Black Gate – Page 1091 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Vintage Treasures: Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors

Saturday, May 18, 2013 John ONeill Comments 22 comments

On April 27, I wrote a Vintage Treasures article about Robert E. Howard’s The People of the Black Circle, one of the first fantasy books I ever owned.

The Comments section quickly became a discussion of REH collecting, with readers swapping photos of their favorite Howard books. Joe H. shared a LibrayThing catalog of his Howard collection, noting the hardest title to find had been Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors. “It took me years to track down a copy,” he said.

Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing that perks up a collector’s ears. Intrigued, I went on a quest to find my own copy of Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu stories.

I finally succeeded this week, after a two-week search. I settled in with my new copy today. First thing I noticed is that the cover, by Stephen Hickman, depicts a treasured artifact from my own collection: the Hickman-designed Cthulhu statute by Bowen Designs — a prized collectible these days. Now that it’s worth something, maybe my wife will let me bring it up out of the basement.

The other thing I noticed is that this is a sizable collection: 250 pages. While I knew Howard had made some minor contributions to Lovecraft’s famous milieu before his death, I had no idea he’d written so many stories that could be categorized as part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Perhaps editor David Drake has been fairly liberal with his selections. I note that “Pigeons from Hell” is included, and that’s only peripherally a Cthulhu story — but it’s a damn good tale, so I’m not complaining.

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J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World

Saturday, May 18, 2013 Matthew David Surridge Comments 1 comment

My copy of J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World has an about-the-author section that describes the 1962 book as “a brilliant first novel that won him instant acclaim and had a dramatic effect on the state of science fiction.” Even allowing for the typically excessive claims of PR text, this is inaccurate: Ballard’s first novel was actually The Wind From Nowhere, published in 1961 and written in two weeks. Still, Ballard’s consistently downplayed and even disowned the earlier book, so let’s take him at his word. How does The Drowning World look fifty years on?

It has to be said that it’s one of those science fiction books that would seem at first glance to be strikingly relevant, if not prophetic — dealing with an idea become disturbingly significant in the years since the story’s first publication. In this case, the book’s set in a future sometime in a mid-21st-century suffering from extreme global warming due to a series of solar storms. The sea levels have risen; the world has drowned. The lead character has no memory of any civilisation we recognise, living with a few million other human beings in the polar latitudes. Reading this book on the heels of news that atmospheric carbon dioxide has passed the 400 parts per million threshold, it’s impossible not to feel a sharpening of one’s interest.

But, like much of the best science fiction, the core of the book is not the science but the fiction. Ballard uses his setting — a flooded tropical London claimed by iguanas and marmosets, totally lacking human life but for a visiting scientific and military expedition and one woman who grew up in the drowned city — to explore strange psychological effects of this particular future. It’s a kind of exploration of depth psychology, of dreams and a collective unconscious. Individual ontogeny is affected by global phylogeny; human identity is affected by a return of the climate and fauna of the Mesozoic era. The book becomes more fascinating as it goes on, increasingly moving away from the science of climate change and using the drowning of the world as a mirror for the submerging of rationality. It is, ultimately, truly concerned with apocalypse: not merely the erasure of the old world, but the making of the world into something new.

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Blogging Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon, Part One – “Polaria”

Friday, May 17, 2013 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

Mac Raboy succeeded Austin Briggs in illustrating the Flash Gordon Sunday strip from 1948 until his death in 1967. As an artist, Raboy was heavily influenced by the strip’s creator, Alex Raymond, and did a fine job of continuing the series. Dark Horse reprinted the entire Mac Raboy run in four oversized monochrome trade paperbacks a few years ago. Titan Books will reprint the series in full color as part of their ongoing hardcover reprints of the entire run of the series. At present, I have only two Mac Raboy stories (one early and one late-period) as a sample of his two decade run on the strip.

“Polaria” was serialized by King Features Syndicate from September 18, 1949 to January 1, 1950. Raboy’s artwork never approached the grandeur of Alex Raymond’s vistas (to be fair, he wasn’t allotted the space), but the realism of his characters (particularly their windswept hair) exceeded the originals. Don Moore’s scripts remained unchanged fifteen years after the fact, as the storyline concerned yet another regional monarch’s desire to become Emperor of Mongo and follow in the footsteps of both Ming the Merciless and Kang the Cruel.

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New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

Friday, May 17, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I first met Michael Penkas in 2010 at the Top Shelf Open Mic in Palatine, Illinois, a friendly local reading event hosted by C.S.E. Cooney.

The Top Shelf Open Mic has attracted some extraordinary talent over the years. Gene Wolfe read chapters of his upcoming novel The Land Across, Joe Bonnadonna shared early drafts of Waters of Darkness, David C. Smith read from his supernatural thriller Call of Shadows, and of course C.S.E. Cooney regularly entertained us with boundless energy, reading from The Big Ba-Ha, Jack o’ the Hills, and other acclaimed publications.

But I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Michael Penkas has become the unexpected true star of our local reading group. His creepy and electrifying short stories have mesmerized us month after month.

Michael has an uncanny ability to pry open your heart with sparkling prose, humor, and warm and genuine characters… and then drive a cold spike through it with relentless and diabolical twists. All with some of the most compact and economical prose I have ever encountered.

Michael has published over a dozen stories since 2007. While he’s best known for his extremely effective horror and dark fantasy, he’s equally at home with mystery, science fiction, and gonzo humor — as his upcoming story for Black Gate illustrates. “The Worst Was Yet to Come,” a chilling retelling of Moses’s unexpected conversation with God immediately after the Ten Plagues of Egypt, will appear here this Sunday. It’s sure to win him many more fans, or possibly get him strung up — or both.

Michael has just released his first — and long awaited — collection, assembling four of his earliest published stories. It’s a delightful sampling of some of the best work of a fast-rising dark fantasy and horror author.

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Get a Random SF or Fantasy Book Cover from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Friday, May 17, 2013 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Oh, Internet. Will you ever cease to come up with new ways for me to waste time?

So the latest thing I’ve been doing is hitting the Lucky Dip button in the Picture Gallery section of the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It generates a random book cover from their massive archives:

Try it!

So far, I’ve seen a few hundred vintage hardcovers and paperbacks, from a 1951 Lord Dunsany hardcover I never knew existed (The Last Revolution) to Samuel R. Delaney’s 1977 collection of critical essays on science fiction (The Jewel-Hinged Jaw); from John Brunner’s 1968 Lancer paperback Into the Slave Nebula to the 1954 Gnome Press edition of C. L. Moore’s Northwest of Earth. And many hundreds in between.

It’s a fascinating kaleidoscope (I can’t really call it a tour) of our genre — and a great launching point to ignite your interest. I ended up reading about UK author M. John Harrison after seeing the cover to his 1975 Panther paperback collection The Machine in Shaft Ten and Other Stories. Plus, doing about a dozen Google searches on the words “Slave Nebula.”

Of course, there’s a powerful search function as well, in case you want to leap directly to a specific book or author. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the new online incarnation and third edition of the classic reference book edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, indexes some 54,000 individual titles, with 113,500 internal hyperlinks and over 4,000,000 words. It builds massively on the text of the (already massive) 1995 CD-ROM edition, and is produced in collaboration with British SF publisher Gollancz and the SF Gateway. And it is, as the introduction points out, still a work in progress.

The only thing that’s missing? The back button. I tried to scroll back to some of the earlier samples, but no dice. Looks like the Lucky Dip is powered by a Javascript app of some kind that doesn’t allow you to page back through prior selections — so if you see something interesting, be sure to write it down!

Read “Martyr’s Gem,” a new Novella from C.S.E. Cooney, at GigaNotoSaurus

Thursday, May 16, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

It seems so long ago now that our first website editor, the ridiculously gifted C.S.E. Cooney, packed up her bags and headed East to Rhode Island. There she found a small but comfy aerie to do her writing, and began turning out ridiculously wonderful short stories.

We’ve published a few here. Her novella “Godmother Lizard,” which Tangent Online called “a delightful fantasy… [it] entranced me from the beginning,” appeared here in November, and we published the sequel “Life on the Sun” — which Tangent called “bold and powerful… this one captured a piece of my soul. Brilliant” — on February 10.

But even Black Gate isn’t big enough to contain C.S.E. Cooney’s talent, and on May 1st her 19,000-word novella “Martyr’s Gem” was published online at GigaNotoSaurus. Here’s a taste from the intro, just to let you know what you’re in for:

“They remember the days before the Nine Cities drowned and the Nine Islands with them. Before our people forsook us to live below the waters, and we were stranded here on the Last Isle. Before we changed our name to Glennemgarra, the Unchosen.” Sharrar sighed. “In those days, names were more than mere proxy for, Hey, you!”

“So, Hyrryai means, Hey, you, Gleamy?”

“You have no soul, Shursta.”

“Nugget, when your inner poet is ascendant, you have more than enough soul for both of us. If the whitecaps of your whimsy rise any higher, we’ll have a second Drowning at hand, make no mistake.”

GigaNotoSaurus is a webzine edited by Ann Leckie. It publishes one longish fantasy or science fiction story every month, including the recent Nebula nominees “All the Flavors” by Ken Liu and “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers” by Katherine Sparrow.

Settle in to your favorite reading place, turn off your phone, and read “Martyr’s Gem” here.

Goth Chick News: Dracula Meets Downton Abbey and The Tudors

Thursday, May 16, 2013 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

Yes, originally I said the exact same thing.

Give me one good reason why the world needs another retelling of Dracula.

I mean, haven’t we suffered enough? As it is, the mythology has been altered so many times to try and make something new out of it, that If Bram Stoker ever found out about Edward Cullen, he’s be spinning in his grave like a rotisserie ham.

On the other hand, it was probably only a matter of time before network television realized that there is a viewer appetite for old fashioned violence and sexy blood drinking, and why the heck should HBO have all the fun with True Blood anyway?

Which brings me to two good reasons why we may want to listen to the Dracula tale being retold one more time…

Downton Abbey and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

NBC is launching a Dracula mini-series this fall which will actually take place in 1890s London (as opposed to trying to modernize the story). In this telling, Dracula has assumed the identity of an American entrepreneur with aspirations of bringing modern science and technology to Victorian society.

This is all a ruse of course, as Dracula’s true endeavor is the pursuit of revenge against humankind after it nearly destroyed him centuries earlier. The only thing that may spoil his plans for vengeance is the comely young lass he’s recently fallen in love with – who may also be the reincarnation of his dead wife.

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Explore History Through Tiny Cardboard Counters with Against the Odds Magazine

Thursday, May 16, 2013 John ONeill Comments 18 comments

I discovered something fascinating while I was trolling eBay for vintage fantasy board games this morning: Against the Odds, a magazine published out of Southeastern, PA, which includes a complete game in each issue.

Now, it’s true that I get a little giddy around magazines. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have published one for a decade. And I also love games. So magazines that include games? I had to go have a bit of a lie down.

Against the Odds is a quarterly periodical of history and simulation, and it looks remarkably similar to the great gaming magazines published by SPI, Strategy & Tactics and Ares, both of which included a game with each issue. Ares, published between 1980 and 1984, was one of my all-time favorite magazines. In that short span it brought over a dozen highly regarded games into the world, including Barbarian Kings, Star Trader, Nightmare House, The High Crusade (based on the Poul Anderson novel), Citadel of Blood, and many others. All 17 issues are currently available as free PDFs at Archive.org.

Against the Odds doesn’t have the same focus on fantasy and science fiction as Ares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fascinating. The first issue I came across, #35 (December 2011), includes the game Boudicca: The Warrior Queen, featuring an historical clash between the Roman Empire and a loose collection of Celtic tribes on the barbaric island of Britannia in 61 A.D.

She meant “trouble” for the Roman occupation of Britain. After her revolt succeeded in burning three major towns and slaughtering tens of thousands of Roman citizens and allies, the Emperor Nero seriously considered whether this distant land was worth the cost to stay. Governor G.S. Paulinus’ remarkable victory – perhaps at the location later known as “Watling Street” – reaffirmed Roman domination. They would remain in Britain for over 300 more years.

But it might have been different. Can you as the leader of a various cluster of independent Celtic tribes cause enough trouble and loss to make the Romans leave your island? Can you as the commander of scattered Roman troops snuff out the rebellion more effectively than Paulinus? Will London burn or be saved? These are your challenges in ATO issue #35, Boudicca: The Warrior Queen by Richard Berg.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Seven, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I always look forward to the Best of the Year anthologies. It’s an annual ritual, like the arrival of spring, heralding new hope and rebirth for the land. Or something.

Over the next few months, we’ll see several of them, from Rich Horton, David Hartwell, Gardner Dozois, Stephen Jones, and Paula Guran, just to name a few. But the season kicks off every year with Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, certainly one of the most interesting volumes for fantasy fans.

Like the preceding six volumes, it is published by Night Shade Books, who are experiencing difficulties. Likely this will be the last one, at least in this format.

In short: if you’re at all interested in a generous collection of some of the finest SF and fantasy from the best writers in the genre, do what I did and buy it now while it’s still available.

Here’s what we know about the stories:

Four artificial intelligences struggle towards life on the icy moon of Callisto; insect love means something deeply disturbing in a world of mantis wives; an elderly woman matches wits with Death in a battle for her life; a birthday party on a spaceship is haunted by ghosts from afar; a UFO researcher finds far more than she’s looking for in the backwoods of Missouri; a grand tour of the solar system ends in an unexpected discovery; a researcher strives to make one last grand discovery before the stars wink out a final time…

And here’s the complete table of contents.

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Before the Onslaught of the Barbarians: Tangent Online on “Niola’s Last Stand”

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Dave Truesdale at Tangent Online reviews Vera Nazarian’s adventure fantasy tale, published here on May 12:

Niola, a young woman, and her grandmother have packed their meager belongings and are ready to leave their city of Menathis, for the evil army of the Varoh is nearly at the gates, and the entire city is emptying itself before the onslaught of the barbarians. At the last minute, however, Niola’s lame Gran decides she must seek the decaying temple of the goddess Rohatat and pray one last time to the goddess.

While Niola believes this a foolish waste of time, she nevertheless honors her promise to wait for her grandmother, not moving beyond the doorway of their cramped dwelling on one of the city streets. During the cold, lonely wait, a series of gods — wispy wraiths — appear one after the other to her, each presenting her with, in turn, a sword, a shield, and a spear, exhorting her to defend the city at all costs.

Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose (set in the same ancient world universe as “Niola’s Last Stand”) in 2002, followed by epic fantasy Lords of Rainbow in 2003. Her recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella, The Duke in His Castle, and Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret.

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

“Niola’s Last Stand” is a complete 7,000-word adventure fantasy tale. It is offered at no cost. Read the complete story here.