Black Gate – Page 1141 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Art of the Genre: The Art of Calvin and Hobbes

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 Scott Taylor Comments 12 comments

I’m on vacation, but I just can’t seem to take a break from writing about something art related, even though I’m technically ‘off duty.’ Currently, I’m on my first leg, the dreaded trip from L.A. to Vinalhaven Maine, a small island off the coast of the mainland.

Now that is a journey! Up at 3 AM, on a plane at LAX at 6:30 AM, a layover in Chicago at noon, then on to Manchester, New Hampshire, at 5 PM, then into a rental car for a 4 hour drive up the coast to Rockland, Maine, where I get a room at an inn to await the 7 AM ferry to the island the next day…

Yeah, it was kind of rough, but once entrenched in a cabin overlooking the Atlantic with a bit of wifi and no phone service, relaxation can be had. So I now sit on the porch, watching the 15 foot tides roll in and think about one of the more brilliant moments of the trip thus far.

Yesterday, as my six-year old son, Ash, looked through the various books stowed in the cabin’s bookshelves he pulled forth a tattered copy of The Essential Calvin & Hobbes. It had been many years since I’d read one of these Bill Waterson classics, but as I saw him pull the book out, I was filled with a feeling of nostalgia.

My son, as it turns out, is the same age as Calvin, and is a single child, although instead of a pet tiger he has a plethora of plush Pokemon at his service. Nonetheless, he’s now reading fervently, has a bit of a precocious streak, and instantly fell in love with the book that is admittedly almost too large for him to read.

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July/August Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Nice creepy cover on the new issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This one is by Ed Valigursky; click for a bigger version. Great line of writers this issue too, including Kate Wilhelm, Eleanor Arnason, Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Hughes, Rachel Pollack, Albert E. Cowdrey, and many others. Check out the TOC:

NOVELLAS

“The Fullness Of Time” – Kate Wilhelm

NOVELETS

“Wearaway and Flambeau” – Matthew Hughes
“The Afflicted” – Matthew Johnson
“Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls” – Rachel Pollack

SHORT STORIES

“Hartmut’s World” – Albert E. Cowdrey
“The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times” – Eleanor Arnason
“A Natural History of Autumn” – Jeffrey Ford
“Wizard” – Michaele Jordan
“Real Faces” – Ken Liu

The tireless Lois Tilton has already reviewed the issue in detail at Locus Online, calling this one “A superior issue… most notably a fine novella by Kate Wilhelm and a short anthropological tale by Eleanor Arneson.” Here’s what she says about Matthew Hughes’ “Wearaway and Flambeau,” a far-future tale of Raffalon the thief:

This time, Raffalon has been nabbed in the act of breaking into the well-warded stronghold of the wizard Hurdevant the Stringent. The wizard employs an experimental punitive spell, which, fortunately for the thief, goes awry in a manner that offers unexpected possibilities. Entertaining stuff. The editorial blurb claims that this one is set in the author’s far-future universe, but it seems like a typical fantasy world of the sort with wizards and thieves.

The cover price is $7.50, for a thick 258 pages. Additional free content at the F&SF website includes book and film reviews by Charles de Lint, Michelle West, and Lucius Shepard; a Science column, “Quicksand and Ketchup,” by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty; and the “Curiosities” column by the talented Bud Webster. We last covered F&SF here with the May/June issue.

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Amazing Spider-Man

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 Ryan Harvey Comments 10 comments

amazing-spider-man-poster With directing great superheroes comes great responsibility. I wish director Marc Webb knew this. Or perhaps directing superheroics on screen isn’t something the man is capable of.

Webb’s re-boot of Sony’s Spider-Man franchise is not an utter elevated train-wreck. If all you want is a bit of comic book action during the summer between The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, then The Amazing Spider-Man is adequate to the task. I certainly can’t give it a worse rating than something like Battleship or Dark Shadows. It’s not a Batman and Robin. There’s that.

But as a Spider-Man film, and me speaking as a Spider-Fan, the The Amazing Spider-Man is a huge disappointment. It’s even a bit depressing. I’m glad I have the Sam Raimi films to bolster me, knowing that somebody has already done Spider-Man right, because otherwise this very unnecessary (except for keeping a lock on film rights) re-do of Spidey’s origin would be… okay, an elevated train-wreck. And to hear Sony, and even some fans, try to do revisionist history on the Raimi films as if they were off the mark — that’s painful. Yes, Spider-Man 3 had many problems, most of which were forced on Raimi by the studio, but it is still a better “Spider-Man film” than this one. The first Raimi film is a well-crafted, dead-on origin story, and Spider-Man 2 is just a goddamn great film. Raimi balanced Spidey’s drama with the crisp fun of his comics.

The Amazing Spider-Man is an overall mess, but there are two major problems that injure it. Before getting into that, here’s a fast rundown on its many other problems:

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Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau

Monday, July 9, 2012 Bill Ward Comments 9 comments

Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau
Charles R. Saunders
Sword & Soul Media (326 pp, $20.00, Paperback, 2011)
Reviewed by Bill Ward

Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau will feel a bit like new territory for fans of Charles R. Saunders. Unchanged, of course, is the terrific action and imagination of Saunders, and the fidelity to character and setting — indeed everything there is to love about Saunders’ Imaro and Dossouye stories is evident in this latest offering. But The Dancers of Mulukau is Saunders’ first full-length sword & sorcery offering of recent years that is not based wholly or in part on existing material, and represents the Saunders of today, not of decades ago. After the various ups and downs of Saunders’ publishing career, it feels good to at last come to a place in which this author’s classic works are now safely preserved and easily available. Now he is able to move forward into as yet uncharted territory to tell new stories and develop new themes, reminding us once again why he must be counted among the giants of the field of heroic fantasy adventure fiction.

Dossouye herself is in new territory at the start of The Dancers of Mulukau. The story of how Dossouye, formidable warrior woman of the Abomey, came to leave her people and wander the land is told in the first book, a picaresque fix-up novel based on classic novellas penned by Saunders in the 70s and 80s, with additional unpublished material and a new story added for the book’s release in 2008. I won’t trouble to repeat much of what I said about Dossouye in my original review of that book, but readers can be assured that all of the hallmarks of those foundational stories have returned and are enlarged upon in The Dancers of Mulukau.

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Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

Monday, July 9, 2012 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 28 comments

When I tell people what a great writer Robert E. Howard was, a lot of them don’t seem to believe me. If they only know him through depictions of Conan or, worse, rip-offs, then they think Howard’s writing is all about a dull guy in a loin cloth fighting monsters and lots of straining bosoms. It’s not that Robert E. Howard thought himself above describing a lithesome waist or a wilting beauty, especially if he needed to make a quick buck, it’s just that there’s a lot more going on in a Conan story than his imitators took away.

It’s easy to pull some samples of great action writing from Robert E. Howard. I’ve done it before, and I could easily do it again here. Only a handful of writers can approach him in that field, and almost none are his equal.

He was also a master of headlong, driving pace. That can be hard to showcase without insisting you read an entire story, so today I want to show readers who seem unaware of his work (or those who are uninterested) a few more reasons why those of us in the know revere him so highly.

Here in one of his historical stories, ”Lord of Samarcand,” is the Scotsman, or Frank, as the easterners call any from Europe, Donald MacDeesa, riding to the court of Tamarlane the Great. See how swiftly, how easily, Howard conjures the scene in all its splendor with just a few well-chosen words, as though he’s panning a camera as MacDeesa rides.

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Samurai 7: Swords and Sorcery with Killer Robots

Sunday, July 8, 2012 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

It was my daughter’s 13th birthday yesterday. One of the things she wanted was the 2004 anime series Samurai 7, which her brother Tim gave her in a handsome Blu-Ray package.

As the parents of most young girls will tell you, it’s not enough to get them a few presents and a hug for their birthday. What they really want is attention. And what Taylor really wanted was for Dad to watch Samurai 7 with her.

Which I did. All 3.6 hours of Disk One, a full nine episodes. Let’s face it — the days when my teenage daughter will want to hang out with me are coming to an end; better seize them while I can.

I’m glad I made the effort to spend time with her. For lots of good reasons, not least of which was that Samurai 7 turned out to be a terrific piece of animated cinema. A lot more enjoyable than those two hours I spent playing dolls when she turned six, let me tell you.

I knew the basic premise before parking my butt on the couch. Like Yul Brynner’s classic Western The Magnificent Seven, Samurai 7 is directly inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film Seven Samurai, one of the most influential films ever made.

A small group of peasants whose town is ruthlessly pillaged by bandits every year journey to the city to hire seven masterless samurai to defend their village. Desperate and poor, all they can offer these samurai is rice — and not very much of it.

Seven Samurai is set in sixteenth-century feudal Japan; Samurai 7 translates the classic story to a post-apocalyptic world of towering, decrepit cities and a blasted landscape dotted with the twisted debris of a recent war.

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Apex Magazine #38

Saturday, July 7, 2012 Soyka Comments 0 Comment

July’s Apex Magazine features ”Coyote Gets His Own Back” by Sarah Monette, “The Silk Merchant” by Ken Liu, “Ironheart” by Alec Austin and “Wolf Trapping” by Kij Johnson (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater). Bruce Holwerda provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Christopher J. Garcia and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month. While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99. Individual issues are also available at Amazon, Nook and Weightless.

Twelve issue (one year) subscriptions can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

House of Black Wings

Friday, July 6, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 3 comments

house-of-black-wings1 Make a list of the ten best horror movies of all time (or the hundred best horror movies of all time) (or the thousand best horror movies of all time) and at least half those titles will be low-budget, independent films. There’s a reason for that.

Despite garnering critical and commercial success over and over, the horror genre is still dismissed by many as lowbrow and simplistic. Big studios just don’t like investing a lot of money in horror.

Except when some low-budget film becomes a huge success. Then the studios rush in to produce big budget sequels and big budget re-makes, none of which are as good as the original low-budget feature. There’s a reason for that too.

Low-budget films can be risk-takers. They don’t have a hundred-million dollars riding on their success, so they can explore areas that will bring them a smaller (but often dedicated) viewership. There’s nothing new in Hollywood, but a quick look through independent cinema venues reveals that this is a boom time for horror movies. House of Black Wings is one of those movies that you have to seek out; but one which is well-worth the effort.

The story begins with Kate Stone, formerly up-and-coming rock star Nicki Tarot, as she abandons the career that has left her ruined emotionally, financially and physically. She finds that her only remaining friend is Robin Huck, a struggling shadowbox designer who has inherited a deteriorating apartment building following the death of her father. The two women act as caretakers to a home filled with struggling artists. But in the midst of all the emotional turmoil, there is a supernatural threat that tempts them with promises of escape.

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How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen)

Friday, July 6, 2012 Joe Bonadonna Comments 10 comments

It was the summer of 1969. Very much like the one described in the song by Bryan Adams.

I quit the rock and roll band I’d been playing with since high school, went to work with my Dad, and had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings; a year earlier, while still in high school, I’d read The Hobbit. Now, after completing my magical journey through Middle-earth, I was totally hooked. I had found a liking — no, a craving for Heroic and Epic Fantasy.

Not long after that I discovered the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy Series, wonderfully edited and championed by Lin Carter. Novels by Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, David Lindsay, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, Poul Anderson, and others fanned the flames of my passion.

To say I was addicted would be a gross understatement. No, I had found novels that had changed my life and would continue to do so for the next 40-plus years!

Then one day, while browsing through a used book store on State Street and Congress in downtown Chicago, I came across three more novels that would further alter my life. The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp, The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber, and an anthology of short-stories by Lin Carter, Beyond the Gates of Dream.

What was this new and exciting genre of fantasy fiction I had discovered? Sword and sorcery, of course! I was not only caught like an unwary Hyrkanian soldier, I was taken captive — axe, mace, and broadsword.

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Pulling Off (or Putting On?) the Blog Mask

Friday, July 6, 2012 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 12 comments

blogging As I watch the tumbleweeds blow through my official author web site, I sometimes wonder what I can do to increase traffic. Authors are told that regular blog entries generate interest and that we should keep up a regular stream of witty and attention-getting material to get people curious about our writing.

A lot of us can make all sorts of excuses about how we just can’t do that. Let’s face it: writers aren’t that social to begin with, or are busy enough with writing or the rest of our lives that it’s hard to find time to draft blog entries. And some of us aren’t that witty. On the other hand… longest journey, first step, to sell you must reach your market, tough get going, and so on.Which is why I’ve finally just made myself get to it with regularity. I’ve recently gotten comfortable with drafting material that matters to me in a timely manner. I can’t tell how much it matters to anyone else, but my thought is that if I build it, they will come.

Yet as the tumbleweeds roll stately forward, I naturally wonder if there’s something more I can do to draw in readers, which is why a recent post from editor, writer, and friend James Sutter’s recent post over at Ink Punks got me thinking.

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