Black Gate – Page 1038 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Summer 2013 Subterranean Magazine now Available

Saturday, July 27, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

The Summer installment of online dark fantasy magazine Subterranean is a special K. J. Parker issue, with two short stories by the pseudonymous author of The Folding Knife and The Engineer trilogy, “The Sun And I” and “Illuminated,” and an article, “Rich Men’s Skins; A Social History of Armour.”

I wonder if the editors have any inside info on who the mysterious K.J. Parker really is? Those Subterranean guys are pretty connected; it’s their job to be in the know on industry secrets and stuff. They’ve published Parker plenty times before — most recently with “Let Maps to Others” (Summer 2012), “The Life and Sad Times of the Western Sword” (Fall 2011), and the World Fantasy Award-winning novella, “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” (Winter 2011).

After a lengthy association like that, you’d think they’d have shelled out a couple bucks for a private eye, and maybe have some fuzzy photos and a database of incriminating leads by now. Like the fact that K.J. Parker and John R. Fultz have never been seen in the same room together. Hmmmm.

If Lee Moyer’s cover looks familiar, it should — it was first used as the cover for Weird Tales 357 (see it here). No crime in re-using great art I guess, but you’d think they’d have chosen something less recent. That issue of WT came out just two years ago! Maybe they’re on a budget. Private eyes aren’t cheap.

They didn’t skimp on the contents though — as usual, this issue is packed with great fiction from some of the top names in the industry, including Joe R. Lansdale, Catherynne M. Valente, and Kat Howard.

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New Treasures: The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe

Friday, July 26, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

It’s Friday. Already. Which means I’m a little tardy getting my latest New Treasures selection up.

I usually decide what book to highlight by glancing over the new arrivals for the week and selecting which one I’m going to read on the weekend. Except this weekend, I’ll have my nose in the 358-page rulebook for Black Crusade, the Warhammer 40k role playing game from Fantasy Flight, learning how to play so I can host an adventure for my kids, who’ve been begging me for weeks. (Why don’t kids play softball any more? Or frisbee? What does that take — 45 seconds prep time?)

So instead, I’m staring longingly at the review books that arrived this week, wishing I could read them. Still, all this Warhammer immersion reminds me of the great adventure fiction set in that universe, and as a result I find the book calling loudest for my attention is Gav Thorpe’s The Crown of the Blood, the first novel in his trilogy of the same name.

Ullsaard has conquered the known world. All have fallen before his armies.

Now it’s time to take the long journey home, back to the revered heart of the great Empire he had helped create for his distant masters. But when he returns to the capital, life there is so very different from what he had believed. Could it be that everything he has fought for, has conquered and killed for, has been a lie?

A sweeping fantasy of immense battles, demonic magic and dark politics.

No waiting around for the sequels, either — they’re already here: The Crown of the Conqueror and The Crown of the Usurper. (Great — more books I can’t read this weekend.) Gav Thorpe has written over a dozen novels in the Warhammer universe for Black Library, including Angels of Darkness and the Sundering trilogy.

The Crown of the Blood was published by Angry Robot in September, 2010. It is 528 pages in paperback, priced at $7.99 ($6.99 for the digital edition). More details at the Angry Robot website.

Blogging Marvel’s Dracula in the 1980s

Friday, July 26, 2013 William Patrick Maynard Comments 8 comments

Bram Stoker’s immortal vampire had left an indelible mark on the comic book industry of the 1970s with Marvel Comics’ award-winning Tomb of Dracula series and its spin-offs. By the following decade, Marvel was ready to put the final stake in the now tired property. The storyline to rid the Marvel Universe of vampires was spread across multiple titles in 1982 and 1983, beginning with Marvel’s biggest title of the decade, The Uncanny X-Men.

Writer Chris Claremont and artist Bill Sienkiewicz kicked the storyline off in Issue #159 of The Uncanny X-Men in a clever update of the Stoker novel that sees Storm falling victim to Dracula. Claremont cleverly starts off with the team frantically rushing to the hospital where their friend has been taken because of dramatic blood loss stemming from a mysterious throat wound. Storm remembers nothing of the attack, has mystified the attending physician by her seemingly miraculous recovery, and yet is decidedly not herself as she exhibits a peculiarly morbid fascination. The one flaw is the story is too rushed. Claremont and Sienkiewicz’s handling of Dracula is the best since Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, if lacking in their unique style and flair. What should have been a multi-part storyline is truncated to fit in a single issue.

Happily, the story served as a prelude to that year’s Uncanny X-Men Annual #6, which developed the storyline further with Storm struggling against Dracula’s hold over her soul; Kitty Pryde falling to possession by Lilith, Dracula’s daughter; Rachel Van Helsing turned into Dracula’s vampire bride; and the Lord of Vampires seeking once more the mystical tome, the Darkhold, which contains the Montesi Formula, the fabled key to wiping out all vampires from the face of the Earth. Once again, the fault is that the story needs far more space than it is allotted. It is a joy to see so many plot strands from Tomb of Dracula being taken up and it is clear that the story is building to a greater story arc, but these issues could have been so much more and with a talented writer and artist team such as Claremont and Sienkiewicz, it is unfortunate they were not.

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FUNGI #21: The Urbille Appears, Thongor Returns, and more…

Thursday, July 25, 2013 John R. Fultz Comments 1 comment

Fungi21-front — Front cover of FUNGI #21.

There’s a place called The Urbille that exists in some distant corner of the space/time continuum. It’s a time/place/city where fractured realities collide, where lost souls amble in prisons of rust or dance in clockwork bodies, and where human flesh is a weakness to be discarded and devoured.

I wrote two stories set in The Urbille. They are positively the WEIRDEST stories I’ve ever written, and now they’re being published together in the jumbo-sized 30th Anniversary Edition of FUNGI. The first Urbille story is called “The Key To Your Heart Is Made of Brass.” The second is “Flesh of the City, Bones of the World.” Both are epic journeys into strangeness, mystery, and horror.

FUNGI #21 is available now and it’s 420 pages of glorious weird fantasy. In addition to my two Urbille tales, which bookend the issue, it includes tons of other stories and articles.

“The Sword of Thongor” is a new tale of Lin Carter’s barbarian hero by Robert M. Price. Weird fiction master Wilum H. Pugmire contributes a new novelette entitled “A Presence of Things Past.”

Fungi21-backcover — Back cover of FUNGI #21.

Additional contributors include:

David Daniel
H.P. Lovecraft
Thomas Ligotti
William F. Nolan
Richard F. Searight
William Hope Hodgson
Ann K. Schwader
Glynn Barrass
James Person, Jr.

Publisher/Editor Pierre Comtois says of the fully illustrated issue: “FUNGI #21 features a stellar lineup of the most incredible talent in the weird fiction field from contemporary hit makers to talented newcomers to yesteryear’s classic authors… including special spotlights on Richard F. Searight and West Coast authors Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, Charles Beaumont and many others. It also features a new interview and fiction from Twilight Zone writer Earl Hamner, Jr.”

The cover painting is a classic piece from Murray Tinkelman, first seen on the cover of Ballantine Books’ edition of H.P. Lovecraft’s THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM in 1976. Another stellar Tinkelman piece graces the back cover, one Ballantine used as the cover of it’s ’76 edition of Lovecraft’s THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD.

To order a copy of FUNGI #21 click here.

Goth Chick News: Elijah Wood Gets Too Freaky for New Zealand

Thursday, July 25, 2013 Sue Granquist Comments 9 comments

Anyone who saw Sin City knows that Elijah Wood can be one creepy dude.

Forget the lovable, hairy-footed Fodo Baggins. As easily as Woods can tear up and give good old Sam Gamgee a hug, he can drop into the role of a glassy-eyed, sociopathic killer with disturbing believability.

Believe me. Because apparently, Wood has his craft so finely tuned that he has managed to skeeve out an entire country.

In a decision revealed Wednesday, New Zealand’s Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) banned Franck Khalfoun’s film Maniac starring Elijah Wood from general screening in New Zealand, saying it can’t be shown outside of film festivals.

The ruling also means the movie can’t be distributed on DVD at a later date.

A remake of William Lustig’s grindhouse cult classic from 1980, Maniac opened in the U.S. last month courtesy of IFC Midnight and had its world premiere at Cannes in 2012.

It was due to screen next at the New Zealand International Film Festival, running July 26th through August 11th.

Explaining the ruling, a representative for the New Zealand fest said that the OFLC informed them that:

The POV (“point of view”) nature of the film mixed with the psychopathic behavior of actor Elijah Wood is more than disturbing, that it’s potentially dangerous in the hands of the wrong person — that is, a non-festival-goer.

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The Doom That Came to Kickstarter

Thursday, July 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

Reports are coming in that Erik Chevalier, the man behind one of the most high-profile Kickstarter game successes of 2012, The Doom That Came To Atlantic City, has admitted that he will never produce the game.

The Doom That Came To Atlantic City, created by Eberron designer Keith Baker and artist Lee Moyer, was a Monopoly-style game with a distinct Cthulhu flair. Described as “A light hearted Lovecraftian game of urban destruction,” the game invited players to take the roles of Great Old Ones in a race to be the first to destroy the world. The Kickstarter campaign launched May 7, 2012 with a $35,000 goal; by the time it closed on June 6, 2012 it had raised an astounding $122,874.

However, over the past 13 months, Chevalier has been releasing increasingly bleak progress reports, culminating in this post Tuesday:

This is not an easy update to write. The short version: The project is over, the game is canceled…

From the beginning the intention was to launch a new board game company with the Kickstarted funds, with The Doom that Came to Atlantic City as only our first of hopefully many projects… Since then rifts have formed and every error compounded the growing frustration, causing only more issues. After paying to form the company, for the miniature statues, moving back to Portland, getting software licenses and hiring artists to do things like rule book design and art conforming the money was approaching a point of no return. We had to print at that point or never. Unfortunately that wasn’t in the cards…

Predictably, the feedback from backers has been scathing.

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“We Thought We Were Immortal”: Robert Bloch on J. Francis McComas, Eric Frank Russell, and Leigh Brackett

Thursday, July 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Last week, as part of my ongoing look at Lester Del Rey’s Best of… paperbacks from the 1970s, I wrote a brief piece on The Best of Robert Bloch. In the Comments section, Tangent editor and uber-fan Dave Truesdale offered up this fascinating tidbit:

Back in 1978 David Gerrold and I edited the Starlog SF Yearbook… For the section titled In Memoriam I wrote Robert Bloch and asked if he would do the honors (Kerry O’Quinn, Starlog publisher had given me a budget and so I was of course paying authors). Bob agreed and turned in well over a thousand words on three people who had passed away in 1978: J. Francis “Mick” McComas, co-founder of F&SF; Eric Frank Russell, and Leigh Brackett. It was a marvelous piece, bookended with how the field had begun so small when everybody knew everybody else and it was a big deal when someone died — and today (1978) when hardly anyone noted the passing of folks like Hugo Gernsback or Raymond Palmer…

After Bob got the check for his piece, he wrote back to express his thanks and that Mrs. Bloch would no doubt enjoy spending it on several bags of groceries.

After thinking on it a bit more, Dave got in touch with Robert Bloch’s daughter, Sally (Bloch) Francy, to ask for permission to reprint the piece. Here’s part of her reply:

I’m sure Dad would be very pleased, and I hope he and Rich Matheson are chatting about it as I ‘speak.’ I babysat for Matheson’s kids and rode horseback with their oldest daughter, Tina… Rich’s passing, though not a surprise, given his age and health issues, was still a shock. He and Harlan Ellison are the two people I knew from when I was a teenager, and to whom I still feel strong emotional ties to my father. They are the last of his generation of the people I knew. I miss my dad every day, still!

Thanks to Dave’s efforts, the complete text of her letter and her father’s 1978 piece are reprinted on the Tangent Online website.

Vintage Treasures: The Comic Times

Thursday, July 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Just check out that 1980 Charles Vess cover at right. Isn’t it neat? I sure thought so, when I accidentally stumbled across it on eBay.

It is now mine. Mine mine mine. Because, Charles Vess. Also, poor impulse control.

Strange thing happened when it arrived, though. I thought I was buying an early issue of The Comics Journal. As soon as I unpacked it — and stopped cooing over the Charles Vess cover — I noticed that it was not an issue of The Comics Journal. It was something called The Comic Times.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I never heard of The Comic Times. Had to look it up and everything.

I’m embarrassed because the early 80s was when I was pretty much completely immersed in the comics scene. I was buying and reading comics by the truckload, from Arthur’s Place in downtown Ottawa. Frank Miller’s Ronin, Cerberus, Love and Rockets, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Keith Giffen’s Legion of Super Heroes, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg, Pacific Comics… I didn’t need something called The Comic Times. I was living The Comic Times.

I’m sure enjoying reading it now, though. It’s a fun and informative little zine, and I bet I would have gotten a lot out of it back in 1980. Near as I can figure out, it only lasted six issues. It was edited by Dennis Cieri and Mark Gasper, and published out of New York. Like The Comics Journal, it was printed on newsprint and looks like it was typeset with a Smith Corona.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1951: A Retro-Review

Wednesday, July 24, 2013 Matthew Wuertz Comments 2 comments

Galaxy’s March, 1951 issue is succinct, offering only five pieces of fiction.

I noticed this on the table of contents: “Next issue at your newsstand first week in March,” which means that the March, 1951 issue was available in early February. That’s fairly standard for magazines (probably so the reader feels like an issue is current), but I admit I still find it confusing.

“The Wind Between the Worlds” by Lester Del Rey – Instead of exploring the solar system, mankind inadvertently figures out how to transport between worlds, drawing the attention of the Galactic Counsel. As a provisional member, Earth can exchange matter with other members of the council. When someone sabotages one of the matter transmitters, it remains open, sucking in large amounts of air from Earth every second. It’s up to a couple of engineers and a bureaucrat to figure out how to switch off the transmitter before the U.S. (under increasing pressure to fix the problem) bombs the facility, which would leave the transmitter permanently open.

I like science fiction like this, where there are a variety of alien races with vastly different cultures and appearances. I also enjoyed how mankind never figured out how to travel through space; we simply figured out how to transport matter to distant areas. Plausible and entertaining.

“The Other Now” by Murray Leinster – Jimmy’s wife is killed in a car accident. But in the weeks that follow, he begins to see glimpses of another reality within his home – her cigarette butts in the ashtray, doors opened that he knows were closed. Then he sees her diary open and reads the latest entry. Not only is it the current date, but she writes of missing Jimmy since his untimely death.

This has a great Twilight Zone feel to it. Yes, I know it predates the show, but the comparison is still valid. Leinster may have been the first author to use the idea of parallel universes, given that his story “Sideways in Time” appeared in the June, 1934 issue of Astounding. I leave this open for discussion.

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When the 21st Century was Far Future: Frank R. Paul: The Dean of Science Fiction Illustration

Wednesday, July 24, 2013 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

I consider Frank R. Paul to be one of the most important — if not the most important — artist in the history of science fiction.

It’s odd then that so few readers today are familiar with his work. Jerry Weist set out to correct that with Frank R. Paul: The Dean of Science Fiction Illustration, a dream project of his that was released only after Weist’s death in 2011.

Paul virtually created American Science Fiction, alongside Hugo Gernsback, in the late 1920s. He was the cover artist Gernsback chose for the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories — every single issue, for over three years, until Gernsback lost control of it in 1929.

That meant Paul crafted many of the defining images of early science fiction, including his interpretation of Buck Rogers (on the cover of Amazing August 1928), H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (August 1927), and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars (Amazing Stories Annual 1927). He made exciting new concepts like space travel, picture-phones, aliens, and robots vivid and real to an America where most people didn’t even own a telephone.

When Gernsback left Amazing behind and founded a new stable of magazines — including Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories — he took Paul with him. Altogether, Paul painted over 300 magazine covers before his death in 1963, most of them for Gernsback.

Paul had numerous artistic firsts. He was the first to paint a space station, for the cover of the August 1929 Science Wonder. He painted the cover for Marvel Comics #1 in October, 1939, giving the world its first look at the Human Torch.

Paul did countless interior illustrations as well. In addition to his striking cover art, he executed a famous series of original paintings imagining life elsewhere in the solar system for the back covers of many of Gernsback’s magazines.

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