Goth Chick News: The Creature Had Good Taste and So Does Tim Burton

Goth Chick News: The Creature Had Good Taste and So Does Tim Burton

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image0021As it may have been with you, for me it all started with the original Universal Studios’ monster movies.

By “it,” I mean a lifelong fandom of the black and white, the subliminal scare, the camera angles and the long shadows; the classics created not because they were drenched in buckets of gore and nauseating realism, but because, as Bela Lugosi said in Ed Wood:

They were mythic. They had a poetry to them

Sigh.

Naturally, meeting someone associated with one of these films is the Goth Chick equivalent to winning the lottery; especially as those individuals who still are around to meet often do not venture far from the sunny and warm climates where they have retired.

Last weekend, Christmas came early when two of my all-time favorites from vintage Hollywood horror found their way to Chicago to attend The Hollywood Show.

Ms. Julie Adams, whose very presence and bearing makes you want to call her ma’am, is best known to many for her portrayal of bathing beauty Kay Lawrence in Universal’s 1954 classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Admittedly, my knowledge of Ms. Adams’ fifty-seven year career was extremely limited which she teasingly pointed out.

I wasn’t just the bit of cheesecake in the Creature movie you know. I actually worked with Elvis too!

Correct on both counts.

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Steampunk Spotlight: City of Iron Board Game on Kickstarter

Steampunk Spotlight: City of Iron Board Game on Kickstarter

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cityofiron-boxLast winter, I saw an excellent game on Kickstarter called Empires of the Void (Amazon). I was fairly new to Kickstarter, however, so didn’t actually back it at the time because I was hesitant about how the whole process worked. When I caught a glimpse of the game at GenCon, however, I was very impressed with the production values and wish I’d gotten it … because the Kickstarter discount turns out to be nearly 50%.

I’m not going to make that mistake again. Empires of the Void‘s creators, Red Raven Games, now has a second Kickstarter going. City of Iron is a steampunk-themed board game, complete with bizarre races, exotic lands (including floating islands), airships, and yes, even bottled demons. That’s right: one of the game’s many resources are bottled demons.

The goal of the game is to build up your civilization’s resource levels to surpass those of your competing civilizations. There are a variety of different ways you can proceed, with each turn allowing for three actions chosen from the following:

  • Build using a Building card
  • Buy Science tokens
  • Play a Citizen or Military card
  • Store a Building
  • Draw a card
  • Tax to gain coins
  • Attack a town

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Dave Sim Announces He’s Ending Glamourpuss And Leaving Comics

Dave Sim Announces He’s Ending Glamourpuss And Leaving Comics

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glamourpuss-21Well, this is troubling.

I stumbled on a report at The Comic Reporter this week that Cerebus creator Dave Sim — at one time my favorite comic writer and artist — has announced that he’s ending his latest ongoing title glamourpuss and giving up on the medium entirely.

Part of the reason I find it troubling is that I’ve never even heard of glamourpuss. How could Dave Sim publish 26 issues of a comic without me knowing about it? I’d heard about his successful Kickstarter campaign back in June, which raised nearly $64,000 to create a special audio/visual digital edition of the Cerebus graphic novel High Society. I also knew he had experimented with an anthology titled Cerebus Archive and a web program called Cerebus TV… but how did he slip glamourpuss past me?

According to what I can find online, glamourpuss was both a parody of 60s fashion magazines and a history of photorealism in comics, masquerading as a surreal super-heroine comic. One of its most talked-about features was an ongoing storyline about the day comic artist Alex Raymond died, The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond. The art samples published online looked stunning. You can view page samples and purchase of most of the back issues at the excellent comiXpress site.

But the real news was Sim’s bleak editorial in the latest issue:

Yes: this IS the last issue of glamourpuss… As soon as I saw the sales on the first issue – 16,000 – I knew that the title and my career were doomed. Because of the sheer volume of material published in the direct market, retailers need to order the highest numbers on the first issue and then start cutting drastically – on average: 50% per issue thereafter. 16,000 down to 8,000 down to 4,000 down to 2,000 and… oblivion…

In a final attempt to keep going, I re-jigged glamourpuss with [sister title] zootanapuss, using both the idea of a variant cover as zootanapuss No. 1 and double shipping each issue… It actually worked. Sales did go up on No. 25… but only by 34 copies over No. 24. I had arrived at my career end point…

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: The Hunger Games and the SAT

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: The Hunger Games and the SAT

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The cheap shots are kind of tempting — analogies, or allegories even, about the SAT as a form of gladiatorial combat. Some of my students do experience the test that way. Certainly the SAT has become a fasting ordeal, now that it’s four hours long and still allows only one break long enough for scarfing down an energy bar. But I’m not enlisting the aid of Katniss Everdeen to fight the College Board over its test. Odd as it sounds, there are some admirable, humane aspects to the SAT in its current incarnation. I’ve just started using the Neo-Roman culture of Suzanne Collins’s Panem setting to work to take the fear out of Latin-derived vocabulary words.

One of the pleasures of the Hunger Games trilogy for adult readers is the subtle thread of Roman influence on the world-building. It’s completely lost on the narrator, who has been raised in extreme poverty and educated only far enough to serve a dictatorial state. Since Katniss can’t comment on the classical echoes, and doesn’t need to understand them to navigate her world successfully, teenage readers who haven’t been offered much history earlier than 1776 can get by all right, too. They hang on in the wake of Katniss’s enormous personality and follow her through fire and storm to the end of the last volume. My students do get all the big themes and moods of the story, and all the wild action. The little grace notes that genre readers smile over, well, left to themselves, my students just shrug and treat them as non-specific markers of Panem’s otherness.

Consider the Cornucopia.

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New Treasures: A Book of Horrors, edited by Stephen Jones

New Treasures: A Book of Horrors, edited by Stephen Jones

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a-book-of-horrorsI ran into Stephen Jones when he and his wife Mandy Slater swung by the Black Gate booth at Worldcon last week. I’ve known Mandy for nearly 30 years, since we were both involved in Ottawa fandom in the early 80s, but Stephen I first met in the early days of running the SF Site. I was an entrepreneur trying to get a website dedicated to science fiction and fantasy off the ground at the dawn of the World Wide Web (1996), and Stephen was a young editor publishing some of the most exciting anthologies in the field, including The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Dark Voices, Fantasy Tales, H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, and many others.

Fifteen years later, I’m a grumpy small press magazine publisher, and Stephen Jones is still publishing some of the most exciting anthologies in the field. The 23rd volume (23rd!!) of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror will be released on Oct 23, and this week, A Book of Horrors, one of the most anticipated anthologies of the year, goes on sale here in the US. It includes all-new stories from Stephen King, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Ramsey Campbell, and many others:

Many of us grew up on The Pan Book of Horror Stories and its later incarnations, Dark Voices and Dark Terrors (The Gollancz Book of Horror), which won the World Fantasy Award, the Horror Critics’ Guild Award and the British Fantasy Award, but for a decade or more there has been no non-themed anthology of original horror fiction published in the mainstream. Now that horror has returned to the bookshelves, it is time for a regular anthology of brand-new fiction by the best and brightest in the field, both the Big Names and the most talented newcomers.

A Book of Horrors is 429 pages in trade paperback. It is published by St. Martin’s Griffin, priced at $15.99 print and $9.99 for the digital edition. You can see more details, including the complete list of contributors, here.

Read all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Subterranean Press Announces $2.99 e-Book Sale

Subterranean Press Announces $2.99 e-Book Sale

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the-chronicles-of-master-li-and-number-ten-oxOne of our favorite small press publishers, Subterranean Press, have announced an impressive sale on more than 60 digital titles.

Until the end of September, all Subterranean Press digital books are available for $0.99 to $2.99, including work by Kelly Armstrong, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Bear, James P. Blaylock, Peter V. Brett, Ted Chiang, Robin Hobb, Barry Hughart, Joe Lansdale, Thomas Ligotti, Brian Lumley, Robert McCammon, Jack McDevitt, Cherie Priest, Mike Resnick, John Scalzi, Lucius Shepard, Lewis Shiner, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, Peter Straub, Michael Swanwick, and Connie Willis.

This includes some classic works of fantasy, such as the 3-novel omnibus The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart, containing the World Fantasy Award-winning Bridge of Birds and both of its sequels; Ted Chiang’s Hugo-Award winning novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects; and his Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelette The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.

It also includes the classic Grimscribe and Noctuary by Thomas Ligotti, the 500-page omnibus edition of The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives by James P. Blaylock, and The God Engines by John Scalzi.

Short fiction lovers have several excellent choices, including The Best of Lucius Shepard; The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volumes One through Four; In the Beginning: Tales From the Pulp Era by Robert Silverberg; The Best of Michael Swanwick, Cryptic: The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt; The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories by Peter Straub; and a collection of Connie Willis’s Christmas stories, All Seated on the Ground.

Subterranean Press eBooks are completely DRM-free. You can find a complete list of available titles here.

Jane Lindskold gives Black Gate its First Ever Audio Interview

Jane Lindskold gives Black Gate its First Ever Audio Interview

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jane-and-pup
photo by Pati Nagle

Jane Lindskold was kind enough to talk to me in her home about a month ago. We discussed wolves, TreeCat culture, enduring friendships with other writers, and of course, her writing. This is the first audio interview I’ve ever done, and as I’ve just learned from Jane, hers too. I found that rather shocking, given how eloquent she was.

The duration of this interview is approximately forty minutes, so find a good time to kick back, relax, and be edified and entertained.

Interview with Jane Lindskold

Conducted by Emily Mah, September, 2012

jane-lindskold

The link to the audio file is above. A picture of the book cover for Fire Season, which we discuss in some detail, is below.

cvr9781451638400_9781451638400

It’s A Small World After All

It’s A Small World After All

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the-mindwarpersI sold a copy of Eric Frank Russell’s The Mindwarpers at Worldcon last week, for three bucks. This usually isn’t a big deal. I buy a lot of vintage SF and fantasy collections, and I end up with a lot of duplicates. A lot of duplicates — thousands of ’em, packed in dozens of boxes in my bedroom, garage, and basement. Years ago, I hit on the bright idea of bringing some with me when I get a booth at science fiction conventions. Beside all the bright, shiny Black Gate issues for sale, I spread out a few hundred paperbacks from the 60s and 70s, and let nostalgia do the rest. (Howard published some snapshots of our booth, including the paperbacks, in his Worldcon Wrap-up last week.)

Sometimes I’ll get compliments from folks who stop by the booth. “You have a terrific collection,” they say with admiration, fingering a 50-year old Ace paperback. It’s a little awkward to admit that this isn’t my collection. It’s a small portion of the duplicates from my collection. But admitting that is akin to confessing to a compulsive mental disorder, so I usually just smile and say, “Thanks. I hate to part with them, but I need the space.”

But the woman I sold The Mindwarpers to thought it was a big deal. She was evidently a big Eric Frank Russell fan, and she had no idea the book existed. It was originally published by Lancer in 1965 with a Richard Powers cover and a cover price of 50 cents, and she was thrilled to find it. She practically did a happy dance right there in the booth. I took her three bucks and told her I was glad it had found a good home.

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Electric Velocipede Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Publish 4 Issues in 2013

Electric Velocipede Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Publish 4 Issues in 2013

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electric-velocipede-24John O’Neill gave me the opportunity to write here and talk a little bit about a Kickstarter campaign that I launched in the week leading up to Worldcon for my magazine Electric Velocipede, an eclectic, speculative fiction magazine. The magazine was founded in 2001 and has published at least two issues (and the occasional double issue) every year since. In 2009, it won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. It’s also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four times and had several of its stories reprinted in year’s best anthologies.

In addition to its critical acclaim, Electric Velocipede has been a place for people to encounter excellent writing that’s just a little different. We particularly pride ourselves on finding new short fiction voices in the field. Among the writers who published early work with Electric Velocipede are Catherynne M. Valente, Hal Duncan, Aliette de Bodard, Rachel Swirsky, Shira Lipkin, and many more.

And it’s not just new voices; established writers have also graced Electric Velocipede‘s pages. Jeffrey Ford, Jeff VanderMeer, Liz Williams, Jay Lake, Alex Irvine, Marly Youmans, Chris Roberson, Genevieve Valentine, Ken Liu, and others have all been here. Here, check out some examples of what we’ve published:

We’re looking to raise $5,000 to cover the costs of publishing four issues of the magazine in 2013. We’re putting out two issues in the second half of 2012 (most of issue #24 has come out already), so we’ll already be on a quarterly schedule and ready to continue that pace next year. At the time of writing this, we’ve raised almost 85% of our funding with more than two weeks to go. While reaching our goal looks very much in our grasp, we don’t want to lose our early momentum and miss out on the chance to bring great content to our current and future readers.

You can view complete details on the Kickstarter campaign here.

Genevieve Valentine Comments on Readercon Harassment in “Things You Should Know About the Fallout”

Genevieve Valentine Comments on Readercon Harassment in “Things You Should Know About the Fallout”

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Genevieve Valentine. Photo by Ellen Datlow.
Genevieve Valentine. Photo by Ellen Datlow

Author Genevieve Valentine, who was the victim of a sexual harassment incident at Readercon 23 that resulted in the resignation of the entire convention board, has posted a lengthy and thoughtful essay on the continued repercussions of the event, titled “Things You Should Know About the Fallout”:

Nearly two months ago, I went public about harassment I experienced at Readercon. Things happened. The outcome was positive….

However, for those thinking of going public with their own experiences with con harassment, I want to talk about how it looks nearly two months on. Because it’s still going, two months on.

In particular, she addresses the naked hostility she has faced from individuals who were not present at Readercon:

The fallout may not be, but will certainly seem like, a Kafka novel.

There will be creeps in comments. (I’ve opted not to publish some anonymous ones, including the person who informed me, “You have absolutely no right to deny someone looking at you or in your eyes.”)

There will be threats. (I won’t link to the worst of these, but it’s not hard to find if you search Readercon and “they take people like you and kill them with rocks” together. Trigger warning for pretty much everything. It’s not a fun read.)

The responses by self-proclaimed rational people questioning your veracity, or the necessity of the discussion, will be somehow worse. In discussing the idea of actively discouraging harassment at conventions, they will use phrases like “thought police” and “mob mentality” and “lynching.”

It’s a fascinating and insightful read. You can read the entire post here.