Christopher Paul Carey on Philip José Farmer’s World of Khokarsa

Christopher Paul Carey on Philip José Farmer’s World of Khokarsa

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gods-of-opar2With the publication of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa, I thought I’d take the opportunity to give Black Gate readers a taste of the world of Khokarsa, which serves as the setting for Philip José Farmer’s epic series of adventure and historical fantasy. It’s a world I’ve been immersed in for the past several years as I worked to complete The Song of Kwasin, the concluding book in the Khokarsa trilogy, as well as other related projects set in Farmer’s prehistoric empire.

Farmer’s achievement in the first two Khokarsa novels — written and first published in the 1970s, and now available in the Gods of Opar omnibus — is impressive. And part of the reason these thirty-some-year-old books hold up so well is the lengths to which the author went to carefully construct a believable world for his prehistoric heroes, heroines, and villains.

The rich level of cultural and descriptive detail in both Hadon of Ancient Opar and its sequel Flight to Opar make them prime examples of fantastic world building. Set twelve thousand years ago in ancient Africa against the backdrop of a civil war between the priestesses and the priests in the empire of Khokarsa, the books unveil a complex pantheon of gods and goddesses.

First and foremost is Kho, known also as the Mother Goddess, the White Goddess, and the Mother of All. She is the central deity of the Khokarsan people. Carefully balanced against Kho is her son Resu, god of the sun, rain, and war. While Resu has been declared the equal of his mother, most Khokarsans still regard Resu as secondary to Kho.

At the time Hadon of Ancient Opar begins, the priests of Resu have been locked in a delicate struggle for supremacy with the priestesses of Kho for over eight hundred years.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion, Part Four – “The Lair of the Scorpion”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion, Part Four – “The Lair of the Scorpion”

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golden-scorpion-61golden-scorpion-41Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion was first printed in its entirety in The Illustrated London News Christmas Number in December 1918. It was published in book form in the UK the following year by Methuen and in the US in 1920 by McBride & Nast. Rohmer divided the novel into four sections. This week we shall examine the fourth part of the book, “The Lair of the Scorpion” which comprises the final seven chapters.

Rohmer gradually segued from following the model of his first Gaston Max mystery, The Yellow Claw (1915) in the first half of the book to more closely adhering to the blueprint provided by his Fu Manchu thrillers for the second half. Readers familiar with the Devil Doctor could not help to recognize this fact as the final part of the novel opens with Keppel Stuart recovering consciousness as a captive in Fo-Hi’s laboratory. Among the exotic Oriental furnishings are the familiar form of caged lizards and insects. Behind the advanced scientific apparatus stands the figure of the Scorpion himself. Fo-Hi at last takes center stage in the novel and there is no mistaking when he says he has tried to follow in the footsteps of the great scientist who preceded him in serving their organization’s mission in England. His speech and bearing instantly recall Dr. Fu Manchu.

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Goth Chick News: The Walls Have Ears; And Other Stuff Apparently…

Goth Chick News: The Walls Have Ears; And Other Stuff Apparently…

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image007Those of you who are fans of Game of Thrones (the books or the HBO series) are already well aware that when civilizations build walls, it’s usually to keep something really nasty on the other side of them. In the case of “The Wall” which borders the Seven Kingdoms of GoT, the 300 miles of solid ice stands between humanity and an army of corpse-collecting, walking dead.

Which sort of makes you wonder; what are other really big walls meant to keep out?

The Great Wall of China for instance…

Oh sure, it might really have been to keep out the Mongols. But what if it was something worse?

In the spring of 2013, Legendary East, an offshoot of Legendary Pictures (late of The Dark Knight Rises), will begin shooting its first project The Great Wall in both China and New Zealand.

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Cerebus

Cerebus

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CerebusI’ve been writing a fair bit lately about Canadian fantastika, and I’ll be doing so again next week, looking at a trio of grand masters who’ve just released what may be one of the most accomplished works of their career. But there’s been a bit of news lately about another notorious Canadian fantasy epic, so I want to talk about that first.

Late in May, Dave Sim began a Kickstarter project, trying to raise $6,000 to create a digital version of the 25-issue “High Society” storyline from his comic book Cerebus. He raised the money in a matter of hours. Each comic issue will be digitised; the story, the letter columns, and the editorials will all be scanned (I don’t know whether the work by other cartoonists that Sim used to run in the back of the book will be included). Sim will also read the text of the comic, performing dialogue and captions, and he’ll provide commentary, as well as show and discuss sketches, notebook entries, and the like. The extra money the Kickstarter will raise from this point will go towards higher-quality audio production, and, if funds allow, towards the digitising of the entire 300-issue run of Cerebus. As of June 13, Sim’s raised just shy of $40,000, with the Kickstarter still running for the rest of June.

In light of the Kickstarter success, I want to give a brief introduction to the series for non-comics readers. There’s no doubt that Cerebus was and is a major work, tremendously significant in the history of comics and in the medium’s development. And it’s relevant, I think, as a fantasy story; as a story that sometimes struggles with its use of fantasy, and as a story that works with and often against action-adventure tropes. But while parts of the work are startlingly effective, parts of it are equally-startling misfires. And the main theme of the book, reflecting Sim’s stated beliefs, is undoubtedly sexist (per Merriam-Webster, sexism is “prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women”) and in the opinion of many readers misogynistic. Sim disputes the term misogyny, arguing that he’s merely not “feminist,” but when he writes that a sensibility based on “reasoned and coherent world views … occurs more often — far more often — in men than it does in women,” it’s hard to see the difference between that and misogyny. Note that the foregoing statement isn’t an external statement that happens to shed light on Sim’s ideology; it’s a part of the text of Cerebus. Sim’s attitudes to gender and sexuality can’t be evaded in discussing the book. Still, I want to try to present here an overview of what makes the book important, with all its flaws.

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New Treasures: The Fantasy Fan

New Treasures: The Fantasy Fan

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the-fantasy-fanLast month, I got a great e-mail from Black Gate blogger Barbara Barrett. In between her entertaining comments on The Avengers, Arthur Machen, and re-discovering comic books, was this fascinating tidbit:

I’ve started reading The Fantasy Fan — a fan’s tribute to Hornig.  It’s a book containing a compilation of all the Fantasy Fan magazines… I’m only on the first zine but I’m amazed how closely the format matches that of Black Gate. Is this a *coincidence*? The first zine was published in September 1933 and it’s chilling because I keep in mind Robert E.Howard was still alive at that point… the breadth and depth of authors, articles and stories are wonderful. It’s definitely a page out of Living History.

Among fantasy collectors The Fantasy Fan is legendary. The world’s first fanzine dedicated to weird fiction, it lasted for 18 issues, from September 1933 to February 1935. Its contributors included some of the most famous names in the genre — H.P Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Bob Tucker, Julius Schwartz, Forry Ackerman, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Eando Binder, and many others — and its young editor Charles Horning so impressed Hugo Gernsback that he hired him to edit Wonder Stories in 1933, at the age of 17. While at Wonder Stories he published Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” and many other famous pulp stories.

Barbara’s reference to a compilation of The Fantasy Fan was so intriguing I had to track down a copy for myself, and it finally arrived last week. Copies of the original fanzine are so rare that I’ve never even seen one, so to hold a facsimile reprint of all 18 issues in my hands was rather breathtaking. The man behind the book is Lance Thingmaker, and here’s what he says in his introduction:

These fragile gems were so unique. They were simple little fanzines, but were filled with stories, articles and comments by history’s most important weird fiction writers and fans. I felt like I was looking back in time… Since they are extremely hard to find, it seemed many others probably never had the chance to check out the world’s first weird fiction zine. I wanted to make it happen.

The end product is a top-notch piece of work. The magazines are presented in facsimile format, with painstaking restoration of the original barely legible pages, hand printed and hand-bound in hardcover by Thingmaker. The book is over 300 pages, including the complete text of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” which was being serialized when the magazine folded. It is limited to 100 copies and sold for $50. Thingmaker’s next project, due to ship later this month, is a facsimile reprint of all four issues of the ultra-rare pulp Marvel Tales.

You can find a detailed breakdown of the contents of The Fantasy Fan here. My thanks again to Barbara for alerting me to this before it sold out!

Andrea Grennan reviews The Infernals

Andrea Grennan reviews The Infernals

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the-infernalsThe Infernals
John Connolly
Atria Books (309 pp, $22.00, 1st Hardcover Edition, October 2011)
Reviewed by Andrea Grennan

Almost-Armageddon books are a marvelous niche in the fantasy market, ranging from serious examinations and thrillers to horror and gore. One of this reviewer’s favorites is the lighter side of Armageddon, as seen in Neil Gamain and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens or Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series.

John Connolly’s approach fits right into this niche, with a marvelous blend of suburban London quirk and the Large Hadron Supercollider in Cerne, Switzerland.

Sound a bit on the these-two-things-don’t-go-together side? Relax, set aside your concerns, and go for ride with Samuel Johnson and his faithful dog Boswell through the looking glass and straight to Hell.

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Art Evolution Challenge 2012: Anna Steinbauer

Art Evolution Challenge 2012: Anna Steinbauer

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schleiertanzIn January I contacted Jon Schindehette over at the ArtOrder about possibly running a contest on the site that would help show some of the promising talent in the field of fantasy. It was my concept to devote five special spotlight posts right here on Black Gate to a collection of new artists as judged by a panel of veteran artists and art directors in the field.

Jon loved the idea, and by February we had a contest running that ended up featuring more than a hundred and twenty-five entries from all over the globe. What were they painting? Well, if this is Art Evolution, then of course they all took a stab at Lyssa, the now iconic female wizardress that has been defined by fantasy art legends since the series began in 2010.

I must say, the experience of running this challenge was a total thrill. Watching a bevy of incredible artists use WIPNation to show the progress of their vision for Lyssa on an almost daily basis allowed me a vision of what working in an old school art department at TSR must have been like.

There were science fiction Lyssas, primal Lyssas, steampunk Lyssas, you name it, and each artist brought such a fantastic flair to what he or she did. However, when it all came down to nuts and bolts, there could only be three winners for 2012, as judged by such talents as Todd Lockwood, Jeff Laubenstein, Jeff Easley, and Lauren Panepinto.

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Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner

Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner

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mage-the-hero-defined1It’s nothing new: taking old mythic tropes and adapting them to modern-age stories. The social commentary thinly-veiled as mysticism, the peek-a-boo mythology references, the obligatory explanation for why most people in our modern times don’t notice magic, the unassuming youth who will one day become a great hero … we’ve all read them.  he secret is in the execution.  How well is this ancient story re-told? How compelling are the characters? Are the truths revealed deep or trite?

Matt Wagner was only twenty-two when the first issue of Mage was published and it’s surprising that someone so young could write something both this introspective and this self-aware. His hero, Kevin Matchstick, is already a cynical, disillusioned man at the story’s beginning. He acts like a man who already has the weight of the world on his shoulders, yet has no true responsibilities. It’s telling that the mysterious wizard who approaches him with news of his great potential is named Mirth. The journey that follows over the next fifteen issues concerns Kevin’s quest to understand and fight forces of supernatural evil; but it’s just as much Mirth’s quest to make Kevin stop being a jerk. The adage that the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing rings through this series.

Kevin, Mirth, the supporting cast and even the incidental characters are written with a surprising depth. No one is merely a follower (on the side of good or evil), each having his or her own reasons for the decisions made. The storyline is equally divided between action scenes and “downtime” where the heroes relax and talk about how they see the world and their place in it. The baseball-bat-wielding Edsel and supernatural civil servant Sean Knight work just as hard to guide Kevin towards self-discovery as they do covering his back during fights with quintuplet casino bosses, hordes of redcaps and the occasional succubus. They also have to face down a dragon. And a staple gun.

This series has been in and out of print for years and a collected edition shouldn’t be difficult to find. But if you have the means, definitely find a comic shop that carries the original back issues. There you’ll get the letter page debates on the nature of magic and morality, Matt Wagner’s comments on the state of the comic industry and the amazing Grendel stories (originally published in the back of each issue as a series of four-page mini-stories). Volume One is subtitled The Hero Discovered. Fifteen years later, there were another fifteen issues subtitled, The Hero Defined. And, someday, we may see the final volume, “The Hero Denied”. Until that day, magic is green.

Vintage Treasures: Poul Anderson’s After Doomsday

Vintage Treasures: Poul Anderson’s After Doomsday

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after-doomsdayI’m putting away all the paperbacks that arrived with my two Philip K. Dick lots, and I stumbled across the fabulous artifact at right.

After Doomsday was published by Ballantine Books in 1962, two years before I was born. It was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine (as The Day after Doomsday) between December 1961 and February 1962.

What truly makes it fabulous isn’t just the great cover art by Ralph Brillhart, with a bug-eyed alien stumbling on some guy surveying a road during his evening constitutional. No no no. It’s this wonderful description on the back cover:

CARL DONNAN was a space engineer — a man of action who did his job well and didn’t think much beyond that — but now his home planet was destroyed and he found himself with two burning ambitions:

– FIND the beings who blew up the Earth.

– SEARCH the galaxies until they located another Starship with female humans aboard.

BOTH PROJECTS were vital to the survival of the human race — and both were monumental tasks.

THIS was the time when the galaxies discovered how grim and purposeful a handful of homo sapiens could be.

A starship with “female humans” aboard. I think the first task for this guy Carl should be to look up “female humans,” find out they’re called “women,” and then put an ad on Craig’s List. The survival of the species is on your shoulders, dude. Time to put down that survey equipment and pick up a clean shirt. And maybe some mouthwash.

There’s a lengthy plot synopsis of After Doomsday here. Don’t expect it to be as entertaining as that back cover copy, though.

Selling Philip K. Dick

Selling Philip K. Dick

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the-simulacra-philip-k-dickAlmost exactly a year ago this weekend I was in downtown Chicago, selling books and Black Gate magazines at the Printer’s Row book fair. It was hot and I got sunstroke, and I had to cancel dinner plans with the charming and beautiful Patty Templeton. Stupid, stupid sunstroke.

But I learned something fascinating. Well, two fascinating things. The second was that no one wants print fiction magazines anymore. I can’t tell you how many people picked up copies of Black Gate 15, dazzled by the look and heft of the thing, asking “What is this?” The moment they learned it was a magazine, they put it down and wandered over to the booth selling travel books.

But the first fascinating thing I learned is that vintage Philip K. Dick paperbacks sell at almost any price.

I learned this mostly by accident. I had a few hundred recently-acquired vintage paperbacks bagged up, but didn’t have time to price them. The night before the show they were spread out in stacks on our bed, all with cheerful blank price stickers, and Alice was threatening to sleep on the couch.

So I just priced them at random. Most I listed at 2 – 3 bucks, occasionally as high as 10. When I got to the more valuable stuff, like the Philip K. Dick , I wrote “$35” on most of ’em, even the stuff I’d only paid a buck or two for. I figured I’d do my homework and re-price everything that didn’t sell later.

Instead, I sold all the Philip K. Dick in less than two days.

Obviously, this was an unusual test case. For one thing, this wasn’t an SF convention and my buyers generally weren’t science fiction readers. They were book collectors who knew just enough about Philip K. Dick to know he’s in demand. There was a lot of impulse buying, and hardened rare book collectors are maybe less reluctant to fork over $30 – $40 on impulse than a typical SF reader.

Still, it was very educational. Dick was one of the only authors browsing customers frequently asked about (the others were Samuel R. Delaney and Ursula K. LeGuin), and if I could put a book in their hands, it was a short step to a sale. It didn’t hurt that many of his paperbacks look terrific, like the Emsh cover on the 1964 Ace edition of The Simulacra, above.

I don’t sell much anymore, but I do have two tables reserved for Chicon 7, the World Science Fiction convention coming up this Labor Day here in Chicago. In preparation, I’ve been accumulating as many Philip K. Dick titles — and other vintage SF paperbacks — as I can find. eBay is one fertile hunting ground, especially if you’re willing to buy larger lots. Last week I purchased lots containing The Simulacra and Dr. Bloodmoney (plus 10 other mixed SF paperbacks) for $6.05 each. I’m pretty sure I can re-sell the Dick titles alone for a lot more than that.

Just how much more remains to be seen. I’ll let you know after Chicon.