Black Gate – Page 1151 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

In Defense of Red Sonja: The Vow

Tuesday, October 16, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 3 comments

Though interest in a modestly-dressed Red Sonja was strong in 1973, it skyrocketed in 1974 with the debut of her famous chain mail bikini in Savage Sword of Conan 1. Sonja returned in her trademark outfit later that year in Conan the Barbarian, issues 43 and 44. Titled “Tower of Blood” and “Of Flame and the Fiend!” respectively, the two-part story finds Conan and Sonja on the run from bounty hunters, sent by the sons of the king Sonja killed two stories earlier. They escape from the bounty hunters, only to find themselves trapped in a mist-enshrouded tower haunted by vampires. By this stage, I don’t understand why this sort of thing would even surprise Conan.

Beyond the predictable motivations of the brother and sister vampires (the brother vampire lusts after Sonja, while the sister vampire lusts after Conan, and the story ends with two dead vampires), we also get further glimpses into Red Sonja’s character. When Conan suggests that her lifestyle is not a woman’s way, her response is, “You’d have me marry, I suppose, raise brats instead of hell.” (That quote should be on a t-shirt.) Further, when the vampire woman attempts to seduce Conan, he asks Sonja if she’s jealous. Her response is neither a passionate denial nor an admission: “There is no place for such womanish things in my life! Sometimes, I almost want there to be, but there is not and there never will be.” Again, her vow is something she will staunchly uphold, but it seems to be one she regrets. Which begs the question of to whom she made the vow, if not to herself.

Further, we see Sonja several times bristle over the Cimmerian helping her. She hates being in anyone’s debt. She’s not above manipulating others into helping her, but aid freely and knowingly given unnerves her. Of course, after rescuing her from bounty hunters and vampires this issue, the debt between them appears to be fairly even (if one counts the times she rescued Conan in earlier adventures). So it’s understandable that the story ends not with a friendly handshake or even a chaste kiss, but with Sonja bashing Conan on the back of the head with a rock, knocking him out so she can make her escape and not risk falling into his debt.

After that two-parter, the four Red Sonja stories published in 1975 were all solo tales. Apparently, the character had finally become popular enough to not need the additional presence of Conan. The first of these stories, “Episode,” (originally published as a back-up story in Conan the Barbarian 48) is a fairly light piece where she is attacked by a giant spider, then a wizard determined to sacrifice her to demons. The second story, “She-Devil with a Sword,” (originally in Kull and the Barbarians 2) is a strange re-interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, albeit with more tragedy.

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Vintage Treasures: World of Wonder, edited by Fletcher Pratt

Tuesday, October 16, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’m gradually making my way, with considerable delight, through the vintage science fiction and fantasy anthologies I bought for a few bucks from the collection of Martin H. Greenberg.

I’ve already covered From Off This World (1949) and The Giant Anthology of Science Fiction (1954), both edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend. This week, I’ve been fondling Fletcher Pratt’s 1951 World of Wonder, subtitled An Introduction to Imaginative Literature.

Pratt, author of The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star, was already a noted fantasy author in his own right by 1951. The science fiction anthology was still a relatively new beast, but the handful that had been published at that point had been generally well received.

Nonetheless, Pratt felt it necessary to grouse about lack of respect in his lengthy introduction:

Now let us not kid ourselves. The stories in this book are fiction, they are literature, whatever definition one chooses to give to those often-disputed terms. A good many people tend to look down on science fiction and fantasy (there is no word that really covers both exactly) because the bulk of it has appeared in magazines with garish covers. They forget that the color of the skin is no guarantee of the flavor of the apple.

Like many books in Greenberg’s collection — especially the vintage anthologies — this one had notes scrawled in the margins, the most prominent being “Fantastic — use. Conflict resolution?” beside H. Beam Piper’s “Operation RSVP.” Greenberg reprinted “Operation RSVP” in Amazing Science Fiction Anthology: The Wild Years 1946-1955 (which I discussed back in June.)

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The Paris Fashion Week of Fantasy Games

Monday, October 15, 2012 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

Six months ago, I attended the Spring Games Auction at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, Illinois, the premiere auction in the country for serious game collectors. Last Friday, I was checking the calendar. They occur every six months, which meant the next one was… holy cats! Saturday morning. I packed up my rental car the next morning and headed out, after making a blood oath to my wife Alice that I would be fiscally responsible this year. Or at least act within the bounds of forgiveness, I told myself.

The auction did not disappoint. The Saturday auction focuses on science fiction and fantasy board games, as well as role-playing games of all kinds. They start promptly at 10:00 am and run for the next seven hours, rattling off about ten games per minute; hundreds every hour, and thousands over the course of the day. For me, it’s the Paris Fashion Week of games — my chance to see all the latest and greatest in new games without having to leave the comfort of my metal folding chair.

Just as last time, the real wonders weren’t dusty artifacts from the early days of gaming, but a panorama of gorgeous and enticing new titles. And again, my knowledge of modern science fiction and fantasy gaming proved woefully inadequate, as time after time, games I’d never seen before made their way to the auction block.

Now, it’s dangerous to be ignorant at an auction. It’s easy to overbid on an item that looks expensive and rare, only to find Amazon has it on clearance for ten bucks. It’s even easier to drop out of the bidding when the going gets tough, confident you can find it cheaper online — only to find copies commanding outrageous prices on eBay. I’ve done both, and while most collectors agree that the greater pain is the memory of that rare item that got away, that’s because they haven’t met Alice and her corrective-therapy broomstick of agony.

So I played it safe this time. I watched a lot of marvelous games go to other bidders, jotting down the titles as they did. I gave up on a used copy of Fantasy Flight Games’ Sky Traders, a game of intrigue and trading in an era of skyships, when bidding shot past $27; it’s in stock at Amazon for $35. Same with Guards! Guards!, a fabulous-looking Discworld game from Z-Man Games, which sold for $40 (new for $57 online), and — perhaps the hardest to let go — a magnificent space combat game based on David Weber’s bestselling series, Honor Harrington: Saganami Island Tactical Simulator, which the fellow next to me bought for $40 (cheapest copy I can find online is $75). And plenty of others, including Zombietown, Dark Minions, Peregrine Games’ Prince of Chaos, and the curious Gnomes of Zavandor.

Later this week, I’ll talk about those items I did bring home, including Empires of the Void, a terrific-looking space exploration game from Red Raven Games. That post will be much more cheerful, I promise.

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part III: Mysteries of Winterthurn

Monday, October 15, 2012 Matthew David Surridge Comments 1 comment

Mysteries of Winterthurn For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic Quintet, in advance of the publication of the fifth book in the sequence next March. I started off with 1980’s Bellefleur, which I thought was brilliant. Last week I looked at 1982’s A Bloodsmoor Romance, which I found interesting, but not up to the first book’s level, perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the romance genre. This week, I’ll be looking at Mysteries of Winterthurn, from 1984, which impressed me quite a bit.

Winterthurn plays with the mystery novel as Bellefleur did the Gothic and Bloodsmoor did the romance. Like those books, it both celebrates and subverts its form, and presents a parable whose themes include America, gender, and God. Unlike those books, it also creates a fully-realised community, the city of Winterthurn, against which background its hero investigates three separate cases. I think it succeeds both as a story and as a work of well-wrought prose. It deftly manipulates symbol and theme, while in its pacing and manipulation of suspense, it might well be called genre-savvy; though not necessarily savvy in the genre one would expect.

The book follows detective Xavier Kilgarvan in three separate cases over about two dozen years. In the first case, “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; Or, The Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor,” a teenaged Xavier investigates a murder at Glen Mawr Manor, the dwelling of his uncle, Judge Erasmus Kilgarvan, and Erasmus’s three daughters — for one of whom, Perdita, Xavier has conceived a strong attraction. As killings and macabre events continue, Xavier finds himself facing apparently supernatural forces. In the second case, “Devil’s Half-Acre; Or, The Mystery of the ‘Cruel Suitor’,” Xavier returns to Winterthurn in his late twenties, at the height of his fame, to unravel the events around the deaths of five women in a ruined landscape near the city. He draws closer to Perdita, even as his suspicions are drawn to the aristocratic Valentine Westergaard. Finally, “The Bloodstained Bridal Gown; Or, Xavier Kilgarvan’s Last Case” sees Xavier, nearing forty, dealing with a triple murder in Winterthurn — and, again, his love for Perdita.

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New Treasures: Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds

Monday, October 15, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I somehow managed to overlook Ian Tregillis’s debut novel, Bitter Seeds, and that situation might not have changed if I hadn’t accidentally stumbled into his reading at the World Science Fiction convention.

In front of a packed audience, Ian spun a tale of Nazi supermen, the warlocks of Britain, and a desperate battle to prevent the twisted psychics of Germany from winning World War II in a supernatural alternate history. I heard less than a minute of his summary of the second novel, but it was more than enough to grab my attention. I got my hands on the first volume, just released in paperback, as soon as I could.

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between.

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities — a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present — Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.

Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis is a tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.

Bitter Seeds was published by Tor Books on April 24, 2012. It is 467 pages for $7.99 in both paperback and digital format. The Coldest War, the sequel and second volume in what’s now being called The Milkweed Triptych, was published in hardcover on July 17, 2012.

See all of our recent New Treasures selections here.

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Daughter’s Dowry” by Aaron Bradford Starr

Sunday, October 14, 2012 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

A famous explorer relates one of his earliest adventures, an exciting sea journey to a sunken tower where a legendary treasure awaits:

I inserted the key into the lock, amazed at how free of corrosion or accumulated grit the inner mechanism was. Yr Neh cocked his ears forward in surprise as well. Our eyes met, and we smiled to each other as I turned the key.

It didn’t open. I felt the tension in the key, then its complete freedom of movement. Puzzled, I put an ear to the side. It was ticking softly. Yr Neh backed away warily, and I had begun to do the same when the box jumped into the air before me.

Flashing and turning, the box changed shape as it fell, landing again on the floor completely transformed. It was now a complex faceted spike of brightest gold. The point pounded into the floor and continued through the stone.

I lunged for the rope, diving through the shallow water on the floor. There followed a moment of silence, broken only by the squeak of the rope from which I still clung, soaked to the skin. Yr Neh sighed in relief, and I joined him. Then the shattered floor collapsed.

Aaron’s first published story was “Mortal Star” in Black Gate 8, which SF Site called “complex and fascinating in design… A very fine story that is impossible to predict.”

You can read the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including last week’s 25,000-word novella of dark fantasy “The Quintessence of Absence” by Sean McLachlan, and Jason E. Thummel’s adventure fantasy novelette “The Duelist,” here.

“The Daughter’s Dowry” is a complete 9,000-word novelette of heroic fantasy offered at no cost, with original art by Aaron Bradford Starr.

Read the complete story here.

Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950: A Retro-Review

Sunday, October 14, 2012 Matthew Wuertz Comments 12 comments

Continuing in my discovery of Galaxy magazine, I began reading the first issue, dated October 1950. I knew what I’d never see in Galaxy, and but what fiction would I discover within?

“Time Quarry” by Clifford D. Simak is the first of a three-part serial. I don’t see this done often with modern magazines, but it seems like back in the Fifties, novel serializations were part of the norm. I wonder how the rights and payment worked out for that, but I digress.

In Part 1, Asher Sutton returns to Earth after disappearing for twenty years on a space exploration mission to 61 Cygni. Little is known of the planet he landed on; no other ship can get near it due to unexplained anomalies. Since his return, Sutton has drawn attention, both from those who want information and those who want him dead.

“Third From the Sun” by Richard Matheson – A family plans to escape from a world on the brink of war. All they need to do is to take a spaceship for themselves and leave everyone but their closest neighbors behind.

Third From the Sun became the title of Matheson’s first paperback short story collection, published by Bantam Books in 1955.

“The Stars are the Styx” by Theodore Sturgeon – Mankind has the tools for creating vast inter-galactic travel, but it will take 6,000 years to set up the framework. Volunteers are sent (usually as married pairs) out to distant points within the galaxy, and when all are in place, they will create a connected network for instant transportation to each location.

Each person’s choice to go out or return to Earth is made at Curbstone, an Earth satellite run by a man sometimes referred to as Charon. Of the latest arrivals, Charon takes interest in Judson, a young man who seems certain to become Outbounder, provided he doesn’t get too distracted by those who are still undecided.

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Weird Tales 360 Arrives This Week

Sunday, October 14, 2012 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Weird Tales 360, the first issue helmed by new editor Marvin Kaye, is scheduled to ship this Friday, October 19.

It’s an auspicious and entirely appropriate number, I think. After changing direction several times over the last few years, Weird Tales has now turned 360-degrees and returned to where it started: publishing classic weird fiction.

The theme of the first Kaye issue is “The Elder Gods,” and the table of contents makes it clear that he is whole-heartedly embracing the Lovecraftian fiction that helped make Weird Tales one of the most sought-after magazines of the pulp era:

FICTION: THE ELDER GODS

“The Long Last Night” by Brian Lumley
“Momma Durtt” by Michael Shea
“The Darkness at Table Rock Road” by Michael Reyes
“The Runners Beyond the Wall” by Darrell Schweitzer
“Drain” by Matthew Jackson
“The Thing in the Cellar” by William Blake-Smith
“Found in a Bus Shelter at 3:00 am, Under a Mostly Empty Sky” by Stephen Gracia

FICTION: UNTHEMED

“To Be a Star” by Parke Godwin
“The Empty City” by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
“Abbey at the Edge of the Earth” by Collin B. Greenwood
“Alien Abduction” by M. A. Brines

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Vintage Bits: Black Isle Resurfaces

Saturday, October 13, 2012 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Interplay, publisher of some of the most acclaimed fantasy role playing games of all time – such as the Bard’s Tale series, Wasteland, Dragon Wars, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, and Icewind Dale — has announced that the legendary development studio behind many of its most popular titles, Black Isle Studios, has reformed.

Black Isle was owned by Interplay and created in 1996 by Feargus Urquhart. It was formed from the crack team of developers who had created Fallout. Over the next few years, they developed many hits, including Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale. Working with a tiny outfit in Canada named BioWare, they also produced Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn.

Interplay began to experience serious financial difficulties in 2001-2002, after publishing a number of high-budget failures such as Messiah and Kingpin. Black Isle was dissolved as Interplay imploded, a move that shocked the industry. All the employees were laid off on December 8, 2003.

Their last titles were the poorly-received PC game, Lionheart, and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II for the Playstation 2. At the time they were dissolved, they were working on Baldur’s Gate III: The Black Hound, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance III and Fallout 3, none of which ever saw the light of day. A nearly bankrupt Interplay eventually sold the rights to the Fallout series to Bethesda, who developed and released its own version of Fallout 3 in 2008.

The closing of Black Isle was a serious blow to RPG gamers, and it marked the end of Interplay as a force in the industry. As someone whose all-time favorite games include Dragon Wars and Icewind Dale, I saw it as the end of an era. Interplay survived for most of the next decade by re-packaging its classic games, especially Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale, as well as their sequels.

Most of the star developers associated with Black Isle, including Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone, are not on board for this new iteration. Urquhart and Avellone founded the successful Obsidian Entertainment (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2). But Mark O’Green and Chris Taylor (designer of the original Fallout) have both reportedly returned.

No announcement yet on what titles the resurrected Black Isle is working on. But I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

Smaller is Better

Saturday, October 13, 2012 Soyka Comments 1 comment

Arriving in the mail the other day was not one, but two small parcels from TTA Press, mini versions of Black Static and Interzone, now both in a more compact, dare I say it, iPad-ish, format, with spine and laminated color cover. Sort of like a book (or, if you prefer, the aforementioned iPad).

Kinda cool. The rationale seems to be a way to pack more content at what I assume is a more inexpensive way to print it (which may also be why both issues will now come out at the same time, six times yearly, instead of alternate months.) Even if it isn’t completely a cost issue, the new versions are quite handsome and, even better, more handy.

A definite updagrade. Kudos to Andy Cox and crew for trying to preserve the magazine in print format.

Hey, maybe it’s like vinyl records in a digital age: it may be a minority format, but there are people who still want to buy it (I’m one of those in both camps).

The September–October issue of Interzone has new stories by Ken Liu, Debbie Urbanski, Lavie Tidhar, Priya Sharma, CW Johnson, and Karl Bunker. Black Static has stories from James Cooper, Ray Cluley, Daniel Mills, Susan Kim, Carole Johnstone, and David Kotok.

Click either cover to see a full-size version.

You can subscribe to one or both here.