Black Gate – Page 1120 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Best One-Sentence Reviews of Manly Wade Wellman: The Winners of The Complete John Thunstone Contest

Sunday, March 3, 2013 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Three weeks ago, we announced a contest to win one of two copies of Manly Wade Wellman’s The Complete John Thunstone, compliments of Haffner Press.

To enter, contestants had to submit a one-sentence review of their favorite Manly Wade Wellman novel or short story. That’s it. Are we good to you, or what?

It quickly became the most popular contest in our history, with a steady stream of diverse entries covering the entire expanse of Wellman’s nearly 60-year career, from his first story in Thrilling Tales in 1927, to his final John the Balladeer story, “Where Did She Wander,” in 1986.

We’d like to present some of the best submissions here, and at the end we’ll announce the two winners, both of whom will receive a copy of The Complete John Thunstone, the latest archival quality hardcover release from Haffner Press.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we received the most votes for Wellman’s popular Silver John stories, also known as the John the Balladeer tales. We begin with Jeremy Harper, who highlights the very first Silver John story:

“O Ugly Bird!” A legend is born when a saintly hillbilly musician confronts a backwoods sorcerer and his goddamn Ugly Bird and smites them dead with his silver string guitar.

Nick Ozment expands on Jeremy’s comments this way:

Having enjoyed one of Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John novels, I find it interesting how Wellman’s traveling troubadour provides an American folk counterpart to Yeats’s Irish bard Owen Red Hanrahan, rooting the mysticism and magic in American soil.

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Damnation Books Releases Waters of Darkness by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna

Sunday, March 3, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

We’re very pleased to note the March 1 release date of a new novel by two Black Gate contributors, David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna, which they describe as “the best supernatural pirate dark fantasy… EVER.” We asked Dave about the book’s genesis, and here’s what he told us:

This story is based on a ms. I wrote in 1978 that was to be a sequel to The Witch of the Indies, my first published novel, based on Robert E. Howard’s Black Vulmea character… I wrote a 50,000-word first draft in the spring of 1978 (before Witch was published) that I filed away for decades. Despite my naive enthusiasm (at the age of 24!) that Zebra would certainly want a sequel, as we know, The Witch of the Indies sank fast and has pretty much been forgotten. But! Who doesn’t love a pirate story? Joe asked to see that old, yellowing (literally) draft and went to work on it. So we wound up collaborating — at a distance of 35 years, in a way — and have written what we both think is a terrific pulp-style pirate dark fantasy.

Joe took my rough draft, added at least 10,000 words to it, recrafted who knows how many thousands more, and brought in new characters, new developments… He went to town and really brought the thing to life.

David and Joe’s last collaboration for us was The Big Barbarian Theory, one of the most popular articles on the Black Gate blog last year. We featured David’s The Fall of the First World in December, and posted the complete text of Joe’s Dorgo the Dowser novella “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” last Sunday.

Waters of Darkness was published by Damnation Books on March 1, 2013. It is 60,000 words and currently available in Kindle format for $5.95. The wonderful cover is by Dawne Dominique. More details at the website.

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination Just $1.99 at Amazon.com

Saturday, March 2, 2013 John ONeill Comments 13 comments

No sooner do I settle into my big green chair with John Joseph Adams’s massive fantasy anthology Epic (which I covered here just two days ago), than do I discover that he’s unveiled another great project. Packed with “all original, all nefarious, all conquering tales,” The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination is available in Kindle format for just $1.99 from Amazon.com. Here’s the table of contents:

“Professor Incognito Apologizes: an Itemized List” by Austin Grossman
“Father of the Groom” by Harry Turtledove
“Laughter at the Academy” by Seanan McGuire
“Letter to the Editor” by David D. Levine
“Instead of a Loving Heart” by Jeremiah Tolbert
“The Executor” by Daniel H. Wilson
“The Angel of Death Has a Business Plan” by Heather Lindsley
“Homo Perfectus” by David Farland
“Ancient Equations” by L. A. Banks
“Rural Singularity” by Alan Dean Foster
“Captain Justice Saves the Day” by Genevieve Valentine
“The Mad Scientist’s Daughter” by Theodora Goss
“The Space Between” by Diana Gabaldon
“Harry and Marlowe Meet the Founder of the Aetherian Revolution” by Carrie Vaughn
“Blood and Stardust” by Laird Barron
“A More Perfect Union” by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
“Rocks Fall” by Naomi Novik
“We Interrupt This Broadcast” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Last Dignity of Man” by Marjorie M. Liu
“Pittsburg Technology” by Jeffrey Ford
“Mofongo Knows” by Grady Hendrix
“The Food Taster’s Boy” by Ben Winters

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination was published by Tor Books on February 19, 2013. It is 368 pages in trade paperback priced at $14.99; the list price on the digital version is $9.99. The awesome cover is by Ben Templesmith. More details are available here. No idea how long the $1.99 deal will last, so take advantage of it soon.

Sorry, Can You Say That Again?

Saturday, March 2, 2013 Violette Malan Comments 15 comments

An actor was once asked, “Did you speak German in the film?” He answered, “Well, we spoke ‘movie German’, you know, British actors using German syntax.”

We’re all familiar with that phenomenon, aren’t we? Though nowadays we’re just as likely to get the actual language with subtitles, at least for short bits of dialogue. That’s fine for film, but it does make you wonder, how do writers deal with the language issue? Especially those of us writing Fantasy or SF?

After all, we’re not all linguistics professors capable of making up a complete language (or more than one, if it should be needed) like you-know-who.

Regardless of what language I might use to speak to friends or family, I write novels in English. And like most of my colleagues in the fantasy-writing world, few, if any, of my characters are either English or English speakers.

Back in the day, when one of the standard conventions of fantasy literature was the stranger-in-a-strange-land (human from our world transported into the secondary world) the issue of language got dealt with in different ways.

CS Lewis ignored it, essentially, in the Chronicles of Narnia, where all the Narnians at least (including the animals) speak British English (and in Calormen, they speak with an Arabian Nights syntax).

As the genre evolved, writers like Barbara Hambly had their primary world characters simply learn the new language, while others had wizards or other magic users intervene to solve the problem magically – what we now consider “the old translation spell ploy.”

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New Treasures: Last Days by Adam Nevill

Saturday, March 2, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’m a fan of dark fantasy and horror, and I especially like to keep an eye on exciting new authors. There’s been some recent buzz about Adam Nevill and his fourth novel Last Days, and I decided to check it out.

Nevill is the author of three other novels of supernatural horror: Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, and The Ritual. His new book Last Days is a Blair Witch style creep-fest, in which a documentary film-maker investigates an apocalyptic cult — and discovers some nasty secrets.

When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered. The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle’s brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals. The shoot’s locations take him to the cult’s first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven’t broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?

The Publishers Weekly review was particularly intriguing: “Fans of films about haunted places, otherworldy beings, and rituals gone terribly wrong will find this homage deliciously chilling.” Doesn’t that include, I mean, everyone? Who’s not a fan of films about “rituals gone terribly wrong?” Uh-huh. Nobody.

Last Days was published in trade paperback by St. Martin’s Press on February 26, 2013. It is a satisfyingly-hefty 531 pages, and priced at $15.99 ($9.99 for the digital edition).

Self-published Book Review: Chains of Loss by Robert Sier

Friday, March 1, 2013 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

Cyborgs versus Orcs.

That’s what I tell my wife that this book is about whenever she asks. Nanites, power suits, superhuman strength and intelligence versus hordes of raging orcs armed with crude weapons and dark magic. Okay, that’s not completely accurate. There’s only one cyborg, at least until the assimilating begins, and while there are plenty of orcs, most of the fights are against the same one. So, maybe “cyborg versus orc” would be more accurate.

Still, with a premise like that, there’s a lot of fodder for great stories, once you consider what else would be in a world that produces orcs and cyborgs: AIs and computers and starships, vampires and wizards and necromancy. And what happens when you combine them: orcs who can sense radio signals, flying humans created by technology? Robert Sier has managed to find a place for all of these things in his book, and the only question is with so much material, where do you begin.

So he starts with the hero. The cyborg, Derek Kazenushi, isn’t exactly military-grade: he just has the standard upgrades that any citizen of New Athens would, including enhanced speed and strength and healing, a few augments in matter fabrication, and the help of his built-in AI, Shadow. What he’s really specialized in, piloting, isn’t much help once his ship inexplicably crashes on Earth. That shouldn’t be possible, as Earth is light-years from New Athens, and faster-than-light travel doesn’t exist. New Athens lost all contact with Earth seven centuries ago, and Derek quickly learns that things have changed. There’s been a cataclysm, a merging of Earth with other worlds, bringing strange peoples and even stranger magic. Come to think of it, Earth merged with another world in the last novel I reviewed at Black Gate, too. Why doesn’t that sort of thing ever happen on this Earth?

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The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in January

Friday, March 1, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

We broke another traffic record in January. Don’t you people have better things to do? Seriously, we’re glad you’re here, but you’re starting to look a bit pale. Think about taking your laptop out to the patio maybe, get some sun.

January was a busy time for us. Emily Mah trumpeted an ultimately successful Kickstarter campaign for the Chizine horror anthology Fearful Symmetries, Scott Taylor talked about selling sex, we took a peek at the paperback release of Throne of the Crescent Moon, Emily Mah (again!) interviewed Ian Tregillis, and Ryan Harvey cracked the binding on Edgar Rice Burroughs The Mucker.

And that’s just the Top Five. What follows is the complete list of the Top 50 posts at the Black Gate blog in January. Enjoy — and remember to bundle up, if you’re enjoying them from the patio.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Four

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

Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from May 6 to July 8, 1933 under the variant title, Fu Manchu’s Bride. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The US edition retained the original magazine title until the 1960s when the UK book title was adopted for the paperback edition published by Pyramid Books.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Alan Sterling lead the police raid of Mahdi Bey’s Riviera estate. Moving deep below sea level in the underground catacombs, they find themselves cut off by steel doors which descend on both sides. Fearing for their lives and plunged in darkness, they are startled to hear the voice of Fu Manchu informing them he is leaving by submarine and that Dr. Petrie and Fleurette go with him. He explains he is sparing their lives only because Sir Denis and Sterling spared his when they both encountered him in his opium trance.

Smith and Sterling manage to climb through an opening in the catacombs and descend into the underground stream and swim across until they can climb the rocks leading to the beach at St. Claire. Sir Denis notes that Petrie could never have made the journey to the submarine in his weakened condition and sees evidence of oil trails that suggest that another party has left the beach via motorboat. The question remains where the motorboat will meet up with the submarine. Smith suspects their destination would be a yacht with which to transport the party to the rendezvous.

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: So I Guess It’s My Blind Spot, Too

Thursday, February 28, 2013 Sarah Avery Comments 1 comment

The closest thing to a sports movie I can recall enjoying–apparently far-future dystopia and maiming injuries are what it takes to make a football-like sport watchable for me.

Last week I wrote about trying to understand sports writing as if it were a subgenre of sword and sorcery. For my students’ sakes, I’ll read just about anything–and usually when my students entice or implore me to leave my comfort zone as a reader, something good happens.

I said something myopic last week, and I’m actually glad to have said it here, where it drew thoughtful, friendly responses that have not only helped me get further into my students’ favorite reading, but have also helped me understand what it is about genre fiction that turns off some litfic-only readers. I said:

And what monster does the athlete vanquish in most sporting events?No monster, just a fellow athlete. What threat does the fellow athlete pose, to anybody other than the athlete we’re reading about? In most cases, none at all. In a boxing match, two potentially decent guys beat the snot out of each other, with nothing at stake that truly matters. In a football game, dozens of young men bludgeon their brains against the insides of their skulls, and for what? For bragging rights and cash? How much patience would I have for a fictional character who did as much harm for something as trivial? The more a sport resembles sword and sorcery combat in its results, the less interested I am in it. Conflict will only get you so far when the motives are shallow. Am I a prig? Maybe I’m being a prig.

Nobody said, Yes, Sarah, you’re being a prig. So, um, thank you for your patience and forbearance.

What happened instead was a conversation about conflict and its stakes generally, a conversation I’ve continued having with myself all week.

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Goth Chick News: Stand by With the Defibrillator Paddles: We’re Flatlining Again…

Thursday, February 28, 2013 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

Okay, follow me on this one for a minute…

It’s 1990 and you, along with a small group of your fellow-medical-student friends (the majority of whom are smoking hot by the way) start daring each other to prove the claims made by patients who have had near-death experiences. You figure the best way to do this is to take turns being brought medically to the brink of death in your underwear, then being shocked and mouth-to-mouthed back into existence by your friends.

If you can now imagine that two of your friends are a pre-24, post Lost Boys Keifer Sutherland and a pre-Eat, Pray, Love, post Pretty Woman Julia Roberts, then this next bit will come as no surprise.

This week reports started springing up all over that the latest film to get laid out on the cinematic operating table and given a Hollywood defibrillation is Joel Schumacher’s 1990 supernatural horror Flatliners.

The original film followed medical students played by Keifer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt and Kevin Bacon, all of whom were overly interested in seeing what happens during the afterlife, but whose experimentation dragged a bunch of supernatural baggage into the here-and-now.

On the positive side, this reboot has attracted the talent of Swedish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev (of the original, sub-titled version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). Oplev will be working from a script written by Ben Ripley, who is better known for his Source Code screenplay than the latter two Species sequels.

With that talent, a Flatliner remake will likely equal — if not surpass — the 1990 version. As much as I love the original, it’s more for the abundance of eye-candy than the campy, often painful storyline and dialog.

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