Black Gate – Page 1113 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Hand of Fu Manchu, by Sax Rohmer

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

William Patrick Maynard, Black Gate‘s resident Sax Rohmer expert, wrote an excellent 9-part series on The Hand of Fu Manchu, starting last November. It piqued my curiosity towards Rohmer, and The Hand of Fu Manchu in particular, and I vowed I would spend some quality time with both.

You’ll note it’s now October. Maybe I don’t always do it quickly, but I do keep my promises. This one was made even easier by the arrival of the gorgeous reprint edition of Rohmer’s third Fu-Manchu novel from Titan Books.

London, 1913. The era of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and the Invisible Man. A time of shadows, secret societies, and dens filled with opium addicts. Into this world comes the most fantastic emissary of evil society has ever known… Fu-Manchu.

A sealed box and murder most foul call Nayland Smith and Dr Petrie back from distant Egypt to the fog-enshrouded streets of London. There they discover that Dr. Fu-Manchu is an agent of a vast and deadly organization — one which will stop at nothing to achieve its ruthless goals.

The Hand of Fu Manchu was originally published in 1917 (the UK title was The Si-Fan Mysteries). There have been numerous paperback reprints over the last century, but few of this level of quality. These Titan editions are handsome and very affordable, in oversize trade paperback format; this one includes an afterword by Leslie S. Klinger, an abbreviated version of his essay from The Mystery of Fu-Manchu.

The Hand of Fu Manchu was published by Titan Books in May 2012. It is 266 pages, and priced at $9.95 for the print version and $7.99 for the digital edition. Read more at the Titan Books website.

Adventure on Film: The Thief of Baghdad

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 markrigney Comments 13 comments

On a recent Friday night, I sat down with my wife to watch The Thief of Baghdad (the definitive Korda/Powell version, from 1940). Thirty minutes later, my wife was fast asleep. When she woke up, she said, knowing I planned to mention the film to Black Gate’s readership, “What are you going to write about this?” Her notable lack of enthusiasm could, of course, be due to any number of factors, but only three reasonable alternatives present themselves: A) my wife is entirely lacking in taste; B) my wife has been replaced by a cantankerous alien entirely lacking in taste; C) this particular movie might well cause many a discerning viewer to harbor similar sentiments.

Let’s be clear: The Thief of Baghdad is one of the most universally acclaimed fantasy films ever made. Even my old (well-loved) copy of The Movie Guide gushes. “Perhaps the most splendid fantasy film ever made,” writes James Monaco and his various contributors, ending the review with “Film fantasy just doesn’t get much better than this.” Halliwell’s is equally enthusiastic, and they don’t like anything. Time Out raves. Coppola and Lucas cite it as a significant influence.

The story is crackerjack from start to finish. (Spoilers here: if you don’t want the plot, skip to the next paragraph.) Ahmed, the king deposed by Jaffar, his own Grand Vizier, falls in love with a princess whom no man can see, and of course vows to see her repeatedly. Ahmed is aided by Abu the thief, but of course Jaffar has designs on the very same princess. When Jaffar kidnaps her, Ahmed and Abu follow, but Jaffar conjures up a storm that separates our two heroes. In order to find Ahmed again, Abu must gain the reluctant help of a fifty-foot genie (the exceptional Rex Ingram), then steal the Eye of the World from a temple guarded by, among other things, a giant spider and giant octopi. Finally, with Ahmed captured and about to be beheaded, Abu swoops in on a flying carpet to save the day.

Given all this, how on earth did my wife (or some random alien) pass out?

The Thief of Baghdad has not aged gracefully. It’s essential viewing, yes, but only for buffs of either fantasy films or Old Guard Hollywood. The inconsistent special effects are the least of its problems; worse by far is what one might call presentational acting, but is in fact mostly just plain bad. Even Sabu, the Indian star who first made it big with Elephant Boy, is revealed to be a truly wooden performer. Conrad Veidt, as the cruel-as-an-adder Jaffar, comes off as a well-oiled villain, but he’s horribly miscast; he’s German through and through.

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National Novel Writing Month: A Five-Year Veteran’s View

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Ryan Harvey Comments 6 comments

nanowrimo-2012 November is almost here, which means for tens of thousands of people spanning the globe the time has come to crunch numbers over thirty days to maximize their ability to write at least fifty thousands words of a novel. It is called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and by this point most of you with any connection to the world of books — whether writing, reading, wholesaling, or propping up the couch — have heard of this social creative writing event. In fact, I expect “NaNoWriMo” and “WriMos” to enter the Oxford American Dictionary within a few years.

Three years ago, I wrote a lengthy post explaining NaNoWriMo and why I started doing it; if you want a longer explanation from a participant about what the month entails, check out that hoary article. Or you can look at the official site. Last year, I again offered my evolving thoughts on NaNoWriMo.

This is my fifth year participating, and although the event started in 1999, a five-year vet such as myself is a rarity. The first time I did NaNo, the Los Angeles TGIO Party (“Thank the Gods It’s Over”) managed to pack all the attendees around a single table in the Cat and Fiddle pub in Hollywood. Half a decade later, the Kick-Off party for Los Angeles jammed wall to wall half of an El Cholo restaurant in Pasadena, standing-room only, with raffles for sponsored gifts and two professional writing gurus in attendance. The growth of the event over half a decade has been enormous, with at least four times as many participants as when I started, and that’s my conservative estimate.

As NaNoWriMo has changed, so has my relationship with it: my feelings about its public face, and how it become more globalized and systematized while losing some of its “handmade” origins. It’s natural that I would start to develop more cynical opinions about the event, but then I acknowledge that some of this comes from how much I’ve changed as an author since 2008 — and that NaNoWriMo played a big part in making those changes.

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Marvel Feature: Red Sonja 2

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 1 comment

By this stage, Red Sonja has had several highly-regarded artists drawing her; but this is the first issue where we meet the artist most closely associated with the She-Devil: Frank Thorne. His art style takes the character into an almost psychedelic landscape. Check out the cozy inn she stops for a drink in and tell me that place isn’t haunted. Every tree looks like something pulled from The Wizard of Oz and the farm is something straight out of EC Comics.

And while Frank Thorne draws a bad acid-trip version of the Hyborian Age, his Red Sonja is a truly a hell-spawn, living up to the title “She-Devil with a Sword.” Check her out on the cover: that’s not a woman reveling in the thrill of battle. That’s a woman who’s pissed off at the Picts. I love the expression on the one in front, who’s obviously trying to get away from Red Sonja, wielding a sword and axe while riding her zombie horse. In the story itself, she wears a riding cloak that flaps behind her like the wings of a huge bat.

The story begins with Red Sonja robbing a brigand of his ill-gotten loot, not to return to the true owner, mind you, but to keep for herself. Among these items is a gold key inscribed with a prayer to Balek, this issue’s guest demon. One page later, the horse she stole from the brigand is stolen from her by a one-legged man named Dunkin, who’s pretty rude to her even after she decides not to kill him for stealing her horse and trying to behead her.

Dunkin has a bit of resentment towards women because he believes that having one leg prevents any woman from wanting him (maybe if he stopped calling them “wenches”). Apropos to nothing, he grabs Sonja and kisses her. This is something she wouldn’t even let Conan get away with; but she has been questioning her vow recently, so maybe she decided to let a man get just a little closer to her to see what happens.

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Popular Marketing Mistakes: Cannibalism

Monday, October 29, 2012 peadarog Comments 13 comments

1. The Sadness — It is too Much!

When my first book, The Inferior, came squalling into the light back in 2007 it received absolutely wonderful reviews.

“Read this and remember why Science Fiction lit your fire in the first place!”

“An exhilarating read, highly recommended and an incredible first novel in what is going to end up an incredible career.”

It made several “Best of the Year” lists. Foreign editors snapped up the rights. An agent in Hollywood got excited about the idea of a movie. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for a start, nobody bought it.

By nobody, I don’t just mean sweaty little nerds like myself with fistfuls of notes or book vouchers. No, the shops didn’t want to buy it either. They failed to stock it, or did so in small quantities. They were right too, because the few copies that made it into stores gathered dust or wept quietly in the back of warehouses.

After “Best of the Year” lists, The Inferior began turning up in other places, such as “most underrated book” lists and — now that I have two novels in print — “most underrated series.” That’s a gentle way of saying “loserville.”

Yes, this depressed me and I whined to whoever would listen until I bored my friends to sleep with it. I didn’t understand back then that both myself and my publishers had made some interesting mistakes in our marketing of the book.

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Vintage Treasures: Solomon Kane: The Hills of the Dead, by Robert E. Howard

Monday, October 29, 2012 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

With all the recent discussion around these parts about Conan and Robert E. Howard, I figured the best use of my time this week would be to sit back and enjoy some genuine Robert E. Howard.

With output as vast as Howard’s, the biggest challenge was choosing what to read. One of my favorite Howard pieces is “Skulls in the Stars,” a genuinely creepy tale in which Solomon Kane investigates a moonlit moor trail haunted by a vindictive spirit, so I decided on Solomon Kane: The Hills of the Dead. It was the second Kane paperback published by Bantam Books (the first was Solomon Kane: Skulls in the Stars, in December, 1978). The striking cover is part of a fold-out poster by Bob Larkin.

In a world ruled by piracy, stalked by vampires, peopled by cities of the inhuman, he stood tall amid the terrors of the Dark Continent. Kane, a man of savage and unconquerable courage, strode deep into the jungles, forever slashing his diamond-edged rapier as evil guided the creatures of the night toward him. Wicked whispers of death touched him. Haunted horrors of the world beyond life reached for him. But Kane never halted his march, for he would never rest until the final, epic duel between light and dark was waged… and won.

Disappointingly, I discovered the contents are not pure Howard — in fact, two of the five stories within were completed by Ramsey Campbell, who also provides the introduction.

Introduction: The Mystery of Solomon Kane, by Ramsey Campbell
“The Hills of the Dead”
“Hawk of Basti” (completed by Ramsey Campbell)
“The Return of Sir Richard Grenville” (poem)
“Wings in the Night”
“The Footfalls Within”
“The Children of Asshur” (completed by Ramsey Campbell)
“Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” (poem)

Still, these’s lots here to enjoy. I’m especially pleased to see the poetry, and Campbell’s introduction, which as far as I know is unique to this volume.

Solomon Kane: The Hills of the Dead was published in paperback by Bantam Books in March, 1979. It is 141 pages, with a cover price of $1.95.

Black Gate Online Fiction: “A Phoenix in Darkness” by Donald S. Crankshaw, Part II

Sunday, October 28, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

This week, we bring you Part II of Donald S. Crankshaw’s epic short novel, as young members of a secretive Order of wizards track a sinister group of Necromancers to their underground lair.

The corridor opened into a wide, circular room, the smooth, polished stone of the walls gleaming from the light that hung from the ceiling on a chain. It was like no lamp that Seth had ever seen; it appeared to be a sphere filled with an steady, harsh white light. Someone moved across the wide floor with a sluggish limp.

It took Seth a moment to realize what he was looking at. The man wore dark pants and a black, short-sleeved shirt, leaving pale skin visible. Unnaturally pale, even for someone who lived in this darkness. Patches of it showed through where clumps of his limp black hair had fallen out. His hands hung slack at his sides, and his feet dragged forward step by lurching step. His whole mode of movement hinted at some terrible deformity hidden just beneath the skin. The mouth was sewn shut, and the wide-open, glassy eyes stared straight ahead.

Seth tightened his grip on his sword. “What the Shol is that? We should kill it.”

“It’s already dead,” said Aulus.

Donald S. Crankshaw has published short stories in Daily Science Fiction, Aoife’s Kiss, and Coach’s Midnight Diner. He lives in Boston. Author photo by Kristin Janz.

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

“A Phoenix in Darkness” is a complete 50,000-word short novel of dark fantasy offered free of charge. It will be published in three parts. The story began last week with Part One, here.

Read Part Two of “A Phoenix in Darkness” here.

Robots versus Musketeers: The Last Musketeer by Jason

Sunday, October 28, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I haven’t read anything by the Norwegian cartoonist Jason before, but I’ve been intrigued for a while. So last week I ordered a copy of Isle of 100,000 Graves from Amazon.com. For a while I had The Last Musketeer in my cart as well — I didn’t know anything about it, but the cover looked cool.

Now pay attention, because this is one of the dangers of online shopping that no one talks about. I’ve never wandered by the counter at Barnes & Noble and accidentally purchased something, for example. But apparently, I forgot to take The Last Musketeer out of my cart, ’cause it showed up with the rest of my order. Whoops.

Now, Amazon has a very forgiving return policy. But to take advantage of it, you have to do stuff. Not the least of which is actually return the item in question. That’s a lot harder to do when it has both a Musketeer and a robot on the cover. You try it.

Anyway, now I have a copy of The Last Musketeer. I read it today, and quite enjoyed it.

Athos, one of the original members of Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, is living a wasted existence as a drunk and a bum in modern Paris, when the city is attacked by ‘laser blasts” originating from the planet Mars. In fine pulp fashion, Athos tracks down a pair of ray-gun toting invaders wandering the city, defeats them with his trusty rapier, and forces the surviving Martian to take him to his rocket ship, where they blast off for the alien planet (one of the running gags in the strip is that Athos has no clue what planet he’s on).

It goes without saying that the comic celebrates all the conventions of 1930s-era pulp science fiction, right down to the goofy alien costumes, stubby rockets, and giant cast-iron video screens. There’s no explanation for how an 1840s-era French Musketeer is still alive in modern Paris, and none is needed. This comic has one audience: those who want to see Athos the Musketeer battle robots on the sands of Mars. If that’s not you, don’t put it in your Amazon cart (even by accident).

But if it is you, I think you’ll have a good time. My one criticism is that the dialog seemed oddly wooden; I put the blame for that mostly on Kim Thompson’s translation. Perhaps I’ve just gotten spoiled by the elegant and frequently hilarious translations in modern manga, especially Fairy Tail and the brilliant Fullmetal Alchemist. But it seemed the crisp and subtle artwork demanded crisp and subtle dialog, and that wasn’t always the case.

The Last Musketeer was published by Fantagraphics in January, 2008. It is 48 pages in full color, and priced at $12.95.

Melinda Snodgrass Discusses Android Slavery, Why Vampires Would Be Lawyers, and Dressage Riding: An Audio Interview

Sunday, October 28, 2012 Emily Mah Comments 2 comments

I’ve had the privilege of knowing Melinda Snodgrass for over ten years now through the writers group, Critical Mass, which is based in our mutual home state of New Mexico.

While home this summer, I sat down with Melinda and Ian Tregillis for high tea before the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics. Okay, so we weren’t in London and we later watched the ceremonies on television, but you won’t necessarily be able to tell that from the recording.

In the course of this interview, we discuss Melinda’s long career in fiction, both as a novelist and a screenwriter.

Tune in to hear her explain, in her own words, how she decided to become a writer after an evening with Fred Saberhagen, Roger Zelazny, and others; wrote the historic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: Measure of a Man on spec; produced her own television pilot; and wrote three series of groundbreaking novels from legal science fiction to socio-political urban fantasy.

This interview is approximately forty-four minutes long, so sit back, relax, and listen to a longtime pioneer explain how it is she always manages to find new trails to blaze.

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New Treasures: Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

Saturday, October 27, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Yeah, I know I’m late to the party with this one. Stories, the high-profile original anthology edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, was released over two years ago — back in June of 2010.

But I have a good excuse. Despite the incredibly awesome cover by Tom Gauld, after my first glace at the table of contents, I dismissed Stories as a mainstream anthology.

I mean, come on. Walter Mosley, Jodi Picolut, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanne Harris, Lawrence Block, Roddy Doyle, and Chuck Palahniuk? You’d have made the same mistake.

Eventually, I picked up enough on the buzz around this book to realize that its claim to being a “groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction” wasn’t just hyperbole. Many of the stories, including Neil Gaiman’s “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” and Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon,” began showing up on genre best-of-the-year lists.

I finally decided it was time to take another look. It didn’t hurt that by then the hardcover was being offered at a bargain price at Amazon.com for 60% off (still in stock if you act fast).

Stories is by no means a straight-up fantasy anthology. But it includes some terrific fantasy fiction by some of the genre’s biggest names, including Richard Adams, Michael Swanwick, Michael Moorcock, Peter Straub, Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers, Joe Hill, Michael Marshall Smith, and Joe R. Lansdale.

And I think you’ll be surprised by the contributions of the writers I mentioned above — who aren’t known for writing fantasy — as well.

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