Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Weird Samurai

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Weird Samurai

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Lady Snowblood (Japan, 1973)

Japanese chanbara (samurai swordplay) adventure shows and movies had a long history of being adapted from popular manga series. As the Sixties turned into the Seventies, chanbara manga got increasingly bizarre and extreme, and the screen adaptations followed. These historical fantasies drew on the avant-garde film movements of the last Sixties, but also pulled imagery and characters from traditional sources, melding dream-logic with ghostly revenants. Bracing stuff, and if it’s sometimes hard to follow their abrupt 90-degree turns, the stories always sort themselves out in the end.

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Vintage Treasures: Modern Classics of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

Vintage Treasures: Modern Classics of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

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Modern Classics of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Press, 1992). Jacket illustration courtesy of NASA

Back in October I wrote about Gardner Dozois’ 1994 anthology Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, saying it was one of my favorite fall reads. I noted at the time that it was part of a trilogy of books Gardner did for St. Martin’s that also included Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997), which I called “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a desert island.” But I’ve never discussed its sister volume, and first in the sequence, Modern Classics of Science Fiction (1992), and so today I thought I’d correct that egregious oversight.

Modern Classics of Science Fiction is a fabulous collection. Like the books that followed, it’s an eclectic and personal volume, filled not with the most famous and acclaimed short science fiction, but instead Gardner’s highly personal selection of some of the best SF of the 20th Century. It includes 26 stories published between 1956 and 1989, by Theodore Sturgeon, Richard McKenna, Jack Vance, Edgar Pangborn, Roger Zelazny, R. A. Lafferty, Samuel R. Delany, Brian W. Aldiss, Gene Wolfe, James Tiptree, Jr., Ursula K. Le Guin, Howard Waldrop, Lucius Shepard, Michael Swanwick, and many more.

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The Harp and The Blade: A Bard’s Adventures in Old France

The Harp and The Blade: A Bard’s Adventures in Old France

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Belarski cover for ARGOSY, June 22, 1940 issue, featuring Part One of “The Harp and the Blade.”The first printing of John Meyers Meyers’ The Harp and the Blade was serialized in seven parts in the pulp magazine Argosy from June through early August of 1940. Although the Rudolph Belarski painting on the cover of the June 22 issue might suggest that The Harp and the Blade is a fantasy, it is not. It is instead a straight adventure story set in medieval France.

What makes this story really interesting is its feeling of reality and the aliveness of the characters. We do not observe the story as if a Hollywood piece, at a comfortable distance from the action. Nor do we wallow in the filth, fleas, and mud. We are shown the reality of battle, the value of a laugh with friends, the necessity of a drink, and the delight of a kiss from one’s wife. The characters’ values are also of paramount importance, with clear demarcations made between good and bad. When there is a case of muddy morals, there is also a rationale, which may not be to our liking, but which makes sense for the characters involved.

The question is never asked — what makes life worth living? Instead, we are shown the answer in the simple things that the hero wants and that his blood-brother already has. This is a man’s tale, not grandiose, but heartfelt and homey as brown bread and good ale.

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Relive the Glory Days of BattleTech with Shrapnel Magazine

Relive the Glory Days of BattleTech with Shrapnel Magazine

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Shrapnel magazine, issues 4-6 (InMediaRes Productions, March, June & September 2021).
Covers by Florian Mellies (left) and Ken Coleman (middle and right)

I bought a few issues of the new Warhammer paperback magazine Inferno! last year, and was impressed enough to start looking around for similar publications. It wasn’t long before I found Shrapnel, the Official BattleTech Magazine published by InMediaRes Productions, and I picked up the first three issues.

Shrapnel is edited by John Helfers and Philip A. Lee, and published four times a year. In many ways it’s a spiritual successor to the old BattleTechnology print mag from the early 90s, edited by William H. Keith, Jr. and Hillary Edith Ayer. Shrapnel began life as a stretch goal for Catalyst Games’ 2019 Clan Invasion Kickstarter; organizers committed to four issues if they hit the goal. The campaign raised a whopping $2,580,000, and Shrapnel has been with us ever since.

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Future Treasures: Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore

Future Treasures: Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore

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Battle of the Linguist Mages (Tor.com, January 11, 2022)

If there’s a more exciting publisher in SF and fantasy at the moment than Tor.com, I don’t know what it is. They’ve dominated both award lists and bestseller lists with their recent powerhouse releases, including Martha Wells’ hugely popular Murderbot chronicles, Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth. Just in the last few months they’ve released brand new books by Tochi Onyebuchi, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Catherynne M. Valente, Alix E. Harrow, Charlie Jane Anders, Becky Chambers, and Peter F. Hamilton & Gareth L. Powell.

They’ve got a stellar line-up in place for next year as well, and we’re looking forward to sharing all the details. But the one I’ve got my eye on next month is Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore, author of Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You (Tor.com, February 2019). Charles Stross says, “It reads like Snow Crash had a dance-off with Gideon the Ninth, in a world where language isn’t a virus from outer space, it’s a goddamn alien invasion,” and that sounds like something worth canceling a few meetings for.

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Goth Chick News Classics: Ray Bradbury’s “The Wish” Brings New Magic to the Holidays

Goth Chick News Classics: Ray Bradbury’s “The Wish” Brings New Magic to the Holidays

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The Book

In 2019 I finally got around to writing about my first encounter with Ray Bradbury and his story “The Wish.” It isn’t one of his most famous or well known, but when it appeared in the December issue of Woman’s Day magazine in 1973, it touched my 9-year-old self in a deeply personal way. Following its appearance in Woman’s Day, “The Wish” only appeared twice more; once in a compilation called Long After Midnight, which I discovered in my subsequent youthful pursuit of all things Bradbury, and once in a format I only just discovered.

Here is where the magic comes in…

Back in October, 2020 I received an unusual voicemail on my “day job” phone. The gentleman introduced himself and asked if I was the Sue Granquist who writes for Black Gate. If so, he had something for me. If not, he apologized for bothering me and then left his number for me to call. What was exceptionally strange about this is that I don’t even know my office phone number, not to mention my very strict policy of separation of church and state – no one at the day job knows about my gig at Black Gate. So how, exactly, did this gentleman track me down there?

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New Treasures: The Godstone by Violette Malan

New Treasures: The Godstone by Violette Malan

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The Godstone (DAW Books, August 2021. Cover design by Faceout Studio/Jeff Miller.

Violette Malan will be familiar to many of you. She’s the author of the acclaimed Dhulyn and Parno series of modern sword & sorcery novels, and The Mirror Prince fantasy series. She was also our Friday blogger here at Black Gate for many years.

Her new novel The Godstone vaults her into the front ranks of modern fantasy. Publishers Weekly raves that it “transports readers to an exciting world of high-stakes magic,” and Kirkus Reviews calls it “An original, enigmatic fantasy about reluctant heroes drawn into a quest to save the world.” It’s the launch of a major new series, released in hardcover by DAW in August. Here’s all the details.

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Now Streaming: Better Off Ted

Now Streaming: Better Off Ted

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Better Off Ted
Better Off Ted

Better Off Ted was a workplace comedy that ran on ABC for two seasons from 2009 through 2010 for 26 episodes.  The series focused on Ted Crisp (Jay Harrington), a middle manager with something of a conscience trying to find the right balance between his conscience and fulfilling the needs of the soul-sucking international conglomerate he worked for.

Ted worked for Veronica Palmer (Portia de Rossi), who was all-in for the company, although it is not entirely clear that she draws a distinction between herself and the company, except when it serves her purposes. Ted oversees a couple of scientists who create the strange inventions the company, Veridian Dynamics, require, only rarely questioning if making things like a weaponized pumpkin means that they are mad scientists. The two scientists, Lem Hewitt (Malcolm Barrett) and Phil Myman (Jonathan Slavin) form an excellent comedy team, able to play off each other with either taking on the role of comic or foil (although Barrett tends to take the straight man role a little more often). Linda Zwordling (Andrea Anders) also works for Ted as a quality assurance analyst who views the scientists as nerds and fears Veronica’s mercurial moods.

Although primarily a contemporary mainstream workplace comedy, Phil and Lem’s inventions clearly have a science fictional element to them. In the first episode, the company decides the cryogenically freeze Phil and later episodes see the scientists creating a hover vest for children to wear (which, of course, would be a prototype for later military use). Veronica’s first line is telling Ted that the company wants to make a metal that is hard as steel, can bounce like rubber, and is edible, to which Ted responds, “We can do that.”

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Old School Pirates

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Old School Pirates

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The Spanish Main (Warner Bros, 1945)

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” –H. L. Mencken, 1919. And when more than during the winter holiday season, the Festival of the Taillights? Bring me my whetstone and cutlass! This week we celebrate old school Hollywood pirate epics, stories of charming rogues and swaggering scallywags. Come on, me lads, heave to and turn aside from It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, for it be time t’ wallow in a different nostalgia, one with more pointy edges to it. An’ ye can lay to that.

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Forbidden Magic, Murder, and Disco: The Carter Archives by Dan Stout

Forbidden Magic, Murder, and Disco: The Carter Archives by Dan Stout

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Dan Stout’s The Carter Archives: Titanshade, Titan Day, and Titan Song (DAW, 2019-21). Covers by Chris McGrath

Whenever an author wraps up a trilogy, we bake a cake in the Black Gate offices.

But what if it’s not actually, like, a trilogy? What if the third book is just a rest stop on a long and exciting journey toward five books? Or seven? Or, Wheel-of-Time like, a stupendous 12 volumes (or 14, or whatever the heck it is)?? If it’s not clear should we bake, or not bake?

Ha! You’re right, of course. Like we’d let nuance like that get in the way of cake. Fire up the oven, lads.

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