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New Treasures: Ashen Stars by Robin D. Laws

New Treasures: Ashen Stars by Robin D. Laws

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ashen-stars2Back in August, we reported that Pelgrane Press’s new space opera RPG Ashen Stars had won a 2012 ENnie Award for Best Setting. That was enough to pique my curiosity, and I ordered a copy.

I’ve been waiting for a science fiction role playing game with a truly rich setting for a long time. Our Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones has been exploring Traveller in a series of occasional articles — most recently on the Netherell setting and The Third Imperium — but to be honest I always found the setting for Traveller to be fairly generic, at least in the early editions. The last SF RPG to really impress me was Rogue Trader by Fantasy Flight, a gorgeously produced game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe; before that I have to go all the way back to Holistic Design’s future-medieval setting Fading Suns, first released in 1996.

I’m very pleased to be able to add Ashen Stars to that short list. Drawing heavily upon his successful GUMSHOE mystery system, author Robin D. Laws has created an extremely appealing game of space opera procedural mysteries. In the tradition of the best hard boiled detective fiction, players are constantly scrambling for money, equipment, and respect… all of which they’ll need to succeed in a war-ravaged perimeter where trust is a precious commodity, and very little is truly what it seems.

The players in Ashen Stars are private eyes — excuse me, licensed mercenaries — acting as freelance law enforcement on a rough-and-tumble frontier called “the Bleed,” where humans and half a dozen alien races mingle, compete, and trade. The Mohilar War that devastated the once powerful governing Combine ended seven years ago, and no one is sure exactly how. The Combine is in no shape to govern the Bleed, and rely on loosely-chartered bands like the players to maintain peace in the sector, keep a lid on crime, and investigate odd distress signals from strange corners of space. Like the crew of the Serenity, your loose band of players operate on both sides of the law, secure lucrative contracts, scramble to maintain your ship and upgrade your aging equipment, and maintain a code of honor in a place where reputation is the most precious commodity there is.

The writing and color art are impressive throughout, and the book is filled with fascinating tidbits that will make you anxious to play, and re-introduce you to the essential joy of role playing.

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Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection

Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection

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universal-classic-monsters-the-essential-collection-classicmonsters_bluraycollection_3d_rgb-560x739This year, the home video divisions of all the major distributors banded together and plotted a full-scale assault on the wallets and bank accounts of Blu-ray owners during September and October. Only the wealthiest could possibly survive an attack that began with the first Hi-Def release of the Indiana Jones films. But the supreme weapon, the ultimate October Surprise, is Universal’s huge ebony slab of fear, nostalgia, and latex make-up: Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection. Spanning twenty-three years and nine films (advertised as eight, sorry Spanish Dracula), the long-anticipated set brings the Masters of Halloween into glorious 1080p for the first time, and in perfect seasonal position to drain your money before you waste it on a Jack Sparrow costume that forty other people are also going to wear to that same party.

Few movie series have had such an impact on filmmaking and popular culture as Universal’s stable of ghouls. They are as much a part of Halloween as Pixie Styx and pumpkin carving. I can’t imagine there are Blu-ray owners with any shred of geek cred out there who won’t want to add this to their shelves. When I received mine in the mail, I rejoiced at the anticipation of a week full of evenings revisiting some of my favorite movies in beautiful restored editions. The box set did not let me down—except for the one film that doesn’t really belong on it, but I anticipated that.

Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection comes packaged in a black slipcase with a side-bound color booklet of trivia. The eight discs contain Dracula (1931), the Spanish-language Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, the 1943 color re-make of The Phantom of the Opera, and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Taking the discs in chronological order, as I did during the week:

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Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950: A Retro-Review

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galaxy-october-1950-smallContinuing in my discovery of Galaxy magazine, I began reading the first issue, dated October 1950. I knew what I’d never see in Galaxy, and but what fiction would I discover within?

“Time Quarry” by Clifford D. Simak is the first of a three-part serial. I don’t see this done often with modern magazines, but it seems like back in the Fifties, novel serializations were part of the norm. I wonder how the rights and payment worked out for that, but I digress.

In Part 1, Asher Sutton returns to Earth after disappearing for twenty years on a space exploration mission to 61 Cygni. Little is known of the planet he landed on; no other ship can get near it due to unexplained anomalies. Since his return, Sutton has drawn attention, both from those who want information and those who want him dead.

“Third From the Sun” by Richard Matheson – A family plans to escape from a world on the brink of war. All they need to do is to take a spaceship for themselves and leave everyone but their closest neighbors behind.

Third From the Sun became the title of Matheson’s first paperback short story collection, published by Bantam Books in 1955.

“The Stars are the Styx” by Theodore Sturgeon – Mankind has the tools for creating vast inter-galactic travel, but it will take 6,000 years to set up the framework. Volunteers are sent (usually as married pairs) out to distant points within the galaxy, and when all are in place, they will create a connected network for instant transportation to each location.

Each person’s choice to go out or return to Earth is made at Curbstone, an Earth satellite run by a man sometimes referred to as Charon. Of the latest arrivals, Charon takes interest in Judson, a young man who seems certain to become Outbounder, provided he doesn’t get too distracted by those who are still undecided.

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Beth Dawkins Reviews Ironskin

Beth Dawkins Reviews Ironskin

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ironskincoverIronskin
Tina Connolly
TOR (304pp, $24.99, Hardcover, October 2012)
Reviewed by Beth Dawkins

Ironskin is a fairy tale reimagining of Jane Eyre and the debut novel for author Tina Connolly. I have never read Jane Eyre, and wouldn’t have known the two were related, but there was an author note at the end.

Our Jane comes to the mysterious Mr. Rochart’s home to work as a governess to his child, Dorie. Dorie, like Jane, has been affected by the fey war. Unlike Jane, Dorie does not wear the scars on her face. Instead her power came from birth. Her mother was taken over by a fey before she was born, leaving Dorie with a fey curse. The girl can make things fly, and uses her power instead of her hands. Jane is tasked with teaching Dorie to use her hands, and act like any other child. As Jane works with Dorie to these ends, she discovers more about the fey curses than she bargained for.

Jane’s life has been hard. Her brother lost his life in the fey war. A bomb destroyed him, and the fey shrapnel from the blast caught Jane in the face, destroying one side of it. The shrapnel from the bomb has a type of fey substance in it that causes those maimed in the war to be cursed. These curses make those injured feel unpleasant things such as sadness, hunger, and, in Jane’s case, rage. The curse also affects those that come in contact with the scarred person. Jane wears an iron mask that shrouds half of her face to keep her wounds from infecting anyone else. People like Jane are called ‘ironskin.’ While this has caused self-loathing and depression in Jane, it quickly becomes repetitive.

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Solomon Kane Movie Needs More Solomon Kane

Solomon Kane Movie Needs More Solomon Kane

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solomonkaneposterThe sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane is my favorite of Robert E. Howard’s serial characters: a fascinating mixture of obsession, religion, righteousness, history, and dark fantasy awesomeness. However, it’s the character I love, not necessarily the stories in which he appeared. With the exception of “Wings in the Night,” the Solomon Kane stories are mid-range pieces in Howard’s canon, not at the consistent level he delivered later with Conan, King Kull, or many of his one-shots. Solomon Kane appeared early in Howard’s short professional pulp career, with the first published story in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales. Perhaps if Howard stayed longer with the Puritan hero while his storytelling skills increased, he might have equaled the Conan series in quality.

But a great character is always an excellent starting point to make a great movie, and in concept a Solomon Kane film should be an easy third-base hit for any talented filmmaker. The 2009 British-French-Czech Solomon Kane, which finally received its limited U.S. theatrical release today (also on VOD if you can’t find a local theater), showed many hints of not only getting on third, but possibly stealing home. Tonally, it captures the 1930s version of Weird Tales. The violence is graphic and bloody without falling into the slapstick idiocy of Marcus Nispel’s Conan the Barbarian. The production design is top-tier for a mid-budget movie and feels saturated with the benighted European dreariness of Kane stories such as “Skulls in the Stars” and “Rattle of Bones.”

What the movie does not have: Solomon Kane. This tends to undermine most of the right steps the filmmakers take, as you might imagine.

It makes no difference if audiences know the first thing about the character of Kane or even know the name Robert E. Howard. The film’s failure to exploit what makes Solomon Kane so fascinating spills over into the story and pacing. Solomon Kane is an origin tale that stretches out for a hundred minutes — an origin for a character who doesn’t even need an origin. As James Purefoy’s voiceover at last declares Solomon Kane’s intentions to battle evil wherever it lies, and the hero leaps onto his horse decked with the swirling black coat and the wide-brimmed slouch hat, the audience will be primed to see this strange avenger work his bloody craft. But then the director’s name appears and the end credits start. Sorry folks, movie is over.
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Josh Wimmer Reviews Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons

Josh Wimmer Reviews Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons

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everythingineed-toknowilearnedfromdungeonsdragonsEverything I Need to Know I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons
Shelly Mazzanoble
Wizards of the Coast (192 pp, $12.95, September 2011)
Reviewed by Josh Wimmer

I have my first-edition AD&D Monster Manual open on my desk, and I’m looking at the entry for “mimic.” As many of you will likely recall, a mimic is a creature that disguises itself as something else — a chest, maybe, or a door — to fool unwary adventurers.

That is where my head went after reading Shelly Mazzanoble’s second book; she is a bit of a mimic. I don’t mean that she cannot stand sunlight or that she resembles stone or wood — hey, this is not a perfect analogy — or even that her armor class is only 7. I bet it is at least 5. She strikes me as dexterous (not to mention closer to chaotic good than true neutral).

No, what I mean is that Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons, while delightful, struck me as only tangentially “One Woman’s Quest to Turn Self-Help Into Elf-Help,” as the subtitle puts it.

Mazzanoble is fun to spend time with. Most of the book is concerned with her relationships with her mom, Judy (this is the mom ur-name, I think), and boyfriend, Bart. Judy has a lot of advice to offer, much of it on the subject of Mazzanoble and Bart’s love life. Mazzanoble clearly adores her mother — they talk daily, which I can accept intellectually is a beautiful thing, for someone else who is not me — but she gets justifiably fed up when Judy starts sending her an unending stream of books like The Secret.

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A Circle of Cats by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess

A Circle of Cats by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess

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a-circle-of-catsIt’s always a pleasure when two creators I admire collaborate. Case in point: A Circle of Cats, a Charles de Lint short story gorgeously illustrated by Charles Vess.

Although it’s very short (48 pages, at least half of which is full-color artwork), A Circle of Cats is a complete and satisfying tale. It tells the story of Lillian, a 12-year-old orphan who lives on the edge of a vast and very old wood with her aunt. One day, after all her chores are done, Lillian chases a deer into a part of the woods she’s never explored before. Falling asleep at the foot of a great gnarled tree, she disturbs a snake that strikes her three times.

As she lays dying, a circle of cats forms around her, for Lillian has found their ancient gathering place. The cats decide to intervene, and when Lillian awakens, she finds herself in the body of a kitten.

What Lillian finds as she explores the woods as a cat, and the strange creatures she meets, form the bulk of the tale. But as night arrives and her elderly aunt begins a desperate search deeper and deeper into the woods for her, Lillian’s efforts to find a way to return to human form become more determined. Ultimately, she learns that getting what she wants will require help from friends she didn’t know she had, and an unusual sacrifice.

Fans of de Lint and Vess’s earlier collaboration, the massive illustrated fantasy Seven Wild Sisters (Subterranean Press, May 2002), will find both the setting and some of the characters familiar, including Aunt Lillian, The Apple Tree Man, and The Father of Cats. De Lint and Vess also collaborated on Medicine Road (Tachyon Publications, June 2009), featuring the further adventures of the red-haired Dillard twins, Laurel and Bess, from Seven Wild Sisters.

While it is primarily intended for young readers, A Circle of Cats is still a fine introduction to Charles de Lint’s fiction, as it has all the hallmarks of his work, including fascinating characters, magical settings, and a story richly suffused in myth. Vess, the artist behind The Book of Ballads and three books with Neil Gaiman (Instructions, Blueberry Girl, and the illustrated version of Stardust), delivers his usual excellent artwork.

A Circle of Cats was published in hardcover by Viking Juvenile in June, 2003. It is 48 pages in full color, with a cover price of $16.99.

Dredd Sentences You to a Bloody Good Time

Dredd Sentences You to a Bloody Good Time

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dredd2012posterThe Charge: Attempting to re-start a film franchise about a classic comic book character.

The Verdict: Guilty.

The Sentence: Director is hereby ordered to make more Judge Dredd Movies.

Any Last Words: I am the law.

The upcoming re-make of RoboCop now feels even more unnecessary than it did before. Dredd has just handed us an over-the-top violent buddy cop SF flick that fills up that niche for the next year, maybe two. Dredd is an old-style Paul Verhoeven film in feel, although missing much of his satirical glee, and hits perfect for a September action movie, trading in any “mainstream” credentials for hard-R blood and guts on a narrow budget. It’s a wet blast for action fans and dark SF junkies.

You may recall a similar film, Judge Dredd, from 1995, which starred Sylvester Stallone as the dispenser of justice in the fallen future. Based on the character created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra that appeared originally in the UK anthology magazine 2000 AD, the Stallone movie was a big-scale epic aiming for broad appeal to become a summer blockbuster, hence the inclusion of a comic sidekick played by Rob Schneider and the sanding away at the harsher elements of the setting. Because of Stallone’s celebrity status, he spent much of the film without the Judge’s eye-shielding helmet on, which the character never removes in the comics. I haven’t seen Judge Dredd ’95 since it was in theaters, but I do recall enjoying it.

I can’t imagine I would feel the same way about Stallone’s colorful but silly film if I watched it today, and this new take on Wagner and Ezquerra’s character has crushed any wish to revisit it. Costing a tight $45 million (pocket change among today’s blockbusters), the British/South African production Dredd sticks closer to source material and ditches any compromise for the general audience: it is authentically brutal dystopian action that works on the simple plane of crunchy ultra-violence.

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Goth Chick News: The Grass May Be Greener Over There, Because That’s Where the Bodies Are Buried

Goth Chick News: The Grass May Be Greener Over There, Because That’s Where the Bodies Are Buried

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image0041As you know from last week, we here at Goth Chick News are very busy relishing the many tasty offerings that come along with the season.

In the Midwest, haunted attractions are dominating the GroupOn offerings, temporary Halloween stores have popped up in every vacant strip mall store-front with Midnight Syndicate music wafting out of their doors and even our friends over at Gorilla Tango Burlesque have gotten into the act with their latest show Boobs of the Dead.

Ah the season… no one can resist it.

From the West Coast, we are about to be smothered under a virtual onslaught of new holiday (i.e. scary) films including Frankenweenie, V/H/S, Sinister and…you must have seen this coming, Paranormal Activity 4.

So it was only a matter of time before the East Coast weighed in.

And there it was.

I just knew the New York-based team at Wunderkind PR wouldn’t let the season pass without gifting me a new horror offering, and considering this might well be the very last season ever (being it is 2012 and all), they really outdid themselves.

Instead of introducing me to a new Master of Horror, they introduced a new Mistress – and about time as well.

Ania Ahlborn, author of The Neighbors.

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Cynthia Ward Reviews The Gods of Opar

Cynthia Ward Reviews The Gods of Opar

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farmer08_bGods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa
Philip José Farmer & Christopher Paul Carey
Subterranean Press  (576 pp, $65.00 Limited Edition Hardcover, $45.00 Trade Edition Hardcover)
Reviewed by Cynthia Ward

Once upon a time, in a lost civilization known as West Germany, the Kreuzberg Kaserne U.S. Army Base let fifth graders leave school grounds at lunchtime. Every week, I crossed the street to the little base bookstore. In the late winter of 1972, I bought the first DC Comics issue (#207) of “Tarzan of the Apes” because I wanted to learn how the heck a human being ended up living with apes. When the writer/artist, the late, much-lamented Joe Kubert, ended his adaptation with Edgar Rice Burroughs’s original cliffhanger, I read Burroughs’s sequel, The Return of Tarzan, to finish the origin story. Then I found myself devouring every other Burroughs book reprinted in the early 1970s.

I couldn’t have been the decade’s only new Burroughs fan, because by the mid-1970s, his estate had authorized two different Tarzan-related series by other authors: the Bunduki novels by J.T. Edson and the Ancient Opar novels by Philip José Farmer. Both series produced a novel or two and then, as far as I knew, ended. The tie-in titles went out of print, their copyright was probably owned or controlled by the Burroughs estate, and Philip José Farmer died in 2009. I figured none of these books would ever see another reprint.

I figured wrong, because Subterranean Press has just released Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa, which is an omnibus of the two Ancient Opar novels by Philip José Farmer – Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) and Flight to Opar (1976) – together with a third, new novel in the series, The Song of Kwasin, by Philip José Farmer and Christopher Paul Carey (Black Gate recently ran essays from Carey about the history of his remarkable collaboration with Farmer, and his discussion of Farmer’s ambitious creation, the lost civilization of Khokarsa.)

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