Johnny Mayhem, man of a thousand faces, leaping from body to body, putting right things that had once went…no wait! That’s the television show, Quantum Leap, which ran from 1989 to 1993. Never mind. Decades before Sam Beckett went leaping through time, there was another bodiless adventurer doing much the same thing. His name was Johnny Mayhem.
(Goliath and the Sins of Babylon, Italy, 1963)
If you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you’ll like. Between 1959 and 1964, the leading genre of Italian adventure films was the peplum, or sword and sandal movie. The fad for these began in 1958 with the first Steve Reeves Hercules film, and there were a whole lot of Hercules films to follow, but we’re going to save those for another day and cherry-pick our way through the non-Herc movies. Peplum films tended to be made quickly and cheaply: indifferently written, poorly acted, and with weak production values. Even those with larger budgets often ran aground on the rocks of tedium and cliché. But there were a few silk purses among the sow’s ears, so this week let’s point out some fun exceptions that might be worth your time. If, you know, this is the kind of thing you like.
…And on the day two hundred
There it stood white to the sky
The house of the God of the cross
Big enough to take two dragon ships inside
All of Asa bay did watch
The wonder raise to the sky
Now must the God of the cross be pleased satisfied
Just outside the circle of the crowd
I started reading William Bernhardt’s Ben Kincaid books back in the mid-nineties. I seem to recall I went on a ‘lawyer’ kick and read him, Steve Martini, and Robert K. Tannenbaum. But years later, Bernhardt made a bigger impact on me with his Red Sneaker Writers series. These slim volumes with the brightly attractive covers, are jam-packed with great writing advice. The first book I read was on Story Structure, and I think it’s still my favorite. Though every one has been both interesting to read and thought-provoking. If I ever get my act together, I’ll add “taught me a lot.”
I’ve read through a couple of them more than once, making notes ( I CANNOT highlight a physical book. I’m incapable of it). Last year, I decided to be a little more systematic and I went through EVERY title, be it Theme, Dialogue, Character – all of them: and I outlined the key points in each chapter. I printed them all out and have a very cool binder. Which, if I ever actually sit down and write a novel, will be of great use.
I’ve read a lot of books on writing – fiction and screenplays. And I’ve come across a lot of useful ideas, suggestions, thoughts, and advice, from folks such as Lawrence Block, Tony Hillerman, William Martell, Syd Field, Robert Randisi, Chris Vogler (though I’m more apt to go to the original source material from Joseph Campbell), and James Scott Bell – to name a few without actually looking at my bookshelves. There are quite a few more, but my education would be incomplete without the Red Sneaker Writers books from Bernhardt. He writes in a clear, amusing, understandable, useful, manner. I can’t imagine not picking up at least something from each book. And I think you’re going to learn more than that.
Do you know someone — a friend, a coworker, a family member — whom you esteem for their many good qualities… and yet whose extreme and undeniable character flaws can sometimes make you want to banish them from your life forever? Of course you do. (Humility and the law of averages should also make you acknowledge that for someone else you know, there’s a good chance that you are that person.)
For me, that problematic individual is Robert A. Heinlein. Dominating the science fiction field from the moment his first story, “Lifeline,” appeared in the August, 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction to his death almost a half century later, Heinlein was arguably the most important writer in the history of American genre sf. In 1974 he was the first writer named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America and was the winner of four Hugo Awards for best novel (and seven “retro” Hugos for works published prior to 1953). Invoking his name can start a passionate argument even now, and he’s been gone for thirty-three years.
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My look back on my Warrior Women film marathon continues with a clutch of movies that I don’t consider terrible, but don’t meet many of my requirements either. For a detailed rundown of the criteria I imposed on this project, see Part 1 here.
The first four in this group actually pass the Bedschel Test, but are still lacking in anything resembling practical armour. This group also includes a cheat film, as I had seen Red Sonja back in the day (and had mostly forgotten it), but I got around this using an entirely unnecessary loophole, which meant watching it in Spanish on YouTube with a translated transcription on my phone. Red Sonja still feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity and merely a vehicle for more Schwarzenegger flexing (who reportedly regards it as one of his worst films).
Sea of Rust (Harper Voyager, 2017) and Day Zero (Harper Voyager, 2021). Covers by Dominic Harman
When I described Robert Cargill’s third novel Sea of Rust four years ago, I called it “a robot western set in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which humans have been wiped out in a machine uprising.” Do I know how to get to the heart of a book, or what.
Now it has a sequel! Well, sorta-kinda. Day Zero is set in the same world, with different characters, and is more of a prequel, opening on the day that machines rebel and exterminate mankind. The narrator is Pounce, a nannybot for eight-year-old human Ezra, a tiger-shaped robot who has to make a fateful choice when machines breach the house and threaten the boy he’s meant to protect. What he chooses to do that day kicks off an adventure that takes him across a newly-blasted apocalyptic landscape. Here’s the book description.
Though it no longer exists, the gaming company known as TSR, Inc., will always be associated with Dungeons & Dragons. However, TSR published a lot more tabletop roleplaying games than D&D. The science fiction game Star Frontiers to this day has a strong fan base, and the game Gamma World continues to find some love. That being said, many of TSR’s other RPGs tend to have been forgotten by a wider audience though they might still have a community of followers.
Such a game is Gangbusters.
Designed by Rick Krebs and originally published in 1982, Gangbusters takes place in the America of the 1920s and 1930s in the fictional Lakefront City. This is a game of cops and robbers, of gangsters and crime lords and Tommy guns. Historical figures such as Al Capone or Pretty Boy Floyd might make an appearance along with fictional characters like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, but players also have the opportunity to play the bad guys. Or they can play the good guys and join the side of the law. Or they can be something in between, like a newspaper reporter or photographer.
The original version of Gangbusters included multiple maps, two ten-sided die, and a 64-page book of rules. Today 64 pages might not seem like much for a rules book, but Gangbusters had plenty of information packed into those pages.
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Murder begets murder, everybody dies, usually badly, and the gods are bastards. Those are the lessons taught in The Saga of the Volsungs, the history of the doomed Volsung family. The historical events reflected in the saga took place between the end of the 4th and beginning of the 5th centuries AD, a period of great tribal migrations and unrest among the Germanic people of Central and Eastern Europe.
Starting around 1000 BC, tribes from the region now called Scandinavia began migrating south and west into present-day Germany, pushing out the Celtic tribes, before running up against the Roman Empire along a frontier that extended from the mouth of the Rhine River and all along it and the Danube River to the Black Sea. To the east, German kingdoms stretched as far as the Pontic Steppe in modern Ukraine and Russia. At the end of the 4th Century AD, the Huns came roaring out of the distant East and began conquering or driving out the German tribes in Eastern and Central Europe. The historic destruction of the Kingdom of Burgundy by the Huns in 436 AD is a major part of the saga, though scaled down from war to a family feud. It is in this age of chaos and death that the stories of the Volsungs were born. The oldest artistic representations of the Volsunga Saga are found in stone carvings in Ramslund, Sweden, but it wasn’t written down until the late 13th century, in Iceland. The more well-known German telling of the story, The Nibelungenlied, was written earlier, about 1200 AD. Wagner drew on both as sources for his epic four-opera cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung.
If the courtly tales of King Arthur and Roland point toward high fantasy, this German legend and its ilk point straight to sword & sorcery. There are no great heroes moved by devotion to home and family to pursue noble deeds, only murderers driven by greed or vengeance to commit deeds of great violence. Good and evil are abstractions that have no place in a blood-drowned age. The violence is direct and driven by personal motives far more often than by ideals or the needs of any kingdom.
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Building which now houses Le Petite, in the early 1900s
When someone finds out that writing for Black Gate is my side hustle, you can be sure that in 3 minutes or less I’ll get asked if I’ve ever seen a ghost. I can say with all conviction, that I have certainly tried harder than the average person. I have attended 38 “ghost hunts” in 11 countries, accompanying paranormal investigators with credentials of varying legitimacy. I have sat up all night, surrounded by EVP recorders, EMP detectors, spirit boxes, full spectrum POV cameras and EDI meters. I’ve done this in places like the catacombs under the streets of Edenborough, Scotland, in the burial chambers beneath St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in London, Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich, Germany and the battlefield of Gettysburg. I consider myself an open-minded skeptic who would love to believe that spirits walk among us, or at least that the shadowy imprints of past events are occasionally visible. However, the most consistent thing I captured on the numerous outings to these damp, chilly places, was a cold.
Needless to say, the people who ask about my ghost adventures are disappointed. “You’ve never seen anything?” they ask, “Like an-nee-thing?”
And the answer to that question is no.
Mostly.