Al Williamson, March 21, 1931 – June 13, 2010

Al Williamson, March 21, 1931 – June 13, 2010

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al-williamson2Al Williamson, one of the finest science fiction artists of all time, died yesterday in New York City.

Williamson began his career assisting Tarzan cartoonist Burne Hogarth in 1948. His first professional credit was a three-page crime story, “The Last Three Dimes,” in Wonder Comics #20 (Oct, 1948), co-penciled with Frank Frazetta. In 1952 Williamson began working for E.C.Comics, joining the legendary Wally Wood, Frazetta, and Roy Krenkel on Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and Incredible Science Fiction, illustrating stories by Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury, among others.

By 1966 he was drawing Flash Gordon for King Features, which garnered him an award from the National Cartoonist Society. In 1967 he took the reins on another Alex Raymond creation, Secret Agent Corrigan, which he drew for over a decade. Art historians note that Williamson used his own face as the model for secret agent Phil Corrigan, which made him easy to recognize at conventions.

In the 1980s Williamson began his famed Star Wars comic adaptations, starting with The Empire Strikes Back for Marvel. Williamson was reportedly George Lucas’ first choice for the Star Wars newspaper strip, as Lucas was a fan of his EC Comics and Flash Gordon, and Williamson drew the daily and Sunday feature until 1983. He did additional work throughout the decade for Pacific Comics (Alien Worlds), Marvel (including Blade Runner and Epic Illustrated), and DC (Superman #400).

Since 1998 half a dozen retrospectives of his work have been published, including Al Williamson Adventures, The Al Williamson Sketchbook, The Al Williamson Reader, Vol. 1, and Al Williamson: Hidden Lands. Most of these had tiny print runs, and I had trouble tracking several of them down a few years ago.  If you want copies, I suggest acting quickly.

Science Fiction site io9 has a gallery of some of the best work of this incredible artist, and comics writer and artist Jimmy Palmiotti has written a eulogy here.

Ye’d Best Start Believin’ in Ghost Stories

Ye’d Best Start Believin’ in Ghost Stories

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We're naught but humble pirates.Bloodbones
Jonathan Green
Wizard Books (240 pp, ₤5.99, CAN$12.00, April 2010)

In 1982, Puffin Books unleashed The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first in the Fighting Fantasy line of gamebooks. The book was conceived and written by Steve Jackson (the British one) and Ian Livingstone, co-founders of Games Workshop. Although predated by solitaire RPG scenarios, Fighting Fantasy combined a choose-your-own-adventure decision-tree structure with a simple dice mechanic to mimic an RPG experience. The quick-start rules, brisk pacing, and art by New Wavey fantasists like Iain McCraig, Chris Achilleos, and Richard Corben, all bundled in a mass-market paperback retailing for $1.95, made Fighting Fantasy wildly successful. The series ran until 1995, along the way spawning ancillary media like novels, computer games, even a full-blown Fighting Fantasy RPG. Fan enthusiasm still burns bright today, with a downloadable fanzine and its own wiki.

Screw Narnia; had I ever discovered some magic wardrobe, I would have jumped with both feet into Titan. As it was, chores were done and allowances scraped together in anticipation of infrequent family expeditions to the mall bookstore. There I could pay to wade through the mire of the Scorpion Swamp, survive Baron Sukumvit’s Deathtrap Dungeon, rally freed slaves to overcome the sinister Gonchong on the Island of the Lizard King. Now I’ve been playing the books all over again, this time with my young sons, imparting to them the same vital life lessons I learned as a young boy: don’t trust strangers; never put your hand in someplace you can’t see; and if you kill someone, you might as well go ahead and take his wallet.

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Read the first three chapters of The Way of Kings

Read the first three chapters of The Way of Kings

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way-of-kingsTor.com has put the first three chapters of Brandon Sanderson’s new epic fantasy novel, The Way of Kings, online for free.

Sanderson is the author of Warbreaker, the Mistborn trilogy (Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages), and the book that got him his own publicist, The Gathering Storm, the 12th and final novel in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, written from extensive notes Robert Jordan made before he died.

Charlene Brusso reviewed Warbreaker for the Black Gate blog here, calling Sanderson an “expert at spinning fantasy stories packed with memorable characters, crisply detailed settings, unique magic, and major helpings of intrigue.”

The Way of Kings is the first book of The Stormlight Archive series. Set in the world of Roshar, where mighty storms cause trees to pull in branches, grass to retract into the ground, and cities to be built only where there is shelter, the novel follows a large cast of characters, including medical apprentice Kaladin, reduced to slavery in a war that rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. 

The Way of Kings will be available August 31st, and weighs in at over 1000 pages. Looks like Sanderson served his apprenticeship under Jordan well.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to register at Tor.com to read the 50-page excerpt.  Registration is free and fairly painless.

Play a science-fiction mini-game from Dark City Games

Play a science-fiction mini-game from Dark City Games

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at-empires-end-img

To promote their new science-fiction role-playing game At Empire’s End, Dark City Games has created S.O.S, a short solitaire SF role-playing game. We’re pleased to reprint the game in its entirety here on the Black Gate blog.

You can either read the text as choose-your-own-adventure style paragraphs, or grab some dice and play according to the short rules. Experienced role players, or those familiar with The Fantasy Trip, should be able to jump right into the action.

Without further ado, we present S.O.S, a Legends of Time and Space science-fiction role-playing adventure by George Dew.

You come out of hyperspace around the barren, rocky, waste-planet of Lemm. It orbits a distant star, and lacks an atmosphere. As a result, the inhospitable grey surface boasts temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero.

Your sensors scan for traces of the distress signal, when suddenly, an alien contact flashes across your navigation screen. Do you want to hail it (001) or attack with initiative (002)?

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Letters to Black Gate

Letters to Black Gate

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btga41Kim Patrick Weiss, of Bavaria, Germany, writes:

I tend to browse the Black Gate website every day, to check the news and, of course, read the new chapter of “The Weird of Ironspell” every Wednesday. When I read your article about Before the Golden Age by Isaac Asimov, two things immediately caught my interest: “…civilizations in grains of sand…” and “…humans in rags taking on entrenched alien conquerors…” and I knew I had to look into getting this book.
      Well, a couple minutes after I finished reading the article, and with my imagination already running wild, I decided to pick up a used copy from Amazon. I was in luck, the 1974 hardcover version by Doubleday was available for only $20. The book arrived today and I already read “Submicroscopic” and “Awlo of Ulm”, the ones that seemed the most appealing, and I can’t say I regret buying the book right away instead of checking out that website you mentioned first. Your article opened my eyes to a wider variety of sci-fi stories and authors, and I just have to say thanks for that 🙂
       It’s also a very nice experience to find out about so many old classics that I never knew existed. Your magazine and website are a great source for new (well, new to me) books and authors and I’m sure there’s still a lot more to discover in the archives. So, thanks again for a great website and an awesome magazine, both of which I hope will stay around for a long, long time!

Glad you enjoyed it, Kim.  “Submicroscopic” and its sequel “Awlo of Ulm,” both by Capt. S. P. Meek, are in fact the stories I had in mind when I mentioned “civilizations in grains of sand.”  They first appeared in Amazing Stories in 1931, and they’re still great fun today.

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Summer Reading

Summer Reading

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62540212Right now, I’m about a quarter of the way into Robert V.S. Redick’s The Ruling Sea, the sequel (second of a planned four book sequence) to The Red Wolf Conspiracy.  I’m reading this in part for an SF Site review, where I previously took a look at the first volume. My interest in Redick stemmed from seeing him at the 2009 Virginia Festival of the Book, held annually in my home base of Charlottesville.  To quote myself,

I was struck by how intense Redick was, how much he cared about his characters and the world he created and how eager he was to share it (and how he struggled to cover as much as he could within the constraints of his allotted time). He didn’t strike me as a “Tolkien by the numbers” kind of guy. So I was mainly intrigued by his personality to read his book.

BlackGate fans should probably put it on their summer reading lists, even if they aren’t reviewing it. Things  I’m looking forward to reading this summer that I’m not reviewing include:

  • The Magicians by Lev Grossman
  • Horns by Joe Hill
  • Angelology by Danielle Trussoni
  • Bright Dark Madonna by Elizabeth Cunningham
  • The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen

Of course, that’s just the tip of my tottering to-be-read pile.  But I’m optimistic that I’ll manage to make a dent in it.

SF Site reviews Black Gate 14

SF Site reviews Black Gate 14

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bglgAuthor Sherwood Smith, who has reviewed virtually every issue of Black Gate, shares her thoughts on our latest issue in a feature review at SF Site:

This issue of Black Gate, clocking in at 384 pages, is more book than magazine…. A few stories are outstanding, and most of the rest are solid entertainment. Add in generous page count on reviews, and the issue is a strong one. Readers tempted to start subscribing ought to consider beginning with this issue, as the prices are going to go up. (Though so is the page count.)

She admits to being pleasantly surprised by “The Word of Azrael” by Matthew David Surridge:

When I read that this tale was “initially inspired by the old Conan paperbacks which preceded each story with a snippet of Conan’s bio,” I groaned…. Was I wrong! Within two pages, Surridge’s deft, ironic voice had disarmed me.  We begin on a battlefield where seven kings and their armies died. The warrior Isrohim Vey wakens alone, except for the Angel of Death… What follows seems to be a series of iceberg-tip stories, that is, the climactic moments of what could have been longer tales. Increasingly intriguing tales. The reader begins to perceive patterns weaving them together into a tapestry of solid gold.

She highlights several additional pieces, including “On a Pale Horse” by Sylvia Volk:

Salsabil regards her father’s mare as her sister, as they share the same name. This isn’t a problem until she takes her sister grazing, and discovers a single-horned stallion following them…. Drought brings the raiding Mutair down on Salsabil’s people. Though they do their best to fight back, they are being driven out of their own lands, many of them killed, but meanwhile the mysterious horned pale horse follows them… A lovely story with a flavor of Arabian Nights.

And “La Señora de Oro” by R L Roth:

A few years ago, my spouse inherited some letters written by one of his ancestors who was a silver miner just after the gold rush. Roth’s epistolary story, which takes place between March and September 1850, is an eerie match in tone and (early on) in details as Tom writes to his wife Annie, telling her about his search for the gold that is supposed to save his family from want. The story is fantasy-horror, the fantastic element serving as a metaphor for what happened to far too many gold rush miners… Hats off to Roth for a disturbingly well-wrought tale, pitch-perfect for the period.

The complete review is here.

Goth Chick News: I Went To See an Acupuncturist and When I Got Home My Voodoo Doll Was Dead

Goth Chick News: I Went To See an Acupuncturist and When I Got Home My Voodoo Doll Was Dead

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voodoo1I have a friend who collects Star Wars paraphernalia. He travels around the country a few times a year attending mammoth SciFi conventions and comic trade shows, in the frenzied remainder of the hunting and gathering instinct that evolution allowed us to keep. The dedicated room in his house where this amazing assortment of merchandise is displayed has its own security system, in place at the request of the insurance company that covers it with a policy of biblical proportion. His Facebook page is a plethora of friends and fans who admire his every acquisition, seeking to purchase or swap rare treasures with their original packaging intact.

By contrast, I collect Voodoo dolls, for which the conventions are largely unpublicized and which no one seems interesting in trading.

The idea of creating and then affecting an inanimate representation of a living thing is thousands of years old. The Egyptians buried their dead kings with dozens of tiny statues of servants which would come to life to serve their masters in the next world, and ancient Romans crafted small likeness of friends and enemies to use in prayers to their many deities. In China, small dolls were artfully sculpted and honored as family ancestors.

In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a civilization that did not have some sort of similar lore. The act of creation is infused with irresistible mystic qualities; once we make it, we can nurture it or destroy it. That is our god-like choice.

So you can clearly see why this is way more fun than collecting Star Wars figures.

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Original Fiction: “THE WEIRD OF IRONSPELL” by John R. Fultz

Original Fiction: “THE WEIRD OF IRONSPELL” by John R. Fultz

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ironspell-6
http://sheikman.blogspot.com

“The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz

Illustrations by Alex Sheikman 

6. The Tomb of Azazar

 

The crypt lay on an uncharted isle off the wild coast of southern Mydrithia.

A triple-sailed war galleon dropped anchor in the narrow cove, but only five men came to shore. If there had been any living sentinels watching from the jungle depths, they would have counted only two of the group as human men. The other three were strangelings: two tall Amurions bearing longbows and a gaudily garbed gnome. They stood on the wet sands and surveyed the wilderness that smothered the slopes of a dormant volcano. There was no sign of civilization old or new in this ancient haunt of green shadows.

Ironspell ran a hand through his shaggy black beard and stared into the jungle, looking for invisible signs. Tumnal pulled the rowboat inland and hid it between two jutting boulders.

This desolate chunk of earth bore the stink of long-buried sorcery, of that Ironspell was sure. But it was a reek that had fooled him before.

“Are you sure this is the place?” asked the gnome, dusting sand off his vermillion robes with a gnarled hand. “Looks nothing more than a place for a good shipwreck.”

Ironspell spat upon the brown sand. “It’s here. Somewhere…”

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Looking Back on the first Sword and Sorceress

Looking Back on the first Sword and Sorceress

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sword-and-sorceress-iSword and Sorceress I

Edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley (DAW, 1984)

The late author and editor Marion Zimmer Bradley probably could not have dared to guess in 1984 that her anthology series, Sword and Sorceress, would turn into a yearly and best-selling institution of fantasy short stories that would extend past her death. That the first volume in the series bears a Roman numeral shows that she did believe the anthology would see at least two volumes; that it now reaches into the mid-twenties (with the twenty-fifth due this year) shows just how much sword-and-sorcery has embraced inclusiveness during the last three decades. Strong female heroines are now a key part of the genre, completing what C. L. Moore started with her amazing — especially for the time — Jirel of Joiry stories of the 1930s. Bradley invokes Moore a few times in her introduction, and the book is dedicated to both Moore and Jirel.

Over a quarter of a century after publication, the first Sword and Sorceress holds up quite well, while still showing some of the growing pains of sword-and-sorcery in the 1980s. Reading through it makes it clear that the sword-and-sorcery revival still had a distance to go in 1984. About three quarters of the stories Sword and Sorceress I are good-to-excellent, but like all anthologies it has rough patches, some shaky editorial picks, and a few pieces that don’t hit at all. As the series had just started, Bradley did not have a large pool of submissions to pick from. Later volumes would improve the mix as the number of works submitted increased, but this is the start, and therefore worth reading for its historical importance, saggy spots and all.

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