Black Gate – Page 1112 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Marvel Feature: Red Sonja 4

Tuesday, November 13, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 1 comment

Before the story, let’s just look over that cover. It’s a parody of a couple famous Frank Frazetta paintings of Conan, down to the swooning male clutching at her leg. Axe raised defiantly in the air, she cries, “Whatever the battleground, whatever the foe, I shall never falter. So swears Red Sonja!” And the eye naturally focuses on the pile of corpses at her feet, almost missing the outline of this issue’s foe in the background. A defiant pose, a pile of corpses, a looming supernatural threat that consumes the entire background … this is what got kids to pluck down a quarter back in 1976. And the chain mail bikini didn’t hurt.

This issue starts, as so many Red Sonja stories do, with the Hyrkanian swordswoman trying to get a drink. She rides into a village that’s seemingly abandoned, save for the statues seated in the tavern. Of course, the townspeople are merely hiding from a gorgon (except for the ones who’ve been turned into statues already) and once they determine that Sonja is responsible for their troubles (based on the fact that she’s a stranger, apparently), they quickly vote to hang her. (This isn’t the last time Red Sonja is sentenced to hanging, for those who want to keep score.)

By the time the villagers realize their mistake, Sonja’s been rescued by the village idiot, who steals a horse for her and sends her on her way. Of course, it says something about Sonja when she decides to head back to the village to investigate and even the village idiot tells her that’s a bad idea.

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December Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

Monday, November 12, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Okay, technically, it’s probably no longer on sale. And we usually don’t cover Asimov’s anyway, since it’s chiefly science fiction in content. But as I was putting this issue away, I was so struck by the moody and beautiful cover by Laura Diehl, illustrating Chris Beckett’s fairy-tale inspired “The Caramel Forest,” that I decided to make an exception and feature it here. So sue me.

I can’t just feature the cover, though, as that would be kinda weird, and make for a very short article. So I typed up the contents of the entire issue. You’re welcome.

NOVELLA

“Sudden, Broken and Unexpected” — Steven Popkes

NOVELETTE

“The Waves” — by Ken Liu

SHORT STORIES

“The Caramel Forest” — Chris Beckett
“The Wizard of West 34th Street” — Mike Resnick
“The Black Feminist’s Guide to Science Fiction Film Editing” — Sandra McDonald
“The Pipes of Pan” — Robert Reed

There’s also poetry by Bruce Boston, Karin L. Frank, and Robert Frazier, and the usual features, including “Merry Armageddon,” an editorial by Sheila Williams; a Reflections column by Robert Silverberg; book reviews by Peter Heck; and the SF Convention Calendar by Erwin S. Strauss.

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Carrie Vaughn Steals the Show

Monday, November 12, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I was reviewing science fiction magazines for SF Site when I first encountered Carrie Vaughn. It was in the Fall 1999 issue of Patrick Swenson’s Talebones, one of the best of the small-press magazines, that I read her story “The Girl With the Pre-Raphaelite Hair,” which I noted in my review “delivers a wallop… A tightly-written tale with a powerful ending.”

Not bad for her first science fiction story. Carrie published more than 50 over the next decade, carving out a name for herself. But it was her debut novel, Kitty and the Midnight Hour (2005), that truly catapulted her to stardom. Featuring late-night DJ (and secret werewolf) Kitty Norville — who hosts a Denver talk show about Werewolves, Vampires, and other supernatural creatures — the book was an instant success. The fourth in the series, Kitty and the Silver Bullet (2008), hit The New York Times Best Seller list, and she’s repeated that impressive feat with at least four subsequent volumes.

This industry is hard on new writers, and over the last ten years I’ve seen it defeat more than a few talented authors. So it’s a genuine pleasure to watch someone climb to the very top of the field, from her first short story to the tenth volume of her bestselling series, on nothing more than hard work and talent. If you haven’t tried Carrie Vaughn yet, her latest effort, Kitty Steals the Show, makes a good jumping-on point:

Kitty has been tapped as the keynote speaker for the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies, taking place in London. The conference brings together scientists, activists, protestors, and supernatural beings from all over the world — and Kitty, Ben, and Cormac are right in the middle of it.

Master vampires from dozens of cities have also gathered in London for a conference of their own. With the help of the Master of London, Kitty gets more of a glimpse into the Long Game — a power struggle among vampires that has been going on for centuries — than she ever has before. In her search for answers, Kitty has the help of some old allies, and meets some new ones, such as Caleb, the alpha werewolf of the British Isles. The conference has also attracted some old enemies, who’ve set their sights on her and her friends.

All the world’s a stage, and Kitty’s just stepped into the spotlight.

Kitty Steals the Show was published on July 31 by Tor Books. It is 342 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the digital version and the mass market paperback.

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Godmother Lizard” by C.S.E. Cooney

Sunday, November 11, 2012 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

A young woman makes a dangerous journey across a fantastic desert landscape in a desperate attempt to save her childhood friend:

He heaped down beside me on the sharps of his knees and stared into the murky slime of the pool. “Do you have another lace?”

I felt him there beside me, all along my right side, every thin bone of him. Whenever he twitched, I expected him to rattle like verdy branches. I untied my other sandal and handed over the lace.

“I’m Ro,” I told him.

“Jaks.” He nodded at me. “Your parents are dead?”

“Pretty much dead, yeah,” I agreed. “Buried down in Paupers’ Grave on the corner of B’ihbrid and Nilzi. I live with Great Aunt Irlingard who hates me.”

“I live with my father and sisters,” he said, “in my Mother’s house.”

After a pause, he added, “My Mother is eating my father. Very slowly.”

C.S.E. Cooney’s fiction has been reprinted in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011 and 2012 editions). Her poems and short stories have appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 3, Apex, Subterranean, Strange Horizons, Podcastle, Pseudopod, Ideomancer, Goblin Fruit, and Mythic Delirium. Her collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes was released by Papaveria Press in May, and her fairytale-with-teeth novella, Jack o’ the Hills, was published by Papaveria in January. She was the recipient of the Rhysling Award in 2011 for “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”

You can see the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Donald S. Crankshaw, Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, here.

“Godmother Lizard” is a complete 16,000-word novella of weird fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Vintage Treasures: Al Williamson Adventures

Sunday, November 11, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Al Williamson is one of my all-time favorite comic artists. His meticulously-detailed alien landscapes, boundless imagination and kinetic style combined to make him the perfect artist for SF adventure comics.

He started working for E.C. Comics in 1952, illustrating stories by Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and others, in titles including Valor, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and Incredible Science Fiction. I remember him chiefly for his later work, especially his famed Star Wars comic adaptations, and his 80’s art in Alien Worlds and Marvel’s Epic Illustrated. He passed away in 2010 (see the BG obit here).

Fortunately, you don’t have to hunt through expensive old comics to see his very best work. Over the years, a number of excellent retrospectives have appeared, including The Art of Al Williamson (1983), Al Williamson: Hidden Lands (2004), The Al Williamson Reader (2008), Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon (2009), and Al Williamson Archives (2010). One of my favorites is Al Williamson Adventures, a beautifully-produced collection of seven stories spanning his entire career, written by some of the best writers in the business:

“Along the Scenic Route” — Harlan Ellison
“Cliff Hanger” — Bruce Jones
“Relic” — Archie Goodwin
“The Few and the Far” — Bruce Jones
“One Last Job” — Mark Schultz
“Out of Phase” — Archie Goodwin
“Tracker” — Mark Wheatley

Al Williamson Adventures was published by Insight Studios Group in September, 2003. It is 96 pages in oversize hardcover, with an 8-page color section.

New Treasures: Jeffrey E. Barlough’s What I Found at Hoole

Saturday, November 10, 2012 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

Jeffrey E. Barlough’s Western Lights series may be the best fantasy books you don’t know about.

I didn’t know about them either, until Jackson Kuhl’s review of Strange Cargo in Black Gate 8. Jackson has called Barlough “a wonderful yet unappreciated fantasist… a talent I invite everyone to sample.” In his review of Anchorwick, the fifth novel in the series, he summarized the intriguing setting this way:

In a world where the Ice Age never ended, a cataclysm has reduced humanity to a slip of English civilization along North America’s western coastline. It’s neither steampunk nor weird western; the technology is early 19th century. It’s kinda-sorta gaslamp fantasy, except there doesn’t seem to be any natural gas. Barlough’s creation is best described as a Victorian Dying Earth — gothic and claustrophobic yet confronted by its inhabitants with upper lips held stiff. As the books are fantasy mysteries, the less said about their plots, the better… mastodons and mylodons mixed with ghosts and gorgons? Yes, please.

Now the seventh novel in the series, What I Found at Hoole, has arrived in a handsome trade paperback from Gresham & Doyle. It picks up at the end of the second volume, The House in the High Wood, which was a nominee for the 2002 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Mr. Ingram Somervell has been called to the remote village of Hoole, in the uplands of Ayleshire, to inspect some property bequeathed to him by an uncle he had never met. Almost at once he finds himself plunged into mysteries that confound him. Why had Clement’s Mill, a dilapidated old mill that did no milling, been left to him… Why had his uncle ordered the old chapel on the fellside and its coffin-crypt sealed after the arrival of Miss Petra, his ward and heir? What was the ghostly yellow light that had been seen on Cowdrie Beacon? And what to make of the frightful dreams hinting at some unimaginable catastrophe plaguing young Somervell since he came into Ayleshire?

These novels, with their oddly pastoral cover art — the cover to this one, F.H.Tynsdale’s A Country Cottage and Church, is from the 19th Century — are an entertaining mix of genres, blending fantasy, gothic mystery, and even a dash of period comedy straight out of P.G. Wodehouse. Don’t miss them.

What I Found at Hoole was published by Gresham & Doyle on November 1st. It is 259 pages and priced at $14.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition.

Kevin O’Donnell Jr, November 29, 1950 – November 7, 2012

Saturday, November 10, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

American science fiction writer Kevin O’Donnell Jr., who added “Jr.” to his byline to distinguish himself from his famous father Kevin O’Donnell, director of the Peace Corps, died this week.

O’Donnell graduated Yale University in 1972; his first short story “The Hand Is Quicker” appeared a year later in Analog. He published more than 70 short stories in a variety of genre publications, including Galaxy, Galileo, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing/Fantastic, and Omni.

His first novel, Bander Snatch, appeared in paperback from Bantam Books in 1979. He published a total of ten over the next eleven years, including Mayflies (Berkley, 1979), War of Omission (Bantam, 1982), and ORA:CLE (Berkley, 1984).

Most of O’Donnell’s fiction was standalone, with the notable exception of his four-book series The Journeys of McGill Feighan for Berkley Books: Caverns (April 1981), Reefs (October 1981), Lava (April 1982), and Cliffs (February 1986).

His last novel was Fire on the Border from Roc Books, published in September 1990; he retired from writing fiction after his last short story, “The Boys from Bethlehem” (written with Denise Lee) appeared in the anthology The Darkness and the Fire in August, 1998.

O’Donnell was very active in the Science Fiction Writers of America, serving as chairman of the Nebula Award Novel Jury in 1990 and 1991, and chairing the Nebula Award Committee 1990-1998. He was the Business Manager of the quarterly SFWA Bulletin from 1994-1998, and in April 2005 he received the Service to SFWA Award.

Steampunk Spotlight – Japanese Edition: Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff

Saturday, November 10, 2012 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 4 comments

In his debut novel, author Jay Kristoff creates a rich fantasy steampunk setting based upon Japanese feudal culture, complete with griffins, samurai warriors, demons, airships, an evil mechanized religious order, and a ruthless dictator. Really, I think that list should be enough to get you interested in reading Stormdancer (Amazon, B&N), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

To date, steampunk has largely been confined to Victorian England settings, with the occasional foray into the wild west. Even the anime and manga steampunk tales have tended to lean on these more traditional interpretations of the genre. Kristoff boldly takes the genre in a new direction, infusing it with new vigor.

The central character in Stormdancer is Yukiko, daughter of the Shogun’s master hunter, Masaru. They are members of one of the four prominent clans, theirs based around Kitsune, the fox, the trickster god in their religious pantheon. When the Shogun hears rumors of a surviving “thunder tiger” (or arashitora, this culture’s name for a griffin), he has a prophetic dream that he will become a stormdancer, riding the great beast into battle and vanquishing all of his enemies. But first, he needs to get his hands on one, so he orders Masaru (along with his team, including Yukiko) off to capture it. Needless to say, things do not go entirely as expected (otherwise it would be a very boring book).

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The Return of Dr. Mabuse

Friday, November 9, 2012 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

Norbert Jacques’s criminal mastermind was immortalized in three classic Fritz Lang films made between 1922 and 1960. As in the original bestselling novel, the title character in Lang’s epic 5-hour silent film, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler, served as the incarnation of post-war German decadence.

A decade later, Lang returned to the character in the classic The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, imbuing the character with an occult influence as Dr. Baum becomes obsessed with the institutionalized Mabuse to the point where he believes he is possessed by his recently-deceased patient’s spirit. Fleeing Germany shortly after the film’s completion, the Jewish Lang proudly noted that in this film, Mabuse served as a critique of the Nazi Party that had recently risen to prominence.

At the end of his career, Lang returned to the character for The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, but the mesmerizing criminal genius was now awash with Cold War paranoia amidst a tale that painted the inexplicably reborn Mabuse as the personification of the Big Brother-style East German communist government forever spying on the people it seeks to control.

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World Fantasy 2012: Neither Hurricane, SuperStorm, Sleet, nor Hail Can Daunt Our Heroine If She Wears Enough Chain Mail…

Thursday, November 8, 2012 C.S.E. Cooney Comments 11 comments

bgruby-slippers — My ruby slippers by hurricane candlelight. Sigh.

Well, as Rabbie Burns would say, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

I had all these wonderful, these glorious, these SUPREME plans to fly from Rhode Island to Chicago on Monday, October 29th, 2012 and spend a few days there among folks I hadn’t seen since I moved last November.

But a little storm named Sandy had other ideas. Oh, I won’t go into the details. They’re not gory enough; besides, it would sound like I’m complaining.

And really, I spent a very pleasant Monday in my attic apartment — which trembled — looking out the windows at sideways trees, contemplating putting on my ruby slippers in case the house fell on me, writing romantic letters by candlelight and reading Diana Wynne Jones’s Enchanted Glass. So that was all right.

bgromantic-desk1 — My desk. Where I wrote romantic hurricane letters.

But fly to Chicago? See family? Spend Halloween among friends, with soup and bonfire and creepy literature? Drive in caravan to Toronto(ish area) where the World Fantasy Convention was located?

CAPTAIN, IT’S A NO-GO. Halloween has been canceled, repeat, Halloween has been canceled.

However, my story does not end with the storm. No, it is just beginning.

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