Sue Granquist Reviews The Vampire Tarot

Sue Granquist Reviews The Vampire Tarot

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vamptarotThe Vampire Tarot
Created by Robert M. Place
St. Martin’s Press (Boxed set, $27.95, June 200)
Reviewed by Sue Granquist

When I got asked to write a review of The Vampire Tarot I thought I was being made fun of. OK, ha ha, ask the Goth chick to review a tarot deck inspired by Buffy and see what she says, very amusing.
Just because I like horror movies and Halloween is my favorite holiday, does not mean I fall into a swoon over every marketing trick with fangs. And so what? I have been known to make the occasional pilgrimage down to the French Quarter in New Orleans where I do get my tarot cards read, but that’s no reason to throw a ridiculous assignment at me just to get a reaction.

I mean, are you kidding? Anyone who has ever read the submission rules for Black Gate is aware of the “no vampire stories” rule. That rule exists for a reason, and the reason is that ever since Stoker penned Dracula authors and movie makers of varying degrees of talent have taken up the vampire and morphed it from a monstrous metaphor for all that is evil in mankind into a handsome vegetarian with a century’s worth of teen-angst. Vampires are supposed to be eating virgins, not taking them to prom, but you’d never know if you’ve ever had to wade through the teen fiction section at the book store.

And now it’s come to this; The Vampire Tarot. A clothing line, jewelry and all manner of home décor just wasn’t enough apparently. I would say Vlad Tepes is spinning in his grave if you wouldn’t think I was making a joke. But I refuse to take this bait. I’m a professional with a job to do and like Professor Van Helsing taking up his mallet and wooden stake, I mean to get it done properly.

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A Lone Candle, Part 2

A Lone Candle, Part 2

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expedition
"Quick! Get the laser ri- I mean, get the thunder stick!"

If genre-shifting mid-tale is unwelcome in film and literature, where is it sometimes acceptable? I’ve found only one medium in which this sort of thing is easily done, and generally welcomed, if done right.

Role playing games.

Hear me out on this. Role playing games are a lot more fluid, since the storyline just keeps going after the genre-shifted adventure. The players know that, sooner or later the story will return to the main genre, and so they’re more willing to play along. That’s been my experience, anyway.

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Art Evolution 2011: Russ Nicholson

Art Evolution 2011: Russ Nicholson

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nicholson-invite-254Yes indeed, there’s yet another addition to Art Evolution! Now you didn’t think I’d sit idly by after the success of my 2010 Art Evolution Project wrapped up did you? No, certainly not, and although I’d managed to hit twenty artists in that mighty collaboration, I wasn’t satisfied because I knew there were many more artists still out there who deserved spots in what my project finally materialized into.

Still, I must admit I was pretty burned out after the initial run, so I took a couple of months off, focused on Art of the Genre, and retooled as I let brew the countless images of other great RPG artists still on my now venerable list.

By February I was convinced that Art Evolution needed further contributions in the modern era of role-playing, and I also thought that at least one more 90s talent and an old-school contribution would best serve the spectrum of what was already in print. To do this, I decided I’d include only five artists this year, five stalwarts who, like all those before, defined and inspired with work that was a step above their contemporaries.

So, without further diatribes into the ‘why’, let me take you to the ‘who’, but first, we strap into the time machine bound for the dawn of the big 80s…

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Murray Leinster’s “Runaway Skyscraper”

Murray Leinster’s “Runaway Skyscraper”

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murray-leinster-runaway-skyscraperI’m a nut about the trivia of dates, so the moment I heard about the birth of my second nephew, A. Dean Martin (yes, really), I had to look up the famous people who share his birthday of June 16. The list includes philosopher Adam Smith, legendary film comedian Stan Laurel, and Apache leader Geronimo. Oh, and some fellow named Murray Leinster.

It was that last name that struck me the most. Murray Leinster is one of those science-fiction masters who has managed to find a place in general public obscurity. Despite a writing career lasting over half a century, Leinster’s name probably means nothing to most casual readers of contemporary science fiction, unless they pick up anthologies of Golden Age stories.

Murray Leinster (pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, 1896–1975) is a rare case of a twentieth-century science-fiction author whose career started before the Campbell Revolution in Astounding but also continued through and beyond it, into the era when Astounding had become Analog and the field had broadened with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy. Like Jack Williamson, Leinster shifted easily into the stable of authors that John W. Campbell corralled for Astounding, which was otherwise made up of newly discovered writers. Leinster wrote some of his best work for Astounding, most notable among them “First Contact,” a story which the Science Fiction Writers of America voted into the classic 1970 anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, meant as a “Nebula Awards before there were Nebula Awards.” “First Contact” tied for fourth place in the list of stories with Theodore Sturgeon’s “Miscrocosmic God.” Its inclusion in the collection marked it as one of the greatest short stories in the field pre-1965.

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A review of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic

A review of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic

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hellebore-and-rueHellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic
Edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff
Drollerie Press (Ebook [Kindle], 238 pp., $9.99, February 2011)
Lethe Press (Trade Paperback, 238 pp., $15.00, May 2011)

Fantasy allows us to see the world not as it is, but as it might be.

Worlds where mortals have powers and abilities we can only dream of; where women neither need nor expect to rely on a man; where genders and orientations are equal, or face inequities starker than our own.

You’ll find all these possibilities, and more, in the twelve worlds of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, the new anthology edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff.

In opening story “Counterbalance,” Ruth Sorrell’s impressive first fiction publication, the world isn’t too different from ours. It initially resembles a typical urban fantasy milieu: magic’s real; the setting’s a modern metropolis; there’s a vampire slayer; there’s a nightclub/bar/safe space for the supernatural set. But the protagonist, Riley, isn’t the vampire slayer–she’s the most powerful being in Toronto. And the safe space? It isn’t, leaving Riley facing a newcomer much too powerful to oppose alone.

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Thor and the Fear of Fantasy

Thor and the Fear of Fantasy

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Thor, the MovieAs a good Shakespearean, Kenneth Branagh understands fantasy. I think the movie Thor succeeds mostly because of what he as a director brings to the film, and what he’s able to get out of his cast. What’s missing seems to be what the script doesn’t give him — a larger world, memorable supporting characters, and a willingness to engage with the matter of fantasy.

The tale’s simple enough. Following an incursion of evil frost giants into the realm of Asgard, Thor, son of Asgard’s ruler Odin, leads a retaliatory raid against the giants; because this endangers a fragile peace between the realms, Odin exiles Thor to earth, stripping him of his power. Thor and his magic warhammer Mjolnir materialise in New Mexico, where he’s befriended by rogue cosmologists, deals with agents of the superspy organisation S.H.I.E.L.D., and struggles against the plots of his brother Loki. Thor ultimately has to regain his power to return to Asgard to save all the worlds from Loki’s schemes.

It’s an enjoyable adventure movie. The set-pieces are well staged, the design of the visuals are distinctive, and the actors sell the material by consistently hitting the right balance between the grounded and the larger-than-life. But the script of the movie struggles to fit the mythic material at the core of the story into standard superhero movie structures.

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New Treasures: Fraser Ronald’s Sword Noir

New Treasures: Fraser Ronald’s Sword Noir

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forsimplecoinFraser Ronald is an author who will be familiar to readers of Black Gate 15. His story “A Pound of Dead Flesh” is a terrific sword-and-sorcery action piece, featuring two legionnaires who become involved in a plot to cheat a necromancer — a plot that very quickly goes very wrong.

Two of the hallmarks of Fraser’s writing are his gift for worldbuilding, and his clear love of sophisticated action tales in the noir genre. Both of these have served him well in his next projects: For Simple Coin, a collection of four tales of “Sword Noir,” and a compact, complete role-playing game called simply Sword Noir:

Hardboiled sword & sorcery – it’s Conan seeking for the Maltese Falcon, it’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in The Big Sleep, set in Lankhmar, it’s hardboiled crime fiction in the worlds of sword & sorcery.

Inspired by mashing up the novels and stories of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert E Howard, and Fritz Leiber, Sword Noir: A Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery is a new RPG from Sword’s Edge Publishing. In it, characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest. Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

Now is the time for your characters to walk down mean streets, drenched in rain, hidden in fog, and unravel mysteries, murders, and villainy.

sword-noirSword Noir is available today from Sword’s Edge Publishing or RPGNow in PDF format for just $4.99, and in print for $10.73. It is a 6″ x 9″ softcover book with black & white interiors — including maps — running 104 pages.

For Simple Coin is 90 pages, and collects three short stories which originally appeared in AtFantasy, Forgotten Worlds, and On Spec, as well as one story original to this collection.  These tales perfectly illustrate the appealing mix of dark fantasy and noir detective fiction that Fraser has perfected.

If you’re a fan of the hard-boiled fantasy of Alex’s Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse novels or Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I., you’ll want to check these out.

For Simple Coin is $1.99 in PDF, or $6.99 for the print version.  It is available through RPGNow. Cover art is by Paul Slinger.

Howie Bentley Reviews The Drums of Chaos

Howie Bentley Reviews The Drums of Chaos

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the-drums-of-chaos-2The Drums Of Chaos
Richard L. Tierney
Mythos Books (440 pages, $45, Sept 2008)
Reviewed by Howie Bentley

Simon of Gitta, Richard L. Tierney’s famous escaped gladiator turned student of the occult, has returned to the Holy Land to take revenge on the Roman officials who killed his parents and sold him into slavery. The Drums of Chaos shows Simon at his most savage as he slays his foes and writes messages on the wall in their blood. Simon is a hell hound on his enemies’ trail, but his plans start being disrupted as apocalyptic supernatural events unfold and cross his path. It seems that there are a handful of different factions of sorcerers, all with their own agendas; not excluding Jesus Christ, the son of Yahweh Zava’ot (A.K.A. Yog-Sothoth).

Although this is a Sword & Sorcery novel in the grand Howardian tradition, it is just as much about the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as it is about Simon’s adventures in the Holy Land. Imagine the Christ Passion viewed through the eyes of H.P. Lovecraft and you start to get an idea where this is going. Some may scoff at this portrayal of biblical events but I think, looking at it objectively, you have to admit that Tierney’s account of the crucifixion is just as plausible as the stories you hear in church, and a hell of a lot more interesting – as I often found myself on the edge of my seat while reading Drums, as opposed to slumped down in my seat asleep. This might well be considered the most blasphemous yarn of the whole literary body termed “the Mythos,” and considering the nature of the field, that’s saying something.

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Realms of Fantasy Celebrates 100 Issues

Realms of Fantasy Celebrates 100 Issues

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june-cover-e1306695326756Congratulations to Realms of Fantasy on its 100th issue (which actually has 101 pages, but I guess the extra page is for good luck, and doesn’t make for quite the same alliterative headline), a notable accomplishment for a publication that has been brought back from the dead on several occasions.  In fact, the magazine has had five publishers, with founding editor Shawna McCarthy the only person who has been there for the duration, according to the issue’s “Little Known Facts.”  Fiction contributors include Leah Bobet, Josh Rountree and Samantha Henderson, Sharon Mock, Thea Hutchinson, Patrick Samphire, Euan Harvey and David D. Levine, as well as poetry by Ursula Le Guin and various art, book, gaming and movie reviews along with the regular Folkroots column by Theodora Gass.  Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

I’m guessing that Realms of Fantasy has never before been mentioned in the same breath as The Paris Review, so we here at Black Gate197-outline1 Tastemaker Central take particular pleasure in noting that the latter literary bastion has much of interest to the same people who read the bastion of fantasy genre tales (and perhaps vice versa?). The Summer 2011 features “Art of Fiction” interviews with  Samuel R. Delany and William Gibson, as well as a story by Jonathan Lethem, “The Empty Room,” that’s available online.

Free RPG Day 2011

Free RPG Day 2011

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This Saturday is Free RPG Day, and as a lifelong gamer I wanted to encourage all of you current, former, and interested potential gamers to drop by your local gaming store to see what free role-playing game products are being offered for your enjoyment.

I’m especially interested in the new Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game Adventure Starter. Any readers of the Black Gate game review section know what a fan I am of Dungeon Crawl Classics, so I’m expecting good things. The Adventure Starter includes an atmospheric scenario for beginning characters, as well as one for higher level characters, and I’m looking forward to running my group through them this evening.

The Adventure Starter is just half the tale, though, for the beta version of the Dungeon Crawl Classics game is available online here. It looks to be a back-to-the-basics style heroic fantasy game, with no feats, prestige classes, attacks of opportunity, etc.  Some days I like the fussy bits and customization of modern fantasy adventure games as much as the next guy, but sometimes I want to throw those books across the room and run something without so many rules, exceptions, and charts. The DCC Beta looks promising: I’ll find out this evening how it plays out, and report back.