Black Gate – Page 177 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Three Things That Scared Me When I Was A Kid

Thursday, April 1, 2021 Joe Bonadonna Comments 29 comments

**Frame from Tim Burton’s 1996 Mars Attacks!**

I’ve written a few articles for Black Gate about the films and novels of my childhood that inspired me to write fiction, and today I’m once again taking a walk down Memory Lane to visit the old Nostalgia Nook.

First, let me say it’s a safe bet that we all grew up with dinosaurs, aliens, mythological creatures, and certainly the film genres of horror, fantasy science fiction, and monster films. I think it’s safe to say that most of us identified with the monsters when we were kids. Who didn’t relate and empathize with Frankenstein and the Wolfman? Who didn’t feel sorry for King Kong? These monsters didn’t scare me. No, they were my friends. I was rarely scared or creeped out by monster and horror flicks when I was a kid, and I was in kindergarten when I first came into contact with Frankenstein, King Kong, the Wolfman, Dracula, the Mummy, and so many others. However, there were three instances where I was frightened by things I had seen and read, things which gave me nightmares and made me wary of things that lurked in the shadows. What’s weird about this, what sticks in my mind is that these three instances all occurred at roughly the same time.

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Brilliance Gleams Beneath a Black Sun

Wednesday, March 31, 2021 Greg Mele Comments 0 Comment

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga Press, October 2020). Cover by John Picacio.

In the 14 months I have had this column, I’ve looked at “historicity and fantasy” from a variety of angles, one of which has been looking at current — and lauded — works by known authors, and assessing how well they weave the two together. Thus far, I haven’t been very kind. While I loved G. Willow Wilson’s The Bird King as a kind of modern fable, it creates its view of dying Al-Andalus by promoting a series of stereotypes about Christian Spain and the Inquisition that would be excoriated where the same treatment applied to the tale’s Muslim world. Conversely, Guy Gavriel Kay is the master of historical fiction masquerading at fantasy, essentially reinventing the earliest form of “Romantic fiction” with his post-Tigana work. Sadly, in Children of Earth and Sky rather than “jumping the shark,” Kay never gets up to speed, creating a tale that is so faithful to the history it is a thinly-veiled variant of, that nothing much ever happens.

So I thought it was time I praised something in this column — because I generally do like far more than I hate. And wow, what a gem I have to talk about with you today.

Over the winter holidays I read Rebecca Roanhorse’s debut entry into the world of epic fantasy: Black Sun. Billed as Volume 1 of Between Earth and Sky, this is clearly the start of an epic, yet just about works as a standalone tale in its own right.

Published last year, this is a departure for Roanhorse, whose work has mostly been contemporary fantasy, though again drawing on native themes. So what’s it about? Well, our official blurb actually does a pretty good job of teasing the plot. Here it is.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Mongols, Cossacks, and Tartars

Wednesday, March 31, 2021 Lawrence Ellsworth Comments 9 comments

The Conqueror (1956)

Let’s get barbaric! Preferably on horseback in central or western Asia. Our first movie, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror, is so terrible that it’s famous for being terrible, while our second film, The Tartars, is just as terrible but unfairly and surprisingly overlooked, especially since one of its stars is Orson Welles. Ah, but our third movie, Taras Bulba…. Now that’s good stuff. So, ferment some milk, shave your skull except for a scalplock, and leave your effete civilizations behind, because we’re going steppin’ on the Steppes!

(And by the way, if this kind of setting is to your taste, you’re going to love the Harold Lamb short story collections edited by our own Howard Andrew Jones, stories that were a major inspiration and influence for Robert E. Howard. The books, including all four volumes of The Complete Cossack Adventures, plus Swords from the Desert, Swords from the West, Swords from the East, and Swords from the Sea, are still available in digital format — and if you move quickly, there may still be a few print copies left.

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A Masterfully Crafted Dark Tale: Shadows of the Short Days by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

Tuesday, March 30, 2021 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been trying to expand my reading diet recently, and I was drawn to the debut novel from Icelandic author Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson, Shadows of the Short Days, when I read Rachel Cordasco’s review at Strange Horizons, in which she called it “a vibrant mix of urban fantasy, New Weird, and Icelandic folklore… Vilhjálmsson virtuosically weaves together Icelandic folklore and fantasy/cosmic horror… to create a unique reading experience.” That sounds like just what I’ve been looking for.

It was James Tivendale’s review at GrimDark Magazine that sealed the deal for me. Here’s the interesting bits.

Vilhjálmsson’s debut is a masterfully crafted dark tale that fuses elements of alternative history, steampunk, science fiction, urban fantasy, and grimdark. It is a strikingly original and often complex narrative that mainly follows two well-crafted protagonists. Sæmundur is a sorcerer who has recently been expelled from the magic university of Svartiskóli for being too ambitious, being intrigued by gaining absolute knowledge of the esoteric source of magic galdur which is forbidden and borderline heresy. He has been nicknamed Sæmundur the Mad, is now a drug and alcohol-fuelled reprobate in the eyes of the majority of his peers but he wishes to prove them wrong. The other major player is Garún who is a talented graffiti artist and she wears headphones which contain a noisefiend…

Shadows of the Short Days was a similar reading experience to the one that I enjoyed with The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Hanrahan. It takes certain fantasy tropes and turns them on their heads… This story is brimming with interesting original races, magic and monstrosities including the winged and intimidating Náskárar, the art of seiour, and a cloth-golem… [it] features parallel worlds, demons, jellyfish that aid breathing underwater, huge airships, rebellious factions, grotesque torture segments, mind-reading, complex incantations, and magical rituals, and a loveable pet cat…

It’s superbly well written, thrilling, and the pacing is exquisite… Vilhjálmsson has presented us with one of the most ambitious, intense, original and thrilling debuts that I’ve read in a long time… this is highly [recommended] and should be a big deal in the fantasy scene.

Shadows of the Short Days was published by Titan Books on October 20, 2020. It is 464 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. Read the complete first chapter (8 pages) at Fantasy Book Reviews.

See all our recent coverage of the best new science fiction and fantasy here.

Twilight: 2000‘s Polish Campaign, Part II

Monday, March 29, 2021 Patrick Kanouse Comments 4 comments

Pirates of the Vistula (GDW, 1985), part 3 of The Polish Campaign for Twilight: 2000

This is Part II of a detailed review of The Polish Campaign, a 6-part adventure sequence published by GDW in 1985 for their Twilight 2000 role playing game. The campaign covers Escape from Kalisz, The Free City of Krakow, Pirates of the Vistula, The Ruins of Warsaw, The Black Madonna, and Going Home. Part I, which looks at The Free City of Krakow and touches upon Escape from Kalisz, is here.

As I re-read Twilight: 2000‘s Polish Campaign, the set of adventure supplements that take place in the immediate aftermath of what starts the players on their adventures in the desolated landscape of World War III and Poland, I’m struck by how much world-building and detail the writers put into the world. For the Polish campaign is a rich sandbox for players and game masters (GM) to play around in. Encounters, towns, villages, NPCs, and mysteries galore fill the pages of Pirates of Vistula and The Ruins of Warsaw, parts 3 and 4 of the Polish Campaign.

The players, surviving US soldiers of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, will have fought their way to safety, escaping the Soviet armies that crushed them. If they made their way from Kalisz to Krakow in the core rulebook’s opening scenario, Escape from Kalisz, they probably found some respite and have managed to resupply to a degree. They may have even made some friends. The overall, presumed player motive in Twilight: 2000 is that they want to return home, that Poland is but a stop over. Now, this could change, and it may not even be the case initially depending on the players. Nonetheless, the players need to find a way to survive in this aftermath of a world collapsing from the creeping nuclear holocaust.

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Day 30

Monday, March 29, 2021 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

So, last year, as the Pandemic settled in like an unwanted relative who just came for a week and is still tying up the bathroom, I did a series of posts for the FB Page of the Nero Wolfe fan club, The Wolfe Pack. I speculated on what Stay at Home would be like for Archie, living in the Brownstone with Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Hortsmann. I have already re-posted days one through twenty-nine. Here is day thirty (April 19). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries.

DAY THIRTY– 2020 Stay at Home

Saul called after dinner. I took my coffee into the front room and talked to him from there. I made a mental note to ask him about the online poker game. “Need a professional to step in and bail you out on that bank job? My rates are very reasonable.”

“I’ll keep you in mind if I need to farm out any work to the minors.”

“Phsaw. Fred can handle those. What are you up to? Done with the bank thing?”

“That wasn’t too tough. I’ve taken this week off and stayed in the house. Good thing I don’t have to tail anybody. There’s not much cover out there.

I laughed. The current environment would definitely challenge his tailing skills, which were better than anybody else’s that I knew.

“How is Mister Wolfe doing?”

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Marvel TV’s Buddy-Cop Entry: Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Sunday, March 28, 2021 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

My son is *super* excited about the MCU’s latest TV venture, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I thought Marvel did spectacular work with WandaVision (see my reviews here and here) which was a real stylistic and tonal departure from the movies. I came to Falcon and the Winter Soldier with less excitement in part because sometimes I feel just saturated with cape and cowl stories. Luckily, the first two episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier delivered in a way that really worked for me.

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Vintage Treasures: Where Do We Go From Here? edited by Isaac Asimov

Sunday, March 28, 2021 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

There are prolific anthologists, and there are very prolific anthologists, and there’s Isaac Asimov. The Internet Science Fiction database lists nearly 200 anthologies with his name on them, averaging around seven per year between 1963 and his death in 1992. (If you’re thinking, Geez that seems like a lot, let me clarify for you. Yes. It’s a lot.)

Of course, the vast majority of those were produced later in his career and in partnership with a team of editors, especially Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. In the early days Asimov compiled anthologies the old-fashioned way: by himself. It was the enduring, decades-long success of those books that paved the way for the massive literary-industrial complex to spring up around Asimov in the 80s and 90s. And he may have had no original anthology more successful or popular than Where Do We Go From Here?

Where Do We Go From Here? was published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1971, reprinted by Fawcett Crest in 1972, and kept in print in paperback for nearly ten years. It was one of the most popular and discussed SF anthologies of the decade, by a wide margin, and cemented Asimov’s reputation for curating — and selling — top-notch short fiction collections. It gathers stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum, John W. Campbell, Jr., Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jerome Bixby, Arthur C. Clarke, James E. Gunn, H. Beam Piper, Walter Tevis, Larry Niven, and others. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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A Tale of Finlay, Part 2

Saturday, March 27, 2021 Doug Ellis Comments 1 comment

“The Conditioned Captain” illustration by Virgil Finlay
(from Startling Stories, May 1953)

In last week’s Finlay post, I told the tale of how, back in the last week of March 2005, I’d acquired 15 Virgil Finlay originals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was an incredible purchase, but within six weeks it led to my acquisition of five more Finlay originals. Needless to say, that six week period was the greatest Finlay run of my collecting career.

I’d bought the Midsummer Night’s illos from California bookseller Peter Howard of Serendipity Books. At the time I bought them, he told me that his consignor on these had a few other Finlay originals which he thought he’d be handling for him. A week later, on April Fools’ Day, I received an email from Howard offering three more Finlay originals.

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New Treasures: The Swimmers by Marian Womack

Saturday, March 27, 2021 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Marian Womack’s debut The Golden Key was published last year — bad year for a debut novel, I must say — but it still managed to get a lot of attention. Booklist called it a mix of “Spiritualism, the suffragette movement, and the fairy tales of Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald… an elegant sense of mystery and otherworldliness. This gothic fantasy will captive fans of historical fiction.”

Her second novel The Swimmers, set in an Earth ravaged by climate change, imagines a world in which the rich live in the Upper Settlement rings high in orbit, and the rest of humanity struggles to survive in a dangerously transformed world, a place of deep jungles and monstrous animals. Publishers Weekly calls it a “meticulously detailed sophomore novel set in a vivid, believable eco-dystopia… Readers will be captivated.”

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