“Releasing the Kraken”: Tangent Online on E.E. Knight’s “The Terror in the Vale”

“Releasing the Kraken”: Tangent Online on E.E. Knight’s “The Terror in the Vale”

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EE Knight-smallCyd Athens at Tangent Online reviews E.E. Knight’s Blue Pilgrim tale for Black Gate, published here on Sunday, January 13:

The Evil Overlord in E.E. Knight’s “The Terror in the Vale” is the Scripton, who is angered when the peaceful vale folk take offense that his soldiers are lifting the skirts of females to determine whether they are girls or women. He alleges that this is necessary because some adults are weaseling their way out of paying taxes by impersonating children…

As is the way of these things, the people resist and fight. This, of course, ups the stakes…

The Scripton decides to change tactics and does this story’s equivalent of releasing the Kraken — he creates a monster.

E.E. Knight is a scifi/fantasy author. He lives with his wife and three kids in Oak Park, IL. He may be contacted through his website at eeknight.com. The Blue Pilgrim was last seen in “That of the Pit,” published in Lords of Swords (2005).

You can read Cyd’s complete review at Tangent Online and “The Terror in the Vale,” a complete 9,400-word novelette of heroic fantasy, free here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by John R. Fultz, Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, is here.

Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon – Part Eleven, “Kang the Cruel” / “The Skymen”

Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon – Part Eleven, “Kang the Cruel” / “The Skymen”

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p101745754-3p30920910-3“Kang the Cruel” was the twenty-third installment of the Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between February 11 and May 20, 1945, “Kang the Cruel” was the first strip without the story input of creator Alex Raymond. It was illustrated by Austin Briggs, who had succeeded Raymond as the strip’s artist the previous year, and was scripted by Don Moore.

The story gets off to a strong start with Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov returning to Mingo City unaware that Prince Barin has been deposed and a usurper sits on the throne. The usurper is Kang the Cruel, the son of Ming the Merciless. This is a strong concept in the classic tradition. The only disappointment is that Austin Briggs’ artwork pales in comparison with Alex Raymond.

Zarkov’s rocketship is shot down by an air patrol led by Kagi, Kang’s lieutenant. Firefighters rush to the crash site as Kang has given orders the Earthmen are to be taken alive. Flash is spirited away by Darin, a freedom fighter who has infiltrated Kang’s air patrol. The new emperor proves he is as cruel a despot as his father, ordering the firefighter who allowed Darin to escape to be flayed, sprayed with ice, and then placed in steam until he dies.

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads in Them

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads in Them

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No wonder the writer I was back in college never finished anything big. She lacked the patience for the kind of slog I’m slogging through now. She knew some nice tricks — could turn out a kickass sonnet in two hours by writing backwards, last line to first — but if she had ever managed to produce a complete book-length draft, she would have wandered off to a next never-to-be-finished project once the revision got tough. She would not have been game for as many rounds of tightening, fact-checking, and continuity repairs as I have had to do for the novella collection I’m sending off to its small press publisher next week.

Most of my college-self’s potential novels never made it past the preliminary notes stage. If my current teacher-self were saddled with that girl as a student, what on earth would I do with her?

Different preoccupations drive different teachers. I’ve been told I teach because it’s as close as I can get to going back in time to rescue myself from various mistakes and misfortunes. It’s probably true. A more virtuous person might teach out of a desire to change the world, or lift people out of poverty, or whatever. Instead, I wander around offering the help I wished I could have found when I was younger — or a variation of that help wrapped in a concealing layer of SAT preparation.

That girl I used to be understood the why of late-stage manuscript drudgery. If asked, she could have explained that a work of fantasy has a greater need than a work of realism for verisimilitude. She’d have quoted Marianne Moore about the “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” but she could not have kept to her seat long enough to make her toads real.

Not that it’s easy now, twenty years later, this sitting still until the job is done. When I sent my protagonist into New Jersey’s notorious Pine Barrens, land of mob hits and mass-hysteria-induced monster sightings, that was thrilling to write. Now that I’m tracking down every reference , however oblique, to gravel roads, because it turns out the back roads in the Pine Barrens are sand, not gravel, it’s not so much fun. If I don’t get the sand roads right, a sizable chunk of my audience will be lost before I ever get to the scene where the Jersey Devil makes its appearance. Unless the toads in my imaginary garden are real enough, nobody will believe my monsters.

Sarah Avery’s short story “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” appeared in the last print issue of Black Gate. A related novella, “The Imlen Bastard,” is slated to appear in BG‘s new online incarnation. Her contemporary fantasy novella collection, Tales from Rugosa Coven, follows the adventures of some very modern Pagans in a supernatural version of New Jersey even weirder than the one you think you know. You can keep up with her at her website, sarahavery.com, and follow her on Twitter.

Goth Chick News: Getting A-head at Airport Security

Goth Chick News: Getting A-head at Airport Security

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Paging Dr WestAnd you thought your holiday travel was a nightmare…

On Tuesday of this week, “sources” from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport reported to the Chicago Sun-Times that 18 human heads had arrived from Rome just before Christmas and were on their way to a research facility in the suburbs when they were stopped by security.

For attempting to smuggle in a wheel of pecorino cheese…?

Nope. Officials initially said it was a paperwork problem that prevented the heads from reaching their final destination, but apparently the crack reporters at the Sun-Times have just discovered the hold-up is actually connected to “an ongoing investigation at the suburban facility in question.” But before you jump to all conclusions, the investigation is “absolutely not” connected to the shipment of the heads, the source said.

Paging Dr. West… Dr. West, please pick up the nearest red courtesy phone…

The heads were unceremoniously shipped as cargo on a Lufthansa Airlines flight, but “were properly preserved and tagged as human specimens,” said Tony Brucci, chief investigator for the medical examiner’s office.

The Coalition for Airline Passengers’ Rights has filed a complaint with the FAA saying the heads were confined to the cargo hold for the 9 hour and 15 minute flight without the benefit of inflight catering or entertainment.

Okay, that’s not true.  But the rest of this is.

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Tangent Online on “Glimmer Faire”: “An Enjoyable Adventure That Reveals the Power of Art”

Tangent Online on “Glimmer Faire”: “An Enjoyable Adventure That Reveals the Power of Art”

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John R FultzCyd Athens at Tangent Online reviews John R. Fultz’s fourth tale for Black Gate, “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” published here on Sunday, January 6:

This was my first encounter with John R. Fultz’s world. That in no way detracted from my appreciation… The hero, Artifice, is in the midst of a career change. He used to be “the most famous Quill in the world’s greatest city, whose books were sought after across the length and breadth of the Continent.” As the story begins, he is a penniless apprentice Playwright, travelling with a company of actors and fae musicians while working on his first play…

This is a prosaic piece, filled with vivid descriptions that make it easy to imagine the characters, their surroundings, and the play itself… Artifice and his companions are a pleasant fit and work well together. The words here are carefully chosen so as to maximize their effectiveness while minimizing the attention they draw to themselves. At its simplest, this is an enjoyable adventure that reveals the power of art and artists.

John’s tales for Black Gate include “Oblivion is the Sweetest Wine” (Black Gate 12), “Return of the Quill” (Black Gate 13), and “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). Seven Kings, the second book of the Shaper Trilogy, was released on Jan. 15; read an exclusive chapter here.

You can read Cyd’s complete review at Tangent Online, and “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” a complete 6,800-word novelette of heroic fantasy, free here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by E.E. Knight, Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, is here.

Vintage Treasures: Creatures From Beyond, edited by Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: Creatures From Beyond, edited by Terry Carr

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Creatures from Beyond-smallIt shouldn’t be a surprise that I didn’t discover science fiction and fantasy through novels — not really. I discovered it by reading short stories in Junior High, and especially the enticing anthologies on display every week in the library at St. Francis School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I didn’t really know what science fiction was; but if it had monsters on the cover, I was all over it.

The first anthology I can recall reading was Creatures From Beyond, a marvelous monster-fest if ever there was one. When I tracked it down again decades later, I was delighted to discover the editor was none other than Terry Carr, the legendary editor whose Best Science Fiction of the Year and Fantasy Annual paperbacks I read avidly all through high school — and who pulled William Gibson’s Neuromancer out of the slush pile at Ace Books.

I think the reason I still remember it so well after all these years is that, unlike most of the collections I checked out of the library, it wasn’t a kid’s book. It’s a genuine SF anthology, with short stories from Henry Kuttner, Clifford D. Simak & Carl Jacobi, Theodore Sturgeon, Donald A. Wollheim, Brian W. Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, and other top-flight authors.

Carr reasoned — correctly — that there was no better source for action-filled monster tales than pulp science fiction magazines and he mined them heavily to generate Creatures From Beyond. The fiction is drawn from Amazing Stories, Astonishing, Unknown, Other Worlds, Comet, Thrilling Wonder, Future, and a smattering of anthologies.

Of course, the other reason I remember it is Eric Frank Russell’s brilliant novelette “Dear Devil,” the tale of a handful of children who survive a nuclear apocalypse on Earth… and the curious (and hideous) explorer from Mars who helps put them back on track towards a new and better civilization. Rejected by all the major SF magazines of the time, it landed at Ray Palmer’s fledgling Other Worlds, where it almost single-handedly put the magazine on the map — and instantly made a name for the young editor who pulled it from the slush, 26-year-old Bea Mahaffey, who’d been thrust the reins of the magazine when Palmer was incapacitated in an accident.

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Childhood Resurfaced: The Bermuda Depths on DVD

Childhood Resurfaced: The Bermuda Depths on DVD

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Bermuda Depths posterThe rise of Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) DVDs from major studios has at last permitted numerous obscure and second-tier features to reach the trembling hands of collectors. Movies that a small coterie of fans despaired would only be available on bootlegs are now only one-click shopping away on a DVD-R. MOD eliminates the need for “demand” and “profitability” that once stood between the collector and a decent legal copy of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.

Apologies to that great Burt Reynolds Western, it’s The Bermuda Depths that best exemplifies the MOD movie and gives a reason for the format to exist: a work unknown to most, but holding in the minds of a few the status of a childhood Holy Grail. And now the Warner Archive Collection, the MOD branch of Warner Home Video, has made available the first and only romantic tropical ghost story with a giant turtle.

Released in 1978, The Bermuda Depths is a quintessential “Did I Dream It?” nostalgia pic. All of us can recall some movie from our elementary school days — glanced late nights on television, on a slow Sunday afternoon, or rented on a blurry Betamax tape — that captivated our imagination in a fuzzy way. It left fleeting, haunting impressions, so that ten years or more afterwards, it feels that maybe the movie never existed at all and we made it up from the flotsam of other childhood ephemera. We wander through life occasionally asking others if they recall “that film where…”, and then getting uncomprehending slow blinks in response, followed by:

“You made that up.”

“No, I swear I didn’t. I mean … I don’t think so. It was this film with a ghost girl on a beach, and she had glowing eyes, and then there was this gigantic turtle that knocked over a boat…”

“It must be a Gamera film.”

“No, no! I saw a lot of Gamera films. Yeah, I can’t tell them apart, but I know this wasn’t a Gamera film.”

“You’ve just got a Gamera film crossed with something else. Look, eat your yougurt and take your pills. I’ll call the doctor.”

No, you were not crazy. This is a case where the memorial reconstruction dredged up from the back of the old junk drawer is exactly right. The Bermuda Depths is indeed “That movie that took place on a tropical beach with this beautiful woman who might have been a ghost and had glowing eyes and there was also this giant turtle that had something to do with it.” That rambling sentence is a spot-on description of the plot and experience of this movie.

It exists. And, unfortunate to report, it isn’t as exciting to revisit as its description might indicate.

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New Treasures: Lords of Waterdeep

New Treasures: Lords of Waterdeep

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Lords of WaterdeepWell, the holidays are finally over and all the gifts have been put away. Unless you’re like me and you piled them all in the living room so you can gaze at them happily.

My family has started to complain, though. I asked for a lot of games, and consequently this year’s haul is a little harder to step over. I can’t help it — ever since I was a kid, I’ve equated the holidays with gaming. There’s just something joyful about gathering all your closest friends and family together for a friendly game of strategy around the kitchen table at Christmas. And then, crushing them all with an iron fist.

Of course, anyone can crush their opponents in a routine game, as I’m fond of saying (every time I lose, without fail, my friends tell me). It’s only the most challenging games, those that add those rare elements of intrigue and power politics, that yield a true sense of triumph.

Forget strategy — I want a game where I can play to my strengths. Backstabbing and subterfuge, that’s what I’m good at.

Which is why I’ve been so interested in Lords of Waterdeep, the new Dungeons & Dragons board game from Wizards of the Coast.

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Brian Catling and The Vorrh

Brian Catling and The Vorrh

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The VorrhRaymond Roussel was a French surrealist writer who died in 1933, aged 56; one of his most famous works, Impressions of Africa, was a self-published novel (later turned into a play) depicting a fantastical African land based on no actual place, which contained a forest called the Vorrh. Late last year, the English sculptor and poet Brian Catling published his second novel, a story based on Roussel’s work: The Vorrh, first of a projected trilogy, described on its back cover as an epic fantasy. It’s a powerful book, precise and unexpected in its use of language and its plot construction, a dizzying and straight-faced blend of history and the unreal.

But beyond that, what is it, exactly? How are we to approach this book? Sure, you could call it ‘epic fantasy’ if you like — it’s very long, and there is fantastic matter in it, though no secondary world — but it’s so different from most other epics, and most fantasy as a whole, that the term is effectively useless. It’s mostly set in the years after World War One, but although there are scenes with peculiar Victorian technology and bakelite automata, it mostly avoids any feel of either steampunk or such recently-coined retrofantasies as dieselpunk or decopunk. It’s a little like the New Weird, but again that’s a category elastic enough as to mean very little, and the implication of a conscious distinction between the work at hand and a larger field of fantastic fiction seems misplaced; this is not a novel that seems to have been written out of an inherent interest in fantasy traditions, but a work that was written because it had to be. So while one can say that the Vorrh of Catling’s novel — a massive forest in which time is confused and myths wander — recalls Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, the feel is something quite different.

So much for taxonomy. Leave aside what to call it. What’s the nature of the thing? What is the experience of reading it? The writing is focussed, highly sensory, unpacking each passing moment; it has the concentration of that fiction which is called ‘literary.’ This careful observation produces fragments of experience from a range of characters; as we go along in the book, their connections to each other become clear. And then as we go further, the structures that define their lived experience, the myths and the communities and the economies, become obvious; interrelations implied. Go to the end, and the whole thing coheres as a connected narrative.

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Red Sonja 6

Red Sonja 6

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Red Sonja 6 coverWhen we last left our heroine, she’d just watched a crazy wizard get killed by a bell. Deciding to get out of the bell tower before anyone started asking her questions, she stole the nearest horse and made her way to the Singing Tower, which was more or less next door to the bell tower. Her traveling companion of the last couple issues, Mikal, is being held prisoner there and if crazy wizards and killer bells are in the tower where they keep guests, who knows what’s in the tower where they keep prisoners.  And we’re off on another psychedelic sword & sorcery adventure.

On page one, we get our first glimpse of the Singing Tower and it is certainly … suggestive. A thick cylinder with a bulbous tip, the tower’s shape is more than a little reminiscent of, oh, let’s say a mushroom. A mushroom surrounded by enticing flowers whose slimy nectar Sonja is compelled to smear across her half-naked body in a state of pure ecstasy. Until she passes out from the sheer pleasure of the act.

Mushroom.

Her unconscious body is picked up by a pair of insect people (because, really, why not insect people?) and taken inside the tower. Before they can do much more than lay her out on a stone slab, Sonja’s awake again and drawing a dagger. The insect men vomit silk onto themselves until they’re wrapped in protective cocoons. So far, this is more or less a typical day in the life for the Hyrkanian harridan.

And then she sees a giant woman tied to a wall. Upon closer inspection, it’s obvious that the giantess is tied to the lattice-work of the wall by her own over-grown hair. When Sonja tries to free her from her own hair, she finds that it grows back faster than she can cut it.

Not that she has much of a chance to cut, since a swarm of tiny bee people attack her, stinging her back to unconsciousness, then forcing her mouth open to feed her more of the nectar that had knocked her out earlier. When she wakes up once again, she finds that her hair has begun to grown like the giantess, binding her to the same lattice-work wall.

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