Black Gate – Page 1019 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

My Favorite Fantasy Movies

Wednesday, October 2, 2013 Jon Sprunk Comments 15 comments

I love a good fantasy movie, and love to goof on bad ones, too. Fantasy is a genre that didn’t always translate well to the big screen, until the recent advances in CGI technology allowed studios to capture creatures such as dragons and Balrogs in all their glory.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Classic Schwarzenegger. Although this adaptation departs from the style (and story) of Robert E. Howard’s books, it retains the grit and raw muscular power of Conan in a way that the newer incarnation (sorry, Jason Momoa) couldn’t begin to match.

James Earl Jones was a masterstroke of casting as the villainous wizard Thulsa Doom. This film contains some unforgettable scenes: Conan growing up pushing that big mill wheel, the witch who had sex with Conan and then tried to kill him, breaking into the Temple of Set, the Tree of Woe, and of course the awesomely bloody climax where Conan cuts his way through legions of fanatics to eventually take the head of his enemy.

Conan, you taught us the riddle of steel, and for that we thank you.

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The Series Series: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin by L. Jagi Lamplighter

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 Sarah Avery Comments 0 Comment

Don’t start with the cover, or the blurb, or the elevator pitch. Don’t start with which other books The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin resembles.

To get into the right mood for the story and its intriguing implications, consider Pollepel Island, a ruined fantasy landscape in the Hudson River. Many times I’ve taken the train north from New York City and looked forward to the few minutes’ glimpse of the Bannerman Castle. It’s a story magnet.

L. Jagi Lamplighter is not the first fantasy author to use the island as a setting, but she may be the first one to capture how much it feels like a misplaced island, like a chunk of dream-Scotland lifted by giants from another continent–if not another universe entirely–and deposited randomly in America. Lamplighter’s version of Pollepel Island is an illusion that hides in plain sight the floating island of Roanoke. Yes, the Lost Colony’s Roanoke, navigated around the world by sorcerers who built there a sanctuary and a school.

All roads lead to wizard school. Don’t let it get you down. Lamplighter is doing several unexpected things with the wizard school trope.

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Ancient Worlds: The World on the Other Side of This One

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 Elizabeth Cady Comments 4 comments

Johann_Heinrich_Füssli_063 — Take a left at Charybdis. If Scylla eats one of your men, you’ve gone too far. Watch out for the Sirens, those women and the ai-ai-ai they make me crazy… you’ll see an island on your left, that’s Crete. I used to drink with a guy from Crete, he was so cheap…

Storytelling, great storytelling, exists on two levels. It tells us the particular story, of course, but it also tells us the Big Ones. It asks the great questions: about ourselves, our relationships to each other and the universe, about life and death and love and fate. The Odyssey, being great storytelling in addition to beautiful poetry, grapples with the biggest of these: what is this humanity of ours? What does it mean? Odysseus wanders, definitely lost, and in the course of finding home also stumbles through illustrations of what a man is.

His adventures with the Cyclops looks at the difference between a ‘civilized’ man and a monster. His encounter with the Lotus-eaters teaches that memory is essential to identity. And of course, no journey is properly heroic without a road trip to the land of the dead.

Back at Circe’s place, she had told our hero that he had to get directions home from Tiresias.

Which raises the question: why? She’s a goddess who can turn men into animals and, in fact, give him directions to the land of the bleedin’ dead, so why can’t she tell him herself?

Maybe he wouldn’t take directions from a woman.

Maybe she didn’t know the way to Ithaca. Humbling for the island’s king: where ya from? Ithaca? Never heard of it…

Or maybe Odysseus’s problem was less a lack of GPS than the fact that he had royally pissed off the god of the seas. As a man with a fascinating relationship with the gods (more on that another time…), Tiresias was particularly qualified to give the king advice on how to placate Poseidon.

Since Tiresias was dead, this poses quite the trick. But Odysseus wants to get home so badly that he will run the risk.

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Remembering Dave

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 James Maliszewski Comments 4 comments

Had he not died of cancer in 2009, today would have been the 66th birthday of David L. “Dave” Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and one of the most under-appreciated creators of the past century.That may sound like an exaggeration, but I mean it most sincerely. Through the medium of tabletop roleplaying games, a concept that owes as much to his imagination and ingenuity as anyone’s, Arneson has profoundly affected millions of lives, including my own. If you’ve ever played in any kind of game that featured a “dungeon” or had a character with “hit points” or who earned “experience points,” you can thank Dave Arneson, who pioneered all these game mechanics in his Blackmoor campaign in Minneapolis during the early 1970s. It was Arneson who made the conceptual leap from fighting battles on a sand table with miniature metal figures to playing individual characters who explored monster-filled labyrinths in search of “more and bigger loot,” as Volume 3 of the 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons memorably puts it.

Sadly, Arneson is far from a household name. When Gary Gygax, D&D‘s other co-creator, died in 2008, it was big news. Newspapers, magazines, and websites across the world, including such prestigious ones as The New York Times, The Economist, and the BBC (to cite but a few) all included high-profile obituaries of the man whom they called “the Father of Roleplaying Games.” More than that, these obituaries often served as springboards for wide-ranging reflections about RPGs and their place in shaping contemporary popular culture. The video game industry in particular hailed Gygax as its intellectual forefather, citing the seminal role Dungeons & Dragons played in shaping it – and rightly so, I should add. There’s no question that Gary Gygax played an incalculably huge role in the popularization of the roleplaying game, a new form of entertainment whose ideas took the world by storm.

Arneson’s death, just a little over a year later, didn’t receive quite the same kind of coverage. There were still obituaries in The New York Times and on the BBC, of course, but they were shorter, more muted affairs, perhaps in part because Gygax’s death was still fresh in people’s minds and there didn’t seem to be much more to say about Arneson that hadn’t already been said about Gygax.

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New Treasures: Let the Old Dreams Die by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

John Ajvide Lindqvist may be the breakout horror writer of the last decade.

That’s not what I might have predicted, given his bio. Lindqvist was a street magician and stand-up comic in Sweden when his first novel appeared. Set in his home town of Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, Let the Right One In (2004) has been filmed twice, once in Swedish and once in English, and both versions have brought him hosts of new fans. His second novel, Handling the Undead (2005), featured a horde of zombies shambling towards Stockholm; Harbour arrived in 2008, followed by Little Star in 2010.

Of course, being prolific is no proof of popularity. No, the real evidence that he’s become a mainstream horror phenomenon is more obvious: he is relentless compared to Stephen King. Of the eight blurbs reprinted on the back of his latest, the short story collection, Let the Old Dreams Die, more than half invoke King: “Reminiscent of Stephen King at his best” (The Independent). “Deserves to be as much of a household name as Stephen King” (SFX). “Sweden’s answer to Stephen King” (Daily Mirror). Makes me wonder if Stephen King will pick the book up in Barnes and Noble and think to himself, “Hey, this guy sounds pretty good.”

Let the Old Dreams Die contains a dozen short stories and novellas, including sequels to both Let the Right One Did and Handling the Undead.

Because of the two superb films made of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In, millions of people around the world know the story of Oskar and Eli and of their final escape from Blackeberg at the end of the novel. Now at last, in “Let the Old Dreams Die,” the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair…

“Let the Old Dreams Die” is not the only stunner in this collection. In “Final Processing,” Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. “Equinox” is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor’s house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect.

Let the Old Dreams Die was released today by Thomas Dunne Books. It is 400 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover, and $14.99 in digital format.

Richard Kadrey Talks with Black Gate About Dead Set

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 Patty Templeton Comments 0 Comment

Richard Kadrey is the kinda guy you see at the all night diner who looks like a degenerate even when he’s sitting there eating a burger. Dark hair. Dark glasses. Dark tattoos. Except the knuckle ink, that’s white. He’s the kinda guy that when he looks up from his coffee and smiles at you, you can’t tell if that grin means he’s going to steal your car on the way out or say hello.

Either way, he’s ridiculously charming and… cool. Like James Dean, Nick Cave, Wild One, cool. You can tell, lookin’ at the rough bastard that he’s got good stories. Like maybe he was a teenage werewolf or used to live with a burlesque troupe in Berlin or he and Tom Waits went on benders in adult theaters in New Orleans — but before you get the nerve to say hey, he picks up his yellow legal pad, tosses the waitress a tip and he’s off into the night.

Now take all that nonchalant badassery and put it on the page because Richard Kadrey’s books are as hella cool as he is.*

Kadrey’s upcoming young adult novel, Dead Set, is about Zoe, a high school kid dealing with the loss of her dad. Zoe and her mom moved to the city. Money’s tight, the insurance company isn’t paying, and starting over sucks for both of them. While her mom non-stop job searches, Zoe is left mostly alone to deal with her grief.

Zoe stumbles on a record store that might be the answer to her problems. The records sold therein don’t hold music in the grooves… they hold souls – including Zoe’s dad… and it’s only a short jaunt from the shop to the underworld.

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September Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 3 comments

Each month, there is enough new fantasy short fiction published to fill a small anthology and it’s right out there on the Internet, just waiting to be read for free. For the past year and a half, I’ve been turning to the pages of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Swords and Sorcery Magazine for a steady dose of new stories. I’m always on the lookout for new sources so if you have any suggestions please, let me know.

I don’t know anything about Curtis Ellett, editor of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, but for nearly two years now he’s been publishing two stories every month. His is a bare-bones e-zine that pays very little, yet has manages to publish fun and worthwhile stories. This month, both stories are good, though only one can be called heroic fantasy.

September’s issue opens with “Carnival Man” written by Alexandra Seidel. Every generation or so, the Carnival Man appears in a random city and calls all, humans and undead alike, to participate in his great revel. Some, like the wandering bard Lykaris, are chosen to serve as members of his personal entourage. With little plot, it reads more like notes from a dream than a story. A good dream, yet a little vague for my taste.

Jeffery A. Sergent‘s “The Young God’s Tears” is more in keeping with the magazine’s title than Seidel’s story. Jade, a young thief and mixed-race daughter of “a robust crusader from the Northern Realms” and a “tiny, porcelain princess from the Eastern Empire,” takes a bet to see if a fabled set of gems really exists. The wager leads her to infiltrate a temple and complications ensue. It’s middling S&S, straight up no chaser. It’s got a nice bit of world-building and some solid action. Nothing extraordinary, but a fun way to spend fifteen minutes.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies publishes every two weeks. They’re not tethered to heroic fantasy and for the past few months they had been letting me down by publishing lots of sci-fi and modern fantastic stories. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you’re looking for an S&S fix, it does not satisfy. This month, BCS is back on track as far as I’m concerned.

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The Horror! Weird of Oz Introduces 5 Weeks of Frights

Monday, September 30, 2013 Nick Ozment Comments 0 Comment

There are ghosts roaming around / Don’t you hear that spooky sound? / They’re out to scare / It’s like a nightmare / There are ghosts roaming around / Tonight’s their night / They’re out to fright / There are ghosts roaming around / Where oh where? / I think one’s there! / There are ghosts roaming around — Nick Ozment, 3^rd grader, 1980

Okay, that is one of the earliest pieces of writing I have, about thirty-three years ago. As you can see, my themes haven’t changed much. October is my favorite month.

Sooo, throughout October, my Black Gate blog posts are all going to be horror-themed, building up to my favorite holiday (which I spell with an apostrophe), Hallowe’en.

For those readers who have been following my blogging of Arak, Son of Thunder through the first 10 issues of its 50-issue run, fear not! I will be returning to that in November (so you’ll have to wait a month for another installment, coincidentally the typical wait for a new issue of an actual comic).

Ghosts and hauntings are on my mind pretty much year-round (for the record, I consider myself an open-minded skeptic). Nary a month goes by that I don’t watch a horror film or read a horror story or do some prying into the paranormal, and this month in particular such thoughts will be at the forefront of my haunted lobes.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of James Blish

Monday, September 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 18 comments

And so we come to the final Classics of Science Fiction volume, The Best of James Blish, published in August 1979.

Final as in the last one published, not the last one we’ll talk about here. We’re at roughly the halfway point in terms of coverage, as I’ve only written about 11 of the 21 volumes so far. I’m not covering them in chronological order (but that probably would have been a good idea, now that I think about it).

As we’ve discussed in the Comments section of previous posts, Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction library is perhaps the finest mass market survey of early 20th Century short SF and fantasy. But looking at it purely from a historical viewpoint, it sure made some odd choices.

Where’s the Best of Robert A. Heinlein, for example? Or Isaac Asimov? Arthur C. Clarke? For that matter, Jack Vance? Keith Laumer? A.E. van Vogt or Gordon R. Dickson? Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Herbert, or Anne McCaffrey?

The answer is simple, of course. Del Rey was limited to publishing the stories he could get rights to — and the short fiction of many of the genre’s top writers, including Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, and Clarke, was tied up with other publishers. It’s a wonder he was able to acquire as many top-flight writers as he did.

And there were obviously commercial factors weighing on his selection as well. While some of his early authors — like John W. Campbell and Stanley Weinbaum — had stopped producing fiction decades ago, Del Rey caught on quickly to the idea that his popular Best of… line was a great way to introduce readers to his midlist authors. And so later entries included The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun and The Best of Hal Clement, authors with a much lower profile than Leiber, Henry Kuttner, or Edmond Hamilton, but who had the good fortune to have books in print from Del Rey in the late 70s.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Vestments of Pestilence” by John C. Hocking

Sunday, September 29, 2013 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

John C. Hocking returns to the pages of Black Gate after too long an absence, with another exciting tale of the Archivist and his friend Lucella.

Sevron Glauco turned with a swirl of his fine cloak, and we followed him out of guard tower 47 into the nighted city of Frekore, wondering where we were going and what a daughter of the Royal House wanted with two such as us.

“She’s broken house arrest in defiance of the King,” I said softly.

“Yes,” said Lucella, sounding unaccountably cheerful, “which makes us her accomplices in treason.”

“Gods and demons,” I swore. “What is it with you?”

Sherwood Smith at SF Site had this to say about “A River Through Darkness and Light,” the fourth Archivist tale, when it appeared in Black Gate 15:

Lucella, a tough warrior woman, and the first-person narrator Archivist, have history together, as they travel in search of a hidden stash of ancient scrolls, accompanied by a scholar and an old soldier. Unfortunately, they are chased by bandits bent on vengeance… and then there’s the demon…

I think of Hocking’s stories as characteristic of Black Gate: a strong blend of the old sword and sorcery action and mood, but with modern attention to character development, especially of the women… this story is a promising opening to the issue.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Michael Shea, Ryan Harvey, Peadar Ó Guilín, Dave Gross, Vaughn Heppner, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a complete 10,000-word novelette of sword & sorcery. It is offered at no cost.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Read the complete story here.