Black Gate – Page 1193 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Apex Magazine #35

Saturday, April 7, 2012 Soyka Comments 0 Comment

apexmag0412_medium This month’s Apex Magazine is a special international themed issue, featuring ”Love is a Parasite Meme” by Lavie Tidhar (who is interviewed by Stephanie Jacob) and ”The Second Card of the Major Arcana” by Thoraiya Dyer; the classic reprint is “Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life” by Rochita Loenen-Ruuize.

Raul Cruz provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Charles Tan and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99. Individual issues are also available at Amazon and Weightless. A version for the Nook will also be available in the near future. Twelve issue (one year) subscription can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw – Part One

Friday, April 6, 2012 William Patrick Maynard Comments 1 comment

Sax Rohmer’s The Yellow Claw was originally serialized in five installments in Lippincott’s from February through June 1915. The serial was subsequently published in book form later that same year by Methuen Press in the UK and McBride & Nast in the US. The novel chooses to divide the story into four sections which is how we shall examine the title over the next four weeks.

Rohmer’s first Yellow Peril thriller outside the Fu Manchu series is chiefly remembered today for having introduced the character of his dapper French detective, Gaston Max of the Surete. Max went on to feature in three other novels [The Golden Scorpion (1918), The Day the World Ended (1929), and Seven Sins (1943)] as well as the BBC radio series, Myself and Gaston Max adapted from a series of short stories about an entirely different Rohmer character, The Crime Magnet.

Gaston Max was highly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin, the series detective who did much to direct the development of the mystery genre and was a primary source of inspiration for both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Max was not Rohmer’s first attempt at fashioning his own French detective after Dupin’s example. His very first novel, The Sins of Severac Bablon (1912) featured Gaston Max’s prototype, Victor Lemage. The interesting feature is that while elements of Yellow Peril thrillers will surface in the book, Rohmer was trying hard to write a more conventional and realistic detective story in a direct break from the thrillers that made his name.

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In Defense of Elves

Thursday, April 5, 2012 Tim Akers Comments 4 comments

I’m in the middle of another book, this one my fourth, and the first in a series of four. But writers are always in the middle of a book, always writing the next book, always revising the current one. And, worst of all, always reviewing and revising and dwelling endlessly on the books of the past.

One of the great things about the Arts is that you create specific works that are pretty much a time capsule of who you were and what you were capable of doing at one discrete point in your life. Each book is a little piece of you that you leave behind in the time stream, and every time you open it you get to re-live and remember what it was like to write that book. It’s a little bit like having a conversation with a younger self.

I don’t mean to sound pretentious when I say things like that. I think too much about what it means to be a writer, how we go about coming up with worlds and gods and believable characters, and then translate those ideas into words in such a way that a reader can experience them as well. Let’s be honest, words are probably the crudest, clumsiest, most difficult to wield of all the creative arts. We depend so much on the imagination of the reader. A writer doesn’t even get to read the book to the writer, and instead has to depend on the reader’s ability to pace the sentences correctly, read the dialogue with the right tonality… everything. It’s troublesome, when you really think about it. This is why I encourage you to go to readings when you get a chance, if only to hear the words in the writer’s voice.

Anyway. One of the books I’ve written is The Horns of Ruin, which was published by the fine folks at Pyr Books in 2010. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently because what I was trying to do when I started that book is similar to what I’m trying to do with the current work. But at some point I changed my plan and went in a different direction.

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Goth Chick News: Welcome to the Hotel Transylvania

Thursday, April 5, 2012 Sue Granquist Comments 7 comments

Nothing sends me straight to my happy place faster than a cartoon; unless it’s a cartoon about monsters.

This probably started before I could walk with the Saturday-morning Bugs Bunny episodes; specifically Hair-Raising Hare featuring the first appearance of the sneaker-wearing creature “Gossamer.” As an adult I was still so enamored with Gossamer that I very nearly had him tattooed on my…

Well thankfully I decided against it.

But maybe its comic books or Captain Crunch cereal or anything related to Star Wars which does the same thing for you. You know you held onto those Dark Lord of Sith footie PJ’s and don’t try to say it was for the collectable value either.

Nowadays, what I love most about cartoons (or animated features as we now call them) is their multiple layers of humor. Just try watching those Warner Brothers shorts today and see what I mean. There was a whole different level of funny which was aimed at our parents, thus flying straight over our heads.

And happily this tradition has carried forward to features like The Incredibles and Despicable Me. I own both and even though I’ve watched them dozens of times, I still kill myself laughing over something new I hadn’t noticed before.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six

Thursday, April 5, 2012 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

In the days of my halcyon youth (no, I’m not 100% sure what that word means either, but I’ve always liked it), I used to look forward to the Year’s Best SF collections from Terry Carr, Lin Carter, and Donald Wollheim. I was still being introduced the riches of the field, and those Best Of volumes were a terrific shortcut to discovering the finest writers out there.

In our modern times this tradition is carried on by Rich Horton, David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, Gardner Dozois, and the talented Mr. Jonathan Strahan, who’s now up to his sixth volume of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year.

I’ve found his past collections excellent, and this year looks to be no exception. Here’s a peek at the contents:

An ancient society of cartographer wasps create delicately inscribed maps; a bodyjacking parasite is faced with imminent extinction; an AI makes a desperate gambit to protect its child from a ravenous dragon; a professor of music struggles with the knowledge that murder is not too high a price for fame; living origami carries a mother’s last words to her child; a steam girl conquers the realm of imagination; Aliens attack Venus, ignoring an incredulous earth; a child is born on Mars…

For the sixth year in a row, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan has collected stories that captivate, entertain, and showcase the very best the genre has to offer. Critically acclaimed, and with a reputation for including award-winning speculative fiction, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is the only major “best of” anthology to collect both fantasy and science fiction under one cover.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six is published by Night Shade Books. It is 606 pages for $19.99 in trade paperback, with a cover by Sparth. Buy it online from one of my favorite book sellers, Mark V. Ziesing at Ziesing.com.

Alan Garner: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath, and Elidor

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 Matthew David Surridge Comments 7 comments

In mid-March the news emerged that writer Alan Garner was returning to the storylines of his first two books, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. His next novel, Boneland, to be published this August, will complete the trilogy he’d always envisioned. Garner was quoted as saying

“Trilogies are strange creatures. The lack of the third book, I discovered, gave the readers of the first two a sense of urgency. There are nuggets in the text that hint of unfinished business. The links to the book-not-written had become subliminal cliffhangers. Why did it take so long for Boneland to gestate? All I can say is that it took as long as it took.”

Garner’s longstanding fans are elated. The first two books in the series came out in the early 1960s, so this really has been some time in coming. In the interim, Garner’s published fairy tale collections and several non-fantasy novels. He’s said that he’s never written specifically for children, but for whatever reason children seem to respond more directly to his work than adults. Not that praise from adults is lacking; the fiftieth-anniversary republication of Brisingamen contained testimonials from Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and Susan Cooper.

I had vague memories of reading Brisingamen when I was very young. Since I’d picked up an omnibus collection of three of Garner’s books — Brisingamen, Gomrath, and the non-related Elidor — the announcement prompted me to sit down and take another look at Garner’s work. I was impressed.

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The 2011 Bram Stoker Award Winners

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

This week the Horror Writers Association announced the winners of the 2011 Bram Stoker Awards at its annual banquet at the World Horror Convention. This year it was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it marked the 25th Anniversary of the awards. A total of 12 awards were given in 11 categories, including one tie:

Flesh Eaters

Isis Unbound

The Screaming Season

Dust and Decay

Superior Achievement in a GRAPHIC NOVEL
Neonomicon by Alan Moore (Avatar Press)

Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION
“The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” by Peter Straub (Conjunctions: 56)

Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION
“Herman Wouk Is Still Alive” by Stephen King (The Atlantic Magazine, May 2011)

Superior Achievement in a SCREENPLAY
American Horror Story, episode #12: “Afterbirth” by Jessica Sharzer (20th Century Fox Television)

Superior Achievement in a FICTION COLLECTION
The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates (Mysterious Press)

Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY
Demons: Encounters with the Devil and his Minions, Fallen Angels and the Possessed edited by John Skipp (Black Dog and Leventhal)

Superior Achievement in NON-FICTION
Stephen King: A Literary Companion by Rocky Wood (McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers)

Superior Achievement in a POETRY COLLECTION
How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend by Linda Addison (Necon Ebooks)

The HWA, in conjunction with the Bram Stoker Family Estate and the Rosenbach Museum & Library, also presented the special one-time only Vampire Novel of the Century Award to:

I Am Legend

Read complete details about this year’s awards at the Horror Writers Association website.

Art of the Genre: Top 10 Literary Sci-Fi/Fantasy Covers of the 1970s

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 Scott Taylor Comments 18 comments

John Berkey WILL appear on this list... but where and when?

I was born in 1971, which makes me old, but not too old, at least in my mind. Although I was indeed a living creature on this planet during the bulk of the 1970s I didn’t really have much conscious thought that was dedicated to anything resembling fiction.

Sure, I saw Star Wars at the local cinema, I had the action figures, but that was about as close to anything literary as I got, the bulk of my time sucked up with Hot Wheels and green-plastic army men. However, while I was learning to walk, potty on a toilet, ride a bike, and crushing on my first girlfriend, the forces of American fantasy art were going into overdrive around me.

Truly, the 1970s was a creative bloom in fantasy and science fiction art, and although I do enjoy both the 60s and even the 50s, I think it is best I start with the decade where this genre moved from the minds of a chosen few to the big time of the greater American consciousness.

As I grew along up, my appreciation for art in general started to move me into the realm of fantasy books and their unreal covers. That’s not to say that 1970s art played directly into this progression, as I was really a child of the 1980s, but the greater knowledge I gained of the industry as a whole, the more I appreciated the groundbreaking art from the decade of my birth.

So, today, having spent nearly twenty years studying the fantasy art industry, and ten of that working directly in it, I’ve grown to love the literary art of the 1970s and wanted to share with you my thoughts concerning some of the very best it had to offer.

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Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Years ago, before I started Black Gate magazine, I worked with David Kenzer in the Commerce Drive offices of Motorola here in Chicago. Dave is the founder of Kenzer & Company, publishers of the award-winning Hackmaster role playing game and Jolly Blackburn’s brilliant Knights of the Dinner Table comic.

KenzerCo was the first investor in Black Gate, and without Dave’s early advice and guidance I never could have gotten off the ground. But perhaps the most important contribution he made to our success was his offer to include an original Knights of the Dinner Table strip in every issue. It was an incredible gesture of faith in my fledgling enterprise, and it helped bring my new magazine to the attention of thousands of gaming fans. Brian Jelke at KenzerCo wrote a proposal for a strip centered around a coffee shop, Steve Johansson signed on to do the art, and The Java Joint was born. It has appeared in virtually every issue of Black Gate, and in July of last year KenzerCo packaged up all the stories — together with a brand new 8-page strip — in Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips, published in print and PDF format.

I’ve written about my days with Dave at Commerce Drive, the multi-million dollar software deals and creative projects we did together, a few times now, including in “How To Succeed in Business,” my editorial for Black Gate 11, and in my portion of the Tribute to Gary Gygax here on the blog in 2008. In my introduction to this new collection I tell the full story of our adventures together for the first time.

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Letters to Black Gate: Poul Anderson, Digital Publishing, and The Dying Earth

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Michael Fierce writes:

I just wanted to say that I really love Ryan Harvey’s article on Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword. I’ve read the revised version many times and have always wanted to read the original, and now, after reading his article, am even more enthused to do so. Really excellent breakdown and the format was very reader-friendly with some visually pleasing colors that really grabbed me.

I know many things about many great books but he definitely takes the cake on his knowledge on that one. I’m going to have to come to your site more if there’s quality writing at that level. Thanks again!

You’re welcome, Michael. And if you enjoyed Ryan’s post, you may enjoy Brian Murphy’s “In the grip of “The Northern Thing:” My Top 10 Northern Inspired Stories” (here), in which he examines Poul Anderson’s Hrolf Kraki’s Saga and The Broken Sword, Nancy Farmer’s The Sea of Trolls, and seven other neglected fantasy classics of the north.

I enjoy the Black Gate website. The posts are often interesting and cover such a broad range of ‘fantasy’ topics that there is something for every fan of the field.

I don’t recall seeing that you folks are open for submissions in the couple of years I’ve been an irregular reader (not that I read in an irregular fashion….). Has there been any thought to an online-only edition or two each year? I’m guessing you get a lot of publishable material that just doesn’t fit into the two print issues. And it would allow for additional as well as more timely reviews and whatnot.

Just curious. I know it would take a lot of work, but it wouldn’t have to have all the bells and whistles (i.e. tons of illustrations) that go in the print edition. My own online newsletters (solarpons.com and Baker Street Essays) are simple affairs put together in MS Publisher and I write almost all the content. I would think Black Gate could produce a content-filled online edition that would get a lot of readers. Perhaps you could include blog posts from some of your staff. I recently found Howard Andrew Jones’ blog post about the definition of sword and sorcery. Interesting read!

I am in no way minimizing the work required. But I would think you wouldn’t have much problem getting contributions, at least.

Keep up the great work!

Bob Byrne

Bob, your note is rather prophetic. As we’ve announced in the Black Gate newsgroup and other places, we are launching a digital version of the magazine this year.

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