Art of the Genre: When Great Art is actually Bad Art

Art of the Genre: When Great Art is actually Bad Art

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Amazing isn't it? Is originality dead, or is someone in Hollywood smarter than we give them credit?
Amazing isn't it? Is originality dead, or is someone in Hollywood smarter than we give them credit for?

I had a question proposed to me in my Saturday blog here on Black Gate concerning the multiple covers of Howard Andrew Jones’s The Desert of Souls. I’ll repost the question here.

I see a lot of photo-manipulation covers and hybrid photo/3D/digital painted covers, and I feel that a lot of them actually look pretty cheap and nasty. If I was Howard Andrew Jones, for example, I would be very happy with the first The Desert of Souls cover (100% digitally painted, stirring, full of life and movement, etc) and very unhappy with the second cover (a mish-mash of photo elements and, I don’t know? 3D elements? What’s going on with those faces? It almost looks like a romance novel cover.) What do you think about this trend?

I’m going to break this down into two different answers. The first will deal with The Desert of Souls, and the second on the current state of science fiction/fantasy covers in general.

The question immediately reminded me of Hollywood and their great marketing machine. In 1990 Paramount Studios released Hunt for the Red October. The movie cost roughly $30 million to make and grossed $200 million worldwide, which is to say it was an enormous success. The movie poster featured a shadowy submarine, Sean Connery’s face, all in black and red, and the title in white lettering.

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New Treasures: Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s

New Treasures: Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s

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goodis-five-noir-novels1Let’s take stock for a minute. Been a busy week, and it’s only Tuesday. Is it time for another installment of New Treasures already?

Let’s see, let’s see… what did we cover last time? Been so long I barely remember. Well look at that — it was a handsome pair of novels from The Library of America. By coincidence, The Library of America also published the book I want to talk about today: Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s.

Or maybe it’s not coincidence. Maybe The Library of America is just that cool. Here’s the back cover copy for today’s omnibus collection of five classic crime novels by David Goodis — you decide.

In 1997 The Library of America’s Crime Novels: American Noir gathered, in two volumes, eleven classic works of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s — among them David Goodis’s moody and intensely lyrical masterpiece Down There, adapted by François Truffaut for his 1960 film Shoot the Piano Player. Now, The Library of America and editor Robert Polito team up again to celebrate the full scope of Goodis’s signature style with this landmark volume collecting five great novels from the height of his career. Goodis (1917-1967) was a Philadelphia- born pulp expressionist who brought a jazzy style to his spare, passionate novels of mean streets and doomed protagonists: an innocent man railroaded for his wife’s murder (Dark Passage); an artist whose life turns nightmarish because of a cache of stolen money (Nightfall); a dockworker seeking to comprehend his sister’s brutal death (The Moon in the Gutter); a petty criminal derailed by irresistible passion (The Burglar); and a famous crooner scarred by violence and descending into dereliction (Street of No Return). Long a cult favorite, Goodis now takes his place alongside Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett in the pantheon of classic American crime writers.

No, it’s not fantasy or science fiction. But it’s a complete noir library in one attractive package, and it has thumbnail pics of five pulp paperbacks from the 40s & 50s right on the cover wrap. Good enough for me.

Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s is 848 pages in hardcover. It was published March 29, 2012, and retails for $35.

Five Genre Movies to Look Forward to This Summer

Five Genre Movies to Look Forward to This Summer

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prometheus_movie_05Summer is almost here, and the time is almost right, for dancing in the streets. Or sitting your butt down in a movie theater to watch a big green thing in purple pants beat up aliens.

As I more and more become “The Black Gate Movie Guy,” I’ve grown aware of my responsibilities regarding upcoming films of interest to our readership. This summer I promise to post reviews of all the major genre releases, which means that, yes, you will get to hear my thoughts on Snow White and Huntsman. Because you didn’t demand it.

This is also a transparent bid to get officially recognized as a movie critic so that I will be invited to press screenings here in Los Angeles and thus be able to post up reviews of films in the days before they are released.

Looking over the summer roster (posted below — yes, all shall be reviewed), aside from a few groans of anticipatory pain, there are five films that really have my geek adrenal glands turned up to the danger zone. Here are the films I hope will make summer worthwhile.

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Courtney Crumrin Volume One: The Night Things

Courtney Crumrin Volume One: The Night Things

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courtney-crumrin-volume-one-the-night-things2Far back in the mists of time (March 2002, if you want to be picky), I picked up an intriguing black and white independent title at my local comic shop. It was Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things #1, written and drawn by Ted Naifeh and published by Oni Press.

The first few pages featured cold and uncaring parents, a spooky house, young bullies, sinister night creatures, and a protagonist who was clearly an aspiring criminal and juvenile delinquent. Before the end of the first issue, young Courtney Crumrin had trapped a goblin and forced it to cruelly devour one of her school mates, bones and all.

Man, this was just what I was looking for. I brought it home and read it to my three children, and they immediately clamored for more.

More is what they got. Over the next few years Naifeh produced over a dozen issues following Courtney and her Uncle Aloysius, a powerful warlock who reluctantly teaches her magic. Courtney’s adventures involved the helpful (but hungry) goblins Butterworm and Butterbug; Boo & Quick, talking neighborhood cats who assist the young aspiring witch; a local Coven of witches and warlocks who frequently turn to Aloysius for help with dread problems; night things from the Twilight Kingdom — including The Dreadful Dutchess, Courtney’s friend Skarrow, and The Twilight King — and the terrible Tommy Rawhead, a giant hobgoblin feared by the Coven, and everyone else.

The various issues of Courtney Crumrin were collected into four handsome trade paperbacks, followed by the short-lived spin-off series Courtney Crumrin Tales in 2005. But that was all, and fans were left waiting while Naifeh turned to other projects, like Polly and the Pirates.

The long drought ended two weeks ago with the arrival of Courtney Crumrin Volume 1: The Night Things, the first hardcover edition of Courtney Crumrin. More importantly, it’s also the first time the issues have appeared in color, and the newly colorized pages look terrific. Volume One reprints the first four issues with special bonus material including sketches and covers of all four issues. The second volume, Courtney Crumrin & The Coven of Mystics, reprinting the next four issues in color, is due Aug 29, 2012.

Courtney Crumrin is one of the finest comics produced in the 21st Century. Don’t miss the opportunity to have these early issues in a handsome permanent edition. Courtney Crumrin Volume One: The Night Things is 144 pages in hardcover; it is published by Oni Press for $19.99.

More than a decade after I read them the first issue at bed time, all three of my children are still ardent Courtney Crumrin fans. But they’ll have to wait for this volume, because Dad wants to read it first.

“What’s Become of Screwloose?” and Other Great Short Fiction by Ron Goulart

“What’s Become of Screwloose?” and Other Great Short Fiction by Ron Goulart

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whats-become-of-screwloose1Ron Goulart has written more than 70 novels, most of them science fiction or fantasy, as well as over a dozen non-fiction titles, including Comic Book Culture and the classic history of the pulps, Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazines.

I saw his name countless times in the paperback racks where I hunted for science fiction as a teen, on slender DAW volumes like Calling Dr. Patchwork, The Panchronicon Plot, and Big Bang. He had a reputation for light comedy, not something that appealed to me at the time, and I pretty much ignored Goulart for years.

In fact, I truly discovered Ron Goulart for the first time five days ago, shortly before midnight last Wednesday.

I was bagging a collection of Worlds of IF, a science fiction digest that folded in 1974, which I’d gradually accumulated over several weeks on eBay. I was casually flipping through the April 1970 issue when I stumbled on the short story “Swap,” by Ron Goulart, with this editorial teaser:

What happens when you swap love partners — and win a hot, curvy bundle of hate?

As a student of short fiction teasers — I’ve written a few hundred for Black Gate — I know a winner when I see one. I pulled the lever to recline the couch and, surrounded by nearly a dozen stacks of aging science fiction magazines, settled back to enjoy a 42-year old science fiction story.

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Charlene Brusso Reviews The Alloy of Law

Charlene Brusso Reviews The Alloy of Law

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the-alloy-of-lawThe Alloy of Law
Brandon Sanderson
Tor ( $24.99, 329p)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

Sanderson burst onto the fantasy landscape with his creative Mistborn series, about a world where allomancers and feruchemists use different metals to feed their magical powers. With its solid world-building, believable characters, and twisty intrigues, the Mistborn series turned what could have been an adequate medievaloid good guys vs the Dark Overlord into a thoroughly memorable read.

Sanderson could have gone ahead and continued to mine that same setting for plenty more stories. And those hypothetical books would’ve been fun–but not half as much fun as what he actually chose to do with The Alloy of Law.

The new book begins some 300 years after the core events of the original Mistborn trilogy. The old characters are now hazy figures of legend. Rising technology, both Allomancy-based and non-magical, means railroads, barges and boats, steel skyscrapers, and, in wealthier enclaves like capital city Elendel, even electric lighting.

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Convention Report: Ad Astra 2012

Convention Report: Ad Astra 2012

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Ad AstraLast weekend I went to Toronto to attend the Ad Astra science fiction and fantasy convention. It was the third convention I’ve been to in my life. I learned a fair bit.

To start with, I learned a bit about the thriving Toronto sf scene. Toronto’s a huge city, both geographically and in terms of population; over six million people live in the Greater Toronto Area, and over eight and a half in the ‘golden horseshoe’ region around the western shore of Lake Ontario. That’s the population base the sf community there draws from. There are writers of all levels of experience in and around the city, and a friend of mine told me there are at least three critique groups of published writers. Publishers are based in the city, notably ChiZine Publications. And, in tough days for retail booksellers, there’s still a dedicated sf bookstore, Bakka Phoenix. As well as three separate annual conventions, that I know of.

Ad Astra was first held in 1980, and focusses on written fantastika. Guests of honour this year were author Harry Turtledove, writer/actress Lesley Livingston, artist Joe Jusko, editor Shelly Shapiro, and fan organizer/scholar Peter Halasz. The 2012 convention was technically north of the city of Toronto proper, in the neighbouring municipality of Markham.

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Strange Horizons April 16, 2012

Strange Horizons April 16, 2012

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This past week’s issue of Strange Horizons features a story by Andrea Kneeland. “Beneath Impossible Circumstances”:

Analise wants to have a baby. A real baby. I tell her that if we had a baby together, it would be a real baby. It would be a real baby and it would have parts from both of us, and it would be a real person made from both of our genes, and that I want parts of myself in a child just as much as she wants parts of herself in a child. When I tell her these things, she turns on the faucet or runs the vacuum or opens the refrigerator door wide and sticks her head in like she’s looking for something so she can pretend not to hear me and I can pretend not to see how damp and salted her reddening cheeks are, and on days like these, when I tell her things like these, the bed sheets between us stay cool and dry and I remind myself of the virtue of silence and I bite my lip to draw blood so that in the morning, when I move my mouth, the pain will remind me not to say a thing.

Other features include poetry by Virginia M, Mohlere, commentary by Adam Roberts on the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke shortlist and a review of Lev Grossman’s The Magician King by Bill Mingin.

sh_head

Art of the Genre: Front Loading a Kickstarter

Art of the Genre: Front Loading a Kickstarter

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This Kickstarter was 70% complete by the closing of the campaign and yet we still are going down to the wire on deadline.
This Kickstarter was 70% complete by the closing of the campaign and yet we still are going down to the wire on deadline.

Ok, could Kickstarter be any more popular than it is right now? I’m thinking no… I mean, if we were looking at a bell curve, beginning in 2009 with Kickstarter’s launch, the top of the bell should be right here, right now.

As I was moving through Facebook yesterday, a place where until November 2011 I’d never heard or seen a mention of Kickstarter, I counted 9 different threads among sites I frequent either pushing a new Kickstarter or asking questions about the platform.

It’s kind of crazy, and yet when the gravy train is running, anyone out there would be a fool not to jump on board, or so all the property flippers from 2006 would like you to believe.

Still, I digress, as this post is about something other than the proliferation of the platform.

This fine Saturday, one in which I incredibly DON’T have a Kickstarter to peddle, I’m going to talk a bit about getting ready for a Kickstarter.

As I mentioned in my last post on the subject, a video is now an even greater key to a Kickstarter’s success, and the days of one-on-one testimonials are dying faster than the people of Portland in the TV show Grimm.

But before I reiterate my discussion on videos from two weeks ago, I really want to take you into the world of Kickstarters, fulfillment, and what it takes to not only get one going, but also how to wrap it up and get it out the door after all the ‘crazy’ ends. This process will take a couple of weeks, so bear with me, but it still begins today with the question I got earlier this week.

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Jonathan Frid: December 2, 1924 – April 14, 2012

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Jonathan Frid: December 2, 1924 – April 14, 2012

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image0021Before we had heard of Lestat, Bill Compton or Edward Cullen, one vampire alone dominated our collective pop culture conscious; the formidable and classic, Barnabas Collins.

This week the offices of Goth Chick News are draped in black, or I should say more draped in black, in respectful mourning for Mr. Jonathan Frid, who portrayed the character on the soap opera/horror series Dark Shadows (making his first appearance at the doors of Collinwood on April 18, 1967) until 1971, and who died last Saturday at the age of 87.

As we’ve previously discussed, Johnny Depp will be reprising Mr. Frid’s iconic role in the Dark Shadows remake set for release on May 11th, though it’s probably more appropriate to call is a “redo” as director Tim Burton has elected to make it a… sigh… comedy.

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