Vintage Treasures: The List of 7 by Mark Frost

Vintage Treasures: The List of 7 by Mark Frost

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The List of Seven Inside Spread-small

I love buying paperback collections. Like this one, which I  found online last week. Just look at at all those gorgeous vintage paperbacks. Seriously, click on that link and look at them. I’ll wait.

Twenty-eight volumes in terrific shape, for less than twenty bucks. Including four early volumes from Neal Barrett, Jr; three vintage Lovecraft collections (one of them The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath); both Ballantine volumes of William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land; one of Lin Carter’s better fantasy collections, Imaginary Worlds; A. Merritt’s The Moon Pool; a smattering of Ursula K. LeGuin, plus C.S. Lewis, Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Bellairs, and half a dozen more. There’s even a beautiful copy of Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space, which I’ve lusted after ever since Violette Malan teased me with the cover in her article on science fiction mysteries last month.

Man, I could just lay these babies down on the floor and roll around in ’em. Except that would probably dog ear the covers.

They finally arrived today, carefully packed in tightly wrapped plastic, and I gently unwrapped them and settled in to examine my new treasures. Many clamored for attention, but the one that practically jumped into my hands was The List of 7, by Mark Frost. That’s the inside front cover above, complete with mummies, gruesome spectres, ghosts, a train chase, and — speaking of Sherlock Holmes — the words “The Game’s Afoot” scrawled on parchment (click for a bigger version).

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Challenging the Classics: Questioning the Arbitrary Browsing Mechanism

Challenging the Classics: Questioning the Arbitrary Browsing Mechanism

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Malinda Lo Adaptation-smallOn what basis, really, do we choose the books we read?

Imagine you’re given a voucher to spend at your favourite bookstore, the value of which is sufficient that, in addition to picking up whichever must-have titles from your favourite authors you’ve been desperate to get your hands on, you’re able to grab some new things, too. The store is well-stocked, you have all day to browse, and a keen desire to spend your voucher all at once, just for the sheer satisfaction of going home with as many books as possible.

So how do you decide what to buy?

Actually, scrap that: there’s a more important question to ask first. Namely: how do you  decide what to contemplate buying? Because regardless of how much free time you have or how broad your tastes, it’s highly unlikely you’ll give equal attention to every book on offer. For whatever reason – or sometimes, given the automatic, reflexive nature of our deeper mental processes, for no real reason at all – in a sea of unknown titles and unfamiliar authors, certain works will nonetheless catch our eye. The font, the cover image, the colour scheme, the title; even the author’s name is sometimes enough to have us reaching for one equally unknown story over another, and if the blurb or first page looks promising, too, then why not give it a try? I’ve certainly bought books that way, and while the resulting purchases can be hit and miss, the act of experimentation is always fun.

But there are different gradations of unfamiliarity. Some books we flirt with over time, never quite sure when we’ll finally take the plunge, but ghosting their spines with our fingertips in the interim – a preemptory possession. Other books are so ubiquitous, their titles and themes infest our consciousness, forcing us – sometimes against our better judgement, but more often in keeping with our desire to exercise it fairly – to see what all the fuss is about. There are books we’ve heard about from trusted sources, titles we’ve seen reviewed by favorite blogs or which our friends have raved over; but also books that have caused a stir, whose reviews have been mixed or strident enough that we want to read them just to see which opinion feels right, or to join in the conversation as it happens.

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(Not) Recommending SF&F Classics to the Young Person or Novice

(Not) Recommending SF&F Classics to the Young Person or Novice

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dunsanyWe’ve all done it: “Oh you want to read some Fantasy or SF? Here, how about some Lord Dunsany or E.E. Doc Smith?”

And the books vanish for months, then get returned by the shamefaced borrower: “Couldn’t really get into them. Sorry.”

I’m probably typical. My much-loved genre classics are the equivalent of a warm bath, not a subject for literary criticism.

Until recently, that is.

My son – “Kurtzhau” – is 9, at the tail end of Middle Grade. He loves some of the rip-roaring YA novels that are knocking around – Percy Jackson and Time Riders, for example (the Pulp tradition is un-self-consciously alive and well in YA). However, he craves proper stories with swords and/or soldiers and lasers in them. Powered armor is also good.

And that’s a problem. Nobody seems to be writing the mainstream subgenres for YA.

Helpful mates recommend all sorts of adult novels, but often forget that the dénouement – say – takes place in a brothel staffed by surgically modified aliens and that the antagonists are incestuous twins.

That leaves the classics; either mid-20th century YA such as Andre Norton or earlier “Pulp” yarns which were constrained by pre-WWII decency codes; the stuff I grew up on, the stuff that still crams my shelves…

The stuff of which Kurtzhau inevitably bounces. Here’s why.

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Blogging Arak 9: Adventure on the High Seas

Blogging Arak 9: Adventure on the High Seas

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ARAK9CWith the return of Roy Thomas to the scripting helm, Arak issue 9 has our protagonists Arak and Valda resuming their quest to rescue Malagigi from his demonic imprisonment in far-off White Cathay. After having rescued Pope Hadrian and having rid the world of one Black Pope, our stalwart heroes are set for some adventure on the high seas. It’s time for a one-off pirate tale, but one in which Thomas manages to work in Vesuvius and an encounter with the lost souls of Pompeii.

Arak is about fed up with cities: “He-No take me — I’ll be glad when we’re done with the cities of your world, and I can take to the forests again.”

But first they have to pay a visit to Neapel (modern-day Naples) to find Pope Hadrian’s friend Gallio, who can provide them passage to Byzantium.  The Holy Bishop of Rome told them that they would know Gallio by the ring he wears, “which shows two hands grasping but a single cross.”

As with every past arrival at a new city, the first signs are ominous. People are packing up and leaving the port in droves, because “there’s no longer work there for free laborers — or honest seamen!”

They soon discover the reason: Gallio’s ship is now manned mostly by slaves. When they begin inquiring down at the bay, two “lecherous merchants” immediately hone in on Valda, because, as Thomas narrates, “Alas, however, in these unenlightened days, the presence of an attractive woman on the docks usually has but one meaning for the sea-rovers of Neapel…”

Need I tell you how their pawing at her ends? With her knife at the throat of one, of course, and the other one nearly skewered like the pig he is. Their lives are spared, though, in exchange for pointing the way to Gallio’s ship.

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The Black Fire Concerto & the Monsters of Memory

The Black Fire Concerto & the Monsters of Memory

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I love monsters. Don’t we all?

When it comes to monsters, one of the best things about writing dark fantasy fiction is that it gives you a chance to build your own.

My first novel, The Black Fire Concerto, is packed with monsters. Black Gate overlord John O’Neill has generously invited me to talk about where my creatures came from, in the spirit of the Monstrous Posts on Monsters series I wrote many moons ago for all you denizens of the shadowlands.

The world of The Black Fire Concerto has been ravaged by a ghoul plague (though one could argue that’s the least of its problems.)

My ghouls are yet another riff on the zombie motif (now, now, no need to roll your eyes, just hear me out.) Most zombie plagues in film and in books pay a lip service of sorts to science fiction – the agent that gets dead flesh moving again is a virus, or an alien undeath ray, or something cut from that pseudo-scientific cloth.

Zombie epidemics have become so pervasive in popular culture, at least here in the U.S., that we only need a little hand-waving in the direction of chemical weapons and government conspiracies to suspend our disbelief – never mind that basic biology tells us the concept is ridiculous.

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Andre Norton, Michael Moorcock and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Andre Norton, Michael Moorcock and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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stormbringerAnd so we come to two of the most influential and prolific fantasy writers of the 20th Century, Andre Norton and Michael Moorcock, as we follow intrepid literary explorers Mordicai and Tim Callahan on their voyage of discovery through Appendix N at Tor.com.

Tim and Mordicai have been none too gentle to some of the writers in Appendix N, including L. Sprague de Camp, Gardner Fox, and even Roger Zelazny. But in Norton and Moorcock, they find authors they can appreciate.

Here’s Tim on Michael Moorcock:

I read The Swords Trilogy and The Chronicles of Corum early, and they made an impact. They exploded inside my mind in a way I have never forgotten, even if I can’t remember many of the story details from any particular chapter… but I didn’t really feel like I tuned into Elric until halfway through the first reprint volume, when we get the four novellas of Stormbringer…

It’s classic Moorcock, in that imaginative and terrifyingly evocative way that I loved all those years ago when I first picked up The Swords Trilogy off a spinner rack in my hometown general store. Stormbringer begins with agents of chaos abducting Elric’s wife, and it takes off into the realm of mass warfare and conflicts with not-quite-dead-gods soon enough.

Moorcock aims for the mythic.

Read the complete article here.

Good to see a little love for classic sword & sorcery, but personally I don’t see a lot of direct influence from Elric on D&D — unless you count the section on powerful artifacts in the Dungeon Masters Guide, which clearly was conceived with weapons like Stormbringer in mind.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Dowry” by Peadar Ó Guilín

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Dowry” by Peadar Ó Guilín

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Peadar Ó Guilín 2009In which the young lover Fiachra learns it is unwise to seduce a wizard’s daughter… particularly in a wizard’s garden.

Fiachra woke on a bed of straw surrounded by snuffling animals and a melange of stenches that made his eyes water. A boy of maybe eight crouched at a safe distance under a flickering rush light.

“My eyes,” thought Fiachra. He tried to rub them, but could not. Color had leached from his vision, as though he were still under moonlight in the wizard’s garden. The boy, the straw, even the rush light seemed grey to him.

He tried to speak, to ask where he was. Only a whine emerged.

The boy approached and gingerly extended a hand. “Good doggy,” he said, “nice doggy.”

It was then Fiachra realised the awful truth. The garden! What had he done? How had he been so stupid? He howled and howled until a man came to whip him. After, he spent the night whimpering with only the boy’s arms around him for comfort.

Peadar’s first story for us was “The Mourning Trees” (Black Gate 5), followed by “Where Beauty Lies in Wait” (BG 11) and “The Evil Eater” (BG 13), which Serial Distractions called “a lovely little bit of Lovecraftian horror that still haunts me to this day.”

Peadar’s first novel, The Inferior, was published to terrific reviews in 2008; it was followed a sequel, The Deserter, in 2012.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Dave Gross, Mike Allen, Paul Abbamondi, Vaughn Heppner, Mark Rigney, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“The Dowry” is a complete 4,700-word short story of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

New Treasures: Lord of Bones

New Treasures: Lord of Bones

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Lord of Bones Justine Musk-smallI like to try new titles and new authors, especially a new fantasy series. This genre is so rich and diverse that no one can encompass it all, and if you’re not constantly willing to dip your toe in the water, then maybe you should try another hobby.

So I was delighted to see that Amazon had discounted the second volume of a promising new dark fantasy series, Lord of Bones, to just $1.30. I snapped up a copy immediately. (If you’re interested, I suggest you do the same — Amazon’s bargain pricing algorithm is notoriously fickle.)

Lord of Bones was written by Justine Musk, who has lived a fascinating life. I know, lots of writers claim to have lived fascinating lives, what with being an ambulance driver in World War I or assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue or something. But seriously, Musk’s life is fascinating. She was the first wife of Elon Musk, founder of PayPal and SpaceX, and her famous article “I Was a Starter Wife”: Inside America’s Messiest Divorce” is filled with quotes like this:

In the late spring of 2008, my wealthy entrepreneurial husband, Elon Musk, the father of my five young sons, filed for divorce. Six weeks later, he texted me to say he was engaged to a gorgeous British actress in her early 20s… Her name is Talulah Riley, and she played one of the sisters in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice. Two of the things that struck me were: a) Pride and Prejudice is a really good movie, and b) My life with this man had devolved to a cliché…

The first crowded apartment we’d shared in Mountain View seemed like ancient history from our 6,000-square-foot house in the Bel Air hills. Married for seven years, we had a domestic staff of five; during the day our home transformed into a workplace. We went to black-tie fundraisers and got the best tables at elite Hollywood nightclubs, with Paris Hilton and Leonardo DiCaprio partying next to us. When Google cofounder Larry Page got married on Richard Branson’s private Caribbean island, we were there, hanging out in a villa with John Cusack and watching Bono pose with swarms of adoring women outside the reception tent… I spent an afternoon walking around San Jose with Daryl Hannah, where she caused a commotion at Starbucks when the barista asked her name and she said, blithely, “Daryl.”

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Self-published Book Review: Woman of the Woods by Milton Davis

Self-published Book Review: Woman of the Woods by Milton Davis

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Woman of the Woods - small

This month’s self-published novel is Woman of the Woods by Milton Davis. Set in the land of Meji, a mythical land based on ancient Africa, Woman of the Woods is the story of Sadatina, a young woman of the Adamu. For centuries, the Adamu have been under attack by the nyoka, dark ape-like servants of the god Karan. Their only protection has been the Shosa, warrior-women blessed by their god, Cha, to fight the nyoka. Even as a young girl, Sadatina is stronger and faster than her older brother, better at hunting and fighting than any of the young men in her village. She eventually learns that this is because she is the forbidden daughter of a Shosa, and even untrained, she is blessed with their fighting ability. She needs those abilities when the nyoka come, slaughtering her adoptive family, leaving her to fend for herself, and eventually her village, with only the aid of two shumbas–jungle cats whom she has raised from cubs. It is as the village’s protector that she earns the name Woman of the Woods, since she protects the village while living apart from it. The Shosa find her there, and invite her to join them. At first she refuses, and returns home. At this point, the story skips forward twenty years, to where she has not only become a Shosa, but their military and spiritual leader.

The latter half of the book, where Sadatina is a mature warrior rather than an awkward girl, is a different story than the beginning. In a longer work, where the second half was a separate novel in its own right, the change would have been less jarring. As it is, it takes some getting used to for the reader to see Sadatina giving orders rather than rebelling against them. The latter half’s story is also larger, more epic story than the coming of age story which filled the first half of the novel. Rashadu, a nyoka who long ago turned against his master, has returned, and it is up to Sadatina to decide whether he is an enemy or an ally against Karan.

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Unconcerned with Genre: Lydia Millet’s Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

Unconcerned with Genre: Lydia Millet’s Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

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Oh Pure and Radiant HeartIt’s not uncommon for writers of fictions called ‘literary’ to use science-fictional or fantastic elements in their work. And it’s not uncommon for sf readers to suggest that they’re using those elements wrongly, with a lack of understanding of the material they’re working with — usually, depending on the specific case, either because the writer didn’t understand the history of the way the element in question has been treated in prior (genre) works, or simply because they haven’t thought the logic of what they’re doing through in a rigorous way. Personally, I find this is rarely a problem in the fantastic ‘literary’ works that I read. And, intriguingly, when it is a problem, it’s not necessarily a significant problem.

I recently read Lydia Millet’s 2005 novel, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. Published and promoted as mainstream ‘literary’ fiction, it also contains speculative elements, and was nominated for the Clarke award. It’s an example of what I mean. It’s not an unflawed novel. And perhaps some of the flaws are the kinds that a writer used to genre fiction would naturally avoid. But I don’t think they’re actually critical flaws in the framework of this particular book, which has its interests elsewhere. And, ultimately, the flaws of the book are far outweighed by its successes.

The novel tells a story about Ann and Ben, a librarian and a gardener, who meet three men mysteriously reborn into the year 2003: Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard — three men who were behind the creation of the atomic bomb. The first quarter of the book brings the cast together, and if it doesn’t explain why the scientists have manifested in the world (just as they were at the moment of the first nuclear explosion at the Trinity test site in 1945, and with no memory of anything after that point) it at least establishes that we’re not likely to get any answers. The second quarter of the book follows Ann, Ben, and the scientists as the three physicists travel to Hiroshima, trying to understand the world of the future. In the third quarter of the book, the physicists, having met an eccentric millionaire in Tokyo, begin a crusade for nuclear disarmament. The last quarter sees the crusade reach a climax with a march and violent conclusion in Washington. Although to say all this in this way shortchanges the strangeness of the book: it’s an often-wonderful piece of extravagance, that lives in a heady mix of symbolism and humanity.

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