Black Gate – Page 1068 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Andrew J. Offutt, August 16, 1934 – April 30, 2013

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 John ONeill Comments 21 comments

Andrew J. Offutt, who authored many fantasy novels in the 70s and 80s, and who made a significant contribution to Sword and Sorcery as an editor with his seminal Swords Against Darkness anthology series, died yesterday.

Offutt wrote numerous novels under the name John Cleve (and other pseudonyms), including five volumes in the Crusader historical adventure line, and the long-running erotic SF adventure series Spaceways. The first science fiction novel to appear under his own name was Evil is Live Spelled Backwards in 1970.

But I first encountered him in Swords Against Darkness IV in 1979, a marvelous book which contains stories by Manly Wade Wellman, Orson Scott Card, Poul Anderson, Tanith Lee, and many others. The first Swords Against Darkness appeared in 1977 from Zebra Books, with a Robert E. Howard fragment completed by Offutt, a Simon of Gitta tale from Richard L. Tierney, and fiction from Poul Anderson, Manly Wade Wellman, David Drake, Ramsey Campbell and many others. Offutt edited a total of five volumes, with the final one appearing in 1979. Together with Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords anthologies and a handful of small press magazines like Weirdbook, Swords Against Darkness kept Sword & Sorcery alive throughout the 70s and into the early 80s.

Offutt went on to some success with collaborator Richard K. Lyons, beginning with the War of the Wizards trilogy (1978-81). He also wrote the War of the Gods on Earth trilogy (1979-83), but was mostly known for his Robert E. Howard pastiche novels featuring Conan and Cormac Mac Art, including The Undying Wizard (1976), The Mists of Doom (1977), and Conan and the Sorcerer (1978). He was a noted contributor to Thieves’ World, appearing in several volumes in the ’80s and ’90s.

Offutt had a long hiatus after his last Thieves World work appear in 1993. He returned briefly to the field in the last decade, contributing a short story co-authored with Richard K. Lyon for 2009’s Rage of the Behemoth from Rogue Blades Entertainment.

Altogether Offutt wrote and edited more than 75 books. He also contributed to the field in other ways, including two terms as president of SFWA, from 1976-78. He died yesterday at the age of 78.

Vintage Treasures: An Earth Man on Venus by Ralph Milne Farley

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Ralph Milne Farley was a pen name for Roger Sherman Hoar, a state senator and assistant Attorney General for the state of Massachusetts. Why a state senator wouldn’t proudly lay claim to a novel featuring a man and woman in underwear on the cover is beyond me, but some people just humbly shy away from fame, I guess.

Or maybe it’s the antennae growing out of her head. It’s hard to be sure.

Whatever the case, An Earthman on Venus was originally published (as The Radio Man) in that grand old lady of the pulps, Argosy, in 1924. It was immediately popular, and reprinted many times, starting in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1939) and then in hardcover from Fantasy Publishing in 1948.

The version of interest to us is the 1950 Avon paperback, pictured at left. Primarily because it’s a prime early example of underwear chic, but also because it was the first true mass market edition.

Legendary editor Donald A. Wollheim — who would later found DAW Books — was at the helm at Avon at the time, and he had an eye for pulp fiction that would play well in paperback. While he was at Avon, he made A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, and C. S. Lewis’s Silent Planet space trilogy available in mass market for the first time, bringing those authors — and many others — a wide audience.

The Radio Man isn’t particularly well-remembered today, but it’s an important part of the history of our genre nonetheless. Not just because of it has giant ants and antenna girls on the cover… well, mostly that. But it was also one of the first sword-and-planet adventures, and it was successful enough to spawn no less than seven sequels over the next three decades, starting with The Radio Beasts (1925) and including The Radio Planet (1926), The Radio Flyers (1929), The Radio Menace (1930), The Radio Gun-Runners (1930), The Radio War (1932) and The Radio Minds of Mars (1955).

Now I don’t know about you, but I thought the sequel was invented with The Godfather, Part II. Evidence that fantasy writers were doing that kind of thing half a century before Francis Ford Coppola thought of it fills me with pride. And a powerful compulsion to buy blue lingerie for Alice, but let’s not get in to that.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in March

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

I think we’ve finally deciphered what it is that Black Gate readers truly want: great fantasy novels, with lots of action and an enchanting cast of characters.

And pirates.

That would certainly explain how the brief announcement of David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna’s first collaboration, Waters of Darkness, vaulted to the top of our traffic stats and stayed there for the entire month of March — edging out Emily Mah’s Ellen Datlow interview, Sean McLachlan’s examination of one of the greatest miniature battles of history, Violette Malan’s look at swearing in fantasy, and Matha Well’s thoughtful look at how her novel The Clouds Roads fits the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre.

There are plenty of surprises — and lots of great reading — in the Top 50 Black Gate posts in March. The complete list follows. Enjoy — and stay tuned for more posts about pirates. We know a good thing when we see one.

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The Book of Horrible Stories by Sheila C. Johnson

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

The first thing we can tell about Sheila Johnson, before we even open this book, is that she has no fear of jinxing herself with a title like The Book of Horrible Stories. For a change, I was delighted to find that the work did not live up to the title.

Within are five (six, if you count the preface, which I do) short stories that explore the art of storytelling, the source of inspiration and how the tropes of horror are often metaphors for things even more horrifying. Beautiful and surreal, but never so vague that they lose the reader. “The Garden Witch and the Boy” sets the tone with a tale of childhood guilt and nightmares. (And when are guilt and nightmares more intense than in childhood?) “The Tree in the Field” starts with a quirky, surreal premise and takes it further than expected. “An Interlude” is Johnson’s answer to that eternal question asked of writers: “Where do you get your ideas?” (It follows up with the question no one asks: “What happens if you ignore those ideas?”) “Mrs. Ambrose and the Conversational Shimmer” is my favorite of the bunch, a ghost story of sorts and a zombie story of sorts, that delves into themes more disturbing than gruesome. The collection is capped by the story that gave the collection its name: “The Book of Horrible Stories,” a love letter to the horror genre itself and to every child who discovers it.

The collection is beautifully illustrated by Wesley Wong and available for $12.00 on Sheila Johnson’s web site. If money’s tight, you can get the Kindle version for a measly 99 cents. This one goes on the shelf between Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link (and not just because that’s where it happens to fall in the alphabet).

Seriously. Ninety-nine cents. Go. Buy.

Belfort Board Game and Kickstarter Expansion

Monday, April 29, 2013 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 1 comment

In the board game Belfort (Amazon), you are trying to complete the building of a city before the snow season arrives, along with the accompanying yeti attacks. This gives you seven months (or rounds) to prove your mettle by completing more of the project than your rival architects.

Toward this end, you carry out the following activities:

Recruit a team of elves and dwarves to gather wood, stone, and metal resources, as well as gold coins
Buy and sell resources at the trading post
Buy property cards, representing new properties you can build
Earn income from your properties and pay taxes
Use wood, stone, and metal resources to build new properties within the town, which provide various benefits
Hire gnomes to work at your properties to gain the benefits from them
Send your elves or dwarves to guilds (randomly determined each game) to gain benefits

To get a sense for the flow of the game, you may also check out this YouTube video. The graphics of the game are fun and engaging, giving it a lot of personality compared to other games of this type and even inspiring a charming comic book (read the digital version here) that brings the dwarf/elf rivalry to life.

The creators of Belfort are now releasing an expansion – currently funding on Kickstarter until May 9 – which will allow you to hire Assistants that provide special benefits. Or you can forego the Assistant benefit to get an expansion permit which augments an existing property, such as adding a Pool to the Inn or an Archives onto the Library. These property expansions provide scoring bonuses for those who have them, giving the potential edge you need to win the game.

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New Treasures: Pandemomium, by Warren Fahy

Monday, April 29, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

In 2009, Warren Fahy released Fragment on an unsuspecting world.

An unassuming paperback about the cast and crew of a reality show on a long-range research vessel in the South Pacific, who receive a distress call from the mysterious Henders Island, Fragment wasn’t just a great modern adventure tale. It was also an over-the-top monster thriller, a glimpse at how life on Earth might have looked if evolution had taken a very different turn half a billion years ago. Henders Island proved to be a fragment of a lost continent, packed with the kind of creatures that could wipe out our fragile ecosystem.

Since the release of Fragment, fans have been waiting for Fahy’s next monster-laden follow up, and it has finally arrived in the form of Pandemomium, a new hardcover from Tor.

Deep beneath the Ural Mountains, in an underground city carved out by slave labor during the darkest hours of the Cold War, ancient caverns hold exotic and dangerous life-forms that have evolved in isolation for countless millennia. Cut off from the surface world, an entire ecosystem of bizarre subterranean species has survived undetected — until now.

Biologists Nell and Geoffrey Binswanger barely survived their last encounter with terrifying, invasive creatures that threatened to engulf the planet. They think the danger is over until a ruthless Russian tycoon lures them to his underground metropolis, where they find themselves confronted by a vicious menagerie of biological horrors from their past — and by entirely new breeds of voracious predators. Now they’re rising up from the bowels of the Earth to consume the world as we know it.

Yup, that sounds pretty much like what I was waiting for. Pandemomium was published by Tor Books on February 28. It is 306 pages (with 11 extra pages of maps and illustrations of monster innards), priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition.

The Scariest Hour in TV History: Space 1999: “Dragon’s Domain”

Monday, April 29, 2013 markrigney Comments 24 comments

What IS the scariest single hour of TV ever? Something out of Night Gallery, perhaps, or one of the more high octane Twilight Zone episodes? Star Trek’s “The Devil in the Dark?” What about recent vintages like True Blood, or some modern-day zombie flick? Salem’s Lot was made for TV and that has chills aplenty, but it’s far longer than an hour.

What’s left?

Space 1999. That’s right. Not usually a rock ‘em-sock ‘em sort of program, and definitely relegated now to the “dated” category, but still… for one awful hour in 1975, Space 1999 changed my life.

Let me admit up front that I was a scaredy-cat kid. If a more frightened child ever existed, I have yet to meet him, her, or it. I was scared of the dark, terrified of the basement, and petrified of being alone: demonstrating fear of abandonment in all its forms, from sensorial to parental. For years, in watching TV broadcasts of The Wizard of Oz, I never once saw the Wicked Witch; at the least hint that she was to make an appearance, I’d flee the room.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Assault and Battery” by Jason E. Thummel

Sunday, April 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Gunnerman Clap, the hero of “The Gunnerman,” returns in a tale of a daring night assault on a cliffside fortress:

Up they climbed, gusted by winds determined to knock them from their perch on the rock. Clap kept his mermaid’s tooth talisman close as he kept reminding Shullum that he was a sailor true, that it wasn’t his fault he was on land, that he really wished to return to the sea, to the ship, and that any protection the Great God of the Deep could lend would be much appreciated.

Ahead they could make out the flickering flame of a storm lantern, dimly illuminating a doorway that looked little protected by the overhang of a small roof. The same could be said of the drenched rat of a guard, huddled up in oiled skins with hat brim pulled to cover his face. Illsby gestured to several marines.

“Soon I be sending the souls I promised you, Great Shullum.” Clap tucked his talisman under his shirt and put a calloused hand on the worn hilt of his cutlass.

The guard’s head jerked up as the marines leapt into the small sphere of light and one clobbered the senses from him. One marine quickly searched the downed man as the other waved them forward; Clap and the rest jogged behind Illsby to crowd under the scant cover of the overhang.

The marines unpacked their rifles and affixed bayonets. The long lengths of steel looked thin and fragile to Clap, and he was thankful for the seaman’s sword that he carried. The buckler would have been nice, but he’d lost that when the boat went down. “Not that I’m in any hurry to be reunited,” he whispered.

Jason’s first story for us was “The Duelist,” published as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction line on September 30th, 2012. His work has also appeared in Flashing Swords magazine, Rage of the Behemoth, Magic and Mechanica, and other venues. Some of his sword & sorcery and heroic fantasy is collected in In Savage Lands and The Harsh Suns, and the first two novels chronicling the supernatural adventures of occult detective Lance Chambers, The Spear of Destiny and Cult of Death, are now available.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“Assault and Battery” is a complete 5,200-word sword & sorcery tale offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in March

Sunday, April 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

bones-of-the-old-ones Novel excerpts were the top draw last month, as Howard Andrew Jones held the top spot for a third month in a row with tantalizing slice of sword-and-sorcery goodness from The Bones of the Old Ones, followed closely by The Waters of Darkness, the new supernatural pirate novel from from David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna. And Vaughn Heppner’s novel Star Soldier was not much further down the list.

Still, short fiction proved plenty popular, with stories by Aaron Bradford Starr, Joe Bonadonna, David Evan Harris, Judith Berman, E.E. Knight, Gregory Bierly, John R. Fultz, Harry Connolly and Vaughn Heppner filling out the Top 12.

If you haven’t sampled the adventure fantasy stories offered through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line, you’re missing out. Every week, we present an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry, all completely free.

Here are the Top Twelve most read stories in March, for your enjoyment:

An excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
An excerpt from The Waters of Darkness, by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna
“The Sealord’s Successor,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
“Seeker of Fortune,” by David Evan Harris
“The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
“The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
“A Princess of Jadh,” by Gregory Bierly
“When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” by John R. Fultz
“The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
An excerpt from Star Soldier,” by Vaughn Heppner
“The Pit Slave,” by Vaughn Heppner

We’ve got plenty more fiction in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Read Last Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary in Speculative Fiction 2012

Sunday, April 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

It’s no surprise that some of the best and most insightful writing in 2012 took place on blogs.

Blogging — with its immediacy and ease of public access — has attracted some of the most gifted writers we have, and fantasy and SF readers are increasingly turning to the blogs and writers they trust for news and opinion. For the latest evidence, look no further than Speculative Fiction 2012, a new collection of the very best online reviews, essays, and commentary from Jurassic London press.

Speculative Fiction 2012 gathers over fifty of the best articles published last year, from the top tier of bloggers and authors in science fiction and fantasy. The contributor list includes some of the most acclaimed writers in the field, folks like Christopher Priest, N. K. Jemisin, Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Elizabeth Bear, Myke Cole, Kate Elliott, Niall Alexander, Rose Lemberg, Kameron Hurley, Adam Roberts, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Sam Sykes, and Lavie Tidhar.

I’m very pleased to say that it also includes one of our own: Matthew David Surridge, whose February 2012 Black Gate article “Tolkien and Attila” is in the Table of Contents. Here’s what Matthew tells us:

This is out now, and has one of my Black Gate articles in it — to paraphrase the Amazon blurb, a look at what Tolkien learned from Attila the Hun. Happy to have a piece of mine in a very strong line-up! And worth noting: proceeds from the sale of the book go to a charity promoting international literacy and education.

You can read the announcement, including the complete list of contributors, here, and Matthew’s original article is here.

Speculative Fiction 2012 was edited by Justin Landon and Jared Shurin, with a foreword by Mur Lafferty. It published on April 23, 2013 by Jurassic London. It is 380 pages in paperback, priced at $11.99. There is no digital edition.