Look”: Weintraub took Tarzan back to his literary roots and made a movie more faithful to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s book series. Tarzan suddenly gained a full mastery of the English language, and the story acquired a more adult tone.

Because of Weissmuller’s continued domination of the Tarzan-on-film image to this day — even the mighty Disney machine cannot overcome him — it’s hard to imagine the latter-day movies in the series as being any good. But Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure is excellent; it’s the ERB-fan’s Tarzan film. Not that I don’t love Weissmuller’s first two movies, but this is actually something pretty damn special for any Burroughs bibliophile. Even if it isn’t based on a specific novel, Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure ranks with last year’s John Carter of Mars and The Land That Time Forgot as a movie that honestly captures the style and feel of ERB’s work. Had he been alive to see it, Burroughs would definitely have approved of the film. He might have objected to Tarzan’s non-monogamy, if it can really be called that, since Jane’s existence is questionable at this point in the movie series.

Also: a pre-007 Sean Connery as one of the villains. And it was actually shot in Africa!

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Red Sonja 13

Red Sonja 13

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Red Sonja 13 coverSo this is the big wrap up to the storyline that began back in issue 8. Red Sonja sneaks back into Skranos in order to reinstate Suumaro as the rightful heir to the throne. Never mind that, over the last four issues, we’ve seen that Suumaro is a misogynistic momma’s boy who can’t seem to accomplish anything on his own. His half-brother Oryx (the current heir to the throne) is even worse. The first plan is to sneak past a sleeping guard.

The next step is to steal a harem girl’s outfit. More specifically, she pays the harem girl a gold coin to remove her outfit. There’s a great panel of the harem girl covering herself in shock at the thought of removing her clothes, even though, really, that must be part of the job description. So Red Sonja has to hold a dagger to the girl’s throat, urging her to forego her usual modesty and strip off the two-piece translucent outfit. Keep in mind, Sonja’s in the girl’s room, so it’s not like anyone else will even see her before she just puts on another outfit. In fact, why doesn’t Sonja just ask her for a spare outfit, since the harem girls can’t wear the same thing every day (and if they do, um, yuck).

Once again, Red Sonja takes to the streets, dressed in a harem slave outfit that leaves more to the imagination than a chainmail bikini. But she’s in disguise now. Because, apparently, no one was looking at her face the last time she was in Skranos. It’s a pretty stupid plan, but of course it works.

One page later, she walks right up to Oryx and starts flirting with him, face uncovered. Keep in mind, this is the man who ordered her to be hung just a couple weeks earlier. Red Sonja was standing at the gallows, insulting Oryx, before his half-brother swung in and rescued her. I’m just saying, she’s someone he’s going to remember. But with a worse disguise than Clark Kent, she manages to get close to him.

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Adventure on Film: Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

Adventure on Film: Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

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Under a fearsome black-and-white moon, a boy, perhaps twelve, enters a fever dream of navigator2orange-fired torches whirling down infinite chasms, of men clambering up a towering church steeple, of skies moving too quickly for thought. The boy’s careworn, grubby face melts into black and white rippling water, and the nightmare — if nightmare it is — comes to a sudden end.

Welcome to Fourteenth Century Cumbria, a snowy, monochromatic waste, all bare rock and snowdrifts and blackwater lakes. In a hardscrabble mining village, young Griffin, plagued by his apocalyptic visions, waits for his idol, Connor, to return from a visit to the wider world. But even before Connor’s return, all talk is of death, for the Plague is come, marching inexorably closer.  The villagers quickly convince themselves that only a holy quest can save them, and on the slimmest of evidence — Griffin’s disjointed prognostications — Connor, Griffin and four other men set off, bound for a mineshaft so deep (it is said) that it leads straight to the other side of the world. Griffin’s band brings a copper cross that they hope to mount to a titanic cathedral as an offering, a Cumbrian plea to stave off death itself.

Griffin finds the mineshaft right enough, together with a mechanical battering ram with which the men bore a hole to the far side of reality. And what do they find once there?  Twentieth century New Zealand.

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