Black Gate – Page 1011 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

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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Syria AD256 City of Dura Europos

Thursday, January 16, 2014 Comments 2 comments

Two dozen Roman soldiers clamber into a narrow counter-mine and dress their shields. Armour clattering and grating on the rough-cut rock walls, they jog through the cool tunnel towards the Persian mine.

At stake are the walls of Dura Europos and the people they protect — the citizens and the women and children of the garrison. Can the Romans clear the tunnel before the Persians fire it, bringing down the ramparts so that they can pour in and massacre or enslave the population?

Tunnel fights are intimate scrums by lamplight. There’s no space for unit tactics. It’ll be a head-to-head fight and these Romans are a human battering ram.

The soldier behind will shove. The one in front will hack and stab like a madman until he falls and the next blunders over him to take his turn.

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Vintage Treasures: Br-r-r-! edited by Groff Conklin

Thursday, January 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

You’ve got to admire an editor who titles his anthology Br-r-r-! You just know it caused fits with distributors, book sellers, librarians and other folks who alphabetize books for a living.

Mind you, Br-r-r-! was Conklin’s 21st science fiction anthology, and I figure by that point you’ll do anything to break up the tedium a bit. It was released in 1959; by 1964 he was so desperate for new topics he was putting out books like Great Detective Stories About Doctors (um, what?). He eventually produced 44 anthologies, before (presumably) going crazy and locking himself in a lighthouse.

In any event, Br-r-r-! looks like a terrific collection, starting with that striking and original Richard Powers cover. Put that cover on a phone book, and I still might choose to read that over a lot of other stuff on the shelves in 1959. Just sayin’.

Here’s the back-cover text. If this doesn’t bring you back to the classic era of 1950s monster movies, then your education is seriously lacking.

B R R R R ! — you’ll shudder when you meet:

THE MONSTER WORM that took 200 years to come up from the depths of the damned — it hated mankind!
THE BEETLE FROM HELL whose stinger brought slow, excruciating death — its evil eyes held the promise of something even worse!
THE LIVING CORPSE that commanded a graveyard. It sentenced a mortician to the bubbling bowels of hell!

And in “Legal Rites,” Isaac Asimov relates the fascinating — and gory — story of a blood-dripping specter fighting for its right to haunt a house. Asimov flavors pure horror with a unique brand of fantastic humor.

These are some of the blood-curdling, heart-pounding messengers of horror to be found in these bloodstained pages of evil!

Just for the record, the pages in my copy are not actually bloodstained. Or evil.

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The Church and Treasury of the Teutonic Order, Vienna

Wednesday, January 15, 2014 Sean McLachlan Comments 3 comments

Gold crucifix and reliquary, 19th century

Vienna is home to many great treasures, such as the Kunsthistorisches Museum with its fine art collection and the Hapsburg armor and armor collection at the Neue Berg. One little museum that’s often overlooked is the Church and Treasury of the Teutonic Order.

Tucked away near Stefansdom, the city’s cathedral, it’s easy to miss with its small steeple, smaller sign, and simple front gate. Go inside, however, and you’ll be in for a treat.

First stop is the 14th century Gothic church, remodeled in the early 18th century in the Baroque style. There’s a fine triptych from Flanders made in 1520 and the walls are covered with the coats of arms of various men who have joined the Order, which is formally called The Order of The Teutonic Knights of St. Mary’s Hospital in Jerusalem.

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Observations: The Two Towers Movie

Wednesday, January 15, 2014 Jon Sprunk Comments 5 comments

Last week I wrote about The Fellowship of the Ring movie, and this week I follow up with the sequel, The Two Towers.

One of the first things I noticed about this film was the short, choppy sequencing of scenes. This mainly occurred in the first hour, and it made for a slightly disjointed viewing experience.

The movie picks up right where Fellowship left off, starting with a gorgeous panorama shot of snow-capped mountains. Then we relive Gandalf’s fall from the bridge of Khazad Dum, but this time we get to see more of his battle with the Balrog, which is sheer awesomeness.

The perspective switches (get ready for a lot of this) to Frodo and Sam, tired and lost, as they make their way through the razor cliffs of Emyn Muil. We see that the Ring is getting heavier for Frodo, who feels its pull more than ever before, and certainly more than old Bilbo ever seemed to exhibit (except for brief spells.) This wandering phase is rather dull until the arrival of Gollum, who has been following the hobbits with plans to steal back the Ring. They catch him in the act and truss him up with elven rope. Frodo decides to free Gollum in exchange for leading them to Mordor; Sam doesn’t trust him (with good reason).

I want to pause a moment here to say that the portrayal of Gollum by actor Andy Serkis is – without a doubt — the highlight of this movie. The Two Towers has always been my least favorite book of the trilogy, sometimes tedious in its depression, but Gollum elevates this movie to being almost as good as the first one. A vicious little beast who can turn so sweet and cute, he is a masterstroke of acting and CGI genius.

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New Treasures: The Big Book of Adventure Stories, edited by Otto Penzler

Wednesday, January 15, 2014 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I love these big omnibus collections, and The Big Book of Adventure Stories is much bigger and omnibus-er than most. Weighing in at a generous 896 pages, it’s Penzler’s generous gift to those of us who love fast-paced pulp adventure… or just need a door stop (for a bank vault).

The massive volume is divided in 11 intriguing sections, including Sword & Sorcery, Man Vs. Nature, Island Paradise, Go West, Young Man (pulp westerns), Future Shock (science fiction), Yellow Peril (sinister Asian villains), and by far the largest, In Darkest Africa.

You can pack a lot of great authors into nearly 900 pages, and Penzer doesn’t disappoint, including Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Philip Jose Farmer, Harold Lamb, Rudyard Kipling, Ray Cummings, Rafael Sabatini, Sax Rohmer, Cornell Wollrich, Louis L’Amour, and many others. Among other fascinating tales are the one that introduced The Cisco Kid, O. Henry’s 1907 “The Caballero’s Way,” and Edgar Rice Burrough’s complete novel Tarzan the Terrible.

Everyone loves adventure, and Otto Penzler has collected the best adventure stories of all time into one mammoth volume. With stories by Jack London, O. Henry, H. Rider Haggard, Alastair MacLean, Talbot Mundy, Cornell Woolrich, and many others, this wide-reaching and fascinating volume contains some of the best characters from the most thrilling adventure tales, including The Cisco Kid; Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Bulldog Drummond; Tarzan; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Conan the Barbarian; Hopalong Cassidy; King Kong; Zorro; and The Spider. Divided into sections that embody the greatest themes of the genre — Sword & Sorcery, Megalomania Rules, Man vs. Nature, Island Paradise, Sand and Sun, Something Feels Funny, Go West Young Man, Future Shock, I Spy, Yellow Peril, In Darkest Africa — it is destined to be the greatest collection of adventure stories ever compiled.

Featuring: Lawless open seas, ferocious army ants, deadeyed gunmen, exotic desert islands, feverish jungle adventures.

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Ancient Worlds: But Is It True?

Tuesday, January 14, 2014 Elizabeth Cady Comments 6 comments

Before we go any further in the discussion of the origins of fantasy and science fiction in ancient literature, I wanted to address a basic question:

Did the Greeks believe any of this was true?

When we sit down to read a work of fantasy, we are very aware of reading about a constructed space. We know we are temporarily inhabiting an imagined world, and much of our delight comes from that work of imagination. Our appreciation of any verisimilitude comes attached to that sense of creation: it is exciting to us that the work we are reading is believable even though it is pretend.

(This is, of course, what non-geeks often don’t understand about those of us of the geekly persuasion. How, they wonder, can you spend so much time arguing over the minutiae and plot holes of a story in which a basic premise is “we live in space and , even more unbelievably, do without money”? The answer is that even a pretend world needs internal consistency, and we argue because tolerances on that consistency vary. I can’t stop tearing my hair out at the messed up timeline of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, my husband thinks this is hilarious, I love him anyway.)

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)

Tuesday, January 14, 2014 Ryan Harvey Comments 13 comments

Other Installments

Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)
Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)
Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1997)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

Sayanora, Tsubaraya — and Sayanora, Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

The end of the Golden Age of Japanese Giant Monster movies coincided with the end of the most productive era for the Japanese film industry. Starting in the early 1950s, the country’s film industry experienced a meteoric rise. The major studios released a combined average of 450 movies to theaters each year. But the growth of television in the 1960s started to erode film attendance. In the late-‘60s, audience levels dropped precipitously, numerous theaters closed, and the studios faced cutbacks. Contract directors and stars were released, departments were scaled down or eliminated, and the studio responsible for the “Gamera” and “Daimajin” films, Daiei, was forced out of business entirely.

Science-fiction and monster movies had it particularly rough because of the growth of television. Popular superhero TV shows offered a cheaper alternative for young audiences to get their giant monster fix. The children who increasingly made up the viewership for Godzilla movies could now see kaiju action daily from their living rooms.

Ironically, the person most responsible for the growth of SF television was Eiji Tsubaraya, Toho Studio’s master of visual effects and one of the four “Godzilla Fathers.” Tsubaraya formed his own independent company, Tsubaraya Productions, in 1963 to create special-effects television programs. The 1966 hit show Ultra Q led to the monumental success of Ultraman the next year. Each week, Ultraman pitted its giant-sized title hero against a new monster. Clone shows sprouted everywhere, and the monsters of cinema screens started to bring in less money.

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