Black Gate – Page 1141 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Tor Releases The Devil Delivered and Other Tales by Steven Erikson

Friday, June 22, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I know we’ve got a lot of Steven Erikson fans out there. We’ve got your back.

On Tuesday Tor Book released The Devil Delivered and Other Tales, the latest collection of a trio of fantasy novellas from Steven Erikson, following 2009’s Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, which gathered three short novels of the Malazan Empire.

Like Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, The Devil Delivered and Other Tales features work previously printed in expensive limited edition hardcovers from PS Publishing: The Devil Delivered (from March 2005), Fishin’ with Grandma Matchie (November 2005), and Revolvo (December 2008). Most of them are no longer available, or available only at collector’s prices, so if you’re an Erikson fan who hasn’t seen them before this edition is a bargain.

Unlike Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, this volume features standalone tales unrelated to his popular Malazan Empire setting. Here’s the summary for the first story, The Devil Delivered:

Mind the Hole. In a world of ozone depletion, toxic deadzones, internicine brew-ups and lifeless oceans, nothing has changed. Or so it seems, but in the break-away Lakota Nation, in the heart of a land blistered beneath an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains of North America, something is happening. Tracked by a growing global audience of online subversives and electronic muckers, a lone anthropologist wanders the deadlands, recording observations that threaten to bring the world’s powers to their knees. Past and future; restless ghosts and rogue corporations; rad-shielded cities and unprotected peripheral populations; all now face each other, across a chasm once wide but growing ever narrower. Mother Earth is poisoned beyond any hope of resuscitation. Humanity beyond any hope of redemption — but one last lesson of life awaits. When Nature starts losing the game, Nature changes the rules. We’ve turned paradise into Hell, and in Hell, the Devil Delivers.

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales is $14.99 in trade paperback for 336 pages. It was published by Tor Books on June 19, 2012.

The Spectre Library Brings Rare Pulp Fantasy Back to Life

Friday, June 22, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

When I originally wrote the title above, it was “The Spectre Library Brings Rare Pulp Fantasy Back to Print.” I had to change it when I realized it wasn’t true. Damn digital books… I have to change the way I speak now.

Let me start over.

The Spectre Library, a small press outfit known primarily for reprinting the works of Victor Rousseau, has produced Kindle versions of all four of Michael Waugh’s rare short novelettes:

The Living Dead
Back From the Dead
Fangs of the Vampire
The Mystery of the Abominable Snowman

All four were originally produced by Cleveland Publishing Co., an Australian publisher, in pamphlet format between 1954 – 55. They are quite short, between 45 and 48 print pages.

The Kindle versions feature the original cover art, and are priced at $9.99 each (click on the image at right for bigger version).

On their website The Spectre Library says they “issue lost, rare works of fiction, with a focus upon publishing jacketed limited edition smythe-sewn hardcovers of Weird, Adventure, Detective, Crime, Oriental and Fantastic Content.” Sounds like an enlightened calling to me.

They also have an excellent gallery of cover art of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Weird & Occult publications — including paperbacks, digests, pamphlets, pulps, and magazines — from Britain, Australia and Canada between 1930-1966. It is curated by Morgan A. Wallace.

Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker Carries on the Tradition

Friday, June 22, 2012 William Patrick Maynard Comments 4 comments

There is a longstanding tradition of occult detectives. Sheridan Le Fanu is generally considered the originator of the sub-genre with his chronicles of Dr. Martin Hesselius. Together with William Hodgson Hope’s Carnacki, Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin, and Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone, Dr. Hesselius’ cases are generally regarded as the finest examples of a continuing occult detective hero in the supernatural realm of mystery fiction.

Willie Meikle, Jim Butcher, and Simon R. Green are among the outstanding contemporary practitioners of the form. Now one may add Jim Beard and his creation of Sgt. Roman Janus to the list of occult detectives whose exploits are worthy of a larger audience. Beard is among the select group whose work is exclusively aimed at the niche market for New Pulp. Sgt. Janus, both as an original creation and as a literary work itself, raises the bar for Beard’s fellow authors to match the same exacting standard achieved here.

Janus, in Roman mythology, is the god of the gateway to the past and the future. So it is with Sgt. Janus, a character who provides the essential link between the astral plane and our own reality. The eight stories in this collection depict the character through the eyes of his clients. The device works brilliantly in giving the reader differing perspectives on the detective and his methods.

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Vintage Treasures: Science and Sorcery edited by Garret Ford

Thursday, June 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

A few days ago I mentioned Martin H. Greenberg’s impressive collection of paperback SF and Fantasy, and the three boxes of that collection I carted back from the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Show. Two are now incorporated in my library. I set aside roughly a dozen of the more interesting titles to talk about here, and the first one is Science and Sorcery, an anthology of pulp SF stories from 1978.

It was published by Zebra, a pretty low-budget outfit. So low-budget, in fact, that it doesn’t even have a table of contents.

Who publishes an anthology without a table of contents? That’s pretty edgy. A publisher desperate to save paper, apparently. The whole thing feels slapped together, from the introduction on the back of the title page to the oddly formatted first story, Cordwainer Smith’s “Scanners Live in Vain” (page 3).

Fortunately, science fiction fans are a diligent and industrious lot, and I found a complete TOC online (at the book’s Wikipedia page, believe it or not). Here it is:

“Scanners Live in Vain”, by Cordwainer Smith
“The Little Man on the Subway,” by Isaac Asimov & James MacCreigh
“What Goes Up,” by Alfred Coppel
“Kleon of the Golden Sun,” by Ed Earl Repp
“How High on the Ladder?” by Leo Paige
“Footprints,” by Robert E. Gilbert
“The Naming of Names,” by Ray Bradbury
“The Eyes,” by Henry Hasse
“The Scarlet Lunes,” by Stanton A. Coblentz
“Demobilization,” by George R. Cowie
“Voices from the Cliff,” by John Martin Leahy
“The Lost Chord,” by Sam Moskowitz
“The Watchers,” by R. H. Deutsch
“The Peaceful Martian,” by J. T. Oliver
“Escape to Yesterday,” by Arthur J. Burks

A pretty eclectic mix, to be honest. Can’t remember the last time I saw an anthology with fiction by Sam Moskowitz. Or James MacCreigh, Ed Earl Repp, Leo Paige, Robert E. Gilbert, George R. Cowie, John Martin Leahy, R. H. Deutsch, or J. T. Oliver, for that matter. I don’t want to say this anthology primarily consists of nobodies, but it looks like this anthology primarily consists of nobodies.

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Q&A With Tolkien and the Great War Author John Garth on Michael Martinez’ Middle-earth website

Thursday, June 21, 2012 Brian Murphy Comments 0 Comment

tolkien-and-the-great-war As a subscriber to the Mythsoc listserv, I was very grateful to find a link from Michael Martinez — proprietor of the fine Middle-earth.xenite.org website — to a recent interview conducted with J.R.R. Tolkien scholar, John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003). It’s a fascinating read and worth checking out; you can find it here.

Some reviewers have dubbed Tolkien and the Great War the best book on Tolkien that has yet been written. I wouldn’t go that far (for the record that book is Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth) but it is arguably the best book on Tolkien in the last decade. While Humphrey Carpenter’s biography is still the seminal work on the life and times of Tolkien, it brushes only lightly over his military service. Tolkien’s experiences with the Lancaster Fusiliers are stamped all over The Lord of the Rings, as Garth ably demonstrates in Tolkien and the Great War, and so any complete understanding of the influences of Tolkien’s works must account for his World War I experiences.

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New Treasures: Necropolis by Michael Dempsey

Thursday, June 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Back in April I told you about this sale at Night Shade Books (now expired). I took advantage of it myself, and ordered roughly a dozen titles.

I finally found time to put them away this week. They look terrific, and I hope to tell you about some of them over the next few weeks.

Let’s start with Michael Dempsey’s Necropolis, a delicious-looking cross of science fantasy and pulp detective novel:

Paul Donner is a NYPD detective struggling with a drinking problem and a marriage on the rocks. Then he and his wife get dead — shot to death in a “random” crime. Fifty years later, Donner is back — revived courtesy of the Shift, a process whereby inanimate DNA is re-activated.

This new “reborn” underclass is not only alive again, they’re growing younger, destined for a second childhood. The freakish side-effect of a retroviral attack on New York, the Shift has turned the world upside down. Beneath the protective geodesic Blister, clocks run backwards, technology is hidden behind a noir facade, and you can see Elvis and Radio City Music Hall ever night. In this unfamiliar retro-futurist world of flying Studebakers and plasma tommy guns, Donner must search for those responsible for the destruction of his life. His quest for retribution, aided by Maggie, his holographic Girl Friday, leads him to the heart of the mystery surrounding the Shift’s origin and up against those who would use it to control a terrified nation.

Night Shade is discovering and promoting a lot of new talent, and Necropolis is a fine example. It’s Dempsey’s first novel, although he wrote for network TV in the mid-90s.

Necropolis is 361 pages in trade paperback, with a $14.99 cover price. It was released in October 2011. The cover art is by E.M. Gist. You can order it directly from Night Shade here.

See the complete list of New Treasures features here.

Star Trek is New Again With Fresh Animated Intro

Thursday, June 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Our buddy John DeNardo at SF Signal tells us about this extremely cool re-imagining of the original Star Trek intro, with William Shatner’s famous voice over… and some very compelling animation.

Keep your eye out for a red shirt who buys it half a second after beaming down, right around the 20 second mark.

The video was produced by The Quintek Group, a digital retouching studio in the Detroit area.

I got seriously nostalgic watching this. It makes me want to blow the dust off my DVD box set of Star Trek Season One and enjoy a few episodes.

Thanks, John. Owe you one.

Goth Chick News: Fed Says No Zombie Apocalypse; But Bullets Available Just In Case

Thursday, June 21, 2012 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

When we here at Goth Chick News predicted that “zombies were the new vampire,” we meant it as an entertainment trend, not a doomsday prophesy. But lately all of us here in the underground bunker are a just a tad bit grateful that our offices are in the bowels of Black Gate headquarters where we could conceivably hole up for several weeks, sustained by a stash of Pop Tarts and Patrone.

Because the reanimated dead are in mainstream news a little more often than we’re comfortable with lately.

Beginning with the horrific face-eating arrest in Miami, followed by several other seemingly subhuman acts, there’s been a flesh-munching wave of terror. We’re not the only ones wondering what’s behind it.

A bona fide zombie apocalypse, however, is not what we should be worried about, at least according to the federal government.

Wow… feeling better already.

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The Retro Pulp Art of Tim Anderson

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

We love pulp fiction. And we love classic SF & fantasy movies.

So what’s not to love about Tim Anderson’s re-imaginings of classic SF films as pulp paperbacks?

Anderson is a concept designer for Electronic Arts in Salt Lake City. He’s also worked as a concept designer for Paramount Licensing, Inc., Radical Comics, and various independent filmmakers.

He’s started working on a personal side project that he hoped would motivate him “into thinking more graphically,” a series of highly detailed period paperback covers for some of the most famous SF films of the 20th Century.

Here’s what he says about his Blade Runner piece at right (click for a bigger version):

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a huge sci-fi fan, and a huge fan of Ridley Scott. Here’s a pulp cover I have had in the works off and on for a while now. I was inspired by the detective pulp covers of Robert McGinnis. If ever there was a sci-fi movie that lent itself well to a detective pulp cover, it’s Blade Runner.

Anyone who’s a fan of the great Robert McGinnis is okay by us.

Check out Tim Anderson’s versions of Alien, The Matrix and others here.

John Ottinger Reviews Bury Elminster Deep

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 Bill Ward Comments 2 comments

bury-elminster-deep-by-ed-greenwood Bury Elminster Deep
Ed Greenwood
Wizards of the Coast (340pp, $25.95, 1st edition August 2011)
Reviewed by John Ottinger III

Sometimes an author can write a little too much about a character. Like a child who loves a stuffed animal, the repeated play can wear the fabric and loosen the stuffing so much that the very toy that was once so loved is rendered unrecognizable. Sentimentality keeps the stuffed animal by the child’s side, but to outside observers, the toy has lost all value.

So it is, I think, with Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood’s latest story of Elminster of Shadowdale. In Bury Elminster Deep the story opens where Elminster Must Die ended. The spellplague that has ravaged the realms has killed Mystra and killed, scattered, or rendered powerless her Chosen, including Elminster. Storm, one of the seven Chosen sisters and Elminster’s constant companion, has lost all magical power other than a head of living hair. Elminster, the most ancient and powerful of Mystra’s Chosen, who has lived through not one, but two incarnations of the goddess, is bodiless, riding the mind of his granddaughter, the dancer Rune, and is unable to perform magic without also enduring bouts of madness.

But then Mystra reappears and asks her favored Chosen to re-enter the kingdom of Cormyr to save it from yet another takeover by Lord Manshoon, the vampire archmage nemesis of Elminster. Manshoon thinks Elminster’s seeming disappearance is an opportunity to seize power in one of the Realms’ oldest human kingdoms. Though severely hobbled by his lack of magic, Storm’s normality and the jealousy of Rune’s boyfriend, Lord Arclath Delcastle, Elminster and company must stop Manshoon before his coup succeeds.

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