Mark Sumner reviews Black Gate

Mark Sumner reviews Black Gate

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devils-tower2Well, sort of.

Mark Sumner, the Nebula Award-nominated author of the Devil’s Tower books — and one of Black Gate‘s most prolific and popular contributors — has a popular blog at Daily Kos where he discusses… well, everything.

Recently he touched on the impermanence of fiction, especially short fiction:

Speaking as someone whose entire lifetime oeurve is at this moment out of print, I can tell you with certainty that books are no more guarantee of immortality than games….But if novels are transient, short story collections are the mayflies of the literary world… Still, a good short story is a jewel of writing, and a collection of stories from the same author can subject you to more ideas, more emotion, and more pure wonder than any novel. They’re a great chance to get an insight into the most important character in any book — the one behind the pen.

Sumner points to four classic short fiction collections, any one of which is a great place for a new short fiction reader to get started.

They are: the horror collection Soft and Others: 16 Stories of Wonder and Dread by F. Paul Wilson, Simak’s book of  terrific early SF, The Worlds of Clifford Simak, Cordwainder Smith’s expansive future history The Rediscovery of Man, and especially George R. R. Martin’s Sandkings.

His recollection of Sandkings was right on the money, and made me want to read it all over again.

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Short Fiction Roundup: Bull Spec

Short Fiction Roundup: Bull Spec

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bullspec-01-page001-200x256There’s a new magazine devoted to speculative fiction with the unfortunate name of Bull Spec, which I hope for the sake of the editorial team does not become known as “BS” for short. I haven’t read any of the contents, though you can get a pdf version (there is a print edition as well)  Radiohead-fashion, i.e., pay what you want. Fiction  by C.S. Fuqua, Peter Wood, Natania Barron, Michael Jasper, with a serial graphic story by Mike Gallagher.

Its stated quarterly mission in exploring new fiction is: “Bring the best of speculative fiction with a focus on Durham-area authors and stories to a wide audience for shared discussion.” One critical comment: a particularly ugly website that looks like something coded in 1999.

Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek: “La Senora de Oro” by R.L. Roth

Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek: “La Senora de Oro” by R.L. Roth

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lasenorodleoro-277She was tiny, beautiful… and crafted of pure gold. Her gifts were pure as well: gold, and madness.

       George took me aside yesterday & he said me & him shoud strike off on our own again. He doesn’t like how things are getting. I told him to bide his time just a bit longer so we can get a little more Gold & then be off home. We need the Gold lady to find the Gold so we have to stay. George says it is a foul charm that needs Blood to work. He thinks the Gold lady is the Devil. I said the Devil has better things to do then live in a little statue. Even if George is right I will leave soon with my Gold & leave the Devil behind.
      I think & dream of home all the time now. In my dreams we are rich & powerful.

R.L. Roth lives in Canada. This is his first published story.

 “La Senora de Oro” appears in Black Gate 14. You can read a more complete excerpt here. The complete Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek is available here.

Art by Malcolm McClinton.

Goth Chick News: The Game is Afoot!…and an Arm, and a Heart

Goth Chick News: The Game is Afoot!…and an Arm, and a Heart

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phantasmagoria_2To call me a “gamer” would do a serious injustice to those hardcore cyber-warriors who are universally recognized for their pale complexion and calloused thumbs. But as someone who has spent many a windfall dollar at the local GameStop, foregone more than one sunny summer day hunched over a keyboard in a darkened room, and lives at least partially in a world where an Easter Egg has zero to do with a bunny, I think that on some level I can relate.

I also fraternize quite openly, both at work and at home, with software developers. Those in the game industry never cease to dream of a world where they would create the games they truly wished to, without the constant and creativity-killing demands of the margin-hungry corporations they work for.

Which is a little scary when you think about it.

What if game developers were allowed to run amok and create any character, any story line or any outcome their imaginations could devise, and could thrust their creations out into an unsuspecting marketplace with nary a care for bottom line returns or movie-deal conversions?

Of course, to imagine that world you would also need to imagine one without the parental rating system. Or aggression therapy.

But that being said, I have always gravitated toward those releases that game developers admire themselves. Their criteria for what is “good” is sometimes but not always represented in the best seller area of your favorite game retailer and many are difficult even to find these days, not just because they’re out of production, but because they’re banned outright.

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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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http://sheikman.blogspot.com
http://sheikman.blogspot.com

In the grand tradition of the heroic fantasy pulps comes “The Weird of Ironspell” — a serialized novella of original Sword-and-Sorcery adventure coming to you over the next few weeks. Catch a new self-contained chapter every Wednesday right here at blackgate.com. The saga continues…

 

 “The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz

Illustrations by Alex Sheikman 

 

2. The Moon God’s Bride

They marched out of the wasteland, where the bones of dead cities lay smothered beneath a sea of black sand.

Their captain was tall and broad of shoulder, his dark hair flapping like ravens’ wings about his wolfish face. The hilt of a silver sword gleamed on his back. The other three were strangelings, two with tapered ears and jewel-bright eyes, the third a grizzled gnome with a face like twisted oak. They had survived the death-worshippers of the waste, the leagues of killing sand, the murderous winds, and the terrible things that slumbered beneath the ruined temples. The scars of battle shone upon their arms and chests like tarnished jewels. 

The quiet folk of Omzir greeted them with suspicion, as all things are met that crawl out of the desert. Yet when the townsfolk saw their gold and silver coins of ancient mint, they welcomed the travelers like old relatives. Ragged children followed them through the dusty streets like famished dogs.

The captain’s name was Ironspell. He asked for wine and roasted meat. Dranba, the keeper of the town’s only drinking house, offered plenty of wine to earn their gold, but explained that water and food were scarce. He spoke the western dialect since he had once traveled with caravans, so he translated for Ironspell and the strangelings. Jealous townsfolk labeled him a slave to foreign dogs, but Dranba did not care, for in only a few days Ironspell’s generosity made him the richest man in Omzir.

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A Quick Quote on “Pulps vs. Slicks”

A Quick Quote on “Pulps vs. Slicks”

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As you read this, I’m in Atlanta to see my brother graduate from medical school. Which means that this is “time-bomb post” I put in the queue to automatically go off and post itself while I’m away. Which also means that I’m keeping this a bit short, as I don’t have the weekend to write up something more in-depth.

What I’ve decided to do instead is let somebody else do most of the work for me. I’m going to share a quote about the pulps that I came across when I was doing my research for my two posts about Frederick “Max Brand” Faust. This comes from Jon Tuska’s essay “Frederick Faust’s Western Fiction” from The Max Brand Compnaion (Greenwood, 1996). Tuska makes an interesting comparison between writing for the pulps and writing for the “slicks,” the glossy magazines that offered supposedly greater prestige for writers who could break into them. Tuska shows a reversal of how people view pulp literature vs. “mainstream” literature:

Both [Faust] and [his agent] Carl Brandt areed that the only way to cope with the depressed economy was for Faust to move into slick magazines which paid much better. Faust, studying the market, readily realized that restrictions in the slicks were more rigid and confining than they ever had been in the pulps. Writing for Western Story Magazine, he had to concern himself with such general notions as a pursuit plot, which [editor] Blackwell preferred, or delayed revelation. Writing for the slicks, he realized that the editors sought to dominate a contributor’s mind. Attitudes and ideas were everything. Beyond entertainment, which both pulp and slick fiction alike provided, slick fiction had to deliver an ideological message to readers which agreed with the editorial policies of the magazine and these were dictated by the advertisers and their agencies. Perhaps it is for this reason that so much of the slick fiction of the 1930s and 1940s had become hopelessly dated while pulp fiction from that same period still pulsates with imagination and iconoclasm. Ideology is time-bound.

In other words, take that Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s! Long live Black Mask, Weird Tales, and Astounding! (And Black Gate carrying on their legacy.)

See you next week.

Frank Frazetta enters Valhalla

Frank Frazetta enters Valhalla

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death-dealer2Frank Frazetta, the greatest fantasy artist of his generation, died today at age 82.

Frazetta got his start in comics in the early 1950s, working with legendary artists such as Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Al Capp, and Harvey Kurtzman on Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Li’l Abner, as well as many titles at EC Comics.

In 1964 Frazetta did his first movie poster for (of all things) Woody Allen’s first film, What’s New Pussycat?  This eventually led to cover paintings for some of the most popular paperbacks of the 60s and 70s, most notably the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, including Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.

For fantasy fans Frazetta is best remembered for his groundbreaking Sword & Sorcery images — such as “Death Dealer” (right), the cover to Lin Carter’s 1973 anthology Flashing Swords 2 — and most especially his colorful and visceral depictions of Conan, which revolutionized fantasy art.

Until Frazetta, Conan was primarily depicted as a white, clean-cut warrior in pseudo-roman garb, straight off the set of a Cecil B. DeMille film (see the covers of Robert E. Howard’s first Gnome Press editions from the 1950s, such as Conan the Barbarian).

But Frazetta swept away all who had come before, re-envisioning Conan as a muscular, dark-skinned titan, a true barbarian in spirit and appearance. Since Frazetta, in defining work by artists like Ken Kelly, Sanjulian, Barry Windsor Smith, Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni, Conan has been revealed as both heroic and fearful, a thick-sinewed, long-haired mongrel, a truly striking figure in all respects.

Frank Frazetta died at a hospital near his home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

For a sampling of some of his finest work, visit the unofficial Frazetta Fantasy Art Gallery.

Exploring Towers of Adventure

Exploring Towers of Adventure

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towers-of-adventureA while back I placed an order with one of my favorite online vendors, FRP Games, whose selection and discounts are both excellent. At the last minute I added an item to my cart that I hadn’t budgeted for: James Ward’s Towers of Adventure, a boxed set for Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord Games.

Not only had I not planned to buy it, I’d never even heard of it until I saw it in FRP’s product newsletter.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for marketing copy:

Towers of Adventure offers the Castle Keeper a marvelous set of interchangeable tower levels, rooms, monsters, NPCs, traps and treasures. This box set allows you to make literally millions of exciting towers for your players to explore. Treasures, tower inhabitants, and tower maps are at your fingers and so easy to use you can put together a complex adventure in five minutes or less.

It’s true!  This isn’t a typical adventure supplement, with a set of interlinked encounters and rooms carefully described for the game master. In fact, while the box contains designs for 15 wildly different towers — including a Zombie Tower, Vampire Tower, Cloud Giant Tower, and Lonely Wizard’s Tower — I couldn’t find a room description anywhere.

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Heroscape Wave 11

Heroscape Wave 11

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Heroscape’s 11th wave arrived the other day and some valiant play testers stepped up to try out the new pieces with me.

wave-11Some of you might have missed the battle recap of an epic Heroscape battle posted at Eric Knight’s blog; these play tests weren’t nearly as involved, but they were a lot of fun.

As you might remember from my last Heroscape review, a wave is a new issue of figures in four packages. This one is titled Champions of the Forgotten Realms, in reference to the Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign world, which ties into the most recent Heroscape expansion set.

Of the four packages of the new wave, the easiest one to get the hang of was The Warriors of Ghostlight Fen. Its hydra and phantom warriors were pretty easy to figure out how to deploy on the battlefield. One of the great things about Heroscape is that the best way to use the figures isn’t always obvious – it requires experimentation, which is nice, because if the battle outcomes were obvious the game simply wouldn’t be as much fun.

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Short Fiction Roundup: WLT

Short Fiction Roundup: WLT

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may10coverWorld Literature Today (WLT), a publication of the University of Oklahoma, has an issue devoted to “International Science Fiction,” though a cursory review of the contributing authors makes it seem that “international” has a mostly eurocentric slant. In any event, you can read Kij Johnson’s story, “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,” as well as various non fiction pieces and a poem that have been posted on line.