Black Gate – Page 1091 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Self-published Books: Review of Noggle Stones: The Goblin’s Apprentice by Wil Radcliffe

Friday, February 1, 2013 Donald Crankshaw Comments 1 comment

When I first started this series of reviews on self-published books, I had two criteria for reviewing a book.

First, it had to be a self-published fantasy novel. Second, based on the blurb and the excerpt, it had to be a book that I wanted to read. At the time, I didn’t realize that the first criterion would be the more difficult one to figure out.

I discuss some of the difficulties in deciding whether to review a book on my personal blog, but the bottom line is that I almost didn’t review Noggle Stones: The Goblin’s Apprentice. It was originally published by a small press, and only later self-published by the author. I might have still decided that it didn’t quite qualify, since it wasn’t originally self-published, but it certainly met my second criterion: . I really wanted to read this book.

If there’s one word to describe The Goblin’s Apprentice, it’s charming. From the author’s own illustrations, to the poetry, to the language. At times, it’s a bit too charming, but in the end I forgave it. The book seems to be aimed at the Middle Grade level, and it has the same sense of whimsy found in the best books of that type.

The Goblin’s Apprentice is the first book of the series Noggle Stones. The central character is Martin Manchester, an aspiring stage magician in 1899 America. His career plans are interrupted by the fact that our world has merged with a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves, ogres, and yes, goblins. Martin soon finds himself a student of the goblin Bugbear, a scholar of Non-Logical Thought, which forms the basis of the magic system in the novel. Accompanying them is Bugbear’s scoundrel of a cousin, Tudmire. Their wandering takes them to the kingdom of Willow Prairie, which is really a small town that’s been awaiting the arrival of a king for centuries. After rescuing the dragon bride Maga from a show trial, the heroes quickly get caught up in the war against the Shadow Smith and his army of patchworks.

…

Read More Read More

Genre 2013: The John Pierce Experiment

Friday, February 1, 2013 markrigney Comments 13 comments

You remember John Pierce: his Bell Labs team invented the transistor, and he coined the term. But, like the rest of us, he had his little gaps. When in his eighties, he met up with author Dan Levitin, who was busy writing that complicated puzzler of a book, This Is Your Brain On Music. Much to Levitin’s dismay, Pierce revealed that he had never knowingly heard any rock music. Now, as to how one can live in a developed nation and achieve this, I don’t know, but once Levitin discovered this curious deficit, the two had a little heart-to-heart, and Pierce asked Levitin to provide six –– count ‘em, six –– prime examples of rock and roll from which he might form an opinion and make appropriate generalizations about the whole.

What does this have to do with Black Gate and fantasy literature? Trust me. Read on.

Levitin’s six tunes were as follows:

“Long Tall Sally” by Little Richard
“Roll Over Beethoven” by the Beatles
“All Along the Watchtower,” by Jimi Hendrix
“Wonderful Tonight,” by Eric Clapton
“Little Red Corvette,” by Prince
“Anarchy in the U.K.,” by the Sex Pistols

Scary choices, methinks, especially those last two. But regardless of my opinion (or yours), Pierce’s request poses two dilemmas.

First, if faced with this same conundrum, which songs would you choose?

Second, what if this situation were applied to fiction? Or better yet, to the ongoing divide in genre vs. literary fiction?

…

Read More Read More

Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon – “The Storm Queen of Valkr” / “The Wizard King of the Fur Men”

Friday, February 1, 2013 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

“The Storm Queen of Valkr” was the twenty-sixth installment of the Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between March 24 and September 29, 1946, “The Storm Queen of Valkr” opens with Flash’s rocketship crashing down in the eye of the hurricane. Flash pulls Dale from the wreckage just as the ship explodes. They are rescued by a party of amazons riding giant wolves and discover their leader is Valkir, Queen of the Forbidden Kingdom of Valkr where they have landed.

Once they reach Valkir’s palace, Flash is placed in the Queen’s harem. He soon meets her royal consort, Marko, and her dwarf jester, Roki. At dinner, Flash offends Valkir by stating he is President of Mongo. She challenges him to a fencing match.

When Flash bests her, her oversized house cat pounces upon him. Flash fights off the great cat. Later, Marko confides in him that Kang’s rocketship has likewise crashed down in Valkr and the deposed Emperor is wooing the Queen and setting himself up as a rival to Marko. This marks an interesting departure from the established formula where the reader would expect the Queen to quickly fall for Flash with her consort becoming a jealous rival to our hero.

Flash and Marko go out riding on wolves and discover Valkir trapped by a flash flood while crossing a stream. Flash rescues the Queen who, unaccustomed to being dominated and then rescued by a man, kisses him passionately before recovering her royal bearing.

…

Read More Read More

Wizards of the Coast Releases the First D&D Next Conversion Notes

Thursday, January 31, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

We last reported on D&D Next when our intrepid man-on-the-scene Andrew Zimmerman Jones live-blogged the Dungeons & Dragons Next Keynote at GenCon last August. This week, Wizards of the Coast released the first D&D Next conversion notes, as part of the new playtest packet.

The playtest packet is now usable with D&D Encounters seasons. The next one, Against the Cult of Chaos, commences on February 6. Here’s the description:

Against the Cult of Chaos is a new adventure that takes inspiration from classics such as Village of Hommlet and Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Not only does this new story feature characters and locations from beloved past adventures, but there’s another compelling reason to participate – there’s two ways to play! The season runs from February 6 through April 3.

Players will need to decide which version of D&D they want to play — D&D 4^th Edition or D&D Next –- when they create their Encounters characters. Dungeon Masters who choose to run the upcoming season under D&D Next rules will be able to download conversion notes at a later date at www.DNDNext.com.

Goth Chick News: Looks Like Someone Fed Them After Midnight…

Thursday, January 31, 2013 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

The 80’s films just keep on multiplying…

I suppose it was inevitable once we got an updated look at Footloose, Red Dawn, and Fright Night, but fans of the 1984 horror / comedy Gremlins have sprinkled their doorsteps with 30-year-old Gremlins Cereal in hopes the reboot specter will pass them by.

Alas, the sugary goodness seems to have finally lost its magic.

Last week, sources told Vulture Entertainment that, “in keeping with Hollywood’s mandated pop culture recycling program, Warner Bros. Pictures is negotiating with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment to reboot their horror comedy, Gremlins.”

This particular reboot has been a hot topic for multi-generational furry devotees, none of whom want the franchise resurrected, especially if it involves CGI. The original film utilized animatronic puppets bringing the Mogwai and the Gremlins to life. And much like the cereal, it was a tasty experience lacking in any significant (nutritional) value that made the original such a keeper. Why, only a few months back, I witnessed a fan at an entertainment expo about to drop $300 on an original, 80’s plush Gizmo.

Come on, why tamper with that kind of love?

…

Read More Read More

The Top 12 Black Gate Fiction Posts in December

Thursday, January 31, 2013 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

December was only our third month offering original online fiction, and once again I was very pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response from you, our readers. Our Black Gate Online Fiction line has quickly become one of the most popular sections of the blog.

The Top Twelve stories in December were:

“The Trade,” by Mark Rigney
“The Whoremaster of Pald,” by Harry Connolly
“An Excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
“The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
“The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying,” by Alex Kreis
“The Moonstones of Sor Lunaru,” by Joe Bonadonna
“A Phoenix in Darkness,” by Donald S. Crankshaw
“Godmother Llizard,” by C.S.E. Cooney
“Awakening,” by Judith Berman
“The Duelist,” by Jason Thummel
“An Excerpt from Seven Kings, by John R. Fultz
“The Tea-Maker’s Task,” by Aaron Bradford Starr

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by E.E. Knight, Gregory Bierly, Dave Gross, and others, is here. The most popular Black Gate fiction in November is here.

Art for “The Whoremaster of Pald” by Chris Pepper.

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

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: When All Stories Were Fantasy Stories

Thursday, January 31, 2013 Sarah Avery Comments 6 comments

Kids under age six are not lying to you, not exactly. When they want something to be true, they genuinely cannot tell that it isn’t. When they fear something might be true, no amount of reassurance is enough, because whatever they project onto the world is indistinguishable from the world itself. My five-year-old really believes his classmate told him it was okay to cut her hair with craft scissors, and he is not trying to manipulate me when he says the monster will emerge from behind his dresser if I turn off his bedroom light. His imagination is as real to him as anything he can touch.

Of course, adults are not always able to distinguish between the world and their mental projections upon the world. We all slip sometimes, a few of us slip a lot, and a very few cultivate slippage deliberately. We like imagining that we could shuck this dreadful adult ability, or avoid developing it at all, as the protagonist of Michel Gondry’s gorgeous film The Science of Sleep does. The thing is, for all of us, there was a long time in childhood when any boundary between reality and fantasy always seemed more like an arbitrary exercise of power on the part of the adults in our lives than like an externally real fact we had to cope with. Why must my son hold my hand when we cross a parking lot in the dark? He believes he is impervious to cars, and can say so using the word “impervious,” so clearly the hand-holding rule must just be Mommy’s power trip.

It doesn’t help that the real world is weird, and so complicated that grown-up attempts to explain it at a child’s level only pump up the weirdness.

…

Read More Read More

Join Howard Andrew Jones on Ask Me Anything on Reddit

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones has put out the word that he’ll be on Reddit tomorrow:

Hope you’ll join me at Reddit Thursday for a live interview, part of their Ask Me Anything series. You can ask me anything you’re curious about regarding this whole fantasy writing gig, so I hope you’ll drop by, and help spread the word!

Howard joined /r/Fantasy for an Ask Me Anything event a year ago, shortly after the release of his first novel, The Desert of Souls, where he was asked “How do you handle portrayals of sexism and racism when writing historical fantasy?”, “What RPGs do you play?”, and “How do you feel about piracy of your books?”

Click here for the official link.

No word on whether or not the chicken will be there.

Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier On Sale This Week

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Myke Cole is a class act. Before he launched a career as an internationally celebrated novelist, he did the decent thing: he apprenticed at Black Gate first.

His story “Naktong Flow” appeared in BG 13, and Dave Truesdale at Tangent Online called it “Thoroughly professional… Think Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now and you’re on the right track.” We attempted to lure him back to our pages with insanely generous offers — his own dressing room, and fresh flowers delivered daily — and even sent the lovely Patty Templeton to interview him, but it was all to no avail. Life as a novelist offered him the one thing Black Gate couldn’t: real money. And respect. And fame. And accolades. And a ton of other stuff, but let’s not dwell on that.

In his essay “Selling Shadow Point,” Myke talks about what it took to submit and sell his first novel, saying “You have to have guts… you have to bite the bullet and take it out to market.” In his case it certainly paid off — his first novel was Shadow Ops: Control Point, which Peter V. Brett called “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men… military fantasy like you’ve never seen it before.” It was an immediate hit, and the reading public clamored for more. Now Cole has delivered and the second volume of Shadow Ops arrives in book stores this week.

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began to develop terrifying powers — summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Overnight the rules changed… but not for everyone.

Colonel Alan Bookbinder is an army bureaucrat whose worst war wound is a paper-cut. But after he develops magical powers, he is torn from everything he knows and thrown onto the front-lines. Drafted into the Supernatural Operations Corps in a new and dangerous world, Bookbinder finds himself in command of Forward Operating Base Frontier — cut off, surrounded by monsters, and on the brink of being overrun.

Now, he must find the will to lead the people of FOB Frontier out of hell, even if the one hope of salvation lies in teaming up with the man whose own magical powers put the base in such grave danger in the first place — Oscar Britton, public enemy number one…

Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier was published by Ace Books on January 29, 2013. It is 368 pages and priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

December was the most active month the BG blog has ever seen, breaking every traffic record in our history. It’s good to have you folks hanging out with us, instead of risking your neck skiing or snowboarding or something. Exercise kills, and it especially has it in for long-time readers with weak vision and poor motor skills.

If you’re just joining us, you missed some great stuff last month. Theo took on the entire SF & fantasy establishment, Rich Horton proved there’s still life in old SF magazines, and tantalizing glimpses of the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness triggered some animated speculation on just who that sinister guy blowin’ up Federation stuff is. I compiled a Black Gate Christmas Gift List, Ryan Harvey continued his enormously popular series on Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars books, and Howard Andrew Jones offered up a generous preview of his new novel The Bones of the Old Ones.

That’s just a sample — here’s the complete list of the Top 50 articles from last month.