Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

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super_8There are bits of wrapping paper static’d to the lamp shade and tendrils of curly ribbon hanging off the chandelier. Here I lay in a sugar and red meat coma under the pressing weight of one too many conversations with the essence of Christmas spirit, three times distilled. With New Years Eve still in front and a bacchanalia of epic proportions behind, what can I do but think happy thoughts about the coming year and a time when the little troll living between my ears will finally stop running in circles and shouting.

Trust me, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

But 2011 looms large and full of promise; that not all movies will be filmed in 3D, some remakes may be worth watching and some events will be worth waiting for. So for you I pull myself up off the sticky floor and shake the glitter off my Mr. Grinch flannel PJ’s to bring you the annual “Cool Stuff in 2011” list. I know you probably have some of your own things to add to it, but far be it from me to ask you to get up and try to type in your current state. Nope, leave it to me to take one for the team, and if you feel up to it later, go ahead and chime in.

Now that the room has stopped spinning, let’s start with the movies.

Super 8, a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams is the obvious place to begin, mainly due to the two gentlemen at the helm.  Until its release in June, you can content yourself by following along with the elaborate viral marketing campaign that has been teasing the crap out of those of us trying to determine the focus of this film.

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Art Evolution 16: Brom

Art Evolution 16: Brom

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The scope of Art Evolution continues, but if you’ve missed any previous artists you can go back and find them here.

‘Middle-Earth Lyssa’ was complete, and I was looking for more recruits. During this whole process I’d kept to my promise, making sure that every person I’d come in contact with, even those who’d turned me down, continued to get updates.

earth-air-254The winter progressed, and during the dead of that cold time it was a great surprise, and certainly a sense of justification for my efforts, when Brom emailed me and said that he’d see what he could do to help out.

Well, three cheers for Brom, a true man of character!

When I was in college, and spent most of my mother’s hard-earned money on comic books [instead of food, or gas, or clothing, or heat…], but I was happy with my long-boxes. That said, I neglected my RPG collection, but lucky for me a friend in my little circle of role-players decided to purchase the TSR campaign setting Dark Sun. As a DM at heart, I decided that I’d take a break from running a game [and therefore having to buy all the books involved in it] and let this guy do the legwork.

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Jan/Feb Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

Jan/Feb Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

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fsf033The big January/February double issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction goes on sale today.

The issue features four novelettes by Matthew Corradi, Albert E. Cowdrey, Pat MacEwan, and “The Bird Cage,” by Kate Wilhelm. There are short stories from Alan Dean Foster, Rick Norwood, Chris Lawson, James Stoddard, Jim Young, Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, and Richard A. Lupoff.

Asked about the issue, Editor Gordon van Gelder had this comment:

I hope the presence of a Ghost Wind and a Whirlwind in the issue won’t lead anyone to conclude the issue is long-winded.

F&SF is published six times a year; issues are 258 pages.  It is the longest-running professional fantasy magazine in the country, and has been published continuously since 1949.

The new cover price is $7.50; cover artist this issue is Kristin Kest. The magazine’s website, where you can order subscriptions and browse their blog, is at www.sfsite.com/fsf/.

We covered the Nov/Dec issue of F&SF here.

Don’t Look Now, It’s the Birds: The Weird Tales of Daphne du Maurier

Don’t Look Now, It’s the Birds: The Weird Tales of Daphne du Maurier

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dont-look-now-nyrb-coverDon’t Look Now: Stories
By Daphne du Maurier, selected by Patrick McGrath
NYRB Classics (368 pages, $15.95, October 2008)

I have recently started an immersive journey through Cornwall, although not of the physical variety, since economically I don’t have the luxury of taking myself there. After a few years of vague fascination with the tip of the southwestern peninsula of Great Britain, which reaches out into the Atlantic to terminate in the pincer claw of Lizard Point and the Penwith Peninsula, I started to do harder research into its history and customs that separate it in weird and wonderful ways from the rest of the island that lays east of the river Tamar. My reason for this intensification of interest is, of course, for writing purposes. And if anyone wants to make a journey into Cornwall that involves fiction, he or she will have to spend some quality time with the Grand Dame of the land of tinners and smugglers, Daphne du Maurier.

Du Maurier (1907–1989) achieved enormous success as an author of twentieth century popular literature. On first publication, most of her novels received dismissive critical notices as “romantic thrillers for women,” while they ran through printing after printing to satisfy public demand. However, du Maurier’s novels have managed to escape the dustbin of most bestsellers of yesteryear and they remain in print and popular as ever today. Critical opinion has also turned around, and the author is now respected as an excellent wordsmith and crafter of plots, a literary descendant of Wilkie Collins, and as the twentieth century “voice” of Cornwall.

Most of du Maurier’s novels are historicals with emphasis on romantic suspense and Cornish settings: Jamaica Inn (1936), Frenchman’s Creek (1942), and The King’s General (1946). Her most famous work is Rebecca (1938), a contemporary-set Gothic masterpiece about an unnamed woman who marries into a sinister legacy in a mansion perched on the cliffs of what must be—although never stated as such—the jagged coast of north Cornwall. Rebecca’s reputation was furthered immortalized in the 1940 film version that brought Alfred Hitchcock from the U.K. to Hollywood for the first time and set the standard for the “creepy maid” figure in Judith Anderson’s Oscar-winning performance as Mrs. Danvers.

But du Maurier had an impact on the “weird tale” as well in her short stories, where she explored supernatural and perverse aspects that are only shadows on the Gothic fringes of her novels. Two of them, “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now,” are classics of supernatural horror that have also received the compliment of popular film adaptations, although du Maurier expressed dislike for Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.

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New Treasures: Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez

New Treasures: Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez

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too-many-cursesI have the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. Much of will be spent laying out Black Gate 15, to be sure, as well as catching up on my towering e-mail backlog.

But if you can’t recline in the glow of the Christmas tree and read at least one new book, it hardly counts as a vacation, does it? Santa brought me several great titles this year, but the one I’ve got my eye on at the moment is the latest novel by A. Lee Martinez: Too Many Curses. Martinez is the author of The Automatic Detective, Gil’s All Fright Diner, and A Nameless Witch, and his newest promises to continue in the same light-hearted vein as those:

The wizard Margle the Horrendous takes special pride in never killing his enemies. Instead, he transforms them into various accursed forms and locks them away in his castle. His halls are filled with his collection of fallen heroes and defeated villains, along with a few ordinary folk who were just unfortunate enough to draw Margle’s attention.

It’s Nessy’s duty to tend this castle. It’s a lot of work, but she manages, taking pride in housekeeping talents that keep the castle from collapsing into chaos. But when Margle suddenly dies, everything begins to unravel. Nessy finds herself surrounded by monsters, curses, a door that should never be opened, and one very deadly dark wizardess.

Happy Holidays to all Black Gate readers out there, and here’s hoping that your loved ones found a way to express their affection for you in the form of a great book.

Vexed Hierarchies

Vexed Hierarchies

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Heroes in the WindAnother year’s drawing to a close, and with it the first full decade of the twenty-first century. It’s a time for looking back, for thinking over what’s happened and what’s going on, in fantasy fiction and elsewhere. I don’t pretend to be in a position to make any worthwhile assessment of fantasy as a whole; but I do want to write about a change that seems to be in process right now. I think it’s a positive change, and potentially a radical one. And I can remember the moment I realised it was happening.

It was when I saw a collection of Robert E. Howard short stories published by Penguin Books.

Let me firstly explain why this was a shock. When I was a kid, Penguin seemed to be a publisher of self-consciously literary books; orange-spined paperbacks featuring mostly English people doing resolutely ordinary everyday things. This wasn’t accurate, as Penguin published sf writers, from Fred Hoyle to Keith Laumer to Fred Saberhagen, as well as mysteries, and writers like Ian Fleming and P.G. Wodehouse; but the perception was that the orange-spined books were realist fiction, and ambitious on a level above the rest. They didn’t interest me at the time, but I gathered from the adults around me that these books represented, in some way that was never clearly articulated, a literary quality beyond the sf and fantasy that I was reading.

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C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Now Available

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Now Available

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bah-haBlack Gate‘s C.S.E. Cooney’s dark fantasy novella The Big Bah-Ha is finally available from Drollerie Press in a variety of electronic formats.

The Big Ba-Ha is a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, following a band of near-feral children who brave a plague-ridden landscape on a desperate quest to rescue one of their own:

Beatrice, who only moments before was the eldest member and leader of the Barka gang, wakes up dead. She was almost, probably, 12. Either the slap rash got her, as it gets everyone over the age of 12, or the Flabberghast got tired of waiting for her to drop dead and took her skin for a door and her bones for his stew. Who can say? What she can say is that she didn’t get to wake up in heaven. Instead, she’s in the Big Bah-Ha, a place that’s supposed to be a comfort to children after they pass on. Only something’s very, very wrong here and, despite all her bravery and cunning, she’s not quite sure how to fix it or if she’ll survive the afterlife long enough to try.

Gene Wolfe said:

It is deep and wise and fabulous, and will leave you shuddering and strangely at peace. You could found a religion on it — or it may found a religion without you. Or found some new thing that humankind has not yet seen. Only God knows what would happen after the founding. As someone (you’ll find out who) says deep in the story, ‘We’re all clowns now.’”

The Big Ba-Ha is available for just $4.25. You can also read an excerpt or pre-order the print (both trade paperback and signed and lettered hardcover) versions here.

Check it out!  You’ll thank us later.

A Review of The Wolf Age by James Enge

A Review of The Wolf Age by James Enge

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thewolfageThe Wolf Age, by James Enge
Pyr (465 pages, $17.00, Nov 2010)

Yes, here I am again, to talk about James Enge. Specifically, The Wolf Age.

You know, I wrote about Blood of Ambrose, and I wrote about This Crooked Way, but this time I’m really stymied. I’m sitting here on my bed, laptop on my knees, feeling unworthy of the task ahead, and I have to ask myself:

“Now, Self, are we prepared to write about the third Morlock Ambrosius novel in a calm, clear, concise manner? Are we willing to dispense with our usual capital letters and exclamation points (I used plenty of those in my personal blog about this book, oh, believe me), and give a proper synopsis, and cite examples of AWESOMENESS and, and, not disintegrate into helpless wails of, But Lev Grossman already said it better than I could! It’s right there in the BLURB!”

And then I said:

“Well, Me, it’s tricky work all right. But someone’s got to do it! …Someone other than Lev Grossman.”

(I didn’t know who Lev Grossman was when I read The Wolf Age, but I envied his blurb, and then randomly picked up and read most of The Magicians before I realized that this Lev Grossman and that Lev Grossman were the same Lev Grossman!!! The Magicians is chilly-cool: like a cocktail of vodka on diamonds, lit with foxfire. So, whatever, I guess it’s okay that a bestselling author of a really good novel said what I meant to say about James Enge before I had a chance to say it. This being:

“James Enge’s books are like a strange alloy of Raymond Chandler, Fritz Lieber, Larry Niven and some precious metal that is all Enge’s own. They’re thrilling, funny, and mysteriously moving. I see 10 things on every page I wish I’d written. I could read him forever and never get bored.”

Speaking of cocktails, Morlock gets really, really drunk in The Wolf Age. For a very long time. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Oops. Should I have said “Spoiler Warning”? Well, I’ll try not to give too many of them.

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Just in time for Xmas (or whatever you celebrate this time of year)…

Just in time for Xmas (or whatever you celebrate this time of year)…

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interzone-2010Just arrived in the mail is Interzone‘s concluding issue of 2010 featuring the cover artwork of Warwick 2651Fraser-Coombe; the combined pieces of the six issues this past year form a complete work called “Playground (Hide and Seek).”  

A signed and individually numbered limited edition print can be ordered from the artist’s website.

In terms of fiction, this issue features the work of Jason Sanford with three stories and introductions by the author.  Additional stories are by Matthew Cook and Aliette de Bodard.

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Six: “At War with Ming”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Six: “At War with Ming”

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at-war-w-ming“At War with Ming“ was the sixth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally printed between October 20, 1935 and April 5, 1936, “At War with Ming” picks up the storyline where the fifth installment, “The Witch Queen of Mongo” left off with Flash awaiting Ming’s recognition of Kira, the cavern kingdom he had conquered over the course of the last two installments as an official kingdom of Mongo.

Unsurprisingly, Ming rejects Flash’s claims that Azura has abdicated as valid and demands that she be vanquished before he will recognize Flash as a legitimate monarch. Sadly, just as in the real life it is a petty disagreement that is interpreted as justifiable cause for war.flashgordon2_1cvr2

Flash immediately declares war on Ming in response to the insult he received. Flash and Dale head the Black Lancers, while the Hawkman Khan heads the infantry and Dr. Zarkov heads Azura’s artillery unit. The first strip ends with Kira’s forces mobilizing for war despite being hopelessly outnumbered.

For the next five and a half months, readers thrilled to Alex Raymond’s glorious depictions of battle. It seems strange, from the vantage point of the 21st Century, to see that the attitude that a war fought over wounded egos was still considered glorious after the tragic and monumental loss of life during the First World War less than twenty years before.

 

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