Black Gate

There’s one fantasy show on television today that I don’t really hear people talking about. I mean fantasy in a stricter sense, not in the broad sense that would include science fiction or urban fantasy or horror; I mean epic fantasy in an imaginary land with simpler technology where magic works.

The show has vibrant and compelling characters, a richly textured world and mythology, and crisp, clever writing. To these eyes it is the best fantasy show yet produced for television; certainly it is hands down the best written animated show on TV today

I am referring, of course, to Avatar

Produced for Nickelodeon, at first blush Avatar may look like any other dozen Yu-gi-oh’s or Digios or Cheerimon’s or, indeed, any show with YA protagonists battling monsters. If all you’ve ever done is flip past, you’re unlikely to have seen anything striking.

If you stay long enough for one episode, you’re liable to be favorably impressed with the writing. If you stay for two or three half-hour shows, you start to appreciate the character development and if you watch for any longer… well, you might just get hooked.

Sure, sometimes the comedic elements are played a little too broadly for my taste, a la animé, but when that happens I remind myself that I’m not the intended audience. Avatar is an amazing storytelling cocktail, one that hasn’t produced any real clunkers in the approximately 40 half-hour episodes aired so far. It doesn’t talk down to its audience, and it doesn’t dumb down its writing. Fond as I am of Johnny Quest and a few other shows, there was nothing this good on television when I was a child. Heck, there’s rarely been any cartoon series on this good, ever, with the exception of the DC animated work from Bruce Timm and co. of the 90s and perhaps a handful of other recent shows. None of them, though, have handled such a long story arc so surely, so deftly. Almost every episode can stand on its own and can be viewed individually, yet when viewed in order each season forms a grand arc. Avatar is sure-footed storytelling.

For those of you not in the know, Avatar is set on an Asian-influenced fantasy world where there are four kingdoms named after the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Magic workers in each of the kingdoms can “bend,” or magically manipulate, the element native to their kingdom, with stylistic martial arts movements. The Avatar, reincarnated every generation, is the only man or woman who can manipulate all four elements. The titular Avatar, Aang, is a 12-year-old who was accidentally suspended for 100 years. While he lay dormant, the fire nation launched a war against the rest of the world. By the time Aang is revived by two teenagers from the water tribe, the fire nation has exterminated all of the air benders (save for Aang) and has nearly conquered the vast holdings of the Earth nation. Aang has the potential to master all of the elements, but he must learn them, and he must learn them quickly, if he is to stop the final push of the fire lord.

I suppose any synopsis could be rendered dull in summary, and perhaps I have managed it above. Or perhaps it’s not Avatar’s backstory so much as its delivery that makes it so excellent. The flawed, likable, lovable characters and their story arcs draw you into the epic. The painter has touched THIS canvas with large broad strokes and small subtle ones with equal mastery. Upon third and fourth viewing new surprises pop out of the backdrops and understanding deepens. I can’t imagine noticing much new from Scooby-Doo reruns.

The martial arts used in the show are fabulous – the magical and martial battles are simply amazing. In addition to everything else, Avatar is probably setting new high standards for animation. The climactic battles in key moments — for instance, the fire nation invasion of the water tribe stronghold at the end of the first season — must be seen to be believed. They’re as gorgeous as the grand battles in any high budget Hollywood blockbusters. I could go on and on, but I have been trying to keep my posts shorter these days, so I’ll shut up now, except that I will mention the first two seasons are available through Amazon right now. 

It’s excellent stuff. Don’t miss it. Sooner or later people will be writing dissertations about this show. I find it hard to believe more adults aren’t talking about it

Howard

I woke up with a crick in my neck yesterday; today it is getting worse and worse. That laundry’s not going to sort itself, nor are the weeds going to wack themselves, but I’m not going to be doing the laudrying or the wacking today. I’m having to lay back against pillows and carry myself — when I walk — as though I’ve just barely survived a zombie throttling. My neck’s held stiffly and canted oddly to the right. (It may that in my movements today I resemble a zombie.)

So I had this epiphany the other day, reinforced today, as I’m not good for much but reading right now. I have a pile of single-author collections nearby. It is more fun to dip back and forth between them than it is to read them one after the other, that way I don’t get tired of one author’s tone and style. Well, yeah, you’re probably thinking, doesn’t everyone know that? Probably. I wish Captain Obvious had visited me with this and other lessons many years ago. I used to sit down with Leiber or Robert E. Howard and read them straight through and not mind at all. Now I prefer to mix things up. My current selections are a Matt Hughes book, Gist Stories, Brian McNaughton’s Throne of Bones, and William King’s Trollslayer.  

Howard

Lamb and the Mist

On Wednesday I got to hold two book texts with my name on them. The first was my master’s thesis. I didn’t think it would be that Earth-shattering to hold it, but, well, it’s nice. Here it is, back from the book binder, with my name and the thesis title on the spine: Subtext of the Steppes: A Critical Analysis of Harold Lamb’s Cossack Saga. Now a copy is sitting on the same shelf as the Lamb books I edited (Wolf of the Steppes, Warriors of the Steppes, Riders of the Steppes, and Swords of the Steppes).

The other book I held was the text of my unpublished novel, Daughter of the Mist, which I printed for another once-over. It was a pleasure to hold the entire thing in my hands. It’s sitting at approximately 93k, which is right where I wanted it, lengthwise, and comes in at 450 manuscript pages. I’ve sent it off to a handful of test readers and my fingers are crossed that problems they find won’t require months of adjusting. They WILL find issues — there are always issues of some kind, which is one of the reasons a writer should use test readers.

I took the entire summer to perform a lengthy revision, then took August for a polishing pass and eliminated some craptacular prose. The next step, after I make whatever corrections my test readers find, is submission to agents and editors.

Here’s the thing I thought might be of interest to vistors. While reading Leigh Brackett stories to my kids this summer I was struck by how much of Brackett’s world-building had percolated unconsciously into my own writing. When my wife first met me, in the early 90s, I was constantly trying to sound like some cross between Roger Zelazny and Fritz Leiber (as my wife will tell you, I mostly sounded like a BAD imitation of Zelazny). Those early efforts were deliberate, conscious, ham-handed attempts to imitate style. This was different. I hadn’t read a lot of these Brackett stories since I was in my mid-teens, and I discovered that place-naming conventions on the mist world sounded — quite unintentionally — very much like Brackett’s Mars. There are a lot of double k’s linked with as and es and followed by “ar.” For instance, she has Jekkara, I have Mekkara. As a matter of fact, my protagonist’s sidekick is Jekka (Jekka, Jekkara). I soaked these things up without realizing — when I was reading these tales  at 15 I wasn’t yet reading for technique, I was just reading for pleasure. While drafting my novel some twenty years later, those naming structures resurfaced without me having an inkling about where they’d come from.  I was dismayed this summer when I realized my conventions hadn’t been wholly original, then decided just to leave things as they were, in quiet homage. Does that happen to anyone else out there? How much does the work of your favorite writers creep in unconsciously?

The discovery shouldn’t really have surprised me — my friend John Hocking has told me that the mist world stuff reads like a modern Brackett/Kuttner/Planet Stories cocktail, though he seems to think I’ve got my own style, these days. Thank goodness.

Just before I printed out this version I discovered I still had one island listed as “Placeholder.” When I’m cranking away on a scene I frequently drop in “placeholder” as a name for a place or person or weird object so that I don’t have to stop the writing flow. I’d somehow left this place unnamed until the very end. I searched my memory and then my bookshelves for inspiration or a word I could twist a little into an interesting place name, and before long I had the new island name, though this time the attribution was deliberate: Kuttnaar. Brackett and Kuttner were friends, after all.

Howard

Finding Fine Fiction

Most of the speculative fiction I’ve read over the last ten years has been from the long ago. At about the time my son was born I decided that if I was serious about writing fantasy I’d better have a solid idea about its roots, its founders, and its themes. Until recently, I rarely came up from the cellar to read more modern work. I missed a whole slew of acclaimed things, and am only now starting to catch up.

I recently read Chris Willrich’s “The Lions of Karthagar,” which was one of the finest stories I pulled out of the Black Gate e-submission pile. We’re looking forward to publishing it in Black Gate. I’d heard good things about his tales of Bone and Gaunt, and Chris kindly sent those my way so I could see for myself — wow. Lyrical, brilliant, scattered with lovely imagery and imagined with haunting loveliness… it’s amazing stuff. I hope he puts a collection together soon, and I certainly hope he keeps writing. Chris’ work had appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the last few years, and so too had the work of Matthew Hughes, another author I’ve heard about but hadn’t read. 

I tracked down a copy of Hughes’ The Gist Hunter & Other Stories and sat down to read a few tales last night. It too is layered with brilliant imagery. The first stories are detective fiction, albeit through a whimsical Vancian lens, and I’m very much looking forward to reading more. This is clever, entertaining, inventive work. And I am extremely pleased that, for once, I’m not coming late to the party, because Night Shade is releasing a series of Hughes’ books very shortly. 

For more information about Hughes, and a way to obtain free Hughes books (follow the link and see just how timely I truly am!)  visit his site by following this link.

Howard

CAS and Robert Jordan

We almost never discuss them here on the blog, but I wanted to point everyone once more to the weekly web articles at the Black Gate site. Every week there’s something of interest going up.

Last week Leo Grin uploaded the final installment of Ryan Harvey’s survey of Clark Ashton Smith. Ryan always writes with great skill and insight, and these four articles are likely to establish him as an acknowledged expert on CAS. He’s currently working away on an essay about Leigh Bracketts Eric John Stark, that I’m very much looking forward to reading.

This week, Black Gate’s Leo Grin posts his own work for the first time, a fine essay on the death and legacy of Robert Jordan. Like Ryan, Leo writes extremely well; both men have an excellent command of the language. They are critical but fair, scholarly but eminently readable. Frequently those sets of poles are unrelated.

You can find both articles, as well as other reviews, essays, and interviews, at www.blackgate.com. New web content appears every Sunday.

If you get a chance to read them, I hope you’ll drop by one of the Black Gate forums and discuss them:

SFReader Black Gate Forum

SFF.Net Black Gate Newsgroup

Editing

My friend Eric and I are both in the midst of novel-length edits, so when he posted the other day about things to keep in mind while editing, I was all ears. Boy, some of the issues he mentioned are familiar to me! Take a look at his helpful hints by following this link.

That’s all for now. I hope everyone’s having a good weekend.

Howard

Today I wrote the final e-submission response for the final batch of e-submissions. By now, if you’ve sent an e-sub to Black Gate, there are five possible results:

1. 1. I’ve let you know that I’ve forwarded the story on to John O’Neill for serious consideration and he’s purchased your story.
2. 2. I’ve let you know that I’ve forwarded the story on to John O’Neill for serious consideration and he’s passed on your story.
3. 3. I’ve passed the story on to John but you haven’t heard from him yet. John’s steaming along and should get to your tale soon. I apologize for his delay — we had to send his nephew to Tijuana to pull John out of the gutter, so he’s a week or so behind yet. He didn’t have any manuscripts with him, though, so nothing important got soiled.
4. 4. I’ve rejected the story and sent you a note.
5. 5. I’ve sent a rejection but you haven’t received it because your spam filter blocked me or because your address changed. 

If you’ve sent me something and haven’t heard back yet, drop me a line. Do remember that when I came on board John took the physical slush and I took the electronic slush, so I can’t answer any physical slush questions, other than that I know John is still working his way through some, alternating between reading those and reading the stories I forwarded on to him for serious consideration.

When we re-open for submissions again we are likely to employ reading periods to help keep things under control. Those reading periods will, naturally, be announced both here and on the web site.

To celebrate, this weekend I will unload some 160 bales of hay into my barn, grade a bunch of papers, and, hopefully, finish the polishing pass on my novel.

My best to all! Have a great weekend.

Howard

Eric Knight’s posted an excellent article on working backstory into one’s plot. Lord knows, I see a lot of ham-handed back story creation and have written some myself; it’s a subject that all world builders need to consider carefully. Just because you know all the names of everyone in Ravenclaw House doesn’t mean that you need to tell us those names. J. K. Rowling, incidentally, DOES know the names of everyone in Harry Potter’s year. But the action doesn’t stop so that we KNOW that she knows all the names. The information just gets used.

Anyway, here’s the article. Writers out there, take note.

Howard

I’ve finished reading all the Black Gate e-submissions. I have a dozen or so responses left to write and a few decisions to make; everyone awaiting e-sub information should know the fate of their story within the next few days.

Howard