Tangent Online on “The Trade”: “Marvelous Tale. Can’t Wait for the Next Part”

Tangent Online on “The Trade”: “Marvelous Tale. Can’t Wait for the Next Part”

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mark-rigney-smallLouis West at Tangent Online reviews the latest original fiction from Black Gate, published here on Sunday, December 9:

Mark Rigney’s “The Trade” immediately drew me into this world with powerful depictions of Gemen and his two companions… Together they are unstoppable. Individually? That is part of their mystery. Hints of background story leak through for each, not enough to explain but enough to tantalize, to [make you] want to read on and know more.

The pace is fast. They arrive in Andolin late in the spring, quickly dispatch several bandit attacks, then are in the far north of Andolin at Tynnefast Reach where Gemen finds a magic mirror. Since the locals refuse to trade for it, he takes it, wakening the wrath of a guardian stone golem. But stone is slow. More than enough time for Gemen’s trio to make it to Corvaen, swap the mirror for knowledge about the Cryptlord’s grave and leave before the stone golem arrives to fetch back the mirror.

However, things don’t go as planned in the crypt, revealing much more about how fragile the bonds between the three may be.

Marvelous tale. Can’t wait for the next part.

“The Trade” is the first installment in an exciting new heroic fantasy series. “The Find,” which explores Gemen’s past and reveals more of his mysterious quest, will be published here next year, followed quickly by the third installment.

You can read the entire review at Tangent Online, and the complete 7,000-word short story free here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by C.S.E. Cooney, Donald S. Crankshaw, Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, is here.

Red Sonja 1

Red Sonja 1

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red-sonja-1-coverFinally, after four years of guest appearances and Marvel Feature auditioning, Red Sonja gets her very own title. And judging from the cover, it’s going to be some opening story. We’ve got a wizard, a giant snake that’s about to bite her leg (even though its head’s already been cut off and guts are spilling out of its neck stump), a giant dead spider, some little gray goblin-looking guy in the background, and a unicorn. And Sonja herself is walking past her own title banner, seemingly ready to step out of her issue, bloody sword in hand, to kill YOU. “To the death” is always a good bad-ass line for an action hero, so we’re ready to see everything on this cover that isn’t Red Sonja dead by issue’s end.

Well, first of all, there’s no giant snake. There’s no giant spider. There’s no goblin. It’s just a mean-looking wizard and a unicorn. Just so you know.

The story begins with Sonja having to kill her horse after it breaks a leg. She’s still feeling pretty bad about it a few hours later when she stumbles on a group of men with torches surrounding a horse, apparently intent on killing it. Coming closer, she realizes that they’ve cornered a unicorn. Seeing a mob abusing a “helpless proud creature” bothers her to the point that she starts cutting through a dozen men to free it. Jumping on the unicorn’s back, the two of them ride away. During the struggle, the unicorn’s horn was broken off, so that it just looks like a horse with a head injury; but Sonja’s quite happy to have the beast as her companion.

So, for those who are reading Red Sonja on a subtextual level, the woman who’s sworn a vow of de facto chastity rushes to help the mythic representation of purity only after its phallic symbol is removed. Of course, there’s no reason to read any symbolism in a naked woman and a symbolically castrated beast bathing together, sleeping together, or leaning against one another in a picaresque sunset. And there’s certainly nothing about the nervous creature growing a new horn, “even more beautiful than the other,” as it gets to know Sonja. Nor is there anything to the bitter old man inciting ignorant villagers into a fury over the unnatural union of Red Sonja and the unicorn.

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Adventure on Film: Could Holy Grail be the Funniest Film Ever?

Adventure on Film: Could Holy Grail be the Funniest Film Ever?

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arthur-kingJust as an older generation recalls with perfect clarity where they were when they heard of Kennedy’s assassination, I know precisely where I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): perched on the floral-print sofa in my parent’s house, watching the film on a poor, weather-impacted PBS broadcast. I also remember falling right off that sub-par couch in paroxysms of laughter when the animator saved King Arthur’s band by conveniently suffering a heart attack.

I’d never seen anything like it.

And you know what? I’ve never seen anything like it since –– except perhaps Brian’s rollercoaster romp aboard a purple-people-eater’s spaceship in another Python outing, Life of Brian. (That one I saw in a theater, with my church-going mother sitting next to me. She laughed her head off.)

What I didn’t know back when I fell of that couch, as I’m fairly sure I do now, is that comedy is little more than tragedy plus time.

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Ridiculous Sale on Stuff You Want at TwoMorrows Publishing

Ridiculous Sale on Stuff You Want at TwoMorrows Publishing

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write-now-16-smallI was going to write a thoughtful and probing blog article on an urgent topic tonight. That’s all the detail I can give you, because the moment I sat down at my desk and saw the e-mail about the big sale at TwoMorrows Publishing, I forgot everything else.

Let’s review. TwoMorrows Publishing, publishers of the Jack Kirby Collector, Alter Ego, Back Issue!, Rough Stuff, Write Now!, and other fine comics publications, is selling much of their overstock at 70% off.

That includes over a dozen issues of Rough Stuff and Write Now! for two bucks each, and books including Comics Introspective: Peter Bagge (marked down from $16.95 to $5.09), the Wallace Wood Checklist (was $5.95, now $1.79), and Best of Write Now! (was $19.95, now $5.99).

The sale runs for exactly one week, until December 16. Some items are nearly sold out, so act fast.

As a special bonus, most print edition purchases come with a free digital edition. TwoMorrows Publishing does an excellent job with their PDF conversions, preserving the layout and the copious artwork on every page in crisp detail.

Check out the sale at www.twomorrows.com. Click on the banner at the top of the page to see the full clearance list. While you’re there, have a look at some of their other catalog items, including the Comic Book Artist Ultimate Bundle — every in-stock issue of the excellent Comic Book Artist magazine for just $54.00 — The Best of From The Tomb at 15% off, and much more.

DeMatteis and Muth’s Moonshadow

DeMatteis and Muth’s Moonshadow

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The Compleat MoonshadowThere was a time in the 1980s when it looked like Marvel and DC Comics might slowly evolve into something like mainstream book publishers: publishers who gave creators fair deals respecting copyright, and who lived off of the publication of new titles rather than the exploitation of intellectual property from decades previous. That hasn’t really happened, so far as I can see. Both companies dabbled in various kinds of creator ownership, but both appear mostly to have retreated to the relative safety of work-for-hire deals in recent years. Vertigo, a DC imprint featuring better deals for creators, seems to have become more strict in their contracts, and the recent departure of their founding editor doesn’t seem promising for the imprint’s future. Epic, Marvel’s attempt at a creator-owned line, largely faded away in the 1990s (though Marvel does still occasionally do some creator-owned work through their Icon imprint). Before it died, though, Epic published what might have been the best comic series in the 1980s to be printed with a Marvel Comics logo, up there with Walt Simonson’s run on Thor: J. M. DeMatteis and Jon J. Muth’s twelve-issue series Moonshadow. Later reprinted by Vertigo, with a slightly changed conclusion, Dematteis and Muth also created a sequel, Farewell, Moonshadow, now reprinted along with the original series in a paperback collection of the whole work, The Compleat Moonshadow. It’s a weird, heady mix of science fiction and fantasy, of fairy tale and scabrous parody. I want to talk a bit about it here.

Moonshadow is a curious coming-of-age story. A hippie named Sunflower is abducted from Earth by smirking balls of light called G’l Doses, who have the power of gods and utterly inscrutable motives; one of them impregnates her, and their child’s named Moonshadow by his mother. The book is his story, told by an aged Moonshadow recalling his youth. He remembers his growing up in the G’l Doses’ ‘zoo’ before his exile in company of his mother, his cat, and a faceless furry humanoid named Ira who’s all id: sex drive and scatology. They kick around the universe, and Moonshadow becomes orphan and outcast; alternately soldier and nanny, confidant of kings and outcast untouchable. He grows older, encounters sex and death and things of the spirit. It’s picaresque on a grand scale, the plot loose, characters fading in and out, recurring and being abandoned.

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Analog, July 1961: A Retro-Review

Analog, July 1961: A Retro-Review

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analog-july-1961This is one of the earlier issues after Astounding completed its name-change to Analog. (The issues from February through September 1960 showed both titles on the cover – so October 1960 was the first purely Analog issue.)

Its Table of Contents is familiar to readers of the magazine even to the present day – there’s an editorial, there’s In Times to Come, there’s The Reference Library (book reviews), there’s the letter column (Brass Tacks). There is also a Science Fact article, and a serial, two novelettes, and two short stories.

The only item you won’t find in most present-day issues is The Analytical Laboratory, which ranks the stories from the issue two months earlier based on reader votes. (This was discontinued some time after I became a subscriber in the ’70s – I remember sending in my postcard with my votes a number of times.)

At any rate, for the April issue the number one story was the opening of Clifford Simak’s serial “The Fisherman”, better known these days by the book title, Time is the Simplest Thing.

The cover shows an asteroid mining setup. It’s by Thomas, who did a few covers for Analog in 1961 and 1962, and nothing much else I can find. I don’t even know his first name. Interiors are by Douglas, John Schoenherr, and H. R. Van Dongen.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Trade” by Mark Rigney

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Trade” by Mark Rigney

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mark-rigney-smallGemen the Antiques Dealer undertakes a dangerous quest for a mysterious stone, in the opening chapter of a thrilling new adventure fantasy series:

“Whatever happens,” Gemen said, “stay close.”

“What is this place?” Velori asked. “What are we dealing with –– and what are we looking for?” A mist loomed ahead, but not chill and cool, nor even white; it was warm, vaguely yellow, and stank with all the putrid force of recently rotted flesh.

“We are about to violate the final resting place of an ancient monarch, Cleon Cryptlord. The elders of his time would not suffer him to be buried anywhere near the city. Inside is a chamber, half-flooded with water, with a great keystone. I need that keystone, my friends. It is for that that we have come.”

Ahead lay a clearing devoid of plant life, centered on a great earthen mound the size of a tumbledown barn. Part way up the naked slope was a gap, not so much a cave as a mouth, and from this hole poured the fog through which they walked. It emerged in gasps and billows as if blown from the lungs of something both vast and immeasurably sick.

“No,” said Velori. “I’m not going in there.”

“We are going, and we are going now. Corvaen and his mad companion agree on one point: whatever lies beneath is not especially alert. If we are quick about our business, we may never encounter what they did.”

Mark Rigney is the author of the plays Acts of God and Bears, winner of the 2012 Panowski Playwriting Competition, as well as the non-fiction book Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Black Static, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, Not One Of Us, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and many more. His contemporary fantasy novel, A Most Unruly Gnome, won the 2009 First Coast Novel Contest. Two collections of his stories (all previously published by various mags and ‘zines) are available through Amazon, Flights of Fantasy, and Reality Checks.

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

“The Trade” is a complete 7,000-word short story of weird fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

The Observer on Why Board Games Are Making a Comeback

The Observer on Why Board Games Are Making a Comeback

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star-trek-catan-smallWe’ve been on something of a Star Trek kick recently, and I see no reason to change that now. So when I stumbled on this article at UK news publication The Observer, echoing many of the comments in my recent post on The Paris Fashion Week of Fantasy Games on the ongoing surge of high-profile SF and fantasy board games, I was delighted to see that the game used to illustrate it was the new Star Trek Catan from Kosmos/ Mayfair Games. Based on the worldwide hit Settlers of Catan, it looks like it offers plenty of Federation action to tide fans over until the May release of Star Trek Into Darkness.

The article itself is worth a read. Here’s a snippet.

Before video games (bear with me here, kids) – and as impossibly archaic as it might sound – there were “board” games: things made with card and glue that required imagination and literal, rather than virtual, interaction… it’s worth noting that the modern video-games market actually owes much to these board games. Visit any video games development studio and you’re likely to spot shelves piled high with colorful boxes sporting unfamiliar names, used for inspiration and lessons in good game design.

If you’re looking for a holiday gift for that gamer in your life, I included more than a few in our recent Christmas Gift List.

But there’s lots more to be found — check out our recent Games posts, for a start. Or just make a trip to your local games store. And hurry — this is the new Golden Age of tabletop gaming, and you don’t want to miss it.

DC Comics Announces Harlan Ellison’s 7 Against Chaos

DC Comics Announces Harlan Ellison’s 7 Against Chaos

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harlan-ellison-7-against-chaos-smallA few months ago, I wrote about Samurai 7, a terrific sword-and-science retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (with killer robots).

It seems this classic tale still has some play in it, if DC Comics’ upcoming Harlan Ellison’s 7 Against Chaos is any indication. Ellison has partnered with artist Paul Chadwick — creator of Concrete, which Blastr calls “One of the most important independent comic series of all time” — to create an epic SF adventure with a familiar theme:

In a distant future, Earth is in grave danger: The fabric of reality itself in unraveling, leading to catastrophic natural disasters, displaced souls appearing from bygone eras, and sudden, shocking cases of spontaneous combustion. The only hope for Earth’s survival is a force of seven warriors, each with his or her special abilities. But can these alien Seven Samurai learn to get along in time to find the source of the gathering chaos and save all of reality?

Ellison, who announced he was dying two years ago (only to change his mind and say he was “feeling somewhat better“), has openly acknowledged his inspiration, saying:

This is 21 years of work finally come to fruition. It is The Magnificent Seven, The Seven Samurai in space, it is the dream fulfilled.

Harlan Ellison’s 7 Against Chaos will be released under DC’s regular brand (i.e. not as a part of the more adult Vertigo or Wildstorm lines) in Summer 2013. Get all the details at DC Comics.

The Black Gate Christmas Gift List

The Black Gate Christmas Gift List

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a-guile-of-dragons[Apologies in advance for not being politically correct enough to call this the Black Gate Holiday Gift List. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, kindly ignore this post. Or use our suggestions to buy something for yourself, we won’t tell anyone.]

If you’re a Black Gate fan, we already know a lot about you. You’re almost certainly a fantasy devotee, well-read, with impeccable taste, and accustomed to the natural adoration of your peers. Pretty close, right? And you’re probably also a procrastinator who puts off Christmas shopping until the last minute, and ends up buying Wal-Mart gift certificates on December 24.

You can do better than that. In fact, we’re here to help you. Here’s a handy list of the best fantasy books, movies, games and comics of the season, with a link to a recent review, courtesy of the editors and staff of Black Gate magazine. We have gifts for every price range, from $5 to $150. Good luck, and happy shopping!

  1. A Guile of Dragons, James Enge ($17.95)
  2. The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones ($25.99)
  3. American Science Fiction: 9 Classic Novels, edited by Gary K. Wolfe ($70)
  4. Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection ($149.98)
  5. Lords of Waterdeep, Wizards of the Coast ($49.99)
  6. The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer ($39.99)
  7. Epic: Legends of Fantasy, edited by John Joseph Adams ($17.95)
  8. A Throne of Bones, Vox Day ($4.99)
  9. Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone ($24.99)
  10. Books To Die For, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke ($29.99)

    11. …

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