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Rich Horton Reviews Song of Time

Rich Horton Reviews Song of Time

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song-of-timeSong of Time
Ian R. MacLeod
PS Publishing (253 pages, $14.95, October 2008)
Reviewed by Rich Horton

Ian R. MacLeod is one of the supreme SF writers of recent years, especially at novelette and novella length, and so it is something of a disappointment that his novels seem to have struggled to find an audience. His newest work is so far only out in the U. K. from the excellent but definitely small outfit PS Publishing. Yet in considering this book I am inclined to understand its failure (so far!) to attract a trade publisher. Song of Time is not a high concept book. Indeed it is difficult to capture it with a single thematic statement. (His two Ace novels, on the other hand, were distinctly about the magical substance aether and the ways in which its use paralleled the Industrial Revolution.) Thus it is, I imagine, a bit harder to “sell” the book. And I must also add that while that is not always a shortcoming, in the present case I think it is rather. About which more later.

Song of Time opens with an aging woman rescuing a drowning man from the ocean off her Cornish house. The man, whom she calls Adam, is a mysterious figure – he has no memory, but he knows – or learns quickly – a great many things, some of which are quite unexpected. He is also a remarkably quick healer, and otherwise unusually constructed. Thus a puzzle is established – but really the book is not about this puzzle (though in the end it is solved, quite satisfactorily).

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Howard Andrew Jones Reviews Legends of Steel RPG

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews Legends of Steel RPG

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legendsofsteelSavage Worlds is a gaming system designed to provide a basic framework around which games in all sorts of settings can be built, but especially games in the Sword & Sorcery genre will perhaps find the best home there. Howard Andrew Jones explores one such setting …

Legends of Steel: Savage Worlds

Jeff Mejia
Evil DM Games (70 pp, $12.00 PDF, January 2009)
Reviewed by Howard Andrew Jones

A lot of games wear their hearts on their sleeves. They’re labors of love. They almost have to be, because one doesn’t usually get wealth, fame, and women by playing and designing games. When it comes to Legends of Steel, the heart it wears on its sleeve is mine. I wasn’t remotely involved in its creation, but I’m a huge fan of sword-and-sorcery, and Legends of Steel seems to have been designed, more than most other games I pick up, with me in mind.

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Centurion: How Many Times Can I Use “Brutal” in a Review?

Centurion: How Many Times Can I Use “Brutal” in a Review?

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2852-FINAL_CENTURION 70x100op 50 %.inddCenturion (2010)
Directed by Neil Marshall. Starring Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko.

If you did not see Centurion during its U.S. theatrical release, that’s probably because you blinked. The British film ran in only a small number of theaters in August on limited engagements, with a simultaneous release on Video on Demand. It played at the Nuart Theater a few miles from my home for a week, and I was unable to get to it. I regretted it at the time because the trailers got my thrill glands pumping: a bloody historical action movie starring a Roman legion. Now that is my kind of fun! I also had faith in director Neill Marshall; I had enjoyed all of his previous movies, and they more than proved that he could handle violent mayhem.

Now that Centurion is on DVD and Blu-Ray, I’ve been able to see what Mr. Marhsall did with the murky historical legend of the Ninth Legion: he made a bloody historical action movie out of it.

Centurion is as straightforward as they come, something the director admits: “It’s not meant to be historically perfect. I’m picking up on a legend and exploring it . . . it’s an action thriller.” The Ninth Legion, which supposedly vanished on an expedition to Scotland in the second century, serves as a springboard for Marhsall to return to the territory of “soldiers-behind-the-lines” from his first movie, the werewolf thriller Dog Soldiers, and sprinkle it with Xenophon’s Anabasis and various World War II movies featuring tough guys doing what has to be done. It is a stripped-to-the-bone bloodletting, filled with decapitations, throat-slittings, head-crushings, and any other mutilation you care to mention.

Not every movie needs deep psychological character explorations or nuanced drama. Centurion knows what it wants, runs after it, and spikes it gorily to the ground. If you think you might enjoy this film, then you will enjoy it — Marhsall delivers the goods as promised.

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A Review of The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

A Review of The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

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time-shipsI’m not entirely sure how to review a sequel that’s written by a different author. I’m even less sure how to proceed if that sequel happens to be for a classic.

It’s not enough that it be a good book on its own. It also has to carry over themes from the original, and ideally, it should measure up to the original — which is almost impossible, because classics tend to become classics because the ideas in them are unique, cutting edge, or at least presented in a fascinating new way.

The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, is a sequel to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and that’s one of the most impossible legacies in science fiction.

It’s a very good book, but it isn’t revolutionary in the way the original is — in part because it really can’t be. To top The Time Machine, you’d pretty much have to invent a new genre.

When The Time Machine ends, the nameless Time Traveller promises to be right back, departs for the future, and vanishes forever. The Time Ships repeats this scene from his perspective (in the original, we see it from the Writer’s point of view) and explains what happened to him.

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Chris Braak Reviews The Magicians

Chris Braak Reviews The Magicians

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the-magicians-by-lev-grossmanThe Magicians
Lev Grossman
Viking (416 pp, $16.00, August 2009 – May 2010 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians makes an admirable attempt at an ambitious premise: is it possible to use the form and structure of Harry Potter to tell a story about ennui, dissipation, and cynicism? What is the difference between the childhood wonder evoked by the “you’re such a special child” childrens’ fantastic literature — with its black and white morality, its uplifting sense of meaning and hope — and the obdurate, insistent messiness of real grown-up life?

The Magicians follows Quentin Coldwater, a brilliant, industrious high school student who spends his time working obscenely hard at schoolwork for ends that are not entirely clear to him, as he is selected for and matriculates at a secret school for wizards in upstate New York. The story self-consciously mimics such similar novels as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, except it equally self-consciously subtracts the moral clarity, the battle against ultimate evil, and the soul-building trials of its main character’s childhood.

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Gemmell’s Legend Remains a Rousing Call to Arms

Gemmell’s Legend Remains a Rousing Call to Arms

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legendI love pre-battle speeches. Arnold’s “Then to hell with you!” prayer to Crom before the battle of the mounds, and Theoden’s exhortation to the Rohirrim just before their charge on the Pelennor Fields (“spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered!”), to name two, make me want to pick up spear and shield and wade into the fray (of course Kenneth Branagh’s Band of Brothers/St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V remains the best). Even though I’d never want to fight in a real shield wall, the power of these speeches admittedly gives me second thoughts.

That’s probably why I loved reading David Gemmell’s Legend (1984) so much. Gemmell’s debut novel is more or less a buildup to (and execution of) a monumental battle scene, and its rousing inspiration speeches don’t disappoint. In terms of the printed page Legend ranks right up alongside Steven Pressfield’s spectacular Gates of Fire for galvanizing battle-speeches.

Here’s one sample as delivered by Druss, the eponymous “legend” from whom the novel derives its name. Druss is an aging warrior and a veteran of innumerable battles who dusts off his axe Snaga and treks to the defense of the fortress Dros Delnoch, like an aging athlete coming out of retirement to prove he can still play. On the eve of the final battle, he rouses the outnumbered Drenai to stand with him, one last time:

Theoden leads the charge...
Theoden leads the charge...

“Some of you are probably thinking that you may panic and run. You won’t! Others are worried about dying. Some of you will. But all men die. No ever gets out of this life alive.

I fought at Skeln Pass when everyone said we were finished. They said the odds were too great, but I said be damned to them! For I am Druss, and I have never been beaten, not by Nadir, Sathuli, Ventrian, Vagrian, or Drenai.

By all the gods and demons of this world, I will tell you now — I do not intend to be beaten here, either!” Druss was bellowing at the top of his voice as he dragged Snaga into the air. The ax blade caught the sun and the chant began.

“Druss the Legend! Druss the Legend!”

If you like the above monologue, you’ll probably love Legend. If not, well, there’s always Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold.

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A Review of Daemon World (Warhammer 40,000)

A Review of Daemon World (Warhammer 40,000)

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daemon-world-newDaemon World
Ben Counter
BL Publishing (414 pp, $7.99, 2009 (originally published in 2003))
Reviewed by Bill Ward

The world of Warhammer 40,000 takes ‘dark’ to a whole new level, with a constellation of warring races in various shades of gray (for example, the ‘good guys’ of the Imperium have no qualms about eradicating entire planets within their own empire), a bleak, medieval gothic aesthetic oozing with fanaticism, intolerance, and cruelty, and an essentially hopeless outlook for humankind.

Indeed, the series tagline, “In the grim darkness of the future there is only war,” gets at the heart of the 40k setting, though it misses somewhat the undercurrent of black humor and parody that have been present in this universe since its inception. But the enormously popular world of the 41st millennium is more than just a space opera version of Warhammer Fantasy – despite its space elves and orks, Warhammer 40,000 is a unique and appealing setting that has been steadily accruing a history and a body of lore for over twenty years, all of which makes it much more complex and interesting than it may appear at first blush. It is a richly detailed, dark fantasy of the future that synthesizes everything from Paradise Lost to Star Wars, H.R. Geiger to H.P. Lovecraft, Dune to Starship Troopers.

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Howard Andrew Jones Reviews HeroScape

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews HeroScape

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Heroscape expansion packs

In 2004, I made my first trip to GenCon and was overwhelmed by the experience. I don’t remember much about the specific tables I visited, but I do remember coming across this new game, HeroScape, which applied a modular style to tactical war gaming – not just in the building of the army (which was usually modular in some sense), but in the design of the playing surface and terrain.

Just as Howard describes himself below, I was also the sort of person who always chose storytelling games over wargames. I had bought some Warhammer units, but had spent so much time painting them that I’d never actually gotten around to playing the game … and even if I had, the lack of terrain would have annoyed me.

With HeroScape, all of these elements came packaged together in a master set, and you could expand on the experience easily enough with various expansion packs. Six years later, Howard describes his experience with the current incarnation of the game.

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William Michael Mott’s Pulp Winds

William Michael Mott’s Pulp Winds

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Pulp Winds
William Michael Mott
Grave Distractions Publications (190 pp. $14.99)
Reviewed by Howard Andrew Jones

A couple of years ago I had the chance to read a cracking good heroic fiction story by William Michael Mott. I knew Mott was a Robert E. Howard fan and a pulp aficionado, but what I didn’t know was that his “Temple of the Salamander” would read like a head-on collision between some of the best features of the stories of Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. “Temple of the Salamander” was set in the dying days of Earth, on a vast, last plateau crossed by an amazing road that may well be intelligent and is certainly dangerous. Traveling this road is the warrior Tulruhk, who is different from the rest of his tribe in part because of his curiosity and in part because he’s capable of compassion, so rare in his world that it makes his occasional act of mercy look like a saintly visit. Tulruhk aids a dying scholar and is rewarded with a chance for membership in an exclusive order dedicated to exploration. Tulruhk’s quest to gain that membership fuels the action in two of his chronicled adventures.

Mott’s drafted three stories of Tulruhk and the last plateau, and they’re collected in Pulp Winds, an anthology of his original work that includes heroic poetry, some atmospheric horror that hearkens back to Lovecraft and Shaver without emulating their sometimes difficult prose, and what may be the only homage I’ve ever read to one of Robert E. Howard’s  fight stories. If Howard had ever written a Costigan fight story with weird elements it would have sounded an awful lot like “Fisticuffs of the Damned.” I think the biggest surprises of the collection were two heroic stories featuring Jack the Giant Killer. When Mott first mentioned these  in an e-mail I was skeptical, but there’s nothing light and airy about these, and I ended up enjoying them almost as much as the adventures of Tulruhk.

Pulp Winds won’t appeal to every reader — in Mott’s work the hero gets the girl and the monsters are there for the pummeling. Which isn’t to say that they’re predictable or that there are no surprises; it’s just that Mott proudly wears his love for pulpy story elements on his sleeve. Mott wants to serve up new adventures in the style of some of the best adventure writers from the golden days of the pulps, hence the title of his collection. If you’re like me and are sometimes in the mood for some monster bashing, sword-slinging, and damsel saving, Pulp Winds delivers in spades.

Feature Excerpt: Rich Horton’s “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy”

Feature Excerpt: Rich Horton’s “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy”

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centaurideviceContributing Editor and SF historian Rich Horton’s article for Black Gate 14 was on modern reprints of the best in classic fantasy and science fiction:

Orion, via their imprints Millennium and later Gollancz, took a different tack in keeping important SF in print. The SF Masterworks series, beginning in 1999, undertook to reprint the very best science fiction novels of the past century or so… a couple of story collections slipped in, including most significantly (to my mind) The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith, the complete stories of one of the oddest and most intriguing SF writers ever. Other interesting works… include what may be Jack Vance’s best singleton novel, Emphyrio; M. John Harrison’s cynical take on Space Opera, The Centauri Device; Michael Moorock’s colorful and louche science fantasy, The Dancers at the End of Time (always my personal favorite among his works); one of the most significant works from Russia: Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; and the complete “Roderick” novels by John Sladek, brilliant satire from one of the field’s best and darkest satirists.

As we wrap up the Sneak Preview of the massive 14th issue of Black Gate we’ve posted a lengthy excerpt from Rich’s article, in which he covers titles from Baen Books, the SF and Fantasy Masterworks lines from Orion, the Science Fiction Book Club, Wildside Press, and NESFA Press.

Rich’s previous feature articles for us include “Fictional Losses: Neglected Stories From the SF Magazines,” (Black Gate 11) “The Big Little SF Magazines of the 1970s,” (BG 10) and  “Building the Fantasy Canon: the Classic Anthologies of Genre Fantasy” (BG 2).

The complete “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy” appears in Black Gate 14.