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Black Static #26

Black Static #26

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black-static-26Black Gate contributor Mark Rigney’s story, “The Demon Laplace,” inspires the cover art by Rik Rawling for the December 2011-January 2012 Black Static. A variation of the “be careful what you wish for” trope, Rigney’s protagonist, Alan, is a 27 year-old postal worker whose lackluster love life has him worrying that he’ll never find someone to settle down with or, worse, he’ll settle for whoever might come along.  Then he meets mercurial Michael Wish (ostensibly short for Wyczniewski), a postal colleague of Alan’s who is taking a break from grad studies in statistics.  Michael in Hebrew means “he who is like god” and who better than a god to grant wishes; unless, that is, the god is really a devil.

Further complicating the picture is whether mathematics can actually predict future behavior (if you aren’t familiar with Laplace’s equation, Google can explain it for you).  After a series of what could be clever parlor tricks, an initially dubious Alan comes to invest god-like powers in Michael when the prediction that Alan will marry the next woman he talks to comes true.

The question is does it come true because Michael actually can predict the future or is it because Alan is so thorough convinced of Michael’s prestidigitation that he acts to make it true? Knowing, or at least believing, that someone can foretell future events leads to Alan’s obsession with finding out what he should do next. Problem is, Michael disavows that he was really doing anything more than “messing” with Alan:

“You little jackass. You want what really happened. Fine. When we met, sorting mail? That was a break from grad school–statistics,yes, probability curves — but I was halfway through my thesis, I was bored stiff, and I needed some kind of inspiration. Turns out what I needed was a live. unsuspecting subject. And there you were, a walking tabula rosa, just going with the flow…You fell for everything I said, hook, line and sinker. There. Is that what you came to hear?

4081Problem is, that’s not what Alan came to hear. Which results in tragedy (you are reading a dark horror magazine so why would you expect anything less?) that may, or may not, have been easily foreseen.

In your future I see some interesting reading ahead.

David Soyka Reviews Is Anybody Out There

David Soyka Reviews Is Anybody Out There

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is-anybody-out-thereIs Anybody Out There?
Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, eds.
DAW (312 pp, $7.99, June 2010)
Reviewed by David Soyka

The $64 question of the modern era is not whether God exists. How you answer that depends on intangibles and inferences based more on faith than the scientific method. What is nearly as imponderable is the empirical evidence of a vast universe (and possibly co-existent multi-verses) within which conditions exist (or once existed) that may give rise to life as we know it (putting aside consideration of life as we don’t know it and are incapable of comprehending). Moreover, given the age of the universe, it is further conceivable that there is, somewhere in some galaxy, more advanced civilizations capable of interstellar travel that, by now, should be aware of our existence. Even if we are in an Einsteinean universe in which speed of light travel cannot be exceeded, seeing as how that we are already capable of mapping distant universes, presumably a more advanced civilization would have the technology to find us and make radio contact, just as we have been launching Elvis recordings out beyond the solar system in hopes of doing the same. With no results.

So, where are they? This is the crux of the famous Fermi Paradox, posed by the Nobel physicist who reasoned that given the mathematical probabilities of the existence of alien civilizations, why hasn’t anyone phoned home? Is it truly possible that we are the only intelligent beings in the universe? Or, more depressing, are “intelligent” beings fated to self-destruct, allowing technology to harness their fate instead of the other way around, before becoming capable of interstellar travel?

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 2: The Gods of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 2: The Gods of Mars

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gods-of-mars-1st-editionI played a bit rough with A Princess of Mars last week in my first installment of this eleven part mega-series on the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. That book knocked me out when I first read it as a junior high school kid, but it was also the first ERB book I ever picked up. Now that I’ve read most of Burroughs’s canon, the flaws of his first book seem more obvious. For all that is wonderful about A Princess of Mars, it looks like a runt compared to the book I knew was snapping at its heels: The Gods of Mars. Also known as: “Edgar Rice Burroughs gets the knack.”

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other visitors and natives, on the planet Mars. A dry and slowly dying world, the planet known to its inhabitants as “Barsoom” contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with eleven books: nine novels, a book of linked novellas, and a volume collecting two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: The Gods of Mars (1913)

Previous Installment: A Princess of Mars (1912)

The Backstory

In his original proposal to editor Thomas Newell Metcalf at Munsey’s Magazines regarding a novel of Martian adventure, Edgar Rice Burroughs suggested he could write three books from the concept. But he apparently wasn’t certain about the content of the second and third volumes to follow A Princess of Mars, since it was Metcalf who gave him the idea of where to start the next book. After Metcalf rejected Burroughs’s second novel, The Outlaw of Torn, he urged the author to return to Mars and send John Carter into the Valley of Dor, the mysterious paradise mentioned a number of times in the first book. Burroughs ran with the concept, and finished the novel in the beginning of October 1912.

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Book Review: Jim C. Hines’ The Mermaid’s Madness

Book Review: Jim C. Hines’ The Mermaid’s Madness

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themermaidsmadnessThe Mermaid’s Madness

Jim C. Hines
DAW (339 pp, $7.99, 2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

Jim Hines has developed a name for himself by taking traditional fantasy and warping it into a twisted, entertaining, and amusing adult fantasy storyline. His first series, the Jig the Goblin Trilogy (Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, and Goblin War), took traditional roleplaying game fantasy clichés – complete with a dwarf who is obsessed with mapping out the dungeon the protagonists are crawling – and turns it on its ear by making a goblin the hero of the series.

In his Princess Novels, he has taken the three classic princesses of fairy tales – Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty – and turned them into a trio of bad-ass fantasy heroines. (You may insert your own Charlie’s Angels comparison here.)

Snow and Talia (i.e. Sleeping Beauty) are living in exile, serving Queen Beatrice – the mother of Cinderella’s prince charming, Armand – as a sort of secret agent squad. Snow is a sorceress, with an emphasis on mirror-based magic. Talia is basically a weapon expert and all-around combat machine.

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Steampunk Spotlight: Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan Trilogy

Steampunk Spotlight: Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan Trilogy

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leviathan

Leviathan (Amazon, B&N)
Scott Westerfeld
Simon Pulse (440 pp, $9.99, Oct. 2009)

Behemoth (Amazon, B&N)
Scott Westerfeld
Simon Pulse (5112 pp, $9.99, Oct. 2010)

Goliath (Amazon, B&N)
Scott Westerfeld
Simon Pulse (543 pp, $19.99, Sept. 2011)

Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy is an epic about an alternate-history version of World War I … and a great example of how steampunk can really work well when it’s firing on all cylinders (both literally and figuratively). In this, the military conflict isn’t just political, but also centers around an ideological difference about technology. The British and Russians have embraced Charles Darwin’s biological insights to breed massive war beasts, while the German alliance put their faith in mechanical (frequently multi-legged) battle machines.

In addition to the global conflict, the major tension in the story centers around two young characters – one from each side of the battle – who are living with their own secrets in the midst of the war. One is a girl disguised as a boy so that she can serve in the British military upon the living zeppelin Leviathan. The other is a prince (and secret heir to the Austrian Empire) on the run from his own people.

On top of all of that, there’s also a romance … even though one of the participants doesn’t realize it for quite some time.

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Charlene Brusso Reviews Conspirator (Foreigner #10)

Charlene Brusso Reviews Conspirator (Foreigner #10)

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conspiratorConspirator
C. J. Cherryh
DAW (416pp, $25.95, May 2010)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

There is more to communication than mere words. Sure, words have meanings, but they are also, thanks to evolution, tied intimately to the way we think and feel, and the world we live in. Language doesn’t just describe culture or psychology, it is culture and psychology, it’s how we are wired, and assuming that a word can be translated exactly from one culture to another – or, worse yet, from one species to another – is a rookie linguist’s mistake. That is why xenolinguistics is such a challenge. And that is why “first contact” stories are so fascinating – and so difficult to do well.

Nobody does them better than C.J. Cherryh. In novels like Serpent’s Reach and Hunter of Worlds, and series like the Charnur and the Faded Sun books, she has delved deep into the tricky psychological aspects of communication between different, sometimes very alien, species. That challenge to understand lies at the very heart of the Foreigner series, of which Conspirator is the lucky thirteenth volume. Technically, it is the first book of the fourth trilogy in the arc, but don’t be intimidated by that. Cherryh slips in just enough backstory to get you grounded before taking off at full speed into the current situation.

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Matthew David Surridge Reviews Shadow Prowler

Matthew David Surridge Reviews Shadow Prowler

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shadowprowler-coverShadow Prowler
Alexey Pehov, translated by Andrew Bromfield
Tor (412 pp, $7.99, mass market edition February 2011)
Reviewed by Matthew David Surridge

Translation enriches a language, bringing in new styles, new influences, new approaches. The phrasing, the way of thinking, native to a given language can often still be found in a text translated into another tongue. Sometimes, even an ordinary story can gain a touch of originality in translation, a kick from unexpected turns of expression.

I don’t know for sure that this is the case with Alexy Pehov’s Shadow Prowler, not speaking Russian myself, but I wouldn’t be much surprised if it were. Pehov has written a fantasy trilogy, with elves and orcs and dwarves and wizards and a quest. Despite a few self-conscious deviations from the norm – elves have fangs, dwarves don’t grow beards – this first book, at least, feels fundamentally like a game of Dungeons & Dragons. The story is even structured around the exploration of an ancient burial ground, Hrad Spein, the Palaces of Bone, filled with traps, magic, and the undead; a quest, naturally, better undertaken by a small party of highly-skilled adventurers rather than a large army.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 1: A Princess of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 1: A Princess of Mars

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princess-of-mars-a-c-mcclurgThe year 2012 C.E. is the centenary of the Reader Revolution. Two novels published in pulp magazines that year, A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes, re-shaped popular fiction, helped change the United States into a nation of readers, and created the professional fiction writer. One man wrote both books: Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In celebration of this anniversary, and in anticipation of the upcoming Andrew Stanton film John Carter based on A Princess of Mars, I will tackle all eleven of ERB’s Martian/Barsoom novels in reviews for Black Gate. I also have something special in store for Tarzan of the Apes. This endeavor sounds a touch insane, but come on, but this is the centennial of the series! When else am I going to do it?

Let us turn back the calendar a hundred years to the beginning of all things…

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other natives and visitors, on the planet Mars. A dry and slowly dying world, the planet known to its inhabitants as “Barsoom” contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with eleven books: nine novels, a book of linked novellas, and a volume collecting two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: A Princess of Mars (1912)

The Backstory

In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs was thirty-five years old and selling pencil sharpeners out of an office in Chicago. His post-military service career was so far a series of undistinguished jobs that kept him and his family barely above poverty: an associate in a mining company in Idaho, a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City, a manager of a stenography department, an owner of a stationery store, and a partner in an advertising agency. No position lasted longer than two years.

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Chris Braak Reviews Cthulhu’s Reign

Chris Braak Reviews Cthulhu’s Reign

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cthulhus-reignCthulhu’s Reign
Darrell Schweitzer, ed.
DAW (308 pp, $7.99, 2010)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

It is unquestionably a challenge to create a sense of drama in a set of stories that all share the premise of “human civilization has been destroyed by invincible monster-gods from space.” Cthulhu’s Reign is an anthology that sets out to do just that, using the theme of H. P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones – most often Cthulhu and his star-spawn, but not always – returning to prominence on earth after countless millennia of death/sleep. All of the book’s fifteen authors are to be commended for their imaginative takes on just what that return might look like, but there are some problems with the anthology as a whole.

The first and primary issue is that it’s just unrelentingly depressing. One story about the end of humanity out of a collection of fifteen is one thing; but a book in which every single story ends on a note of complete and utter hopelessness is exhausting. There is no reason to blame the authors; they are each separately and privately fulfilling their mandate. The problem is with the idea of the theme itself, which might be charitably described as “too much of a good thing.”

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Art of the Genre: Game Review, Paizo Bestiary Collection

Art of the Genre: Game Review, Paizo Bestiary Collection

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pzo1120_500

One day, long ago, I went to a Waldenbooks and picked up a copy of TSR’s Monster Manual II. It was my first monster compendium, the only other I’d seen was a borrowed copy of Monster Manual I with the rather mundane David C. Sutherland III cover. It was this book, covered by Jeff Easley, that taught me just what it was to hold the power in your hand over a world of fabled monsters.

Still, the journey into the realm of the enemy, the monster, was on well its way with that purchase, as was my apprenticeship in the profession of Dungeon Master. That trip has taken a long and twisting road through more realms of imagination that could be spoken of this day, but nonetheless, it’s been a truly special one.

Monsters, you see, are the key to everything that truly IS a role-playing game. Sure, you could make the argument that it’s about the players, the story, the social interaction, but at the core it all revolves around the conflict. This conflict, and the experience points born from it, is inherently tied to the realm of monsters.

Simply put, to be an effective Game Master [as the term Dungeon Master has become antiquated over the decades, I guess, although I still use it…] you need to have a plethora of monsters at your disposal.

This is true of any system, but even more so in a fantasy setting, and as I started playing Paizo’s Pathfinder upon its release, I’ve had the pleasure of filling my shelves with some of their rather incredible monster supplements.

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