How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon

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how_to_train_your_dragon_posterHow to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBloid. Featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson.

A new U.S. Godzilla film is on the way! One that will do it right! Rejoice!

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Now, where was I . . . something else about giant monsters. . . .

I avoid most CGI animated films that don’t have the name “Pixar” in front of them; last year’s Monsters vs Aliens was just another reminder that nobody else seems to even try to reach Pixar’s level of story quality and characterization. “Those Who Are Not Pixar” are quite content just to wink at the adults with pop-culture jokes and coast on celebrity voices. However, when I saw the trailers for How to Train Your Dragon, I was intrigued. The movie appeared to be mostly ironic fantasy—not a genre that does much for me, aside from an occasional Terry Pratchett novel—but it also seemed to have some genuine heroic sword-and-sorcery going on in it. Vikings and dragons . . . I thought there were some juicy possibilities.

Okay, so I was wrong.

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Now Shipping: Black Gate 14

Now Shipping: Black Gate 14

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bg-14-cover3Black Gate 14 is now shipping.  Foreign and domestic subscriber copies went in the mail last week.

At  384 pages, Black Gate 14 is the largest issue in our history. Be sure you’re in a sturdy chair while reading.

It includes an 8-page Knights of the Dinner Table strip, nearly 25 full pages of art, and over 150,000 words of fiction – including a Morlock novella from James Enge, a new tale of Brand the Viking from John C. Hocking, and fiction from Michael Jasper & Jay Lake, Pete Butler, Robert J. Howe,  Diana Sherman, Martin Owton, Mike Shultz, and many others.

Rich Horton returns with another detailed look at the rich history of the fantasy genre, this time focusing on publishers striving to keep the best of the past in print in “Back To The Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy.” And of course we include our regular review columns, calling out the finest new fantasy games and books, assembled and edited by Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward.

The complete Black Gate 14 preview is here.

The gorgeous wraparound cover is by Bruce Pennington, who also did the cover to Black Gate 12.

The issue is available for just $15.95, plus $2.50 shipping – or, until we come to our senses, you can include it as part of a 4-issue subscription for the criminally low price of $29.95. Our order page is here.

We’re hard at work converting the issue to PDF format, and will make a downloadable version of the issue available in early April for just $4.95 (only $2.95 for existing subscribers).

Short Fiction Beat: Online

Short Fiction Beat: Online

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cw_42_600Over at Clarkesworld, stories by Gord Sellar and Matthew Kressel, plus an interview with Kij Johnson.  This cool cover by Georgi Markov is called “Retro Robots.”

Kind of makes you miss magazines that you could hold in your hand and leave out on your coffee table to display.

Dickson’s Dorsai! to Hit Small Screen

Dickson’s Dorsai! to Hit Small Screen

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dorsai-cover-wrapOccasionally a bit of book-to-film news seems to come out of nowhere and create some genuine surprise. So, amidst reports of this-or-that being remade, rebooted, retread, reimagined, or reduxed (what is it this week? Lord of the Ring Tones? Aliens vs. Predator vs. Chucky vs. Tony Montana? T.J. Hooker on Mars?) it seems there is actually an original, never done before, not part of a hot franchise redo, SF book adaptation slated for television. Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe Cycle, better known by the name of the first book in the series, Dorsai!, is being made into a live action series by MDR productions (official site). Announcements to that effect can be read at SFsignal and SF Crowsnest.

Not a great deal of information on it yet, just some nice art and story boards, and general background. The Dorsai! universe is an interesting choice, from a  series of books I enjoyed but one that felt very disjointed and fragmented due to the long time separating books, the somewhat cobbled together nature of the earlier ones, and similar issues. I have a bit of a hard time imagining the tv series (or mini-series more likely) picking up on future books as, if I recall correctly, they mostly all jump ahead in time and present an entirely new cast of characters.

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A Remembrance of Steve Tompkins

A Remembrance of Steve Tompkins

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A little over a year ago, my friend John C. Hocking called me  to let me know that Steve Tompkins passed away.  I was on a family mini-vacation at the time, and, oddly enough, I am again on a family mini-vacation shortly after the anniversary of his death.

kullI wanted to point all of you to the fine series of articles over on The Cimmerian in remembrance of Steve, but I also wanted to offer a word of explanation. Neither John nor myself could claim to be close friends with Steve, though we were occasional correspondents. I had the pleasure to meet him in person once, and we sometimes traded information and opinions, for we shared many of the same fiction preferences, but I did not know him that well.

So why, then, was Hocking so upset that he called me to let me know, and why was the passing of this acquaintance so moving that I think about him from time to time even when it’s not the anniversary of his death? Why are so many people still talking about a man that many of you may never have heard of?

It’s because Steve was a phenomenal scholar of fantasy and heroic fiction/sword-and-sorcery and probably the most well-read person I’ve ever met — and he was also, simply, a really nice guy.

You have only to visit his archived essays at The Cimmerian to see that talent, or his good natured spirit. You also can flip through the essays he drafted in many other places, not the least of which are some of the Del Rey Robert E. Howard volumes, including Kull – Exile of Atlantis. He was a genius.

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John C. Hocking’s “The Face in the Sea” nominated for Harper’s Pen Award

John C. Hocking’s “The Face in the Sea” nominated for Harper’s Pen Award

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face-in-the-sea-277The Sorcerer’s Guild announced this week that John C. Hocking’s “The Face in the Sea” (from Black Gate 13) has been nominated for the Harper’s Pen Award (formerly the Ham-Sized Fist Award).

The Harper’s Pen Award honors the best Heroic Fantasy or Sword and Sorcery short fiction. The award is sponsored by The Sorcerer’s Guild. The stated goal of the award is “to encourage authors to continue to explore heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery fiction, as well as to reward those who continue to publish it.”

The Finalists for 2009 are:

Special shout out to Black Gate Contributing Editor Bill Ward, for his nomination for “The Last of His Kind.”

There’s some fine publications on that list.  If you like heroic fantasy, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to try a few of the links above and, if you like what you see, support one of our sister magazines. Me, I’m going off to read some more Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

Congratulations to all the finalists!  The winner will be announced next week.

Goth Chick News: Graveyard Humor

Goth Chick News: Graveyard Humor

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goth-kidsThere’s nothing like being faced with your own weirdness.

Last week a home improvement project forced me to pack up my beloved library for the weekend, including that creepy little statue from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Every last book had to be removed, and since I didn’t trust anyone else, I did it myself.

The eye-level shelves contained nostalgic memory joggers such as the complete set of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which represented the first review I ever did for Black Gate, and the hard cover copies of every book Anne Rice ever wrote, each personally signed to me (remember all the lousy weather you stood outside in to get those autographs?).

These two items may seem a bit strange to you, but that’s par for the course around my abode. And when I come across something odd, even for me, that’s saying something.

As I got toward the bottom shelves in the corner near the love seat, just left of the secret door leading down to the dungeon (kidding), I found I had collected a whole shelf of unusual books on the topic of death. And for those of you thinking “That sounds normal for her,” it really isn’t.

Unlike the “Goth Kids” on South Park, I am not, nor have I ever been, death obsessed. One summer working as an orderly at the local hospital cured me of that, believe me. Wheeling several of the real thing down to the morgue while the warmth was still dissipating was enough to put me off.

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Everybody Loves Cthulhu…

Everybody Loves Cthulhu…

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Anticipating CTHULHU’S REIGN (Part 1)

Available on April 6, 2010...the end is near...
CTHULHU’S REIGN is coming on April 6…

“After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.”
– H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu,” 1928

“I want to know the same thing we all want to know: How’s it going to end?”
–Tom Waits, Orphans, 2006

There was a time, not so long ago, when only those who read H. P. Lovecraft’s masterful tales of cosmic horror had heard the name “Cthulhu.” In 2010 that is no longer the case. Thanks to an ever-growing legion of Lovecraft fans, books, magazines, movies, games, and web sites, Cthulhu has taken his place firmly among the Greatest Monsters of All Time.

Dracula. Frankenstein. Wolf-Man. Mummy. King Kong. Godzilla. Cthulhu.

Anyone can add a few more of his favorite monsters to this list, but one thing’s for sure: Great Cthulhu has risen into the mortal consciousness in a way that Lovecraft himself probably never imagined. And what’s not to love about this mountainous space-god with the head of a colossal squid, demonic batwings, a bloated and scaly body, and the ability to sleep for eons beneath the Pacific Ocean while sending evil dreams to haunt mortal men?  Today, even folks who have never read a Lovecraft story have heard of ol’ squid-head and his legacy.

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The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Speak to Me of Death”

The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Speak to Me of Death”

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speak-to-me-of-deathMost pulp writers of the 1930s were itching to break into the hardcover book market. Since reprints of pulp stories in book form were rare at the time, these writers did not expect that their work for the newsstands would survive past an issue’s sell-date. They felt comfortable re-working and expanding on them to create novels. Raymond Chandler famously called his process of novelizing his already published work as “cannibalizing.” He welded together different short stories, often keeping large sections of text intact with only slight alterations. Other authors took ideas that they liked, or else felt they could do more justice to in the novel format, and enlarged them into books without text carry-over. Robert E. Howard used “The Scarlet Citadel” as a guide for The Hour of the Dragon. And Cornell Woolrich turned many of his short stories into novels. “Face Work” became The Black Angel. “Call Me Patrice” became I Married a Dead Man. “The Street of Jungle Death” became Black Alibi. And “Speak to Me of Death” became Woolrich’s most depressing novel (which is really saying something), Night Has a Thousand Eyes.

In most of these cases, Woolrich made major changes from the short version to the longer one. “Face Work” is a minor piece and only remains as an incident within The Black Angel. “Street of Jungle Death” is a pretty wretched piece of junk, and yet Woolrich took this silly “big cat on the loose in Hollywood!” and fashioned it into a grim classic — one of his best novels — set in the web-ways of a South American city.

But in the case of “Speak to Me of Death” and its growth into Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Woolrich changed little of the story. He instead deepened this examination of fate, psychic powers, and police work so it lasted over three hundred pages. The short story is a classic, and so is the novel — it’s merely a matter of the length of the author maintains the effect. If Night Has a Thousand Eyes is the superior work, “Speak to Me of Death” might be better for your nerves because it ends much sooner.

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Gary Con II Report

Gary Con II Report

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gary_con2-logo1On Saturday I drove to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for the second annual Gary Con, a friendly gathering in honor of Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons and the father of role-playing games.

You can read the Tribute to Gary Gygax, written by the staff at Black Gate magazine and Paizo publisher Erik Mona after Gary’s death in 2008, if you’re not familiar with his work.

Chainmail re-enactment of T1: The Village of Hommlet at Garycon II
Chainmail re-enactment of T1: The Village of Hommlet at Garycon II. Click for bigger version.

Lake Geneva is the birthplace of D&D and, consequently, the entire RPG industry. It was here that TSR, the company Gary co-founded in 1973, was headquartered for over two decades, and where many of the creative minds who helped it grow from a fledgling hobby company to the most influential game publisher of the last 30 years still live today – people like Tim Kask, founding editor of Dragon magazine, Gamma World author James Ward, RPGA founder Frank Mentzer, Snit’s Revenge creator Tom Wham, and many others.

The stated goal of the con is to “harken back to the early days of gaming conventions where role-playing was in its infancy and the players shared a strong sense of camaraderie,” and in that respect Gary Con was an unqualified success.

Players gathered around dozens of tables enjoying highlights from TSR’s early catalog, including first edition AD&D, Metamorphosis Alpha, Dawn Patrol, Boot Hill, Dungeon, Chainmail, and more modern games that strive to capture that sense of old-school adventure, such as Hackmaster, Castles and Crusades, and even Gygax’s fondly remembered post-TSR effort, Dangerous Journeys.

Best of all, I saw many renowned game designers and early TSR employees mingling with the crowd, or acting as dungeon masters for classic Gygax modules such as Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, The Temple of Hommlet, and Castle Greyhawk.

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