The Battleborn Interview: Part Two

The Battleborn Interview: Part Two

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Having beaten back the kobolds (see Part One of this interview, here at Black Gate), Sean CW Korsgaard sat down again to talk Sword & Sorcery, and his editorial vision for Battleborn, his upcoming magazine.

With your editor hat firmly on, what’s something you nearly always respond to positively? Heroic animal companions? A romantic sub-plot? A surfeit of halberds? 

Given Battleborn‘s approach to sword-and-sorcery, it should surprise nobody that memorable characters and authentic, hard-hitting action scenes are right above home plate for me.

For characters, you follow in the traditions of heroes like Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric, Kane, Hanuvar, and more. So, even as you plot out your story, every detail you give your lead character matters. Are they distinctive in your mind’s eye? Do they have a few details that make them stand out, not only in the story, but as they stand beside a century of sword-and-sorcery heroes? Do you have an arc for them planned? Do you have some ideas for sequel stories where we follow that arc?

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Foreign Bodies, Part II

Foreign Bodies, Part II

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Uncaged/Prey (Dutch FilmWorks, October 13, 2016)

A new, twenty-film watch-a-thon, this time looking at horror films from around the world. The rules are the same — they must be films I haven’t seen before, and they must be free to stream.

With a bit of luck, this new watch project will feature a lot more quality films as I unearth horror from around the globe. With that said…

Uncaged (AKA Prey) – Netherlands – (2016)

We are introduced to Lizzy (Sophie van Winden) with her hand down a crocodile’s gullet, trying to retrieve a cellphone. This tells us a couple of things; she’s fearless, and she’s okay working with large animal puppets. This will come in useful. Lizzy is called in by the police as an expert after some folks turn up mangled, having been mauled to death by something big. Following another attack on a golf course, a rogue lion is confirmed, and it seems to have set its sights on Amsterdam.

After a series of botched and bloody attempts to trap the beast, Lizzy teams up with her dodgy boyfriend, cameraman Dave (Julian Looman), and her old flame, British hunter Jack De La Rue (Mark Frost), who is confined to an impressive wheelchair due to the last lion he hunted biting his leg off. After much larking around, the final confrontation takes place in Amsterdam University, and things get messy for a fun climax.

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Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

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Cover for The Graveyard Heart and Elegy for Angels and Dogs by Bob Eggleton

Tor Double #24 was originally published in August 1990 and is the final volume in the series which compiled a classic story along with a sequel (or prequel) written by another author. Walter Jon Williams used the world Zelazny created with an overlap of only a few characters to expand Zelazny’s story. Not original to the Tor Doubles series, Elegy for Angels and Dogs was originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 26 years after The Graveyard Heart appeared.

The Graveyard Heart was originally published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in March, 1964. Opening at New Year’s Eve 2000, Zelazny offers a decadent society of the Set, who live to attend flamboyant parties and be seen, going into cryosleep between the parties to prolong their lives. Alvin Moore has managed to get an invitation to the “Party of Parties,” where he promptly falls in love with Leota, one of the Set.

Since the Set only come out of hibernation every few years to attend elaborate parties, there can be no relationship between Moore and Leota. Unable to accept this, Moore decides he must be admitted to the Set and goes about figuring out how to improve his chances of achieving his goal.

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Quatro-Decadal Review: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1999, edited by Gordon Van Gelder and Robin O’Connor

Quatro-Decadal Review: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1999, edited by Gordon Van Gelder and Robin O’Connor

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1999, with a Chesley Bonestell cover

This is a 50th Anniversary double issue… why did it have to be a double issue? I hate to start the review with a petty observation like that, but honestly, this was a bigger task than I was hoping for, especially because the November ’99 Asimov’s SF was also a double issue!

Right inside the cover is an ad for Frank M. Robinson’s Science Fiction of the 20th Century:  An illustrated History.  Really pulling the nostalgia strings for the older sf!  Another item to put on my ‘to buy’ list.

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Space Opera vs Sword & Planet: Flash Gordon

Space Opera vs Sword & Planet: Flash Gordon

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Flash Gordon is sometimes labeled Sword & Planet fiction. It meets quite a few of the characteristics. It has an Earthman, Flash, ending up on a strange world where he engages in battles with strange monsters and weird humanoid aliens, including winged men, bird riders, lion men, and others. However, it fails the S&P test on one major feature, the primary weapon used. When Flash is first challenged, if at all possible, he reaches for a ray gun rather than a sword.

John Carter, Dray Prescot, Jandar of Callisto, and Ruenn Maclang of Talera reach for a sword. For this reason, since “sword” is the very first word in Sword & Planet, I tend to classify the Flash Gordon stories as Space Opera and put them in a category of S&P adjacent. It’s a matter of taste, of course. I tend to be a splitter rather than a lumper, which means I tend to separate genres along narrower lines than some other folks. The images I’ve posted today, downloaded as public domain or as stills from the movie, illustrate this feature of the Flash stories.

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Merlin: A Retrospective

Merlin: A Retrospective

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Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I have been rewatching a few things as I move through this last part of 2025. I’m not sure why I’m feeling nostalgic, but I am. Part of that rewatch is BBC’s Merlin. I watched this as it aired, all the way back in 2008. I adored it then, and I adore it now. No doubt, part of the adoration now is very much tied to how much I loved it as I was discovering the series for the first time. A not insignificant part, however, is because this show is just good.

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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Arthurian Elements In the Conan Canon – Part II

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Arthurian Elements In the Conan Canon – Part II

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It’s installment three of Cimmerian September, and I’m going back to Spring of 2018 for today’s post. But it’s not a reprint (Hey: I think people should read last week’s essay on “Rogues in the House”!

I took a fantasy template developed by John Teehan, citing Arthurian elements to be found in almost any fantasy work. Well, at least one element can be, anyways. I applied the principles to the first four Conan stories: “Phoenix on the Sword,” “Frost Giant’s Daughter,” “The God in the Bowl,” and “The Tower of the Elephant.” You can click on this link to see that three of the four scored pretty low.

Well, we’re gonna look at the next three Conan stories: “The Scarlet Citadel,” Queen of the Black Coast,” Black Colossus,” and Iron Shadows in the Moon.”

So, let’s see how the stories shape up.

John Teehan, in The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy: Volume One, challenges the reader to think of their favorite contemporary fantasy novels. And we’re talking Tolkien-onwards here, not just the past few years. Then he gives a list and says it would be difficult to think of a book that didn’t have any of the five themes on the list. He is making the point that the Arthurian legend, largely brought to popular culture by Thomas Malory, was an interweaving of those five themes. High fantasy epics like David Eddings’ Belgariad still follow this path.

I immediately thought about Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales and how they didn’t really emulate this pattern. Or so it seemed to me. My friend Deuce Richardson immediately pointed out two stories that did significantly incorporate these elements. So, I decided to start at the beginning and take a good look at “The Phoenix on the Sword”: then, do a less detailed survey of the following stories.

This time around, we’ll give “The Scarlet Citadel extra attention, then move on to the other two.

So, here we go!

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Launching Battleborn: An Interview with Editor Sean C.W. Korsgaard, Part One

Launching Battleborn: An Interview with Editor Sean C.W. Korsgaard, Part One

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Deep in the underground tunnels of Black Gate’s vast Indiana Annex, I sat down with Sean CW Korsgaard and we embarked on a lively chat about his upcoming S&S magazine, Battleborn – what it is, where it’s headed, and how S&S fits into our contemporary literary landscape. The Indiegogo to jump-start Battleborn closes on September 30th, so read on to see if you’d like to join in on the action. 

Why start a new Sword & Sorcery magazine in 2025? Are you worried about competition from other S&S magazines? And what sets Battleborn apart?

First, we are very fortunate that after decades of being in the doldrums, sword-and-sorcery is seeing a genuine renaissance. We have the biggest group of talented writers the genre has seen since the 1970s. There’s an entire market starved for heroic, action focused fantasy, and we are building Battleborn on that! …

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Foreign Bodies, Part I

Foreign Bodies, Part I

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Clementina (Crudofilms, December 7, 2017)

A new, twenty-film watch-a-thon, this time looking at horror films from around the world. The rules are the same — they must be films I haven’t seen before, and they must be free to stream.

With a bit of luck, this new watch project will feature a lot more quality films as I unearth horror from around the globe. With that said…

Clementina – Argentina (2017)

I’m starting this new 20-film watch-a-thon with this masterful exploration of the trauma associated with domestic violence.

The true horror in this film from Jimena Monteoliva is the understanding that domestic violence in Argentina has escalated, with the perpetrators often escaping justice by fleeing the region.

The film begins with Juana, played with extraordinary rawness and vulnerability by Cecilia Cartasegna, lying curled up on the floor in a pool of her own blood, clutching her pregnant belly. We soon learn she has lost the baby, and her neighbour saw her husband, Mateo, running from the apartment.

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Tor Doubles #23: Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch and Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier

Tor Doubles #23: Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch and Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier

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Cover for Riding the Torch by Wayne Barlowe
Cover for Tin Soldier by Ron Walotsky

Both stories published in this volume originally appeared in 1974, with Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier appearing in April and Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch appearing four months later.

Tin Soldier was originally published in Orbit 14, edited by Damon Knight and published by Harper and Row. The story was also Vinge’s debut story.

Among Vinge’s best known works is her Hugo and Locus Award winning novel The Snow Queen, which was also nominated for the Nebula, the Ditmar, and the coveted Balrog. That novel took its inspiration from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Vinge’s first story, The Tin Soldier, looks to the same source, taking its title from Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” a fact referenced in the story.

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