Black Gate – Page 1175 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Burnham Society

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

The premise of this podcast series is that tourists came from as far as the Faerie Kingdom and Hell to visit the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and, once it was over, decided to stay. These sub-cultures continued to co-exist with every other immigrant community in Chicago, integrating just enough to go unnoticed by most people. The Burnham Society was established to intervene in those situations where the sub-cultures don’t peacefully co-exist. The organization is perpetually trying to maintain its lofty goals while dealing with petty day-to-day politics (much like its namesake, architect Daniel Burnham).

The posts (which normally run between seven and eight minutes) are smart, funny and surprisingly touching. We learn why you should never clap for Tinkerbelle, how demons get their restaurant licenses, all the reasons you shouldn’t seek immortality and various other tidbits of secret history and magical advice. Rowan Bristol, the narrator and reluctant book-seller, presents himself as a surly and impatient guide through supernatural Chicago; but there is an undercurrent of optimism in every post. My favorite so far may be episode four (You Are Not the Chosen One), which begins as a snarky deconstruction of the Harry Potter series, but becomes something subtly beautiful and, in many ways more empowering than JK Rowling’s amazing series (brief aside: Does anyone else get the impression that Rowling originally intended Hermione Granger to be the main hero of the books?) The most recent post (Molly and the Dragon by Steven Fluet) is a wonderful short story about how anyone can find magic.

You can find all of the podcasts on the Burnham Society home page or iTunes. You can also learn more about the Burnham Society on its Facebook page. Hopefully, some of you will be inspired to follow Daniel Burnham’s advice and make no small plans.

Drinking Atlantis, No Chaser: Conan the Barbarian (2011) Blow-by-Blow & Play-by-Play

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 Ryan Harvey Comments 19 comments

conan-poster-1 I have a week-long break between summer movie reviews, the gap between Prometheus and Brave, so I have chosen to return to Ghosts of Summer Pasts. Not long past. Just last year. Ladies and gentlemen, Hyborians and Hyrkanians, the 2011 Conan the Barbarian! [Insert tepid Monty Python and the Holy Grail “yeah!” here.]

Many movie websites do play-by-play reviews, essentially a one-post blog-thru of a film, providing comments along with time stamps. I’ve wanted to try my hand at this for years, and this short summer break opened up the opportunity to exercise this review format on an awful film that sword-and-sorcery fans don’t want to talk about. But if I can find a way to wrench some entertainment from the Blu-ray of this movie (yes, I bought it — but used at a bargain price), then let it be so.

It was August of ’11 that saw the release and immediate flop of the Marcus Nispel-directed Conan the Barbarian. Critics savaged the movie, but most fans of Robert E. Howard saw the dire writing in the ancient language of Acheron on the wall long before the release. I gave up hope for the movie when I heard that Nispel was attached to it. Nothing I had seen of the man’s previous work indicated he had any notion of theme or subtlety — or even how to stitch together a comprehensible action scene. The guy came across as a refugee from an awful ’80s metal band who decided to get into directing so he could show “awesome!” stuff on screen. In other words, he was picked for the job because of a superficial resemblance to sword-and-sorcery, not because the man has any affinity for filmmaking or Robert E. Howard.

The casting of Jason Momoa met skepticism when first announced, but among all else that went awry with Conan the Barbarian, Momoa was one thing that went right. More about that on the play-by-play.

I enjoyed the movie more this second time viewing it, but that isn’t because I found any new appreciation for it. Conan ’11 works simply better on home video, where its limited scope and poor VFX feel more appropriate. Also, watching at home meant I could take breaks to go get a drink or read Shakespeare or call my sister in Munich. I could live my life around the film, and the film benefits from my ability to ignore it whenever I want to. The only downside to home video is that the 3D in the theater, terrible as it was, did hide some of visual flaws and clunky special effects.

Okay, queue up your disc or streaming or whatever, and let’s drink Atlantis….

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The Best of Modern Arabian Fantasy, Part V: Saladin Ahmed and Throne of the Crescent Moon

Monday, June 18, 2012 Emily Mah Comments 1 comment

images Saladin Ahmed‘s been very, very busy as his career takes off after the success of Throne of the Crescent Moon, the first novel in an exciting new Arabian fantasy series that received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, so I was lucky that he was able to take the time for an interview.

I always try to fake up some confidence in an interview and not think of how famous or talented my subject is, so imagine my horror when I got the answers back and found I’d mistyped the title for his book in the questions. I’d planned them carefully and had his book open as I wrote them, but used an abbreviation of the title from my notes.

I can only speculate about the fingernails on a chalkboard feeling Saladin had while answering questions from some random woman who sounded like she barely knew what she was talking about, but he was gracious. At least I didn’t misspell his name.

Read on for some tantalising hints about his next two books.

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Thank You, Martin H. Greenberg (and Doug Ellis)

Sunday, June 17, 2012 John ONeill Comments 31 comments

That’s a pic of one of the boxes I unloaded in my library this morning. It contained 103 paperbacks from the vast collection of the great Martin H. Greenberg, one of the most prolific and talented anthologists our field has ever seen (click for a more legible version). Greenberg died almost exactly a year ago, on June 25, 2011. He left behind some 2,500 anthologies and other books he created — including over 120 co-edited with his friend Isaac Asimov — and his company Tekno Books, a book packager which produced nearly 150 books a year. I wrote about six of them just last week in my article TSR’s Amazing Science Fiction Anthologies.

He also left behind a massive collection in his home in Green Bay, which was purchased by Chicago collectors Doug Ellis and Bob Weinberg. They’ve been gradually selling the high value stuff — autographed vintage hardcovers, things like that. Doug runs the Windy City Pulp and Paper show every year, and he brought some of it to the show.

I’m usually a pretty social guy. Put me in a room with fellow collectors and I’ll happily spend my hours chatting. But as I passed Doug’s booth, I saw countless boxes of what looked like beautiful, unread vintage paperbacks stacked in neat rows, all priced at a buck. I started to browse, then select a few books, and finally obsessively dig through every single box, much to the annoyance of the always patient Jason Waltz and my other companions.

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Losing My Way to Ray

Sunday, June 17, 2012 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 8 comments

100 Revisiting the stories of Ray Bradbury has been a lot like sitting down to revisit Twilight Zone episodes. I don’t just mean the twist ending, though there is that. I mean the other things – the misanthropic critic/hero/rebel who talks for a long while, perhaps too long, about the troubles of society, of humanity. The mirror held up to show us ourselves as we once were when all men wore hats and all women wore dresses. The sad realization that while there are cool and brilliant bits, our sense of pacing has changed, and that having experienced enough of these stories, we get the sense of how an unfamiliar one will end.

I loved Ray Bradbury’s stories as a child. I remember the thrill of picking up one of his short story collections because you’d never know what you’d get, story to story, and the titles rarely told you. Would it be a horror story, something from ancient China? A space adventure? Would the ending be dark, or light? In grade school, it was always a profound relief to find a Ray Bradbury tale in the school literature readers, for you knew you’d be transported to some interesting place.

Fired by nostalgia, wanting to celebrate my first favorite author, I read The Martian Chronicles for the first time in 30 years, and then I began to work my way through The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which collects 100 tales, many of which I’d never read.

And I discovered that I couldn’t go home again. I keep setting the book aside, then coming back to try just one more, to see if I could recapture the old thrill.

It’s not Bradbury who changed – the words are still threaded together with that same poetic skill. The messages are still poignant or powerful, depending upon the tale. Yet I can’t lose myself in them anymore. I want to – God, how I want to – but I just can’t fall through the words and get lost in the wonder. I must have found him at just the right age. And now, I think, I must have gotten old. Morosely, I have set the book aside, and I am not sure I will return.

Howard Andrew Jones is the author of the historical fantasy novels The Desert of Souls, and the forthcoming The Bones of the Old Ones, as well as the related short story collection The Waters of Eternity, and the Paizo Pathfinder novel Plague of Shadows. You can keep up with him at his website, www.howardandrewjones.com, and keep up with him on Twitter or follow his occasional meanderings on Facebook.

A Dance With Dragons wins the 2012 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel

Saturday, June 16, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The winners of the 2012 Locus Awards were announced today:

Fantasy Novel — A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
Science Fiction Novel — Embassytown, China Miéville
First Novel — The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Young Adult Book — The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente
Novella — “Silently and Very Fast,” Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA; Clarkesworld)
Novelette — “White Lines on a Green Field”, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean Fall ’11)
Short Story — “The Case of Death and Honey”, Neil Gaiman (A Study in Sherlock)
Anthology — The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-eighth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois
Collection — The Bible Repairman and Other Stories, Tim Powers
Non-fiction — Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature, Gary K. Wolfe
Art Book — Spectrum 18, Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner
Artist — Shaun Tan
Editor — Ellen Datlow
Magazine — Asimov’s Science Fiction
Publisher — Tor

The Locus Awards are presented annually to winners of Locus Magazine’s readers’ poll. The award was first given in 1971; last year’s fantasy winner was Kraken, by China Miéville. We reported on the 2011 awards here.

Congratulations to the winners, and special congratulations to Cat Valente for sweeping three categories: Young Adult Book, Novelette and Novella.

Complete details on the 2012 winners, including all the nominees, are available at Locus Online.

New Treasures: Dungeons & Dragons Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook

Saturday, June 16, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I don’t get to play D&D as much as I’d like these days. Which means that my enjoyment of the latest supplements chiefly depends on how fun they are to read. By that measure, Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook is one of the best books to come from Wizards of the Coast in a while.

What makes this one stand out? On the surface it’s pretty lightweight, described as

A guide for players and Dungeon Masters who want to play in a Dungeons & Dragons game that explores dungeons and plumbs the blackest reaches of the Underdark… Players will find an assortment of new powers, equipment, feats, character themes, and player races, including the kobold and the goblin. For Dungeon Masters, the book is a trove of dungeon-building advice and details, including lore on classic dungeon monsters, some quirky companions for adventurers, a few timeless treasures, and tips for incorporating players’ character themes into an adventure.

Yeah, we’ve seen this book a few times over the decades. A collection of vague dungeoneering advice, some monsters that didn’t make the cut for other modules, and a few new feats. Reminiscent of the 1986 title that finally convinced me I could ignore future TSR hardcovers, The Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide.

At least, that’s what I thought until I opened it.

My favorite section is a 17-page chunk of Chapter 2 titled “Infamous Dungeons,” which takes a detailed look at some of the most popular publications in D&D history, from Castle Ravenloft to The Temple of Elemental Evil to The Gates of Firestorm Peak. Not half-hearted marketing pieces, but warts-and-all descriptions of classic dungeons alongside pics of the original modules. Here’s a brief excerpt from the assessment of 1980’s The Ghost Tower of Inverness:

That publication was preceded by a tournament version that one could purchase only at WinterCon VIII in 1979 in a zip bag containing 40 loose-leaf pages. But even its more professionally published form, the adventure’s tournament pedigree was on full display. Discussions of scoring the players’ efforts riddle the adventure text, which presents an oftentimes nonsensical dungeon full of desperation-inducing challenges… Since then, the Ghost Tower of Inverness has appeared from time to time in various products. Most recently, it was featured in the D&D Encounters season March of the Phantom Brigade.

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The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss wins the David Gemmell Legend Award

Saturday, June 16, 2012 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Patrick Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear, the second volume of The Kingkiller Chronicles, has won the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2011.

The David Gemmell Legend Award is a fan-voted award administered by the DGLA. The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel was first granted in 2009, to Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves; in 2010 the winner was Graham McNeill’s Empire: The Legend of Sigmar, and last year’s was Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings.

The nominees for the 2012 award also included The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, Blackveil by Kristen Britain, Warhammer: Blood of Aenarion by William King, and The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson.

The Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Debut was awarded to The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe.

The Ravensheart Award for best Fantasy Book Jacket/artist went to the cover for Warhammer: Blood of Aenarion, done by Raymond Swanland.

Complete details are available at the DGLA website.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Chicks Kick Butt

Saturday, June 16, 2012 Soyka Comments 0 Comment

I recently reviewed Chicks Kick Butt over at The SF Site. My reaction was a little less than enthusiastic, certainly less so than fellow Black Gater Alana Joli Abbott’s review. Here’s probably why:

…an anthology called Chicks Kick Butt sounded like something that would appeal to me, even if I’d never read anything by the female authors collected here, nor the editors. But, half the fun of picking up a story collection is discovering the work of people you’ve never heard of, or have heard of but never read.

In this case, however, that’s part of the problem. Some of these stories will no doubt resonate with their fan base. Not being part of them, I’m left to wonder what the fascination is. In part, that’s because I don’t get the whole vampire deal. Though I understand the charismatic kink of the guy (or girl) who drinks your blood and consumes your soul, maybe the first time someone thought of putting a cell phone in the hands of the attractive undead to use their curse for good instead of evil, or at least have highly charged sex, but still have problems just like the rest of us whose throats are unblemished, it was kind of fun. But an entire genre with multiple sub-genres of this stuff, really?

New Treasures: Phil & Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One

Friday, June 15, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Girl Genius is one of my favorite comics. Or at least it would be, if my dang kids didn’t stop stealing the issues and I could read them.

Now Tor has solved that problem nicely, with the publication of Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One: Agatha Awakens, a handsome 320-page full-color compilation of issues 1-10.

Which my kids immediately stole.

Until I find it again, I have to talk about it in the abstract. Like this: Girl Genius rocks. It’s a “Gaslamp Fantasy” (don’t call it steampunk) which follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, a struggling student at Transylvania Polygnostic University who ends up on the run from the sinister Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. As she makes her way across the wasteland of a devastated Europe, she learns she comes from a family of Sparks — mad scientists with superhuman scientific gifts, and that her own gifts are just beginning to blossom.

I’m making liberal use of Wikipedia to fill in gaps here, owning to the missing issues stashed somewhere under my children’s beds upstairs.

Suffice it to say that Girl Genius is a terrific all-ages comic (one hopes, anyway). It’s fun, fast paced, and filled with lots of laugh-out-loud moments. Phil & Kaja Foglio make especially innovative use of color — the opening pages are black and white, and when color slowly seeps into the pages the effect is quite dramatic. Girl Genius began life in 2001 as a print comic, but became a full-fledged webcomic on April 18, 2005. In 2008 Phil Foglio was nominated for a Hugo award for Best Professional Artist for his work on Girl Genius, and in 2011 the strip won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One: Agatha Awakens was published in hardcover by Tor Books on February 28, 2012. The cover price is $34.99 for 320 pages in full color.