Howard Andrew Jones on The Roots of Arabian Fantasy

Howard Andrew Jones on The Roots of Arabian Fantasy

Comments 4 comments
The Adventures of Amir Hamza, translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
The Adventures of Amir Hamza, translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls, knows a thing our two about Arabian fantasy — and excellent storytelling.

He was recently invited to be a guest blogger by our friends at SF Signal. The result is a fascinating post on the origins of Arabian Fantasy, the influence of Indian folklore, puzzle box stories, Aesop’s Fables, Persian myth, and more more.

Anyone looking for pointers on excellent non-Western fantasy will find the entire article richly rewarding, including this fascinating tidbit:

The fantastic tales of Arabia might, sort of, begin with the 1001 Nights, but they certainly don’t end there. Less well known in the west is The Adventures of Amir Hamza. This immense work was written by Ghalib Lakhnavi in 1871 — though that’s not when it was created. Lakhnavi was just setting to paper the result of some thousand years of oral stories concerning the fictitious exploits of the Uncle of the prophet Mohammad — though that should in no way diminish what was a mammoth undertaking. Like the 1001 Nights, The Adventures of Amir Hamza brim with fantastic monsters, magic, and mayhem and romance. Within them, though, is a more obvious strain of Indian influence. It is currently available in one volume from Modern Library, painstakingly and lovingly translated/assembled by Musharraf Ali Farooqi.

The complete post is here.

Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part One, Gail B McIntosh

Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part One, Gail B McIntosh

Comments 8 comments

isengard

Yes indeed, I bring you another tale of art before you attempt to burst the buttons off your jeans with a hearty Thanksgiving feast. All winter holidays are something strange here in L.A., and it’s hard to think about turkey, snow, and roasting anything when the sun is bright and ocean breeze carries the promise of white-tipped surf and meditative tranquility.

Art, however, never takes a holiday [nor do we here at Black Gate L.A. since John O’Neill thinks days off are a grand waste of time]. That being said, I began a project some time ago that is very dear to my heart, so much so that Ryan Harvey doesn’t even argue with me about it which is saying something.

Below, I’ll lay the groundwork for my argument in case you who read this would like to contradict me, but I warn you, my passion is unmatched, and without vacations I’ll simply outlast you. Today, then, begins Part One of a small series dedicated to this topic, and I hope you’ll take the time to read them and educate yourself.

Part One:

I would argue that the prettiest role-playing game ever produced was Iron Crown Enterprises the Middle-Earth Role-Playing. Certainly the game’s popularity in the RPG boom decade of the 1980s was only rivaled by the gorilla in the room of TSR’s AD&D, statistics from the time indicating MERP was second in sales totals for the decade behind the RPG giant.

…

Read More Read More

Anne McCaffrey, April 1, 1926 – November 21, 2011

Anne McCaffrey, April 1, 1926 – November 21, 2011

Comments 5 comments

weyr-searchAnne McCaffrey, one of the most loved SF and fantasy writers of the 20th Century, died yesterday at her home in Ireland.

McCaffrey is probably best known for her Dragonriders of Pern novels, which began with the novella “Weyr Search” in Analog in October, 1967.

“Weyr Search” won the Hugo Award for Best Novella; its sequel “Dragonrider” (published in two parts in Analog in December 1967 and January 1968) was awarded the Nebula.  The two stories were collected as the first Pern novel Dragonflight, first published by Ballantine Books in July, 1968.

That was followed by an incredible 22 novels and two collections of short stories (some co-written with her son Todd), including The White Dragon (1978), the first hardcover SF novel to become a New York Times bestseller.

McCaffrey was a very prolific writer, with more than 100 books to her credit. Her first novel was Restoree (1967), and she had a real talent for series — including the Crystal Singer series, Freedom, Doona, Dinosaur Planet, Brain & Brawn Ship, Acorna, and many others. [I know — crazy, right? The only comparable modern author I can think of who has nearly this many popular series  is L. E. Modesitt.]

I recently bought a collection of vintage Analog magazines, and came across the one above, with the “Weyr Search” cover by John Schoenherr. It reminded me that those were the days when genre magazines could catapult you to the very peak of the profession, something far more rare today. McCaffrey had published only a handful of stories and her first novel (barely) when “Weyr Search” appeared… within a year she had won both the Hugo and Nebula, and published the first novel of a series that would make her a bestselling writer.

In addition to stellar sales, Anne McCaffrey was highly honored by fans and her fellow writers. She won the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2007, became a SFWA Grand Master in 2005, and was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame in 2006.

Ten Questions for Daniel Abraham

Ten Questions for Daniel Abraham

Comments 1 comment
Daniel Abraham
Daniel Abraham

Daniel Abraham and I met at the Millenium PhilCon, my first ever WorldCon. I noted that he had “Albuquerque, New Mexico” under his name on his badge, so I let him know that I was from Los Alamos, and then a few caffeine fueled day/night cycles later, I found myself invited to join his writers group. I’m very glad I did. Like me, Daniel is a Clarion West graduate, though we attended different years. He is the only person, that I know of, who has had his wedding picture in Locus with a toilet prominently displayed in the foreground. That was a gift from said writers group.

I still remember the email Daniel sent when he landed his first novel deal, a four book series with Tor. I was there when he workshopped his first Jayne Heller book, for which he adopted the pen name MLN Hanover, and I was the person he and Ty Franck, the other half of the duo who writes as James SA Corey, knew in common. Ty came to New Mexico for a visit and inevitably met the rest of the writers group, which he would later join.

In the following email interview, I got a chance to catch up with Daniel and revisit some of the stories he’s told me over the years.

An Interview with Daniel Abraham, aka M.L.N. Hanover, aka James S.A. Corey

Conducted and Edited by Emily Mah, November, 2011

Emily Mah: I always think of the story of how you became a writer as beginning pre-natally, when your mother dreamed of you becoming an architect. Care to share what followed from this?

Daniel Abraham: Well the short form of the story is that my mother wanted to be an architect from the time that she was 12, only this was the 60s.  When she got pregnant with yours truly, her first thought was “Oh well, maybe I’ll have a son and he’ll be an architect.”  Her second thought was something like “Ohmigod, did I just think that?”  What followed from that was that I spent my gentle formative years with my Spanish-fluent hippie English major father while my mother got her architectural degree.  He read to me a lot all through my childhood, and apparently some of it stuck.

…

Read More Read More

My Three-Year, 150th Post Anniversary . . . vs. The Giant Robots

My Three-Year, 150th Post Anniversary . . . vs. The Giant Robots

Comments 9 comments

godzilla-against-mechagodzillaThree years ago this week I posted my fist official article on the new Black Gate blog. I was one the original seven bloggers who answered John O’Neill’s call to make Black Gate online a place people wanted to visit again and again.

Yes, seriously: there were only seven bloggers at the start, one for each day. At one point, we may have dipped down to three. Those were strange days.

And I’m still here after all those years, at the Tuesday spot. And not only is it my three-year anniversary this week, but this post is my one hundred and fiftieth. No, I didn’t plan these two anniversaries to coincide. In fact, if you do the math, this means that over the past three years I failed to meet the weekly Tuesday post five times. I’m sorry, but some things just happen — like giant monster attacks. (Well, I wish; I tried that as an excuse at my old day job, but it didn’t work.)

I wasn’t a newcomer to Black Gate’s website when I started the weekly spot. Before the site became a blog with a rotating team, I wrote a few articles on request for John O’Neill. I finished a series on Clark Ashton Smith that I started on another website, and those articles still get good hits: (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.) I also penned a long analysis of the two version of Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, a piece I’m still proud of.

But it was my 25 November 2008 review of Conan the Raider that marked my first “Tuesday Blog Post.” This apparently unambitious start was actually a tip of the hat to the series that got me noticed as a blogger in the first place: reviews of Conan pastiches.

…

Read More Read More

Weird Fiction Review, and its Doppelganger

Weird Fiction Review, and its Doppelganger

Comments 2 comments

wfrBack in August we reported that Wildside Press sold Weird Tales magazine to Marvin Kaye, leaving editor Ann VanderMeer out in the cold.

But it didn’t take long for Ann and her husband Jeff VanderMeer, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Finch and City of Saints and Madmen, to bounce back with a new enterprise: Weird Fiction Review, an online journal of fact and fiction:

WeirdFictionReview.com is an ongoing exploration into all facets of the weird, from the classics to the next generation of weird writers and international weird. Reviews, interviews, short essays, comics, and occasional fiction.

weird-fiction-reviewCool. Ann and Jeff are a creative force to be reckoned with, and together they have co-edited several fine fantasy anthologies, including The New Weird and the monumental The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories, a four pound, 1,152-page exploration of weird fiction over the last century. The new website looks extremely promising as well, featuring fiction by Jeffrey Thomas, Jean Ray, and Michal Ajvaz, non-fiction from Jeffrey Ford, Scott Nicolay, António Monteiro, and others, and a web comic by Leah Thomas.

Astute genre readers will note there’s already a fine periodical with the name Weird Fiction Review, a critical journal edited by the distinguished S.T. Joshi (see right). Published annually by Centipede Press, the first issue was released in Fall 2010. According to Ann & Jeff,

This site exists in a symbiotic relationship with S.T. Joshi’s print journal The Weird Fiction Review but does not share staff.

Whatever that means. But hey, we’re just happy to have Ann back at the helm of a new fantasy magazine, doing what she does best: discovering and promoting new talent. More power to her.

Steampunk Spotlight: Kings of Air and Steam

Steampunk Spotlight: Kings of Air and Steam

Comments 5 comments
iron-kingdoms-254

I was never a huge fan of history class. It wasn’t until after college that I really began to enjoy history, and then it was mostly in the form of alternate history novels. This reading motivated me to begin reading more widely in real-world history, too, though I still like the alternative stuff a little better. In 2005, I pulled some of this reading together into an essay for The Internet Review of Science Fiction on “fantastic adventure history“, stories blend alternate history with fantasy.

Definitely the most potent type of alternate history in publishing these days – with or without fantasy elements included – is the sub-genre known as steampunk. This alternate history is set in an Industrial Revolution or Victorian-era setting, but the steampowered technology is ramped up a bit beyond what was realistic for the time. The look and feel of steampunk is so enticing that even Disney has gotten into it, releasing a limited edition pin set, The Mechanical Kingdom, that features the classic Disney characters in steampunk variants.

Steampunk got its start as hard science fiction, as described at the recent “Founders of Steampunk” panel from the World Fantasy Convention, but it’s definitely moved beyond that. In fact, my first writing for this magazine, back in Black Gate 10, was a review of the fantasy steam-fueled roleplaying game, Iron Kingdoms, in which powerful wizards are able to control hulking mechanized constructs called warjacks. (Interested? Check out this interview with Iron Kingdoms artist Matthew D. Wilson.)

Without really seeking them out, these steampunk games seem to keep coming across my path … probably because there are just so darn many of them. In Black Gate 15, I reviewed the Victoriana roleplaying game (available on PDF at DriveThruRPG), which also has strong fantasy steampunk themes. In that same issue, I reviewed the steampunk zombie novel Boneshaker (Amazon, B&N). Today, steampunk seems to permeate through all sub-categories of genre fiction.

It also seems to permeate my house. I’ve got several steampunk novels, collections, games, and other oddities that I have had every intention of getting around to reading and reviewing. So, in an attempt to clear through this pile of steampunk populating my bookshelves, I’ve decided to begin a series of posts on recent steampunk goodies, starting with an upcoming steampunk board game: Kings of Air and Steam.

Joan North, The Cloud Forest, The Whirling Shapes, and The Light Maze

Joan North, The Cloud Forest, The Whirling Shapes, and The Light Maze

Comments 8 comments

The Light MazeIf you read a lot, you’ll soon find yourself drawn to writers who become personal favourites but who, unaccountably, go unrecognised by the wider world. A little while ago my girlfriend introduced me to a book by one of her own favourite writers, a woman named Joan North. I want to write about North here, because I was impressed by her work and I think she deserves to be better known.

North wrote three books, fantasies for children; what you’d now call stories aimed at the younger end of the YA category. North’s first book, The Cloud Forest, was published in the UK in 1965 and in the US the year after. Her second book, The Whirling Shapes, was published in 1967. Her last book, The Light Maze, was published in 1971 and shortlisted for the 1972 Mythopoeic Award.

I’ve looked for more information online about North, but can find nothing. What I know about her is what’s written on the dust jacket of The Light Maze:

Joan North was brought up in North China but now [1971] lives in North London, “in a household which comprises a mathematical husband, two daughters, and two Siamese cats.” She says that her chief interest is in “what might be called exploring Inner Space.” This preoccupation can be traced in her earlier books, The Cloud Forest and The Whirling Shapes, which, like The Light Maze, bring into an ordinary and often comical picture of everyday life an awareness of other worlds, other modes of being. She likes reading about Yoga, Zen, Christian mysticism and Eastern philosophy.

…

Read More Read More

Free Knights of the Dinner Table Online Strips

Free Knights of the Dinner Table Online Strips

Comments 2 comments

kodt-webcomicThe talented Jolly Blackburn, creator of the comic Knights of the Dinner Table, has posted an epic KoDT comic strip online for your enjoyment.

Knights of the Dinner Table is the finest gaming comic ever made. It follows the misadventures of a group of misfits from Muncie, Indiana, whose love of gaming routinely trumps normal social conventions, and occasionally even their sense of self preservation.

This latest online strip, “Not Up To Speed,” finds the gang involved in an impossibly ambitious  live-action recreation of the D-Day landing in a vast convention hall at Gary Con.

Long time readers will recognize the characters Eddie and Sara, who appear in the KODT Java Joint strip in the pages of Black Gate magazine.

The latest issue of the Knights of the Dinner Table print magazine is #180 (October 2011), making it one of the longest-running independent comics in history.

Knights of the Dinner Table magazine is 64 pages of comics, reviews and gaming fun for just $5.99. It’s available at better comic and game shops around the country, or online at KenzerCo, and it gets my highest recommendation.

Let’s Play White by Chesya Burke

Let’s Play White by Chesya Burke

Comments 0 Comment

lpw_smallChesya Burke’s new short story collection newly out from Apex Publications provides a take on the horrific and strange from, as you might expect from the title, an African-American perspective. The title comes from the opening story, “Walter and the Three-Legged King,” in which the down on his luck protagonist is advised by a talking rat, one that he’s maimed by tearing off its leg, that “let’s play white” is the only way for him to get a job and avoid getting thrown out of his apartment.  The notion that you have to “play the game” in a job interview is hardly the province of any particular race, however; moreover, the no-doubt low paying  job of doorman the protagonist hopes to land might actually have less to do with “playing white” than “playing subservient,” which is why ethnic minorities probably hold a larger percentage of these kinds of positions.

Of course, sf and fantasy have been a natural home for ethnic writers to explore the state of “otherness” in which alien creatures and societies symbolize the psychology of oppressed racial and sexual minorities.  Burke’s stories are more grounded in the everyday realities of the disenfranchised, realities that are disrupted by cultural myths such as the actually benevolent but of course misunderstood village witch (“The Teachings and Redepmtion of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason”), zombies (“Cue Change”) voodoo (“Chocolate Park”), diviner-healers (“The Unremembered” and “The Light of Cree”)  and the evil eye (“I Make People Do Bad Things”).  Some of the scariest, however, are the most realistic.

…

Read More Read More