I’m on vacation, but for the one or two (and I’m probably overestimating) of you whose Saturday is not complete without something from me in this space, you can read my review of Robert Redick’s The Ruling Sea, the second volume of his The Chathrand Voyage series.
Regular programming should resume next week.
The success of Universal’s Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi made not only a cycle of similar horror films inevitable, it virtually demanded the studio turn their attention to a direct sequel.
As had happened with Lon Chaney in the silent era, MGM was quick to top Universal at its own game. They secured the services of Lugosi and director Tod Browning for a remake of Chaney’s silent classic, London After Midnight (1927). Browning had directed that notorious lost classic and having Lugosi fill Chaney’s shoes as the faux vampire seemed an inspired choice.
Browning’s remake, Mark of the Vampire would wing its way to theaters in 1935. Joining Lugosi’s Count Mora was Carroll Borland as his incestuous daughter, Luna. Borland was heavily featured in publicity photos with Lugosi despite not having much of an acting career (the following year she was reduced to a bit part in the first of Buster Crabbe’s Flash Gordon serials for Universal), but her portrayal of Luna was enormously influential on the cinematic female vampires who followed.
Borland contributed more than just the definitive screen depiction of a female vampire, however. Several years before Mark of the Vampire was born, she began a longstanding (and allegedly unconsummated) relationship with Bela Lugosi. She remained obsessed with the actor long after his death and had written a lengthy treatment for a Dracula sequel to star both of them entitled Countess Dracula.
Warning: This essay contains some spoilers.
If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults.
–J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf
I don’t get to the theatre too often these days, and with two young daughters in tow more often than not it’s to see a children’s film. But I’m not lamenting this fact, especially when the movies are of the quality of Toy Story 3.
Hey, I love Robert E. Howard, Bernard Cornwell, and the Viking novels of Poul Anderson as much as the next battle-mad fantasy fan, but I’m man enough to admit liking (most) Pixar films as well. And Toy Story 3 might be the best one I’ve seen. Critical consensus is not necessarily a hallmark of a good film (see Blade Runner, panned on its initial release by most critics, recognized as genius years later), but I think it’s telling that Toy Story 3 currently has a 99% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In this case, the critics are spot-on.
Toy Story 3 is a near-perfect children’s film. Like all children’s films, it possesses straightforward story lines, engaging visuals, and brisk action in order to keep young attention spans focused. (If these qualities sound like less than appealing, well, genre films can’t be all things to all people). So why sing its praises on Black Gate? Toy Story 3 serves as an instructive example of how to tell a great story within the confines of a given genre. Just like you can’t get too bogged down in dialogue or non-linear narrative techniques in a movie for kids, that story you submit to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly better contain some elements of sword play and sweeping action if you want to stand a chance of getting it published. If you disregard your audience you’re destined to fail.
Has anyone ever asked what you would grab out of your house if it was on fire and you could only make one trip? Or maybe the question was, if you knew you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, what would you take with you?
If it comes up in conversation and it’s focused on food, that one’s easy.
Pez.
However, when it comes to actual items, the answer becomes a bit more complicated and largely depends on who is asking. If it comes up at a family gathering, I usually can say “my photo albums” with a straight face. But as I’m among friends here, allow me to lay out the real list (in no particular order):
Having read this list it should come as no surprise at all that I’m counting the days to the Chicago Comic Con this weekend. Yes, this is the Chicago version of the biggie in California, but the line up is still good.
The following letter was originally sent to author Jeff VanderMeer on July 21, 2006, after I finished reading his groundbreaking and superbly weird “mosaic novel” CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN. After reading last week’s review of this modern classic (and the two stunning sequels that have appeared since then) I thought it would be interesting to post this message that I was compelled to write after finishing the first book of the Ambergris Trilogy.
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Dear Mr. VanderMeer,
Tonight I finished reading CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN. I discovered the book quite by accident…while gliding listlessly through the staid environs of the local Big Chain Store (as I often do, wishing there was something worth buying on the fantasy shelves). I was about to leave with the taste of a familiar disappointment filling my mouth. But…something caught the corner of my eye…or my soul…and I turned toward a random shelf without any particular reason for doing so.
There sat a book that drew my hand toward its spine, and before I realized what I was doing, I was looking at the cover to CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN. Something in the back of my mind rose (squid-like) to the surface. I read the comments on the back of the book, and on the first few pages. There was something here…something I’d been looking for. To my amusement, the book itself validated my thought seconds later as I read the quote from Mr. Moorcock: “It’s what you’ve been looking for.”
Now, I should explain that this has happened to me before. I have a sort of mystical relationship with exceptional fantasy books…a radar sense, if you will…the bright works, the ones worth reading, the pillars of gold standing among the rotting piles of formulaic drivel, they sometimes call out to me. I can explain it no better than that. While I can’t stand to read much of “modern” fantasy and sci-fi, I seem to have this uncanny talent for finding the books that are true works of genius. But my theory is this…the books find me.
Apex Magazine #15 was published on August 2, featuring fiction from Theodora Goss, Nick Mamatas, a reprint by Jeff VanderMeer — and “Dogstar Men,” a short poem by Black Gate blogger C.S.E. Cooney.
This is the first issue of Apex from new editor Catherynne M. Valente; Jason Sizemore continues as the publisher. The striking cover is by Brazilian artist Priscila Santos.
We last profiled Apex in June when they announced they were re-opening to submissions.
C.S.E. Cooney’s poem “Dogstar Men” is available here. Her most recent work for Black Gate, the three-part (and suitably epic) blog opus Exploring Fantasy in Metal, begins here.
Apex Magazine #15 is available online; the complete magazine is also available in a downloadable, pay-what-you-want edition through Smashwords, and in a Kindle edition (for 99 cents). Select back issues are also available through their excellent Magazine Archive.
To join the Apex Army and donate, subscribe, or help spread the word, visit their online store.
. . . And the boy thought,
This is wonderful! and left his father,
Soared higher, higher, drawn to the vast heaven,
Nearer the sun, and the wax that held the wings
Melted in that fierce heat, and the bare arms
Beat up and down in air, and lacking oarage
Took hold of nothing. Father! he cried, and Father!
Until the blue sea hushed him, the dark water
Men call Icarian now. And Daedalus,
Father no more, called “Icarus, where are you!
Where are you, Icarus? Tell me where to find you!”
And saw the wings on the waves, and cursed his talents,
Buried the body in a tomb, and the land
Was named for Icarus.—Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VIII
Where does the love of fantasy, and of storytelling, start? For every person it’s different, of course. For me it begins with feathers on the waves.
Those feathers, the remains of Icarus’s joyful but tragic flight toward the sun when he forgot his father’s warnings, are specific for me. But the broad world of the tales of the Greeks and Romans are a gateway for many people into fantasy. Whether it started with the Minotaur, the war at Troy, the labors of Heracles, Bellerophon on Pegasus against the Chimaera, or Perseus and Medusa, the Greek’s ancient religion and the poets whose writing let it survive have introduced countless readers to the fantastic and the greatness it can achieve.
I’ve often thought about the source of the power of the Greco-Roman legends, their heroes and the gods, and why they still have such enormous affect on us today, when no one worships them any more. They were even losing their grip on religious importance in the time of Ovid, one of the greatest tellers of their exploits. In the twenty-first century, the Iliad is no less an engrossing a story, the plays of Sophocles can still ensnare an audience, and even Hesiod can infuse a sense of wonder in a modern reader as he writes about the beginnings of all things.
Bitch Slap the (unrated) film relates to fantasy fiction how, you may ask?
The cast includes Lucy Lawless (Xena), Kevin Sorbo and Michael Hurst (Hercules). Fictionmags chum and fantasy novelist Damien Broderick passed along the intelligence back in December ’08 that the husband of a friend of his had a hand in making the film. Don’t know if it ever made the theaters, but it’s now out on DVD.
The box art has the three generously proportioned leading ladies in costume: short spandex gold-lame dress/black skirt & fishnets/low-rise jeans, stage-center. Hey, what’s not to like going in? Most of the viewer reviews on Netflix and Blockbuster panned it. The remaining 10% seemed to really like it.
I confess I liked it. It’s intentionally trashy, but it seems we haven’t had a good trashy girl-fight film since Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill.
Australian Shakespearian actor Michael Hurst is Gage, a scumbag dealer in high-priced stolen goods who has acquired at least one item of interest to each of the three kick-ass babes who, early in the film, get very medieval on him.
The Woman Who Loved Reindeer, by Meredith Ann Pierce
Magic Carpet Books (256 pages, $5.95, May 2000)
To begin with, I should tell you that I adore Meredith Ann Pierce’s writing. It has a sense of fairy tale about it, a simple yet otherworldly quality. I will happily read anything she’s written and recommend it to others.
Nevertheless, I have to say that The Woman Who Loved Reindeer might push some peoples buttons for reasons that have nothing to do with the high-quality prose.
Caribou is an isolated girl of thirteen or so, living away from her people because of her true dreams and possible magic. Then her sister-in-law unceremoniously gives her a baby to care for. Although Caribou resents the request — the sister-in-law admits that the baby isn’t her husband’s — an obscure impulse makes her accept the child. And then her life starts to get both richer and stranger.
The child — Caribou names him Reindeer — is not entirely human. When he’s still a baby, a golden reindeer nearly takes him away. As he grows, Caribou dreams of him as a reindeer calf and notices that he casts a reindeer’s reflection in the water. Also, he doesn’t entirely comprehend human emotion. He’s a trangl, a shapeshifter who turns into a reindeer, a being that Caribou’s culture fears as essentially untrustworthy — a view that’s not entirely unfounded, since Reindeer seems to have a limited capacity for empathy.
I don’t know what makes a novel great. Maybe every great book is great in its own way. I suspect, though, that a novel’s greatness resides most often either in its structure (not just its plot, but its balancing of themes and elements, its division into units like chapters, and its decision of what to describe and when) or its prose (its ability to make every word count, not only in depicting character and setting, not only in moving forward story, but in advancing the theme of the book, what it’s about, the idea that prompted the telling of the tale in the first place).
I suspect also that truly great novels fuse the two things, so that stylistic choices are an outgrowth of structure, while structural elements are visible in the voices the story uses. And all these things are always surprising the reader, even while making perfect sense.
Which brings me to Jeff VanderMeer, and his three novels of the fictional city of Ambergris: City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch.
This is not a typical trilogy. The three books are very different from each other in both style and structure, although they do have some themes and characters in common. Chiefly, they have Ambergris in common.
Ambergris is a strange place, a baroque metropolis defined by wars between sprawling merchant houses, the orgiastic annual celebration of the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, and a mostly-subterranean nonhuman race called Grey Caps. The city changes over the course of the books — its technology shifts, its social structure is altered — but then the way we see the city changes as well.