Steampunk Spotlight: Victoriana RPG update

Steampunk Spotlight: Victoriana RPG update

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jewelempireA couple of weeks ago, I began my exploration of steampunk – one of the most popular subgenres in speculative fiction today – with a review of the upcoming board game Kings of Air and Steam, currently being funded through Kickstarter. (There’s still about another day before the deadline to pre-order a copy at a huge discount.)

Kings of Air and Steam focused on the more mundane aspects of the steampunk setting – shipping merchandise by airship and railroad. There’s certainly a lot more to steampunk than that and one game which embraces the more fantastic end of the spectrum is Victoriana RPG.

What is Victoriana?

Picture a traditional fantasy adventure setting, such as those made popular by Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons, complete with elves, dwarves, sorcerers, undead, monsters, and so on. Now advance that world about 500 years, from the classic Middle Ages setting into the Victorian era. That is, essentially, the basis of Victoriana.

I favorably reviewed the Victoriana core rulebook and several supplement books in Black Gate #15 (now also available in Amazon Kindle format), but they’ve come out with three new sourcebooks since then. How do these new supplements stack up? If you really want to explore the world of Victoriana, these are definitely what you’ve been waiting for, although you will need at least the core rulebook to get started.

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Game Review: Castle Ravenloft

Game Review: Castle Ravenloft

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61sthemncpl_sl500_aa300_I recently received a copy of Castle Ravenloft and I wanted to take a moment this Saturday to talk about it. Not that I’m looking to pitch or anything, but I’ve had the chance to play several of the ‘big box’ games rolling off the presses this year and it’s been kind of fun to compare what I’m seeing with each.

To me, Castle Ravenloft is a bastion from my youth, a place where I went only because I was dragged there by my DM, Mark, as a particularly creepy and nasty torture for my Dungeons and Dragons characters.

When I had the chance to crack the seal on this newest piece of the Ravenloft legend I was immediately taken back to my youth while also being brought forward in time to the newest incarnation of D&D thought up by the creative minds of Wizards of the Coast.

First off, know that this is a HUGE box, and as I started pulling stuff out of it I kept getting flashbacks to GenCon 2011 when I was trying to put together a physical copy of King Snurre Ironbelly’s throne room for the climax of my current Against the Giants Campaign. As I walked that huge conference hall in Indianapolis I was amazed at the cost of creating a dungeon and the denizens that populate it. I mean, I could have spent my entire budget trying to do it, and yet this box held four times the quantity of stuff I would have needed to run a successful dungeon.

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Clarkesworld Issue #63

Clarkesworld Issue #63

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cw_63_300The December issue of Clarkesworld is currently online. Featured fiction: “Sirius” by Ben Peek, “In Which Faster-Than-Light Travel Solves All Our Problems” by Chris Stabback and the conclusion of Catherynne M. Valente’s “Silently and Very Fast.” Non fiction by Brenta Blevins, Jeremy L.C. Jones and Neil Clarke.  The cover art is by Folko Stresse.

All of this is available online for free; there’s even an audio podcast version of “Sirius” read by Kate Baker. However, nothing is really free. The magazine is supported by “Clarkesworld Citizens” who donate $10 or more.

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #62.

R.I.P. Euan Harvey

R.I.P. Euan Harvey

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euan-harveyIn the decade or so I’ve been editing Black Gate magazine, I’ve been blessed to cross paths with a wide variety of talented writers, artists, and creators.

One of the most talented was Euan Harvey, a terrific short story writer whose career was just beginning to take off. His work appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Aoife’s Kiss, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. I bought a story from Euan, “Kamaratunga’s Masterpiece,” and it is scheduled to appear next year in Black Gate.

In August 2009 Euan was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. He lived and taught in South East Asia for thirteen years, but that year he returned to the United Kingdom, where he lived just outside London with his wife and family.

Today his family posted the following announcement on his Facebook page:

To all of Euan’s friends who have been reading this. I am sorry to tell you all that his melanoma grew so fast that on Tuesday his state deteriorated and we were warned he might not have long. His brother and sister, cousin and parents were… all with him yesterday, and last night Alex and Fon stayed with him. He could hear but not talk. At 5.45 this morning [Friday 9th] his breathing changed, and he died very peacefully.

BG Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones, who discovered and first introduced me to Euan while he was editing Flashing Swords magazine, said this about him:

Euan Harvey was a fine man and father, and an excellent writer. He gave me great novel feedback, and I have enjoyed his stories for years. I was proud to call him friend. I am stunned and saddened by this news.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Five – “The Zagazig Cryptogram”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Five – “The Zagazig Cryptogram”

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hand-titan1return-titan1“The Zagazig Cryptogram” was the fifth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on January 26, 1917 (two months after the fourth installment) and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 19 – 21 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The Zagazig Cryptogram” picks up two weeks after the last installment with Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie joining Inspector Weymouth at the River Depot police station to examine a corpse. A Burmese dacoit has been fished out of the Thames along the wharf where the Joy Shop sits. The coroner’s report reveals that the man was strangled rather than drowned as initially suspected. Smith spies in the Times’ personal column a mysterious message has been posted consisting of nothing more than the word Zagazig written seven times in a row. While Petrie dismisses it as nonsense, Smith points out that Zagazig is a town in Lower Egypt. He is convinced that the mysterious code and the murdered dacoit are somehow connected to the Si-Fan.

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Enjoying the Unique Character of Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade

Enjoying the Unique Character of Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade

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dark-crusade-wagnerWhy has swords and sorcery languished while epic fantasy enjoys a wide readership? In an age of diminished attention spans and the proliferation of Twitter and video games, it’s hard to explain why ponderous five and seven and 12 book series dominate fantasy fiction while lean and mean swords and sorcery short stories and novels struggle to find markets (Black Gate and a few other outlets excepted).

During a recent reading of the late Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade (1976) a potential answer coalesced: Many readers want and expect deep characterization in their fiction, and it’s simply not a particularly strong suit of the swords and sorcery genre (or at least of classic swords and sorcery, circa 1930 through the early 1980s). Wagner is one of a handful of classic swords and sorcery authors to whom history has not been particularly kind*. His dark, God-accursed hero-villain Kane deserves a place alongside Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in the roll of great genre heroes, but is sadly left off many “best of” swords and sorcery lists. Relegated to the status of cult figure, Kane is the darling of heroic fantasy connoisseurs but unread of by many casual genre fans, and unheard of by most of the larger fantasy fan base.

Kane and many of his swords and sorcery ilk are not what most modern readers would consider fully realized characters. You just don’t get anything close to the same level of introspection and cradle to the grave development of Kane in Dark Crusade as you do of, say, Kvothe in Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind.

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Goth Chick News: The Best Book to Not Read on a Plane

Goth Chick News: The Best Book to Not Read on a Plane

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image0021Until recently, reading on a plane was one of my personal joys.

As an electronics geek (admitting it is the first step) it is a rare thing indeed for me to find myself in an environment where connectivity isn’t possible.  Okay, I know that some flights are now offering Internet in the sky, but I prefer to ignore this for the time being in the name of preserving the one place where I can guiltlessly escape email, IM and my cell phone.  And though it is still possible to “work” while disconnected, I generally ignore this as well and relish the opportunity to sink uninterrupted into a novel.

And this was precisely what I did on a recent getaway to my favorite US destination; New Orleans.  I boarded the American Airlines jet and settled back in my window seat with Chris Bohjalian’s fourteenth novel, The Night Strangers.

Things went all wrong shortly thereafter.

We had only just pushed back from the gate when the plane came to a rather abrupt halt and the engines shut down.  The pilot’s voice sounded a tad embarrassed when he explained our aircraft had just experienced an “electrical abnormality” and mechanics were being called to look into the issue before we would be cleared to take off.

Now, as someone who has clocked countless hours on airplanes, this “electrical abnormality” didn’t concern me all that much.  I imagined that some unexpected red light was blinking away in the flight deck that probably wouldn’t have meant much if it had occurred aloft, but as it had started up while we were still on the runway, the crew was obligated to halt our journey and have it looked at.

I went back to The Night Strangers.

In case you’re not familiar (I certainly wasn’t prior to picking up his latest book), Chris Bohjalian is a New York Times bestselling author, and his latest outing The Night Strangers is a ghost story inspired by both a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger’s successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

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A Review of The Prow Beast

A Review of The Prow Beast

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the_prow_beastThe Prow Beast
Robert Low
Harper Collins UK (358 pp, $24.95, 2010)
Reviewed by Bill Ward

It was with some sorrow that I came to the last page in Robert Low’s The Prow Beast — the fourth and, sadly (for now?), final book in the excellent Oathsworn saga. Beginning with 2007’s The Whale Road, the Oathsworn series has followed Orm Ruriksson’s intrepid band of adventurers the length and breadth of the Viking world in the 10th Century, from Scandinavia to Constantinople, from Jerusalem to the steppes of Russia, all the while taking them from an obscure band of raiders to far-famed men the subject of song and saga. And it is this fame that lies heavily around the necks of the Oathsworn in this final volume, for their reputation makes them both a target and an ill fit for a settled life away from the sea.

The novel begins with a bang, in the middle of a grim sea-fight against desperate odds — and a wildly dangerous pack of ulfhednar, the ‘berserkers’ of Viking lore. Orm, our narrator for the whole of the saga, then backtracks to explain how his men’s current predicament came to pass, and how the alliance of revenge-fueled Randr Starki and Pallig Tokeson, King of the Joms, was born. A perfect storm of factors collides upon the Oathsworn, who find themselves hated, their treasure coveted, and the pregnant Queen with whom they were entrusted, Sigrith, wife of the King of Sweden, hunted by rivals who do not wish to see her birth an heir to the throne. The Oathsworn’s Hestreng Hall is looted and burned, their longship the Fjord Elk destroyed by Greek fire, and the remnants of the Oathsworn and their families find themselves hunted and on the run. And that is just the beginning.

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The New York Review of Science Fiction drops Print Version

The New York Review of Science Fiction drops Print Version

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nyrsfOne of the best critical magazines for fans of science fiction and fantasy is The New York Review of Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kevin J. Maroney. It has been published monthly since 1988, and it’s been nominated for a Hugo Award virtually every year. Famous for its in-depth reviews, serious tone, and critical excellence, NYRSF also has deep ties to the fan community, with plenty of news and interesting commentary on both fiction and the folks who create it.

I’ve been a subscriber for roughly a decade and I find that while NYRSF is rarely a quick read, I can always count on it to point me towards the best in modern SF & fantasy, as well as bringing plenty of neglected classics to my attention. I rarely get a third of the way through an issue before rising from my big green chair to go dig through my library for some obscure 1970s paperback or pulp story they’ve referenced. The staff writers have excellent taste and very long memories, and they know their stuff.  NYRSF: it’s entertaining, and it’s good for you.

For the past few years the editors have been bemoaning the bleak outlook for the genre’s print fiction magazines. And on December 4, NYRSF became part of the news: they announced they would switch to a PDF-only format with the August 2012 issue:

We will continue to publish print issues through the end of the current volume in July 2012. It does not appear that we will continue in print past then but will switch to PDFs of entire issues. These may be emailed to subscribers, or we may decide not to have subscribers and just make each issue available online, either for a nominal charge or for free. We will almost certainly also offer a print-on-demand option as well…

We have offered a PDF subscription to overseas and non-US subscribers for the last couple of years, but we are now, this minute, offering this option to all subscribers. If it is time for you to renew your subscription, we want you to know that you can switch immediately to all-electronic for the reduced price of $3.00/issue.

Read the complete announcement here.

John Joseph Adams merges Fantasy and Lightspeed

John Joseph Adams merges Fantasy and Lightspeed

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fantasy-lightspeedLast month we reported that John Joseph Adams, editor of Fantasy and Lightspeed, had acquired both magazines from publisher Prime Books.

I think I also said “Adams has not announced if he’ll make any changes to the magazines.” Well, strike that.

After publishing the December issues of both magazines, Adams made this announcement on his blog:

We’ll be merging Fantasy and Lightspeed. But never fear: We won’t be doing away with any of Fantasy‘s fiction; each issue of the combined magazine will contain four science fiction stories and four fantasy stories. We won’t be reducing the number of stories, or replacing any Fantasy content with Lightspeed content; this will be a true merger…

Since we’re doubling the amount of fiction in each issue, we’re going to raise the price of our ebooks — but not by double: We’ll be raising the price to just $3.99. So you’ll be getting twice as much fiction, for just a dollar more per issue; plus, from here on out, each ebook edition of Lightspeed will feature exclusive content that you won’t find on our website — namely, in addition to the eight short stories you’ll also find [on] our website, each ebook issue will now feature a novella-length story.

We’ll be keeping the www.fantasy-magazine.com website up as an archive, but all future Fantasy content will appear as part of Lightspeed, at www.lightspeedmagazine.com, so be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!

Adams also announced that they’ll be eliminating the non-fiction articles that accompany each story, in order to focus more on fiction. However, they will continue to publish feature interviews and author spotlights each issue.

While I’ll miss the separate identity Fantasy had as a standalone magazine, overall I think the changes are positive. And $3.99 per issue is a real bargain for that much fiction.

We last covered Fantasy Magazine in April with issue #49.

You can read the complete announcement here, and purchase the Kindle editions of Lightspeed and the final issue of Fantasy — featuring stories from Joe R. Lansdale, Seanan McGuire, Alasdair Stuart, Naomi Novik, and Nike Sulway — for just $2.99 each.