Pastiches ‘R’ Us: Conan the Defender

Pastiches ‘R’ Us: Conan the Defender

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conan-the-defenderConan the Defender
Robert Jordan (Tor, 1982)

I’ve had some requests on the site and in emails to my own blog from people who have enjoyed previous installments of “Pastiches ‘R’ Us” to look at Robert Jordan’s novels. I’m here to serve. This week and next I’ll feature two of the famous fantasy author’s Conan novels.

Robert Jordan, the pen name of James Oliver Rigney Jr., is the best-known of the stable of writer on Tor’s long-running and now defunct Conan pastiche series. After writing six consecutive books (and the novelization of Conan the Destroyer), Jordan turned into one of the most popular authors of epic fantasy with his “Wheel of Time” series. Unfortunately, Jordan’s career ended early with his death in 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis, only a month before his fifty-ninth birthday.

How does Jordan’s work on Conan stack up? He’s not consistently the strongest of the Tor group—I think John Maddox Roberts deserves that title—but when Jordan first started writing Conan, he created some fresh and energetic material. His first Conan novel, Conan the Invincible (also the first of the Tor series), is pulpily exciting and one of the few pastiches from the Tor books that I recommend to people who normally avoid non-Howard Conan.

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Short Fiction Review #22: Interfictions 2

Short Fiction Review #22: Interfictions 2

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51e9xmo1jbl_sl160_aa115_1What’s interesting about a collection of “interfictions,” aka “interstitial fictions,” is that this isn’t just another descriptor  (e.g., new wave fabulism, new weird, slipstream, paraspheres, fill-in-the-blank) made up by an editor or a marketing department or critic that subsequently becomes blogosphere fodder about how inaccurate and/or stupid it is. Rather, interfictions is the self-proclaimed terminology of an actual organization that sponsors not only this second volume of what presumably is an ongoing anthology series, but promotes all kinds of “interstitial” literary, musical, visual and performance arts.

So just what is an interfiction? Henry Jenkins’s introduction opens with the famous quote from Groucho Marx about not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him as a member. While it may be true that interfictions don’t fit neatly into traditional categories, there’s considerable irony, if not the essence of interstitiality, about the idea of an organization in which membership is earned by virtue of failing to belong anywhere else.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on defining interfiction (if you’re interested, see my review of the first Interfictions for further deliberation), though it is interesting that the authors themselves, as well as co-editors, Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak, aren’t always quite sure, other than to note what it isn’t.

Sherman, for example, says that one rule of thumb for considering what to accept for Interfictions 2 was that if a story more than likely could be something you’d see in a genre magazine, say, Fantasy and Science Fiction, then it probably wasn’t an interfiction (adhering to the “if it belongs to some other club, it can’t be in ours” rubric). It is particularly ironical, then, that Amazon has named  Interfictions 2 as one of the top ten science fiction and fantasy books of 2009!

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Steven Brust’s Jhegaala

Steven Brust’s Jhegaala

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jhegaala-brustJhegaala
Steven Brust
Tor (300 pages, $24.95, July 2008)
Reviewed by Bill Ward

The world of epic fantasy has its Martins, Jordans, and Eriksons, writers at the helm of long-running series with massively convoluted plots and hundreds of characters — and, quite often, no end in sight. But when compared to Steven Brust’s Taltos novels, which debuted in 1983, these long-running epics are Johnny-come-latelys, part of a newer way of packaging fantasy fiction that began with Robert Jordan in the early nineties and shows no signs of abating. Jhegaala is the eleventh book chronicling the adventures of the clever and cynical rogue Vlad Taltos, a character whom Brust has been writing about for twenty-five years in a series that hearkens back to an earlier mode of serial fantasy, the episodic sword and sorcery tale.

Which means, unlike with epic fantasy, a reader can pick up a book in the middle of Brust’s series and not have to worry about needing a wealth of prior plot and exposition to understand it. Jhegaala is perhaps an even better example of this than some of Brust’s prior books, as it takes place completely out-of-context chronologically and geographically with the rest of the series. Vlad, on the run from his own House and exiled from his home city of Adrilankha, travels to his ancestral homeland in the East. There, among his own kind in the town of Burz, he stumbles into the paranoid world of local powers, and begins to unravel a mystery that involves a pervasive guild, a coven of witches, and the ruler of the region himself.

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Short Fiction Beat, Shameless Self Promotion Division

Short Fiction Beat, Shameless Self Promotion Division

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cover4Steampunk Tales offers an interesting convergence of the new and old,  a pulp magazine for the iPhone (don’t worry, non-Apple heads, there’s also a downloadable PDF version). Volume 4  features ten stories:

“Convergence Culture, Pt. 2” by C.B. Harvey
“The Brass Pedestal” by Natania Barron
“The Gods of War” by Arkwright
“Miluth” by Alison Boyd
“Stormada, Pt. 3” by SatyrPhil Brucato
“An Unfortunate Engagement, Pt. 6” by G. D. Falksen
“Sideways” by Andrew Singleton
“The Choice for Cibyl” by David Soyka
“The Steam Mapper” by Clark Sumner Edwards
“The Juggernaut” by Rajan Khanna

And, yes that Soyka fellow happens to be directly related to me in the most direct way possible. But, check the issue out, anyway.

The Graphic Versions of “Pigeons fron Hell”

The Graphic Versions of “Pigeons fron Hell”

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Continuing my graphic novel coverage of earlier posts. . . .

Once upon a time, the Louisiana region known as Acadiana was home to many magnificent plantations . . . but time changed that.

In August, I wrote an article about Robert E. Howard’s southern horror tale, “Pigeons from Hell,” my personal favorite work from the seminal fantasy author. That post contains a full spoiler-filled discussion of the plot, so I won’t recap it here. Although “Pigeons from Hell” has nowhere near the fame of Howard’s sword-and-sorcery work, it has leaped into the comics medium not once but twice . . . and in two completely different ways. On one side is a straightforward rendition, capturing most of what makes the story so powerful. On the other side is a modernization and adaptation that tries new tricks with the same story structure.

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GOTH CHICK NEWS: Hanging Around with Dead People

GOTH CHICK NEWS: Hanging Around with Dead People

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ghostadventures2I’ll bet you’ve noticed a rather interesting trend on your cable channels lately. Namely, ghost hunting reality shows.
 
I’ve counted no less than seven without even trying: The Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and Most Haunted, The SyFy Networks’ Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, and Ghost Hunters Academy, The Discovery Channel’s Paranormal State, and one of my personal favorites, A&E’s A Haunting. 
 
Now, I could whip out my psychology degree and tell you that this saturation of fascination with the dead stems from a need to dodge the harsh reality of plunging stock markets and home foreclosures by indulging our primal attraction to the unknown, but that wouldn’t be entirely the whole story. 
 
I think it has way more to do with the fact that we’re all just closet adrenaline junkies, and at least some of these shows offer a few moments of genuine spine-tingling escapism. 

ghost-huntersThen again, an equal number are train wrecks of over-acting we just can’t look away from.
 
But either way, it’s an addiction.  I can say this without compunction, as I’ve been addicted for years.
 

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Spectrum 16: Now Fortified with Black Gate!

Spectrum 16: Now Fortified with Black Gate!

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spectrum16spectrum-16b1Spectrum 16, edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner, was published this month by Underwood Books.

I’ve been a fan of these books since the first, way back in 1994.  There are a lot of Best of… anthologies gathering the most acclaimed short fiction each year but, until Arnie and Cathy thought of it, no anthologies collecting the finest art. It was a stroke of genius, and that first volume was a hit. They’ve been at it ever since.

The books are full color and include lush layouts covering Advertising, Books, Comics, Concept Art, Sculpture, Editorial, Institutional, Unpublished — and even a lengthy Year in Review.  Spectrum 16 weighs in at 264 pages, and is just $39.95 for the hardcover (I bought mine for $26.37 from  Amazon.com). This year the Grand Master is Richard Corben.

Browsing these books is marvelous. Top-notch science fiction and fantasy often sets my imagination soaring, but not in the way that really great artwork can. The editors collect an astonishing array of diverse images from hundreds of gifted artists — pictures that are humorous, baffling, erotic, beautiful, disturbing, breath-taking, and everything in between. Depending on what your imagination is like, these books can be more diverting than a Stephen King novel.

This year is a special treat because the editors have seen fit to include Malcolm McClinton’s cover to Black Gate 13  in the Editorial section — in all its wrap-around glory. “Gladiatrix” was Malcolm’s first cover for Black Gate, and the first wrap-around image we’ve published since BG 3. It’s a knockout piece, and the response from readers was universally positive.

It’s a proud moment for us.  I’d like to congratulate Malcolm for being included — and also for a fabulous cover.

Short Fiction Beat: On Spec

Short Fiction Beat: On Spec

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os_fall09_coverCanadian SF magazine On Spec completes its 20th anniversary of publication.

The Fall 2009 issue is guest edited by Robert J. Sawyer, and features fiction by Brent Knowles, Joanna M. Weston, Dave Cherniak, Amanda Downum, Erin Thomas, and Andrew Bryant. There are also poems by Phoebe T.H. Tsang and Lynn Pattison, as well as author interviews and other commentary.

Quite an accomplishment, eh?

Happy Thanksgiving! Celebrate with an Uncanny Story

Happy Thanksgiving! Celebrate with an Uncanny Story

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It’s Thanksgiving here in the United States.  One of the better holidays ever invented, even if you’re a displaced Canadian like me.

american-fantastic-tales2In addition to eating, putting the finishing touches on BG 14, eating, writing my editorial, and eating, I’ll be stealing a few hours for leisure reading. Thanksgiving weekend usually involves at least a little travel (this year we’re celebrating in Madison, Wisconsin, three hours from our home in St. Charles, IL), so anything too long is out.  I need something I can finish in short bursts, in between sequential naps in a big green recliner.

Fortunately, a perfectly apropos choice landed on my doorstep last month, compliments of the Library of America. Peter Straub’s two-volume American Fantastic Tales, subtitled Terror and the Uncanny, is one of those genre-defining collections, a banquet of spooky fall reading that will likely last me months. And just like Thanksgiving, it’s unapologetically American in focus.

As we’ve already established, I’m a sucker for big retrospective collections.  This one reminds me of a favorite from my childhood, Anthony Boucher’s seminal two-volume A Treasury of Great Science Fiction. Gathering numerous tales of vintage SF and even a few complete novels (including Alfred Bester’s The Stars Our Destination and A.E. Van Vogt’s The Weapons Shops of Isher), it captivated me for weeks in the summer of 1977, most of which I spent reading in the trailer in our back yard. 

Straub doesn’t include any novels among his selections.  But like Boucher’s classic, American Fantastic Tales is huge — nearly 1,5oo pages of fiction, carefully selected to showcase the best horror tales in American history, from Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Joe Hill, Kelly Link, and Michael Chabon.

treasury-sfVolume One, From Poe to the Pulps, features Herman Melville, Robert W. Chambers, Edith Wharton, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch and many others.  Volume Two, From the 1940s to Now, includes John Cheever, Charles Beaumont, Vladimir Nabokov, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, John Crowley, Stephen King, Steven Millhauser, and over a dozen more.

While I sometimes wished for a few more editorial notes on the selections, overall I’m very impressed.   I’m sure this collection (also available in a handsome boxed set from Amazon) will be on more than a few Christmas wish lists.

I hope you find suitable treasures of your own to snuggle down with this weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, Black Gate readers.

Batman/Doc Savage Special #1

Batman/Doc Savage Special #1

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batman-as-the-shadowI am going to semi-repeat myself in my next two Black Gate posts, going over graphic novel versions of material that I’ve discussed over the past few months.

First up, and the more immediately timely subject because it just hit the newsstands on November 11, is DC Comic’s Batman/Doc Savage Special #1, a one-shot designed to set up a new alternate universe called The First Wave. As I posted before, this is one of few mainstream superhero comic ideas that to really excite me over the past two years, since it would re-imagine the modern comic heroes into the world of 1930s pulp. No super-powers, no aliens, just guns and gadgets . . . plus the re-appearance onto the comics pages of the some of the classic figures of the pulps.

When I bought Batman/Doc Savage Special #1 at my local comic book store, it was the first time I had bought a “monthly” mag in a few years. Usually, I wait to purchase trade paperbacks, but this was a must-have. There was no way I could wait until this got collected with the issues of the upcoming regular First Wave series, which doesn’t start until March. And, unfortunately, Batman/Doc Savage Special was over all too quickly. Another reason I usually don’t buy monthlies and wait for the book publication.

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