Black Gate – Page 1043 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Arak Issue 5: Tournament of Champions!

Monday, July 29, 2013 Nick Ozment Comments 1 comment

Wow! By issue 5 of Arak: Son of Thunder, Roy Thomas and Ernie Colón have really hit their stride. With this issue, I figure I’ve ingested a large enough sample size to recommend this title unequivocally to fans of sword-n-sorcery and high fantasy. I mean, it’s not genre-defining or trend-setting or anything, but it’s well done. Good stuff.

They’ve established main and supporting characters, set up the parameters of the plot, and now the cogs and wheels of the long-term story are starting to turn. But before we get to all that, I must make a follow-up observation about the art:

It is surprising how much of a difference an inker can make. On first glance, one might assume the title had a new artist, but no. Colón’s pencils are now inked by Rodin Rodriguez (who is credited as “Inker/Embellisher”). Inkers bring different styles to the table, and the end product really can take on strikingly different characteristics depending on who is laying down those embellishments.

In my description of the art in my post for issue 4, I noted that the inking sometimes feels a bit rough and muddy, occasionally obscuring or flattening out the action. Here is a study in contrast: the characters and scenes in issue 5 really pop; they’re well defined and striking. Rodriguez’s inking is not as dark or splotchy as his predecessor; rather, he brings a more artistic cross-hatching style, with bold, solid lines that better define bodies and objects.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of Henry Kuttner

Monday, July 29, 2013 John ONeill Comments 17 comments

I’ve gotten used to introducing these vintage Best Of collections — as I did recently with The Best of Robert Bloch and The Best of Murray Leinster — assuming that most readers have no idea who the authors are.

There’s been a surge of interest in Henry Kuttner lately, however, and he’s been in the news half a dozen times this year at Black Gate alone. The most recent was just last week, when we listed him as one of the luminaries covered by Bud Webster’s Past Masters.

But before that, Connor Gormley wrote a Fantasy Face-Off featuring Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis vs. Robert E Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian, I discussed The Startling Worlds of Henry Kuttner and looked at his Weird Tales classic “The Graveyard Rats.” And we announced the lucky winners of the giveaway copies of Thunder in the Void, the deluxe collection of Kuttner’s Space Opera tales from Haffner Press.

It’s not just us with a recent Kuttner obsession. In just the last few years, there’s been a re-discovery of this brilliant pulp author. Haffner also published the detailed retrospective Detour to Otherness, a collection of tales co-written with his wife, C.L. Moore, and a generous volume of his weird menace tales, Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One. He’s been a favorite over at Paizo’s Planet Stories imprint as well, and they’ve brought his classics The Dark World, Elak of Atlantis, and Robots Have No Tails back into print in handsome new editions.

Centipede Press and the Science Fiction Book Club produced a massive 915-page retrospective of Moore and Kuttner’s collaborative work in 2006, Two Handed Engine: The Selected Stories of Henry Kuttner and C.L.Moore.

And his 1943 short story “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” (co-written with Moore) was made into the feature-length film The Last Mimzy by New Line Cinema in 2007.

Seriously, that’s not bad for someone who died over 50 years ago.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Highwater Harbor” Part Three, by Aaron Bradford Starr

Sunday, July 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Gallery Hunters Gloren Avericci and Yr Neh discover that there is more than one plot afoot in their search for the enigmatic Highwater Harbor — and that danger comes in many forms.

False panels fell away on every side, revealing the entire hold to be lined floor to ceiling with tiny, latched compartments. Before Yr Neh or I could properly react, each of the hundreds of brass latches clicked from their secure position, freeing the doors to swing open.

From each, the tiny dark forms of rats tumbled, gathering into a squeaking carpet.

Yr Neh, staring with horrible fascination, let out a deep growl. As one, the living mass faced us. With high barks and squeaks of rodent rage, the rats charged forward toward this living symbol of feline oppression, and, by extension, toward me.

I retreated atop the nearest crate, while Yr Neh climbed up my exterior, to stand, defiant, upon my shoulders, teeth bared, claws flexing for purchase, which he found at the level of unyielding bone. The wave of rats washed forward, up the sides of the boxes, relentlessly advancing.

“Kill him!” Pamani screeched from below.

Louis West at Tangent Online called “The Sealord’s Successor” a “gripping tale of fantasy, mystery, murder and intrigue. A must read” and “The Tea-Maker’s Task” “an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek fantasy… I wanted more.” We’re more than happy to oblige with this fourth exciting installment of the adventures of Gallery Hunter Gloren and his cat companion, Yr Neh.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Jamie McEwan, Martha Wells, Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“The Highwater Harbor” is a 35,000-word novella of fantasy mystery presented in three parts, with original art by Aaron Bradford Starr. Part I is here; all three parts are offered at no cost.

Read Part III here.

“What If Luck Wasn’t a Matter of Chance?”: OXV: The Manual

Sunday, July 28, 2013 Matthew David Surridge Comments 4 comments

OXV: The Manual The 2013 edition of Montreal’s Fantasia film festival is well underway and I’ve been able to see three films so far, with more planned. A few days ago, I watched The Garden of Words, a visually spectacular 45-minute slice-of-life anime, and at noon yesterday took in After School Midnighters, a kid-oriented 3D animated movie that nicely balances plot and wackiness. Then, later that afternoon, I attended a showing of OXV: The Manual, a science-fiction film premiering at the festival. I was impressed enough to want to write about it here.

OXV is an exceptionally strong film, not flawless, but dedicated to its ideas and the science-fictional notions driving its plot. At its core are questions of determinism and free will, questions the movie builds to and explores rigorously. Around these themes it subtly but surely builds a kind of alternate reality, then over the course of its story develops that reality in ways that we don’t expect. The structure of the film is complex without being hard to follow, and opens up into a larger tale than we might at first suspect. Overall, it’s hard not to think of Primer while watching it; it’s not that the two films are similar, but they’re both good films that tell truly science-fictional stories on relatively limited budgets.

In a world, and specifically an England, where people’s relative levels of luck have been measured scientifically, an absurdly unlucky boy falls in love with the luckiest girl in the world. The boy has a low ‘frequency,’ the girl a high one; they cancel each other out and create wildly improbable events if they spend more than a minute together. Young Isaac Newton — in this world, people are named for great scientists and thinkers; Isaac’s known as Zak — persists in loving Marie anyway, despite the fact that a side-effect of her high frequency is a lack of emotion. With his friend, Theodore Adorno Strauss, he struggles to come up with a way to change his frequency. They succeed, developing a ‘manual’ that suggests words that alter the speaker’s luck. The movie develops from there, exploring ramifications and unintended consequences of their discovery.

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New Treasures: The Fall of the First World, Book Two: Sorrowing Vengeance by David C. Smith

Sunday, July 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’ve seen a lot of exciting news from David C. Smith recently.

If you’ve been following the Black Gate Online Fiction series (see the latest here), you know that his recent collaboration with Joe Bonadonna, Waters of Darkness, has been near the top of our monthly traffic charts since we published an excerpt back in March. And just a few months ago, our website editor, Michael Penkas, reviewed his much-loved Red Sonja novels, co-written with Richard L. Tierney in the early 80s.

That wasn’t even the big news, however. No, that was the re-release of Dave’s seminal fantasy trilogy The Fall of the First World, originally published in paperback by Pinnacle Books in 1983. Unavailable for nearly thirty years, these exciting novels are finally being returned to print by Borgo Press. The first, The West is Dying, appeared in November, and now we’re very pleased to see that volume two, Sorrowing Vengeance, arrived last month.

“I see more in darkness than you can see in the light.” A priest turned sorcerer is reborn as the ultimate creature of Evil. He will topple a throne and begin the destruction of the world, even as the crowns of two empires move inexorably toward launching an impossible war that neither can win. The King of Athadia, fearing a personal curse, tries to maintain peace. But when his Queen is abducted by the barbarian ruler of the East — and she welcomes the affront — armies gather on every border, and ships set sail on oceans of blood. The world is at war, and a great sorrowing vengeance, foretold long ago, comes to life in the darkest of times… The second great fantasy novel in the epic saga of The Fall of the First World!

Sorrowing Vengeance was published by Borgo Press on June 19. It is 452 pages, priced at $18.99 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition. The third and final volume, The Passing of the Gods, is also due this month.

The Secret Supplement: Greyhawk, Gygax, and Outdoor Survival

Sunday, July 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 23 comments

A while ago, my 13-year-old daughter Taylor told me her friend Will had seen the famous “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” episode of Community and wanted to learn how to play.

“Sure,” I said. “Tell him to come over on Saturday and I’ll put together a quick adventure for both of you.” My 15-year-old son Drew joined in, creating a fighter, and even Tim, my 17-year old, got in on the action, rolling up a 1st level magic user.

That was over six months ago. What began as a simple session, involving a bunch of farm kids rescuing a dwarven thief named Jasper from marauding gobins, has evolved into an epic campaign, a desperate adventure to stop an army of hobgobins and orcs from completing a railroad that will bring war to their frontier home.

It’s the most fun I’ve had role playing in decades.

I introduced my kids to D&D years ago, but we played only intermittently, and the campaign — such as it was — never really built up steam. The addition of a fourth player, from outside the family, has brought with it a regular Saturday morning schedule, and the result is a much heightened level of interest from everyone involved.

Things are happening faster, they’re leveling up quicker, and they spend the days between sessions talking excitedly, planning, and trying to puzzle out how all the clues they’ve uncovered fit together to reveal the sinister plan behind events.

It’s brought a change in how I dungeon master, too. When I was DM for a group my own age, from roughly 1980 to 2000, there was a certain level of performance anxiety. Every session had to be bigger and better, each adventure more ambitious and epic than the last. I couldn’t just create a fun, two-hour subterranean module… I had to bring an entire underworld civilization to life, with a believable backstory and vast cast of heroes and villains.

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Jack Vance and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Saturday, July 27, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Ah, Appendix N, the gift that keeps on giving. In the years before the Internet, it’s how young readers discovered great fantasy.

Over at Tor.com, Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode continue with their ambitious and well-researched journey through Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N, the library of fantasy and SF titles in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. They’ve already covered Fritz Leiber, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sterling E. Lanier and Robert E. Howard. Here they are on Jack Vance:

Mordicai Knode: Also worth noting that everybody’s favorite evil wizard turned lich turned demigod turned major deity, Vecna, is named after a “Vance” anagram. & while we are pointing out bits and pieces — like the prismatic spray, which is such an amazing piece of writing, such a great turn of phrase, that it inspired a whole range of spells — I want to mention the ioun stones. In Dungeons & Dragons they are these little gemstones that float around your head—I always imagined the Bit from Tron — but in The Dying Earth story that inspired them, the IOUN stones are much more sinister and are gleaned from the center of a dwarf star that has been cut in half by the shrinking edges of the universe. Just let that sink in; that is really an incredible idea… And those sorts of ideas are scattered all over the book, like some pirate with holes in his pocket idly scattered gold doubloons all over it.

Tim Callahan: It’s kind of like, for me anyway, when I was a kid, and I’d read the AD&D Player’s Handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide and just read through some of the spell names or magic item titles (without reading the descriptions below) and imagine what weird and wonderful things these powers and items could do. Vance reminded me of that world of possibilities, almost on every page.

Read the complete article here.

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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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