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Frederick Faust, Bound for SF and The Smoking Land

Frederick Faust, Bound for SF and The Smoking Land

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smoking-landThe Smoking Land
Frederick Faust writing as George Challis (Argosy, 1937)

I’m returning to the subject of Frederick Faust for the third time this year. But I have a specific, Black Gate-centered justification for it: I wish to unearth his single novel of science fiction, a piece of Lost World and Weird Science strangeness called The Smoking Land.

Faust, under Max Brand and his eighteen other pseudonyms, made his reputation with Westerns, but he did write in almost every genre that appeared in the story magazines of the time. He penned historical adventures, detective tales, mainstream short stories for the “slicks,” and espionage yarns. In 1937, he authored his one true science-fiction work, the novel The Smoking Land, which appeared serially under the pseudonym George Challis in the old warhorse of the pulp world, Argosy, starting in the May 29 issue.

(In fact, this Saturday evening I stood face-to-face with one of the actual issues of Argosy in which the novel was serialized, housed in the pulp collection at Author Services in Hollywood. Actual surviving issues of the self-destructive pulps are rare finds, and they need special protection to survive. And hey look! One of the Argosy installments of The Smoking Land shares space with the Cornell Woolrich story “Clever, These Americans”! . . . Okay, so maybe only I care.)

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Ye’d Best Start Believin’ in Ghost Stories

Ye’d Best Start Believin’ in Ghost Stories

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We're naught but humble pirates.Bloodbones
Jonathan Green
Wizard Books (240 pp, ₤5.99, CAN$12.00, April 2010)

In 1982, Puffin Books unleashed The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first in the Fighting Fantasy line of gamebooks. The book was conceived and written by Steve Jackson (the British one) and Ian Livingstone, co-founders of Games Workshop. Although predated by solitaire RPG scenarios, Fighting Fantasy combined a choose-your-own-adventure decision-tree structure with a simple dice mechanic to mimic an RPG experience. The quick-start rules, brisk pacing, and art by New Wavey fantasists like Iain McCraig, Chris Achilleos, and Richard Corben, all bundled in a mass-market paperback retailing for $1.95, made Fighting Fantasy wildly successful. The series ran until 1995, along the way spawning ancillary media like novels, computer games, even a full-blown Fighting Fantasy RPG. Fan enthusiasm still burns bright today, with a downloadable fanzine and its own wiki.

Screw Narnia; had I ever discovered some magic wardrobe, I would have jumped with both feet into Titan. As it was, chores were done and allowances scraped together in anticipation of infrequent family expeditions to the mall bookstore. There I could pay to wade through the mire of the Scorpion Swamp, survive Baron Sukumvit’s Deathtrap Dungeon, rally freed slaves to overcome the sinister Gonchong on the Island of the Lizard King. Now I’ve been playing the books all over again, this time with my young sons, imparting to them the same vital life lessons I learned as a young boy: don’t trust strangers; never put your hand in someplace you can’t see; and if you kill someone, you might as well go ahead and take his wallet.

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Play a science-fiction mini-game from Dark City Games

Play a science-fiction mini-game from Dark City Games

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at-empires-end-img

To promote their new science-fiction role-playing game At Empire’s End, Dark City Games has created S.O.S, a short solitaire SF role-playing game. We’re pleased to reprint the game in its entirety here on the Black Gate blog.

You can either read the text as choose-your-own-adventure style paragraphs, or grab some dice and play according to the short rules. Experienced role players, or those familiar with The Fantasy Trip, should be able to jump right into the action.

Without further ado, we present S.O.S, a Legends of Time and Space science-fiction role-playing adventure by George Dew.

You come out of hyperspace around the barren, rocky, waste-planet of Lemm. It orbits a distant star, and lacks an atmosphere. As a result, the inhospitable grey surface boasts temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero.

Your sensors scan for traces of the distress signal, when suddenly, an alien contact flashes across your navigation screen. Do you want to hail it (001) or attack with initiative (002)?

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Looking Back on the first Sword and Sorceress

Looking Back on the first Sword and Sorceress

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sword-and-sorceress-iSword and Sorceress I

Edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley (DAW, 1984)

The late author and editor Marion Zimmer Bradley probably could not have dared to guess in 1984 that her anthology series, Sword and Sorceress, would turn into a yearly and best-selling institution of fantasy short stories that would extend past her death. That the first volume in the series bears a Roman numeral shows that she did believe the anthology would see at least two volumes; that it now reaches into the mid-twenties (with the twenty-fifth due this year) shows just how much sword-and-sorcery has embraced inclusiveness during the last three decades. Strong female heroines are now a key part of the genre, completing what C. L. Moore started with her amazing — especially for the time — Jirel of Joiry stories of the 1930s. Bradley invokes Moore a few times in her introduction, and the book is dedicated to both Moore and Jirel.

Over a quarter of a century after publication, the first Sword and Sorceress holds up quite well, while still showing some of the growing pains of sword-and-sorcery in the 1980s. Reading through it makes it clear that the sword-and-sorcery revival still had a distance to go in 1984. About three quarters of the stories Sword and Sorceress I are good-to-excellent, but like all anthologies it has rough patches, some shaky editorial picks, and a few pieces that don’t hit at all. As the series had just started, Bradley did not have a large pool of submissions to pick from. Later volumes would improve the mix as the number of works submitted increased, but this is the start, and therefore worth reading for its historical importance, saggy spots and all.

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Short Fiction Review # 28: Dark Faith

Short Fiction Review # 28: Dark Faith

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dark_faith_frontcvra_medium1

[Hell] doesn’t exist, no more so than the entities that are called Satan and the Devil.  They’re all…storybook constructs…Know this: there is no such thing as a ‘cosmic evil.’ Evil is a human matter, fashioned by ignorance, brutality, addiction, emotional trauma—the list is endless. The cosmos doesn’t feel anything, it is just a space, it doesn’t care about either good or evil, it is simply, like Heaven, indifferent.

“For My Next Trick I’ll Need a Volunteer” by Gary A. Braunbeck

p. 275, 285

That pretty much sums up my personal view of a universe indifferent to ongoing human folly.  That said, I’m fascinated by the notion of faith and its ethical implications, so a short story collection entitled Dark Faith co-edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon naturally got my attention. People rely on faith to provide an orderly framework to their lives, to infuse meaning to their existence. What these  stories (as well as several poems) share is a consideration of what happens when the assumptions that underpin faith unravel. For the most part, the results are not good

The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given  our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.

Poets and sages like to say that there is clarity in certain death. That a calm resignation settles over the nearly deceased, and they embrace the inevitability of the end of life with dignity and grace.

But there was no clarity for her, no calmness, no life flashing before her eyes in a montage of joy and regrets.  There was just pure animal terror, screams torn from her throat as she plummeted toward the ground in the longest ten seconds of her life.

And then there was an explosion of pain.

p.2

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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

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prince_of_persia_posterPrince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Directed by Mike Newell. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina.

I appear to be transforming into Black Gate’s “movie reviewer.” A natural development, considering that I’m a voracious film-goer who sees most new movies during their opening weekends (a benefit of living a block away from one of best multiplexes in Los Angeles), and that the studios have tossed quite a few fantasy spectacles our way so far this year that appeal to the magazine’s demographic.

I am indeed thankful that the Great Movie Gods are providing us with more epic fantasy. I just wish they were providing us better epic fantasy. What do I need to sacrifice to get something more worthwhile from Middle Eastern fantasy than Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time? Goats just aren’t doing it, apparently, and my apartment manager has informed me that this is in violation of health codes. So I’m stuck, for the moment, with a sand-and-sorcery epic based on a video game franchise.

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Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1—1 Million Years B(ruce) W(ayne)

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1—1 Million Years B(ruce) W(ayne)

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return-of-bruce-wayne-1After reading the Batman/Doc Savage Special, I didn’t imagine I would return to pick up any monthly Batman comics—or any monthly comics—for a span. I’m a trade paperback fellow who follows news of monthlies so I know what to buy in larger bound form when it reaches the bookstores.

Then I saw the sneak of the cover for issue #2 of the limited series Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. And I screamed “Solomon Kane!” and rushed to find out what writer Grant Morrison was doing with this series. I learned that he was going to give me six issues of pulpy adoration, with Batman filling in a series of legendary pulp hero roles throughout history: barbarian Stone Age warrior, puritan witch-finder, pirate swashbuckler, and hard-boiled P.I.

Okay, I was on board for this, even though it rises out of the confusing mess of recent crossovers and events in the DC Universe, a mix-up that has alienated a lot of Bat-fans.

The events leading up to The Return of Bruce Wayne come from Grant Morrison’s run as writer on the monthly Batman comic and on the massive DC Universe event Final Crisis. Morrison is either a genius or a madman, probably both, and his time with Batman has seen developments that absolutely stagger the mind. The guy brought back Bat-Mite, for cryin’ out loud! Other crazy things he’s done: give Bruce Wayne a son with Talia; suggested that Bruce’s father, Thomas Wayne, faked his own death and is still alive; created a league of international Batman-and-Robin imitators; put Batman up against an adversary who might be the devil himself; and included “the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh” from some nutball 1961 story where Batman discovers a colorful version of himself on another planet.

And the amazing thing about all this? It works. Morrison is maniacal, but he layers on so much dementia that it is impossible not to ride along with it, even if half the time while I was reading it I was thinking “Huh?” That was fine, because the other half of the time I was thinking, “Whoa, cool!” . . . usually right after thinking, “Huh?”

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Short Fiction Review #27: Conjunctions 52

Short Fiction Review #27: Conjunctions 52

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conjunctionsThe Spring 2009  issue of Conjunctions (yeah, I know, my reading is way behind) edited by Bradford Morrow and Brian Evenson, the twice yearly literary magazine published by Bard College, is a follow-up to its New Wave Fabulists issue of about eight years ago. This time around there’s less effort expended in attempting to define a “new” subgenre. Instead, there’s a simple page-and-a-half introduction and a title, Betwixt the Between: Impossible Realism, that I find more concisely descriptive of this type of  fiction than the extensive critical commentary contained in its predecessor. Alas, I found the fiction selections overall less compelling than when the earlier volume was trying to prove something.

Part of the reason I didn’t connect with some of these stories may be the underlying premise of the objective here. I don’t have a problem with the premise. I just don’t think it was fulfilled. According to the editors,

Betwixt the Between investigates ways in which, on the one hand, works of fiction treat the impossible as if it were the solid groundwork of the real or, on the other hand how the ineffable can sometimes flash lightning-quick through the realms of the real, leaving everything the same and yet unaccountably changed. Worlds and concomitant models of logic are offered here that reveal something about our daily existence and yet turn away from it to forge disjointed realities that strike the reader simultaneously as familiar and anything but.

p. 7

I get that. But a number of these tales don’t strike me as weird for the purpose of explicating the wondrous underpinning of human existence that otherwise seems mundane, they strike me as weird just for the sake of being weird.

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Robin Hood (2010)

Robin Hood (2010)

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robin-hood-2010-posterRobin Hood (2010)
Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, Max Von Sydow, Oscar Isaac, Matthew Macfayden, William Hurt, Mark Addy.

For the past three decades, versions of the Robin Hood legend have followed an unwritten maxim that they must be dark, realistic, epic, and not a touch of fun. It’s as if artists have done all they can to avoid looking or acting like the 1938 Michael Curtiz-Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hood.

By St. George, why? Why wouldn’t you want to catch some of the glory of one of the most beloved adventure stories ever put on film? I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that The Adventures of Robin Hood is the most successful and important version of the Robin Hood legend in the entire seven-plus centuries that it’s been in existence. Who is Robin Hood? He’s Errol Flynn. Nothing will ever change that.

I’m fine with somebody trying, however. But I wish one of those somebodies would recall the thrill of Flynn and Curtiz and not fear it. (I think they’re afraid of green tights. Fine, make ‘em gray. Get over the stupid “tights obsession” already!) They should also consider well the old lays that made Robin Hood both a hero and a humorous trickster figure. This is what I want to see, and I’d wager it’s what most audiences want to see as well. Rob from the rich, give to the poor, make rich buffoons look even buffoonier, and wield the sharpest-shooting bow and arrow in the kingdom. Not much to ask for, really.

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Goth Chick News: The Game is Afoot!…and an Arm, and a Heart

Goth Chick News: The Game is Afoot!…and an Arm, and a Heart

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phantasmagoria_2To call me a “gamer” would do a serious injustice to those hardcore cyber-warriors who are universally recognized for their pale complexion and calloused thumbs. But as someone who has spent many a windfall dollar at the local GameStop, foregone more than one sunny summer day hunched over a keyboard in a darkened room, and lives at least partially in a world where an Easter Egg has zero to do with a bunny, I think that on some level I can relate.

I also fraternize quite openly, both at work and at home, with software developers. Those in the game industry never cease to dream of a world where they would create the games they truly wished to, without the constant and creativity-killing demands of the margin-hungry corporations they work for.

Which is a little scary when you think about it.

What if game developers were allowed to run amok and create any character, any story line or any outcome their imaginations could devise, and could thrust their creations out into an unsuspecting marketplace with nary a care for bottom line returns or movie-deal conversions?

Of course, to imagine that world you would also need to imagine one without the parental rating system. Or aggression therapy.

But that being said, I have always gravitated toward those releases that game developers admire themselves. Their criteria for what is “good” is sometimes but not always represented in the best seller area of your favorite game retailer and many are difficult even to find these days, not just because they’re out of production, but because they’re banned outright.

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