Black Gate – Page 1118 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Goth Chick News: Harry Potter Gets Horny

Thursday, October 11, 2012 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

It was bound to happen eventually.

This week as I perused the backlog of seasonal goodies that find their way to my in-box every October, I opened one that made me feel a whole bunch of things at once; some of them very “adult.” It was about little Daniel Radcliffe’s latest movie project which just happens to be in the horror vein.

You all remember Daniel, right? He played the adorable, tussle-haired boy wizard in the Harry Potter franchise, though admittedly he did grow up somewhat by the last couple of films. Still, in the round glasses and brandishing a wand and all, it was difficult to see him as completely grown up.

From there, he daringly went nude on the stage in London and New York, playing the mentally-disturbed, decidedly grown-up role of Alan Strang in Equus. But there again, the character is only 17 years old and sick in the head enough to mutilate six horses.

Clearly not sexy.

Then most recently we saw Daniel in the very creepy, Victorian fright fest The Woman in Black. Yes, he played a bereaved lawyer with a child of his own; but trussed up in that white collar under about four layers of worsted British wool he somehow still evoked a character in a fantasy setting, albeit a spine-chilling one.

And now we come to the announcement of his latest venture.

…

Read More Read More

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Hazards of Teaching Cool Stuff You Love in a Classroom

Thursday, October 11, 2012 Sarah Avery Comments 3 comments

“Why do we have to read so much?” said the students who thought Intro to Myth would be an easy A. “And all this writing! You turned it into work!”

“Why are you asking us to think critically about mythology, of all things?” said the students who regarded stories only as entertainment. “I want to read this stuff the same way I read watered-down versions of it when I was ten.”

“Why are you making us read The Silmarillion?” said the less reflective of the Tolkien fans. “I’ve read The Lord of the Rings twenty times, and I thought I could get college credit for stuff I already did in high school.”

Alas, one side effect of attending college is that one may be asked to do college level work. Most of my students were good sports about it. I assured the students who weren’t that they were welcome to keep their copies of the syllabi and read the same books for kicks on their own, and they could get out of the bother of keeping pace, writing papers, or thinking about what they read. All they had to do was go to the registrar’s office and withdraw from my class. Nobody was making them stay.

Nearly all of them stayed.

…

Read More Read More

Adventures in Stealth Publishing: The Return of the Sorcerer

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 John ONeill Comments 22 comments

Some time, I dunno, about four years ago, I saw the cover for The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith online, and I knew I had to have it.

Maybe it was the cool cover. Maybe it was the Gene Wolfe cover blurb. I can’t say. But I wanted it. Real bad.

Of course, it wasn’t published yet. So I had to wait. I added it to my Amazon cart, where it sat. For months. The publication date changed a few times, and then Amazon slapped it with one of those “Currently Unavailable” warnings that are code for “We have no clue when it’s going to ship, dude.”

So I reluctantly took it out of my cart. But I still kept an eye out in bookstores. For years. It was a long, lonely vigil, like Penelope waiting for Odysseus. Exactly like that, now that I think about it.

There were false reports from time to time. Private sellers listed it on Amazon, but when I queried them they admitted it was “available for pre-order.” Bastards. Our own Brian Murphy, usually rock-solid reliable, even wrote a detailed review in July of 2010, the poor deluded fool. It’s sad what deadline pressure can do, I know. When I have to, I make up books to review too, I’m not throwing stones.

Then today I saw it listed for sale by the Book of the Month club. Yes, the Book of the Month club. That’s just weird. They don’t sell books that don’t exist, usually.

So I dug a little further. I discovered, to my astonishment, that Amazon.com had it listed. So did Barnes & Noble. Apparently it came out in 2010.

Excuse me? 2010?? How the hell did it get past me? I had, like, a dragnet the size of Rhode Island out for this book. I’m usually pretty plugged in to the publishing industry. Really. I’m connected, man. It hurts that this book managed to get past me. For two years.

I blame the publisher, because they’re small and I can pick on them. Prime Books, you owe me an apology. And maybe a cinnamon danish.

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Whoremaster of Pald” by Harry Connolly

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

One of the most popular pieces of short fiction we’ve published in Black Gate magazine was Harry Connolly’s first fiction sale, “The Whoremaster of Pald,” which originally appeared in Black Gate 2.

Since that early sale, Harry has become a celebrated fantasy novelist, with titles including the Twenty Palaces novels Child of Fire and Game of Games. Featuring a brilliant and resourceful merchant in a corrupt and violent port city, “The Whoremaster of Pald” has all the hallmarks of his later fiction, and is filled with mystery, surprising twists, and great characters. Here are the opening paragraphs:

My prison cell stank like a bird cage. It was terribly dark, and I listened for the sound of rats. I despise rats. I lay down on the wooden plank that would serve as my bed for the night. My bruised back throbbed, but at least I could still breathe. It’s always nice to breathe after a beating.

In the morning a sweet little sparrow of a girl would testify against me. The charge was murder, and she had seen me do it. It had started only the evening before, when I decided that something had to be done about the new Warden.

RPGNet called the story “remarkably rich and textured,” and Locus magazine said:

[“The Whoremaster of Pald”] was one of my favorites. Harry James Connolly’s unlikely hero is a fat master of a whorehouse who cringes before bullies; not your usual fantasy hero at all. His story is told with smooth, vivid prose that is strongly reminiscent of Jack Vance, Connolly’s Zed gradually engages reader sympathy as he veers between bullying protection racketeers, a new worker who decides she can’t really stick to prostitution, a conniving rival, and the mayor’s lout of a nephew… an unputdownable tale. Connolly works the twists and turns so cleverly it’s impossible to guess what will happen. It’s hard to believe this is Connolly’s first published story.

Several years ago, we published the story in its entirety on the Black Gate website; we’re proud to offer it again here as part of the new line up of Black Gate weekly Online Fiction.

Read the complete story here, and the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including the adventure fantasy novelette “The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel and Sean McLachlan’s novella of dark fantasy, “The Quintessence of Absence,” here.

Art by Chris Pepper.

Mystery 101: Books To Die For is a Complete Course in Mystery Fiction

Tuesday, October 9, 2012 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

I don’t read much mystery fiction, and if I’m honest with myself it’s because I feel a little lost in the mystery section of the bookstore. I don’t know the authors or the major titles, and there are just so many choices it’s overwhelming. Safer to take my money and retreat back to the science fiction aisle, and buy that Asimov reprint.

But if I were a little more adventurous, or had a knowledgeable friend to hold my hand, I bet I’d find a lot of great reading in those shelves. There’s always a ton of old ladies buying mystery paperbacks, anyway. And if there’s a more discerning paperback reader than the American old lady, I haven’t met her.

It’s very possible that knowledgeable friend arrived in the mail this week, in the form of Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, a fabulous book that looks like it could open the door to a lifetime of mystery reading.

With so many mystery novels to choose among, and so many new titles appearing each year, where should a reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems?

In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world’s leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about the authors and their own work as they do about the books that they love, 119 authors from 20 countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Agatha Christie to Lee Child, from Edgar Allan Poe to P. D. James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Lord Peter Wimsey, Books to Die For brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and for those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover.

Even if you’re not in the mood for a mystery novel marathon, Books To Die For is perfectly suited for browsing, with brief personal essays from the world’s most illustrious mystery writers, chatting about the finest mystery novels ever written. The book is arranged chronologically, starting in 1841 with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Dupin Tales; the second entry is Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (covered by Sara Paretsky). The last one is The Perk, by Mark Gimenez, published in 2008.

In between are 118 enthusiastic mini book reviews, most averaging two to four pages, by writers including Rita May Brown, Linda Barnes, Carol O’Connell, Chuck Hogan, Joseph Finder, Charlaine Harris, Joe R. Lansdale, Laura Lippman, Max Allan Collins, Phil Rickman, Bill Pronzini, Jeffery Deaver, F. Paul Wilson, John Connolly, Joseph Wambaugh, Elmore Leonard, Eoin Colfer, Anne Perry, and many, many others.

Books To Die For is edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke; it was published by Atria on October 2. It is 560 pages in hardcover, and priced at $29.99. The digital edition is $14.99.

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part II: A Bloodsmoor Romance

Tuesday, October 9, 2012 Matthew David Surridge Comments 6 comments

A Bloodsmoor Romance Last week I began looking at Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, in advance of the publication of the fifth book in the sequence next March. I thought 1980’s Bellefleur was a tremendous work, eloquent testimony to the imaginative power of the Gothic and to the sophistication the form can sustain. This week I’m looking at 1982’s A Bloodsmoor Romance, to which I had a more qualified response.

To some extent this may well be a function of my being not the right reader for this book. While Bellefleur consciously played with the genre conventions of the Gothic proper, Bloodsmoor uses and parodies the conventions of 19th-century romance — romance as we know it, the story of young women looking for love and marriage. And romance as such is not a form that has any intrinsic appeal to me, or whose appeal I understand. I don’t say it’s bad. I’m saying I have no idea what makes romances good or bad as romances.

Unsurprisingly, then, the book plays off of texts with which I’m not familiar. I’ve seen similarities noted to Little Women, for example, which I’ve never read. Bloodsmoor is also intensely ironic, satiric in a way that Bellefleur wasn’t (as I read these books, anyway). So this is a genre that never appealed to me, and with whose key stories I have no experience, and it’s being sent up in a fairly unsubtle manner. Maybe it’s surprising that I didn’t have a worse reaction than I actually did.

…

Read More Read More

In Defense of Red Sonja: The Chain Mail Bikini

Tuesday, October 9, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 3 comments

After only two appearances in Conan the Barbarian (issues 23 and 24), Red Sonja was already on her way to becoming a fan favorite. A strong, intelligent woman with the courage of Conan, if not his strict moral code (or upper body strength). Her dress sense (a chain mail tunic and red shorts) provided ease of movement and showed just enough skin to be sexy without being exploitive.

So where did the chain mail bikini come from?

Before the Internet, fan art was published mostly in fanzines or pin-up pages in comics. Artist Esteban Maroto was the first to draw Red Sonja in her now-famous bikini and, having nowhere else to publish it, mailed it to Conan writer/editor Roy Thomas. The visual was so striking that, when she next made an appearance, artist John Buscema drew her in the same outfit. Furthermore, Maroto was hired to draw the back-up story in that same issue. And to make it a hat-trick, a third artist (none other than Boris Vallejo) painted the cover art with the metallic swimwear.

The issue where all this took place would have been iconic anyway. Savage Sword of Conan 1 premiered in August 1974. The popularity of Conan the Barbarian had made the publication of a second Conan book just good business sense. To give you an idea of just how popular the character was, Marvel wouldn’t get around to publishing two Spider-Man titles until 1976.

Of course, Savage Sword would promise to be far from more-of-the-same. Its format as an over-sized black-and-white publication classified it as a magazine rather than a comic book. “So what?” you may ask. In 1974, comics were still heavily regulated by the Comics Code Authority. There was only so much violence (and sex) that could be shown in Conan the Barbarian. But as a ‘magazine’, Savage Sword of Conan could show as much violence (and, eventually, nudity) as Marvel dared. And as the series went on, they dared a lot.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Castle Waiting, Volume Two

Monday, October 8, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I first discovered the brilliant and touching Castle Waiting through Linda Medley’s self-published comic in the late 90s. Eventually collected into the graphic novel Castle Waiting: The Curse of Brambly Hedge, it retold the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty (sort of), as seen by an odd cast of mostly minor characters. It was well written and beautiful, feminine in perspective and mood, incredibly slow-paced, and wholly original. I loved it.

And then it pretty much vanished. Stray issues popped up now and again in my local comic shop over the years, but it looked to me like Castle Waiting would always be one of those undiscovered indie treasures that never broke into the mainstream.

Fanatagraphics turned all that around in 2006 with the massive Castle Waiting, a 472-page omnibus collecting virtually all the early issues in an attractive and affordable format. Picking up the story many years later, Medley follows the new inhabitants of Sleeping Beauty’s ancient castle, most of them fairy tale characters with mysterious origins. Managed by the unflappable (literally) stork Rackham, the Castle is home to an eclectic mix of humans, outcasts, and friendly but mischievous sprites and other spirits.

This volume was successful enough that it allowed Medley to return to publishing Castle Waiting on a regular schedule in 2006. She published fifteen issues with Fantagraphics, and those issues were finally collected in 2010. Focusing chiefly on the pregnant Lady Jain, who has fled to the castle to escape an abusive husband, this second volume drew wide praise from NPR, Time Magazine, and many other sources, and Publishers Weekly ranked it one of the best comic books of 2006 in a critics’ poll.

With its long-awaited second volume, Linda Medley’s witty and sublimely drawn fantasy eases into a relaxed comedy of manners as Lady Jain settles into her new life in Castle Waiting.

Unexpected visitors result in the discovery and exploration of a secret passageway, not to mention an epic bowling tournament. A quest for ladies’ underpants, the identity of Pindar’s father, the education of Simon, Rackham and Chess arguing about the “manly arts,” and an escape-prone goat are just a few of the elements in this delightful new volume.

The book also includes many flashbacks that deepen the stories behind the characters, including Jain’s earliest romantic entanglements and conflicts with her bratty older sisters, the horrific past of the enigmatic Dr. Fell, and more.

Interestingly, except for a tiny copyright notice on page 377, the book is published totally anonymously, with no mention of Linda Medley anywhere on the cover, spine, or title pages.

Castle Waiting, Volume Two was published in December 2010 by Fantagraphics. It is 384 pages in hardcover for $29.99. There are no paperback or digital editions. With its slow pacing and glacial (almost non-existent) plot, it’s not for everyone. But I recommend it highly.

Vintage Treasures: Hong on the Range by William F. Wu

Monday, October 8, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I admit this one doesn’t seem very vintage to me, but perhaps that’s just because I’m getting a little vintage myself.

William F. Wu’s fourth novel, Hong on the Range, was published 23 years ago. It was originally published in hardcover and has never had a paperback release.

And that’s too bad, since it’s the kind of off-the-wall science fantasy that I think would really appeal to a modern audience. Set in a post-apocalyptic American West where cities have decayed and the surviving towns cling to the railway, where most people have cyborg enhancements, meat is harvested from cows without harming them, and a young man named Louie — a “control-natural” forbidden by law from enhancing himself, and who is shunned and misunderstood by others — heads West to find his fortune.

The Old West Was Never This Wild! In a New West filled with cyber-enhanced cowboys and mechanized singing steers, Louie Hong must make his way through hostile territory filled with cattle rustlers and bank robbers, and a passel of cyborg bounty hunters who think he’s both! A story about coming of age in a strange and dangerous land where a young man’s most faithful friend may just turn out to be a computerized steer named Chuck.

While it’s the only novel in the sequence, Hong on the Range is part of a series of stories written by Wu that began in 1985 with “Wild Garlic.” Most of them were published in Pulphouse magazine; the last one, “In the Temple of Forgotten Spirits,” in 1993.

Hong on the Range was published by Walker & Co in 1989. It is 286 pages in hardcover. It has never had a paperback release, but it was re-released in a digital edition for $2.99 last October.

Adventures Fantastic on “The Duelist”: “Black Gate‘s Online Fiction Debut Has Set a High Standard”

Sunday, October 7, 2012 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Our first Online Fiction Feature of 2012 was Jason E. Thummel’s adventure fantasy novelette “The Duelist,” posted last Sunday. Adventures Fantastic was one of the first to review it this week:

Was it worth the wait? The answer is “Yes!”… This is a tale of a drunken duelist who is the top in his field… the plot is a solid sword and sorcery story. First I like the protagonist, Androi Karpelov, because even though he’s a very flawed hero, he’s still a man with honor. And he’s willing to take great risks to satisfy that honor… The story moves at a nice clip, never dragging.

Black Gate‘s online fiction debut has set a high standard of quality. That’s a good thing.

Thummel is also the author of the novel The Spear of Destiny and the short story collection In Savage Lands… I liked them a lot. Look for a review sometime in the next few months. This is a writer whose work I’m going to keep an eye out for.

I’m looking forward to more of Black Gate‘s fiction offerings. It’s been one of my favorite publications for a long time.

Author Donald Crankshaw turns a critical eye to our format at the Back of the Envelope blog:

How well does Black Gate‘s new format work for reading stories? Are they comfortable to read? Is it easy to keep track of your place? I find these questions particularly interesting… the story uses the same unusual color-scheme, light blue letters on a black background, as for Black Gate‘s blog… Surprisingly — or perhaps not so surprisingly, assuming that their web designer knows what he’s doing — I found the blue-on-black color scheme to be comfortable to read, and had no trouble with eye strain. Another thing that surprised me was that the lettering was large enough to read clearly on a mobile device…

Black Gate‘s blog posts have in-line commenting on the article page. This is how I prefer to see comments on blogs, but it can work to the detriment of long stories, partly by making a long page even longer, and partly because spamming and trolling can distract from the story. The solution Black Gate came up with works well. The story does not contain in-line comments, but a link to the blog post announcing the story, allowing readers to comment there. It also keeps all the comments in one place, to prevent a proliferation of pages.

Overall, I think the formatting that Black Gate used worked well. My only real concern is how well it will handle even longer stories, and I suppose we’ll see that when it happens.

Our complete schedule of upcoming fiction is here.