Black Gate – Page 1011 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Vintage Treasures: The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

Monday, January 20, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

So I tried to hit all the genre classics in my early days as an SF and fantasy reader, and I think I did a pretty fair job . Sure, I have a few gaps here and there, but overall I think I managed to read the ones that looked interesting.

With a few notable exceptions. I didn’t discover James H. Schmitz until relatively late, and I wasn’t able to lay hands on his most famous novel, Hugo nominee The Witches of Karres, until years after I heard about it. Considering that it’s been re-issued six times since its original 1966 publication, by Ace, Gollancz, Baen, and the Science Fiction Book Club, that’s either really bad luck or I’m not nearly as accomplished a collector as I like to think. I have a copy now, and I look forward to rectifying the situation.

Over the years I’ve read multiple brief synopses of the novel, but my favorite remains P. Schuyler Miller’s Analog review:

In the far future, Mankind has scattered among the stars, bred into peculiar forms and developed peculiar powers. Captain Pausert of Nikkeldepain makes the serious mistake of rescuing three little Witches of Karres from their overwrought owner. There follows espionage, piracy, assorted forms of mayhem, and a freewheeling galactic war that nobody knew was in progress. You will, in the process, encounter such things as Worm Weather, klatha hooks, and a vatch to end all vatches… not to mention grik dogs and Nartheby Sprites and Sheem Robots.

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Margaret St. Clair, Andrew Offutt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Sunday, January 19, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I think I’ve read — and written — more about Gygax’s Appendix N in the last year than I have in the past three decades.

I’m not sure why there’s been such a recent surge of interest in a relatively short addendum to a 1979 gaming volume, to be honest, but I credit James Maliszewski. He’s examined Appendix N more diligently than any other fan writer, with several intriguing articles on his popular gaming blog Grognardia over the years.

Those include “My Appendix N” (from May 8, 2009), in which he answered the question “What fiction has influenced your campaigns, play styles, and writings?”; “Appendix N 2.0” (June 28, 2010), which reviewed the more extensive list of recommended books Gygax compiled thirteen years after the publication of the DMG, for his 1992 fantasy RPG Mythus Magick; and “Appendix N, 1981 Edition” (June 15, 2011), examining the fantasy authors “whose works are relevant to D&D,” as cited by the authors of What is Dungeons & Dragons?

Perhaps most fascinating, one of James’ earliest articles on the subject was “Addendum to Appendix N,” (November 25, 2008), in which he published Gygax’s answer to the question “How would Appendix N change if you’d written it in 2007 rather than 1979?”:

The fact is that I wouldn’t change the list much, other than to add a couple of novels such as Lanier’s second Hiero yarn, Piers Anthony’s Split Infinity series, and the Disc World books.

I would never add other media forms to a reading list. If someone is interested in comic books and/or graphic novels, they’re on their own.

I think it’s probably safe to say that James has been the king of Appendix N scholarship for the past five years. (Read the complete text of Gygax’s original Appendix N here).

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Revisiting A.B. Mitford’s The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai

Sunday, January 19, 2014 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Two weeks ago I reviewed the film 47 Ronin, which Universal Pictures labeled a flop only a day after its U.S. release.

At that point the picture had earned about $85 million worldwide. That take has now increased to $116 million (according to BoxOfficeMojo), still well shy of its $175 million budget. Whether or not Universal’s premature announcement doomed the film, it’s now clear they weren’t wrong about its ultimate fate.

While browsing the remainder tables at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I stumbled on a curious title: The 47 Ronin: Japanese Tales of Vampires, Ghosts, and Renegade Samurai, by A.B. Mitford. I assumed it was a guerrilla tie-in; a cheap reprint timed to capitalize on the release of the movie. Except it was published nearly two years ago, in 2012, and there’s nothing cheap at all about the beautiful design, with striking endpapers and gorgeous color art on nearly every page.

I was right about at least one thing though: it is a reprint. It was originally published as Tales of Old Japan in 1871, one of the very first tomes to bring tales of Japanese monsters to Western shores.

Algernon Bertram Mitford was a British diplomat who later became Baron Redesdale. He developed a keen interest in Japanese folk tales while serving as attaché to the British delegation in Japan from 1866 – 1870 where, among other things, he witnessed the dissolution of the last feudal Japanese military government — the Tokugawa shogunate, ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa clans at Edo Castle — and the founding of a modern nation-state under Emperor Meiji.

Mitford was writing at a time when Japan was beginning to open to the West for the first time, less than 20 years after American Commodore Matthew Perry infamously sailed into Tokyo Bay with modern steam ships and explosive shell guns, gave the Japanese two white flags, and told them to hoist the flags when they wanted him to cease shelling the city and surrender. Perry forced the opening of Japan with the Convention of Kanagawa, and Mitford, writing a decade later, is a textbook case of white-guy-stupid, especially in how he’s perpetually surprised that the Japanese don’t greet Westerners with open arms and a bottle of warm saki.

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Gifts From the Godfather of Space Opera: The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four

Saturday, January 18, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Cancel all my appointments! My copy of The Reign of the Robots, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four arrived today.

Edmond Hamilton is my favorite pulp writer, and has been ever since I encountered his work in Isaac Asimov’s seminal anthology Before the Golden Age. I talked about my early affection for Hamilton — and my frustration at being unable to find some of his most acclaimed early space opera — in my Vintage Treasures piece on The Best of Edmond Hamilton last fall.

At the time I wrote:

While some of Hamilton’s shorter fiction was reprinted over the years, both Cities in the Air and The Universe Wreckers, and much of the longer work which made him famous, was available only in the early pulps in which they first appeared.

Stephen Haffner finally rectified this in 2011 with his The Collected Edmond Hamilton volumes, which gathered at last all of Hamilton’s early pulp work in archival quality hardcovers (thanks Stephen! I owe you one).

When I wrote that, only three volumes of The Collected Edmond Hamilton were available, covering Hamilton’s work from his very first story “The Monster-God of Mamurth” (from Weird Tales, Aug 1926, gathered in The Metal Giants and Others), through “World Atavism” (from Amazing Stories, Aug 1930, collected in The Universe Wreckers.)

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New Treasures: RuneQuest 6 by Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker

Saturday, January 18, 2014 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

It takes a lot to get me to try a new role playing system. I’m fairly happy with the ones I already play — first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and Steve Jackson’s Melee and Wizards games — and I barely have time to devote to those at it is.

I’m not sure what it was that originally drew me to try RuneQuest. I think it might have been the promise of a wholly different flavor of fantasy. AD&D was medieval villages, magic users, and Gygax’s Against the Giants. RuneQuest was talking animals, bronze age warriors from strange ancient cultures, and Paul Jacquey’s enigmatic Duck Tower (“What? A tower of ducks? That’s so weird. What’s with all the ducks in armor? Seriously? Mike, come check this out.”)

So I dragged my brother Mike to a RuneQuest game on the campus at Carleton University in Ottawa, where we soon found ourselves in the thick of a fast-action melee. In our first exposure to critical hit tables, Mike’s grizzled dwarf fighter fumbled an epic axe hit at the height of the battle, and managed to slice off his own leg. To this day, I can’t mention the word “RuneQuest” without Mike growling, “Yeah. Best system in the world.”

Needless to say, Mike didn’t play much after that. But I kept up with the various incarnations. A big part of my fascination was the result of Chaosium’s support efforts, especially the amazing Pavis and Big Rubble boxed sets. I still consider them some of the finest gaming products ever created, and have been much impressed with the recent reprint editions from Moon Design Publications.

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Spotlight on Fantasy Webcomics: Happletea‘s Spin on Mythology and Pop Culture

Friday, January 17, 2014 alanajoli Comments 0 Comment

Loki and Odin from Scott Maynard's Happletea — Loki and Odin from Scott Maynard’s *Happletea*

The majority of webcomics I read are ongoing stories, most with fantasy elements, that focus on character development and plot and world building. Happletea is the only gag strip in my feed, and while it doesn’t have those other elements, it brings both humor and insight in spades. Created by Scott Maynard, the strip has been going since 2008 with some regularity (though not consistent updates), and it is, according to Maynard, “the only comic that excoriates religion, pop culture, and politics while, at the same time, lauding the world of cryptozoology.” I use Maynard’s own description here because it’s not only accurate (I can’t think of another comparable comic, except very possibly Sinfest, which I read only on occasion), but because it captures Maynard’s sense of humor.

In Maynard’s strip, recurring characters include:

Lil K, whose misadventures have included pre-looting for the Mayan apocalypse, starting a revolution in Latin America upon misunderstanding what New Year’s Resolutions were for, and coping with the chaos of New York
Sasquatch, Lil K’s foster father, who packs wormy lunches and occasionally has bizarre fashion sense
God, who takes the form of a cat living at Lil K’s house
Allev, Lil K’s blond friend who is often the voice of reason against Lil K’s antics

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Goodbye, Professor

Friday, January 17, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Russell Johnson, who played the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, died yesterday at the age of 89.

The news reporter for WXRT here in Chicago, Mary Dixon, wryly noted during her morning show that the Professor was the only eligible male on Gilligan’s Island. Watching the show as a young girl, “it was all about the professor,” she said.

For me, a young nerd in Junior High, the professor embodied a little more than that (not that being a brainy sex symbol wasn’t a major accomplishment in itself). Everyone looks for role models at that age, and Russell Johnson’s good-humored, everyman brainiac was perhaps the finest role model on the airwaves in the mid 70s for young science enthusiasts — and I can’t help but wonder who will be cast in the role in the upcoming remake.

There was no shortage of smart characters on television at the time, from Spock to Bruce Bixby’s David Banner (The Incredible Hulk) to Peter Falk’s genius detective Columbo. But none of them was as likable — or as endlessly inventive — as Russell Johnson’s easy-going Professor, who could build a lie detector and a sewing machine out of coconuts. Johnson’s Professor wasn’t just smart… he was funny and charming, and week after week he showed that over-the-top enthusiasm for science didn’t have to be a social liability if you didn’t want it to be. You could be both smart and well-liked; it didn’t have to be a choice.

It was obvious that, in the microcosm of civilization that was Gilligan’s Island, the Professor was the one individual who kept everything running. His was a thankless role. He was constantly taken for granted, many of his ideas failed, and not a single one of his inventions ever got them off the island. But Johnson filled that role with a character who was noble, kind, and constantly upbeat. Here was a man of science who fit in; who was admired and, yes, loved.

Goodbye, professor.

You Can’t Get There From Here

Friday, January 17, 2014 Violette Malan Comments 6 comments

Are Fantasy and SF the genres of travel? I think so. With the exception of brilliant pieces like Julie Czerneda’s recent Turn of Light – where the whole story takes place in one remote valley – most Fantasy novels, and a great many SF novels, involve travel or journeys in a significant way.

The Odyssey, with its hero’s encounters with Cyclops, gods, witches and other monsters, was probably the first fantasy story of any length. Nowadays we tend to think of “epic” as having something to do with scale, but all literature originally designated by that term involved a journey.

LOTR is the most obvious, and likely the most influential example of the modern Fantasy journey, but there are others. Lord Dunsany’s The Charwoman’s Shadow, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter, offer shorter travels, but predate Tolkien. We’ve seen quite a few more recent examples, such as Elaine Cunningham’s Winter Witch, Tanya Huff’s The Silvered, and Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, in which the journey forms the backbone and structure of the novel.

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Blogging Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon, Part Eleven

Friday, January 17, 2014 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

“Tympani” by Dan Barry was serialized by King Features Syndicate from April 27 to July 9, 1955. The strip gets underway with Flash returning to Earth and taking Dale out to enjoy a symphony orchestra concert. Dale’s hair has reverted to its classic look, happily. The concert goes awry when the orchestra launches into a piece and the audience is deafened by the cacophonous sound.

Taking to the streets, they discover every car horn in the city is going off causing accidents and traffic jams. The situation spreads over the globe with factory whistles going off, sonar jamming, rockets misfiring, etc. Soon train accidents cripple the food industry and fuel truck accidents leave people without heat in winter. Dr. Zarkov is busy researching sound vibrations to try to get to the root of the problem that has threatened civilization.

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Goth Chick News: Artist Collective 44Flood Takes on Vampirism

Thursday, January 16, 2014 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

When I see the words “artist collective” and “vampirism” in the same proximity, I am forced to look closer.

I mean, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an artist collective anyway? Probably not vampires.

Until today, I admittedly envisioned a commune, perhaps somewhere in the dessert or maybe Colorado, where personal hygiene is not particularly high on the to-do list. But after doing a bit of research I came to understand that unlike an artist commune, where people live together and produce art as a function of the group’s activities, an artist collective shares ownership, risk, benefits, and status of their joint work; and presumably showering more.

Okay, whatever.

Now that we are all clear on that bit, where exactly does vampirism come in?

44FLOOD is the name of an artist collective and publisher formed by Kasra Ghanbari, Ben Templesmith and Menton Mathews. Templesmith is tapping his old 30 Days of Night bosses IDW Publishing by forming a joint venture to create Libretto: Volume 1: Vampirism.

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