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Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest

Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest

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Oddly compelling…

EC Tubb’s Dumarest serial is oddly compelling… so oddly compelling that, if you like the first book, you end up slowly chugging through the series.

For those who’ve just tuned in, this is an incredibly long mid-20th century low Space Opera serial that influenced the roleplaying game Traveller. Note, series not serial: though there is forward momentum, each book is standalone — it’s more Deep Space Nine than Babylon 5. Also note the low. This isn’t exactly Conan in Space, but the Cimmerian would not be out of place.

So, Dumarest wanders a Grapes of Wrath galaxy — think how we met Rey in The Force Awakens — in search of Earth while pursued by the fanatical Cyclan, cyborg monks with no emotions other than the hunger for power and pride in their intellect.

It’s very much The Fugitive does Space Western. There are exceptions, and Tubb often kicks off with a short story before settling down the real meat. However, in almost every episode, Dumarest is the archetypal Drifter who becomes involved in gothic goings on in one of the local great houses, usually because that house faces some external threat.

(The houses are usually Gormenghast-style piles crammed with extended family and fuelled by dwindling fortunes. However, from time to time he swaps in military unit, spaceship, expedition, clan or band, with similar effect.)

This happens so consistently, that the books should be too formulaic to keep coming back to.

But we do. Each novel is the same but different.

How did — does — he do it?

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The Shadow over Innsmouth as a Generational Family Saga in Rural Alabama: Michael McDowell’s Blackwater

The Shadow over Innsmouth as a Generational Family Saga in Rural Alabama: Michael McDowell’s Blackwater

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Michael McDowell’s Blackwater was a paperback horror series originally published in six volumes by Avon in 1983. It’s a tough set to track down these days, but not impossible. For those wiling to settle for a modern edition, Amazon offers a complete omnibus Kindle volume for just $9.99 and, at the other end of the spectrum, Centipede Press produced a hardcover slipcased set of all six books in 2014 for $350.

I don’t own any of the original Avon paperbacks (although it’s certainly possible that one or two are buried somewhere in my basement). But my interest was piqued this week by a September 22 Facebook post by author Nathan Ballingrud:

I’m in the midst of reading Blackwater, by Michael McDowell. It is, you might say, as if The Shadow over Innsmouth was written as a generational family saga set in rural Alabama. It is strange, funny, warm, and frightening, and a true pleasure to read.

You gotta admit, as blurbs go, that one certainly gets your attention.

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New Treasures: The Tinker King by Tiffany Trent, Book II of The Unnaturalists

New Treasures: The Tinker King by Tiffany Trent, Book II of The Unnaturalists

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I discover a lot of great writers by attending readings, and that’s exactly how I found Tiffany Trent. I was at Wiscon — which has one of the most rewarding reading tracks of any convention in the country — back in 2012 , where one reader in particular really impressed me. Her writing was fresh and original, with a marvelously inventive world and a compelling and instantly likable main character. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

My favorite tale… was Tiffany Trent’s The Unnaturalists. Set in an alternate London where magical creatures are preserved in museums, The Unnaturalists follows plucky young Vespa Nyx, who is happily cataloging unnatural creatures in her father’s museum until she becomes involved in Syrus Reed’s attempts to free his Tinker family, who have been captured to be refinery slaves. Funny, fast-paced, and packed with lively characters, Tiffany Trent’s novel captured my attention immediately.

The Unnaturalists was published in hardcover in 2012, and the sequel, The Tinker King, arrived in 2014. Saga Press published the paperback edition of The Unnaturalists (above) in June of this year, and the paperback edition of The Tinker King followed on July 26. Both are available for $7.99 in print, and $6.99 in digital format. The covers are by Aaron Goodman (click for bigger versions).

A Sorceress Hiding From the Most Powerful Sorcerer in the World: Annie Bellet’s Level Grind: The Twenty-Sided Sorceress

A Sorceress Hiding From the Most Powerful Sorcerer in the World: Annie Bellet’s Level Grind: The Twenty-Sided Sorceress

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Annie Bellet’s Twenty-Sided Sorceress books are a USA Today bestselling series… pretty impressive for a small press outing from a relatively unknown writer. Last year Bellet was (like Black Gate) nominated for a Hugo Award on the Rabid Puppy slate, for her short story “Goodnight Stars” from The End is Now anthology. And (also like Black Gate) she declined the nomination… that principled stand won her an Alfie Award at George R.R. Martin’s Hugo Losers party, a coveted award in its own right.

Now Saga Press is gathering the first four novels in the popular series into one handsome omnibus edition, Level Grind: The Twenty-Sided Sorceress, Volume One. The books follow the adventures of Jade Crow, a sorceress hiding from the most powerful sorcerer in the world: her ex-boyfriend, who wants to consume her heart. They are:

Justice Calling (152 pages, July 23, 2014)
Murder of Crows (162 pages, August 23, 2014)
Pack of Lies (226 pages, October 14, 2014)
Hunting Season (204 pages, Dec 2, 2014)

Here’s a look at the original covers, all from Domed Muse Press.

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Troublesome Magic and High-Stakes Adventure: Marc Turner’s Chronicles of the Exile Trilogy

Troublesome Magic and High-Stakes Adventure: Marc Turner’s Chronicles of the Exile Trilogy

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In his article for Black Gate last December, Marc Turner described the opening novel in The Chronicles of the Exile series this way:

My epic fantasy debut, When the Heavens Fall, came out in May this year, and it can best be summed up as The Lord of the Rings meets World War Z. It’s not a zombie apocalypse novel, but that’s going to come as scant consolation to the characters who find themselves having to wade through an army of undead.

The second book in the series, Dragon Hunters, was published in February. Here’s what RT Book Reviews said about the first two volumes:

Wildly imaginative settings, wonderfully empathetic characters, troublesome magic and high-stakes adventures… [Turner] balances an enormous setting and legendary monsters with flashes of insight and humor that keep the story consistently captivating, all while crafting a battle of wits and determination that builds to a riveting climax.

The third book in the trilogy, Red Tide, arrived in hardcover from Tor Books yesterday.

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Return to Enoch: The King of Nightspore’s Crown by Raphael Ordoñez

Return to Enoch: The King of Nightspore’s Crown by Raphael Ordoñez

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“Answers, he wants! Do you really think you can just go out and find the whole story somewhere, complete and cross-referenced, without any gaps or inconsistencies? I’m sorry to disillusion you, my boy, but that’s not the sort of world we live in. It’s a messy place. There are no infallible interpreters walking among the living, no emissaries sent from the blessed realm to dole out bits of lore that move history along and need never be questioned.”

Astyges speaking to Keftu, from The King of Nightspore’s Crown

oie_201222utyzw9lrIt’s a rare fantasy story that really surprises me. Partly, I have read a lot, but often there appears to be a collective dearth of imagination. I know readers — myself included — enjoy and find easy comfort in stories filled with familiar characters and plots, but once upon a time, before fantasy became a mass-market commodity in the 1970s, there seemed to be limitless inspiration in the stories that were told. Contemporary fantasy keeps getting stuck in homage and mimicry. When faux-European settings weren’t the norm, a reader could be transported to worlds as strikingly weird as Hodgson’s sunless Night Land, Burroughs’ dying Barsoom, or the haunted corridors of Peake’s Castle Gormenghast. When there’s no limit to the colors on a fantasy writer’s palette, why do I feel like I keep seeing the same dozen or so?

It was exactly three years ago that I first encountered Raphael Ordoñez’s writing. “The Goblin King’s Concubine” (BCS #129), a captivity narrative set in a deadly, spider- and fungus-infested jungle swamp on the dying world of Antellus, was like nothing else I was reading at the time. I sought out Ordoñez’s blog, Cosmic Antipodes, and spent hours reading his older posts on things ranging from planetary adventure to painting to autism. His love for storytelling unconstrained by the modern expectations of genre fantasy were refreshing. By the end I was ensnared, and watched for new stories with anticipation. Each is strange and unique and couched within a complex cosmogony which is a mix of Old Testament, William Blake, and pulp nuttiness, among other things. It can be read about at length here.

Last year, Ordoñez self-published the novel Dragonfly (read my review here). It brings together several characters introduced previously in short stories. Unlike the discrete events of those tales, the novel is a full-blown epic. Keftu, sole survivor of a desert tribe, thinks he is the only person alive in the entire world, until he espies a glowing city floating above the ocean. He is prevented from reaching the sky-city Narva when he falls into the clutches of the Cheriopt. The Cheripot is the the “semi-divine headless social machine” that controls everything in the crumbling, ocean-encircling megacity, Enoch. He becomes by turns, a famous gladiator, a liberator, and finally, the last hope to thwart the half-goblin Zilla’s nefarious plans to throw Enoch into total chaos.

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Future Treasures: The Fall of the House of Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

Future Treasures: The Fall of the House of Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

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the-fall-of-the-house-of-cabal-smallJonathan is a marvelously talented fantasy author. We published two of his stories featuring Kyth the Taker, the cunning and resourceful thief whose commissions somehow always involve her in sorcerous intrigue: “The Beautiful Corridor,” (Black Gate 13) and its sequel, “The Shuttered Temple” (BG 15).

His most recent novel was Carter & Lovecraft (October 2015). He published his first novel, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, in 2009; his newest novel The Fall of the House of Cabal is the fifth to feature gentleman necromancer Johannes Cabal and his comrades, including his vampiric brother, Horst. It arrives in hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books at the end of the month.

Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, has come into possession of a vital clue that may lead him to his ultimate goal: a cure for death. The path is vague, however, and certainly treacherous as it takes him into strange territories that, quite literally, no one has ever seen before. The task is too dangerous to venture upon alone, so he must seek assistance, comrades for the coming travails.

So assisted ― ably and otherwise ― by his vampiric brother, Horst, and by the kindly accompaniment of a criminologist and a devil, he will encounter ruins and diableries, mystery and murder, the depths of the lowest pit and a city of horrors. London, to be exact.

Yet even though Cabal has risked such peril believing he understands the dangers he faces, he is still underestimating them. He is walking into a trap of such arcane complexity that even the one who drew him there has no idea of its true terrors. As the snare closes slowly and subtly around them, it may be that there will be no survivors at all.

We’ve covered most of Jonathan’s recent releases here at Black Gate — including his article on writing the Johannes Cabal series, “Some Little Infamy.”

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A Secret Conflict During the Civil War: The House Divided Series by Sean McLachlan

A Secret Conflict During the Civil War: The House Divided Series by Sean McLachlan

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Sean McLachlan, our Wednesday afternoon blogger, is primarily known around our offices as the guy with the enviable travel budget. His recent travelogues have taken him to Roman ruins in Spain, Wallingord Castle in England, a volcanic island in the Canary Islands, the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, a writing retreat in Tangier, Morocco, and even more exotic places.

But Sean is also a prolific author. A former archaeologist, he is now a full-time writer who specializes in history, travel, and fiction. He won the 2013 Society of American Travel Writers Award for his Iraq reportage, and his historical fantasy novella “The Quintessence of Absence” appeared in Black Gate. He currently has several series on the go, including Toxic World, a post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure, and the Trench Raiders action series set in World War One. And his contemporary thriller, The Last Hotel Room, will be released later this month.

But my current favorite is his Civil War horror series House Divided, which so far consists of two novels: A Fine Likeness and The River of Desperation. Here’s what Sean told me when I asked him about the origin of the series.

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Much of a Muchness: Phyllis Eisenstein’s Born to Exile

Much of a Muchness: Phyllis Eisenstein’s Born to Exile

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First edition of Eisenstein’s Born to Exile
Fantasy Fiction, editorial, detail
Why was the editor of Fantasy Fiction getting stories full of mystical strangeness? We cannot tell.

Recently I was reading an editorial in Fantasy Fiction, an old magazine from near the end of the pulp era. This is the kind of thing I’m apt to do, especially when I should be getting some work done, but in this case I was hooked by the title, which was one of Latin’s greatest hits about reading: NON MULTA, SED MULTUM (“not many things, but much of a thing”).

The message of the editorial was that the editor was seeing too many stories that overdid the number of fantastic elements: “Recently a story came in which had everything — ghosts were making a compact with a group of trolls to defeat the Greek gods, now about to retake the world with a bunch of Hebraic letter incantations.”

The editor felt this was bad and stopped reading on the third page. I say it sounds awesome and the editor should have been banished to the outer darkness where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. But I’m of the opposite school of fantasy — the “more cowbell” school, you might call it (to allude to another classic). Some people will try to tell you that less is more, but “more cowbell” people insist that only more is more: more miracles, more fireballs, more talking squids in space.

The truth is that neither school is right or wrong; it’s just a question of what works in a given story. The advantage of the non multa, sed multum approach is that it allows the writer to explore the ramifications of a fantastic concept, and maybe work in a character or two, not to mention a more carefully detailed world.

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When a Trilogy Becomes a Sextuplet

When a Trilogy Becomes a Sextuplet

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Michael J. Sullivan
Michael J. Sullivan

After the launch of his newest book a few weeks ago I asked writer Michael J. Sullivan if he could spare some time to talk about his writing process. In addition to being talented, Michael also happens to be one of the humblest and kindest writers it’s been my pleasure to meet. It’s my pleasure to turn the blog over to him.

I recently released Age of Myth, the first novel in my new series. It’s the one with the big tree on the cover. Since people ignore advice, and nearly everyone actually does judge books by their covers, it’s a good thing for me that trees appear to be popular (no pun on poplar intended… okay maybe it was).

My first series The Riyria Revelations is six books long. This new series was supposed to be a trilogy. You’ll note I used the word supposed in that sentence. When I write a novel it almost always tops off around the 100,000-130,000 word mark (around 375-450 pages). I don’t plan it that way — just happens. It’s the length I need to tell a self-contained tale. Apparently I also have a set number when it comes to how many books it takes to write a series. You guessed it, my trilogy grew to six books long (okay, you had help from the post’s title). No, the publisher didn’t make me expand it, and Peter Jackson had nothing to do with it. The story takes place during a great war, but the story stopped before all the conflicts were over. I had a suspicion readers weren’t going to like that. I didn’t either. Quitting before the war was 100% resolved felt unfinished.

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