Twilight: 2000‘s Polish Campaign, Part I

Twilight: 2000‘s Polish Campaign, Part I

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Twilight: 2000 takes place in the aftermath of a limited tactical nuclear war during World War III. While the inciting event is over (the use of nuclear weapons), the world is still very much in collapse, so the players are engaged in a game of survival. They are what is left of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, crushed by two Soviet divisions in Poland in the spring of 2000.

The game is one of the few true sandbox games that I have ever encountered. While my Traveller games often had sandbox elements, they were still typically guided by a grand narrative. Twilight: 2000 forgoes even that, for the most part. Casting the players in the roll of trying to make their way in the world. The operating presumption is that they want to return home — aka, the United States. 

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Day 27

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Day 27

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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-five. Here is day twenty-six (April 16). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries. You really need to read Day Twenty-Six before this one. Trust me – I wrote it!

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN– 2020 Stay at Home

“Dammit Goodwin, let me in.” Inspector Cramer was standing outside the front room window through which I’d conversed with Doc Vollmer earlier. I had refused to the open the door for him after the body had been removed and the area decontaminated by the professionals.

“No sir. Somebody with the virus died on our stoop. He touched the front door, which I’ll be cleaning later. You examined the scene. Yes, you had gloves on, and that mask, which, by the way, looks terrific on you. But the answer is still ‘No.’”

“I am a police official and this is a crime scene. Open the goddamn door.”

Wolfe had been sitting in a chair, though none of the ones in that room are comfortable for him. He arose and came over to the window, and I moved away.

“Nonsense, Mister Cramer. That man was never in this house. The front stoop is certainly a crime scene; do with it what you will.”

Purley Stebbins had been over near the stoop, talking with a cop in uniform, but he came over.

“Hi, Purley. That’s not proper social distancing.”

Stebbins has a pained ‘You’re not funny expression’ which I think he only uses for me. Like he did right then.

Wolfe went on. “You may ask your questions from there. That man did not come inside, or in any way communicate with Mister Goodwin or I.”

“So, you’re saying you have no idea why a man, stabbed and carrying the virus, desperately wanted to see you before he died?”

Wolfe sighed, though he didn’t really mean it. “Really, Mister Cramer, how many times have we done this before? Perhaps the man was passing by on the sidewalk, was assaulted, and ours was the closest doorbell to ring. Confound it. Even during this lockdown, must you badger me and assume that I am concealing material relevant to a homicide?”

I bet Cramer wished he had a cigar instead of a mask right now. He pulled his mask down and I saw that his face was flushed. “Like I haven’t had good reason in the past, Wolfe.”

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Mad Shadows, Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

Mad Shadows, Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

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Mad Shadows, Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate (Pulp Hero Press, February 26, 2021). Cover artist unknown

Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Dorgo the Dowser’ emerges with new content in Mad Shadows Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate. It is available now in paperback ($17.95 for the 332-page paperback; $2.99 Kindle). Under the recent charge of Pulp Hero Press, the first two books have been reprinted in glorious style (Book One: Mad Shadows by Joe Bonadonna and Book Two: Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent). The release of Book Three: The Heroes of Echo Gate marks the tenth year anniversary of the first book’s publication. The official book blurb clarifies what to expect in the latest installment:

Dorgo’s Greatest Challenge

During an arduous and dangerous trek through the Scarlet Desert in search of the fabled Well of Tears, Dorgo the Dowser and his companions accidentally uncover an ancient artifact buried for eons beneath the blood-colored sand. After a harrowing, action-packed journey through the desert they find the Well of Tears, the repository of God’s tears, and there encounter the ghosts of the Sisters of the Blue Light, the Guardians of the Well. The nuns tell them about the relic of antiquity they found: it is a thing of cosmic evil — a thing not of their world, a thing which must be destroyed. But the answer to destroying that artifact is a riddle Dorgo and his companions must discover for themselves.

When the Spirit trapped inside the artifact is set free by one of their companions, Dorgo and the others learn that the evil now threatens not only their world, but all the Otherworlds of the multi-dimensional Echoverse. The key to destroying this evil is somehow tied in with the demons seeking to control Echo Gate — the master portal that leads not only to every world in the Echoverse, but through Space and Time, as well. As a great battle erupts on the island of Thavarar, where Echo Gate is located, Dorgo and his companions must unravel the mystery of the thing they found in the desert, and discover the means by which it can be destroyed.

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Vintage Treasures: Invaders of Earth edited by Groff Conklin

Vintage Treasures: Invaders of Earth edited by Groff Conklin

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Invaders of Earth (Tempo, September 1962). Cover artist unknown

Before his untimely death in 2016, Bud Webster was Black Gate‘s poetry editor and one of our finest columnists. He wrote a number of Who? columns on forgotten SF writers for our print issues, and thoughtful pieces on selling books at conventions for our website. In his paean to the science fiction anthologies of his youth, Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies, Bud wrote fondly about the great SF anthologies of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Here’s an excerpt from Above the Rest, the chapter dedicated to editor Groff Conklin.

I kept noticing that the stories I liked best, the ones I’d remember from one week to the next, the ones I thrust on my friends with the words “You GOTTA read THIS one!”, all seemed to come from the Conklin anthologies. So, I began pulling his books off the library shelves before I picked Bleiler’s, or Pohl’s, or the others, and when I found (joy of joys!) a dingy little shop near my school that sold ratty old paperbacks for a dime, Conklin’s were the ones I looked for first.

In a note to me about Conklin, Jack Williamson said, “His anthologies…. were landmarks, and I think they had a good deal to do with a wider acceptance of SF…”

In compiling this beast, I’ve read reviews, looked at web pages, and talked to long-time SF readers, fans and pros over and over. When anthologies are discussed, certain names are always mentioned: Pohl, Merril, Bleiler and Dikty, Healy and McComas…. and their relative merits discussed at length. But when Conklin’s name comes up, they invariably nod and say, “Oh, yeah, anything by Groff Conklin.”

Like Bud, my early exposure to adult science fiction was in SF anthologies I found in school libraries, in my case edited by Terry Carr, Robert Silverberg, and Isaac Asimov. But I discovered Conklin soon enough, and one of my favorites was his 1952 anthology of alien invasion tales, Invaders of Earth.

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L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #4: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #4: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

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I’ve continued reading the Oz series by videoconferencing with my niece a few times a week. We’re having a lot of fun. Not long ago, we finished L. Frank Baum’s fourth entry in the series he really didn’t want to write, but as they say…. “if you back up a dump truck full of money…”

Dorothy is going to rejoin her Uncle Henry in California where he’s visiting his brother. She’s picked up at the train by Jeb and his horse and buggy. On the way to the ranch, a terrible earthquake opens the ground and swallows them up!

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #1 History of Fantasy

Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #1 History of Fantasy

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Imaginary Worlds (Ballantine Books, June 1973). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo

I’m the age Proust was when he died, and Lin Carter books are my Madeleine cake.

The covers transport me to the sunny afternoon garage sales of my teens. Picking up one — they’re tiny compared to today’s paperbacks — and riffling the yellowing pages, and I’m thirteen years old, on a hill-walking holiday in Wales, rummaging in a small town charity shop while the rain rattles the dirty glass window. And later, playing Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D was my edition!) in a stuffy teenage bedroom in a Victorian house where the hundred-year-old window slammed down and nearly took off the DM’s leg as he was smoking a roll-up while perched on the ledge…

And like the D&D games of my mid teens, Lin Carter’s books never quite lived up to the potential of the promised exoticism. In our case, we were teenagers with limited life experience. We did very well, as far as it went, and our DMs were patient and I argued too much. Lin Carter, several times married, a Korean war veteran — the Vietnam sequence that kicks off the Callisto books reads very authentically —  cosmopolitan New Yorker, experienced editor, has less excuse.

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Incredible, In More Ways than One: Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man

Incredible, In More Ways than One: Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man

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The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
First Edition: Fawcett Gold Medal, May 1956. Cover art MH.

The Shrinking Man
by Richard Matheson
Fawcett Gold Medal (192 pages, $0.35, Paperback, May 1956)
Cover art MH

I think it safe to say that Richard Matheson is best remembered today for his novels and stories that were adapted into films and TV scripts, including the dozen plus scripts he himself wrote for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone TV series in the late 1950 to early ‘60s. (An ironic exception is Matheson’s first-published short story, “Born of Man and Woman” (1950), which remains in print in the first volume of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.)

Matheson’s first six novels, at least, from I Am Legend (1954) to What Dreams May Come (1978), were all adapted into films. (Among short stories adapted into film was 1971’s “Duel,” which became a TV movie under Steven Spielberg’s direction). The earliest film adaptation came from his second novel, The Shrinking Man (1956), becoming the striking if dubiously plausible 1957 film dubbed, Hollywood-style, The Incredible Shrinking Man. I suspect more people have seen the film than have read Matheson’s novel. Yet while I’m reviewing the book here and not the film (which I last saw decades ago), I will compare the two on a few points, mainly because Matheson himself wrote the screenplay for the film. So the differences between novel and film may be instructive.
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Goth Chick News: Fill Up the Gas Tank and Break Out the Fireball, or Hitting the 2021 Show Circuit Hard…

Goth Chick News: Fill Up the Gas Tank and Break Out the Fireball, or Hitting the 2021 Show Circuit Hard…

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GC, masked up and ready to go…

Now that the dumpster fire that was 2020 is in the rearview mirror, and tiny pin lights of normality are beginning to appear, it is only natural that we here at GCN begin the annual countdown to “the season.”

Now, before I start getting messages reminding me it is only March, allow me to remind you that the event around which the entire GCN year revolves was a sad specter of itself last year. Haunted attractions were closed, parties were cancelled, and even Hollywood closed up shop, leaving us bereft of new fall screen screams.

Though the Halloween pop up stores were picked vulture-clean by mid-September by the masses trying to capture the seasonal spirit at home, those same stores were simply emptying out their 2019 warehouses of old props. Why? Because the trade shows that Black Gate photog Chris Z and I normally haunt in the early part of the year, where retail buyers find all the latest and greatest merchandise, were also cancelled.

So, it’s not without significant giddiness that Chris Z has sent his kilt to the dry cleaners and taken the canned air to his camera collection, while I stock the company Hummer with the usual inventory of road trip goodies. You see, in the last month, many of the events we normally cover each year have cautiously begun announcing 2021 dates.

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The Shadow Knows A Good Pulp Painting When He Sees It!

The Shadow Knows A Good Pulp Painting When He Sees It!

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Detective Story Magazine, December 2, 1919. Art by John Coughlin

I thought that today I’d tell the tale of a painting by the talented and prolific John Coughlin, which was used as a pulp cover not once but twice.

Its first appearance was over a century ago, as it graced the cover of the December 2, 1919 issue of Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine. At that time, it illustrated “Eyes of Blue” by Arthur P. Hankins. But its more famous appearance came a dozen years later.

Street & Smith created the character of The Shadow to narrate “The Detective Story Magazine Hour” on radio. That weekly program was launched on July 31, 1930 to promote Detective Story Magazine, and dramatized a story from the current issue. The character of The Shadow was a huge hit, and listeners began asking their news dealers for copies of that Shadow magazine. Sadly for Street & Smith and their prospective customers, there was no such magazine.

Not surprisingly, they soon decided to rectify this and publish a Shadow pulp to cash in on this interest, but uncertain of its prospects, they made it a quarterly. They also didn’t want to incur the expense of buying new cover art for the first issue, dated April 1931. So they decided to recycle a painting in their inventory that featured a Chinese man – Modest Stein’s cover for the October 1, 1919 issue of Street & Smith’s The Thrill Book. Author Walter Gibson was then told to set part of the first Shadow story (“The Living Shadow”) in Chinatown, and they used Stein’s old cover, adding a shadow to the cover in production.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Not-So-Wholesome Buccaneers

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Not-So-Wholesome Buccaneers

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Blackbeard the Pirate (1952)

The role of Long John Silver in Disney’s 1950 Treasure Island finally launched the talented English actor Robert Newton into international stardom. As Silver, Newton popularized the broad West-Country accent that’s become the default talk-like-a-pirate voice of buccaneering rogues ever since. (You can blame—or acclaim— Newton for the ubiquitous piratical “Ahr!”) But fame ruined the actor, enabling endless rounds of drink, gambling, and the kind of wild behavior that made him a role model for Oliver Reed and Keith Moon. And Newton was never able to escape the shadow of the one-legged pirate with the parrot on his shoulder—but typecast though he was, you can still see that he enjoyed the role even while repeating it. Newton died from alcohol-related heart failure in 1956, and his ashes were buried at sea in the English Channel off Cornwall: “Ahr-men.”

Blackbeard, the Pirate

Rating: **
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Raoul Walsh
Source: Amazon streaming video

On November 22, 1718, Edward Teach, the notorious pirate known as Blackbeard, was killed on his ship the Adventure during a fierce boarding action led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard. By the time he was brought down, Blackbeard had been shot five times and suffered twenty wounds from edged weapons. For the most famous image depicting this event, look no further than the painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris on the cover of your editor’s Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure anthology.

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