Monsters, Magic, and Kung fu: The Daoshi Chronicles by M. H. Boroson

Monsters, Magic, and Kung fu: The Daoshi Chronicles by M. H. Boroson

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The Daoshi Chronicles, published in paperback by Talos Press. Covers by Jeff Chapman

I discovered M. H. Boroson’s delightful Daoshi Chronicles when Sarah Avery reviewed the opening novel The Girl With Ghost Eyes here at Black Gate five years ago, saying in part:

We’re connoisseurs of kickass combat scenes, eldritch lore, and victories won at terrible, unpredictable price. We want our heroes unabashedly heroic and morally complicated at the same time. Add a decade or more of research on the author’s part, distilled to the most concentrated and carefully placed drops, and a well-timed sense of humor, and you’ve got the recipe for the perfect Black Gate book…

Li-lin’s family has protected the world of the living from the spirit world for generations. Most Daoist priests and priestesses take it on faith that their rituals work — they can’t literally see the spirit world and the efficacy of their magic. Li-lin can, though. She has yin eyes, ghost eyes, a visionary ability that appalls her father and would disgust her trusting neighbors if they knew…

Devoted daughter, faithful widow, compassionate protector of Chinatown, Li-lin must conceal her rarest talent, lest she shame everyone she loves. Long practice at concealment, combined with the necessity of bending rules and stories if she’s to be effective in a world where even a warrior priestess is expected to show deference to men and elders no matter what, has prepared her almost too well for the mystery she must solve.

Someone wants her father dead. That someone wants it enough to lay trap after trap for her family. Bad magic is on its way, of the kind only the Maoshan can stop.

Li-Lin and her ghost eyes save Chinatown, don’t you doubt it.

The Girl With Ghost Eyes proved popular in broader circles as well. Publishers Weekly called it “A brilliant tale of monsters, magic, and kung fu in the San Francisco Chinatown of 1898,” and The A.V. Club proclaimed it a compelling page-turner, saying it “Introduces a thrilling world of kung fu, sorcery, and spirits… The pace never slows, offering a constant stream of strange characters, dire threats, and heroic actions.”

I had to wait for the paperback of the sequel, but Talos released The Girl With No Face in mass market in September and now I finally have a matching set.

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 26: Introducing Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost and Launching the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1979!

Uncanny X-Men, Part 26: Introducing Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost and Launching the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1979!

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Well, if you’ve been waiting for my epic reread of the Uncanny X-Men to reach one of the most consequential and memorable stories in comic history, your waiting has paid off. It only took 26 blog posts, but we’ve arrived at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga. This arc of the Dark Phoenix Saga, from issue #129 to #131 does some major things.

First, it introduces a mutant who will over the course of the coming decades become a very important X-Man and eventually one of the team leaders: Kitty Pryde. Second, it introduces a mutant who over than same time period will become an iconic X-Men rival and villain, and eventually an ally, teammate and leader herself: Emma Frost. Third, it deepens the corruption of Phoenix’ soul by Jason Wyngarde and Emma Frost.

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A Fine Addition to any SF Library: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

A Fine Addition to any SF Library: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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Tin Stars (Signet, 1986), volume 5 of Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction. Cover by JAV

Isaac Asimov published more than 500 books in his lifetime. Now Asimov was amazingly productive — averaging around 1,700 words published per day over the last two decades of his life — but no one is that prolific. In later years he became a proficient book packager, working with editors like Charles G. Waugh and especially Martin H. Greenberg to churn out dozens and dozens of science fiction anthologies in which he contributed little more than an introduction and perhaps some editorial guidance.

If this sounds dismissive, oh my friends, it is not meant to be. Asimov was interested in a great many things, but one of his earliest and most enduring passions was short fiction. It was his love for early science fiction pulps that set him firmly on the path towards being a successful SF writer by his later teens, and in his later years he became one of the staunchest champions of the science fiction short story — and in particular those stories and authors that, by the 70s and 80s, were in growing danger of being forgotten. Between 1979 and his death in 1992 he put his name (and the considerable selling power behind it) on numerous SF anthologies and long-running anthology series edited with Greenberg and Waugh, including The Great SF Stories (25 volumes, 1979-92), The Mammoth Book series (6 books, 1988-93), Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy (12 books, 1983-91), and others. I don’t know if it was ever made explicit, but it seemed pretty clear that Waugh made the selections, Greenberg handled the rights paperwork, and Asimov was sort of a godfather over the whole process. In any case, the success of these books helped inspire other reprint anthologies, and for many decades life was good for classic science fiction lovers.

Those days, of course, are long over, and mass market reprint genre anthologies are scare as hens teeth today. But when times are tough, the tough get creative, and so I’ve been on the hunt for older science fiction anthologies I may have overlooked all those years ago. That’s how I rediscovered Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction — and it is a delight.

Like many of his other popular series it was edited with Greenberg and Waugh, and included 10 volumes published between 1983-90. Each had a different theme: Intergalactic Empires, Space Shuttles, Monsters, Invasions, and so forth. They were generously sized (300-400 pages) and came packed with wonderful stories selected by an editor with a keen eye. These books have never been reprinted, but they’re not hard to find. In fact I recently bought a set of five in nearly brand new condition for significantly less than original cover price.

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New Treasures: It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

New Treasures: It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

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Jo Kaplan is a fast-rising writer who’s worth keeping an eye on. Under the name Joanna Parypinski she’s published stories in Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, and Vastarien, and in prestigious anthologies like Haunted Nights and Miscreations.

Her debut novel It Will Just Be Us appeared in September to wide praise. Publishers Weekly called it “A rich, dense supernatural thriller,” Manhattan Book Review hailed it as “A fantastic ghost story,” and Bram Stoker Award-winner John Palisano proclaimed it “A chilling, poetic, modern Gothic masterpiece.”

When nights are long and the wind blows chill through the snow drifts in my back yard, that’s when I long to burrow into blankets with a chilling book. This looks like it will do the trick nicely. Here’s the publisher’s description.

A terrifying new gothic horror novel about two sisters and a haunted house that never sleeps, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

They say there’s a door in Wakefield that never opens… Sam Wakefield’s ancestral home, a decaying mansion built on the edge of a swamp, isn’t a place for children. Its labyrinthine halls, built by her mad ancestors, are filled with echoes of the past: ghosts and memories knotted together as one. In the presence of phantoms, it’s all Sam can do to disentangle past from present in her daily life. But when her pregnant sister Elizabeth moves in after a fight with her husband, something in the house shifts. Already navigating her tumultuous relationship with Elizabeth, Sam is even more unsettled by the appearance of a new ghost: a faceless boy who commits disturbing acts — threatening animals, terrorizing other children, and following Sam into the depths of the house wielding a knife. When it becomes clear the boy is connected to a locked, forgotten room, one which is never entered, Sam realizes this ghost is not like the others. This boy brings doom… As Elizabeth’s due date approaches, Sam must unravel the mysteries of Wakefield before her sister brings new life into a house marked by death. But as the faceless boy grows stronger, Sam will learn that some doors should stay closed — and some secrets are safer locked away forever.

It Will Just Be Us was published by Crooked Lane Books on September 8, 2020. It is 272 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and just $1.99 in digital formats. Get all the details at Jo Kaplan’s website here.

See all our recent coverage of the best new SF and fantasy releases here.

A Tale of Wonder: The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle

A Tale of Wonder: The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle

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When Molly Grue yells at the unicorn, it expresses a little how I felt on reading Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968) this past month for the very first time:

First edition

But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. “Where have you been?” Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn’s old dark eyes that looked down.

“I am here now,” she said at last.

Molly laughed with her lips flat. “And what good is it to me that you’re here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?” With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. “I wish you had never come, why do you come now?” The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.

Of course, what Molly learns is that she needn’t have waited for wonder and transcendence to find her, but should instead have sought them. Taking her lesson to heart for myself, I felt betrayed and angry for only a moment before yielding to chagrin that I hadn’t sooner sought this perfectly-cut gem of a story. The book sat on a shelf for twenty years, gathering dust and losing to the sun the richness of color of its wonderful Gervasio Gallardo artwork.

If The Last Unicorn was a lesser book, I could offhandedly describe it as an illustration of the universal need to undertake a quest, to find wonder — whether from beauty or love or something more ineffable. But Beagle has given us so much more. He’s tucked treasures inside prose that echoes with the sounds of hidden woodland glens and that is painted in the colors of lost and recovered dreams; he’s elucidated the value that can be gleaned from loss, sacrifice, regret. And further, he’s told a story about stories, and how they don’t reflect reality, except when they do. He’s played with the various elements of fantasy — the quest, the wizard, the princess, etc. — in a way that loves them as much as it punctures them.

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Future Treasures: Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

Future Treasures: Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

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Nnedi Okorafor has won every major award our small field has to offer. She won a Hugo and Nebula Award for her Tor.com novella Binti, a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death, a Locus Award for Akata Warrior, an Eisner Award and another Hugo Award for the comic LaGuardia — and a great many more, including a Black Excellence Award, Kindred Award, Lodestar Award, and awards I’ve never even heard of. I hear that when she steps outside to pick her up dry cleaning, strangers throw awards at her.

Her latest is another intriguing Tor.com novella, Remote Control, the tale of an alien artifact that turns a young girl into Death’s adopted daughter. Publishers Weekly calls it “electrifying,” and Library Journal praises its “stunning landscape of futuristic technology and African culture.” Here’s the description.

She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.

The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa ­­― a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.

Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks ― alone, except for her fox companion ― searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.

But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?

Remote Control will be published by Tor.com on January 19, 2021. It is 160 pages, priced at $19.99 in hardcover and $10.99 in digital formats. Read Chapter 1 at i09.

See all of our coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

The Burroughs Boom

The Burroughs Boom

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Pages from In Part Scal’d: The 1963 Fan Poll Results, published by Dick Eney

Back in the 1960’s, the publishing world experienced a Burroughs boom.  Following Edgar Rice Burroughs’ death in 1950, the next decade saw his works fading from public view, with most out of print.  That all changed in 1962, when several publishers realized that many of Burroughs earlier works were now public domain. Donald Wollheim of Ace perhaps took the greatest advantage of this, swiftly flooding the market with paperback reprints of Burroughs books, sporting great covers by Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta. This caused ERB, Inc. to look into their properties, and they soon inked deals with various publishers to bring out authorized editions of Burroughs’ works, including Ballantine for the Tarzan and Mars series and Ace for the Venus and Pellucidar series.

According to Life magazine, in 1962 the Tarzan novels being reprinted in paperback were runaway best-sellers.  That year, Burroughs books sold more than 10 million copies – roughly 1/30th of the total of all paperback sales for the year.

In going through some vintage fanzines and other fan publications a few months ago, I came across a copy of In Part Scal’d: The 1963 Fan Poll Results published by Dick Eney.  Inside was a two page article by Dick Lupoff, who recently passed away.  Among his other achievements, Lupoff was a significant figure in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ publishing (including through his editorial work at Canaveral Press, which brought many ERB works out in hardcover) and scholarship.

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Vintage Treasures: The Guardsman by P. J. Beese and Todd Cameron Hamilton

Vintage Treasures: The Guardsman by P. J. Beese and Todd Cameron Hamilton

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The Guardsman (Pageant Books, 1988). Cover by Thomas Kidd

The Guardsman is an interesting piece of science fiction history. Well it’s interesting to me, anyway.

It’s the only novel by either of its two co-authors, P. J. Beese and Todd Cameron Hamilton. Beese had a handful of short stories in mid-90s SF anthologies, Hamilton is much better known as an artist, and quite a good one — he painted about two dozen covers in the late 80s and early 90s, including six for John Varley novels and half a dozen very fine Analog covers — such as this splendid piece for the November 1987 issue.

The Guardian would probably be forgotten today (in fact, probably is forgotten), if not for the fact that it was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best novel — a nomination that was quickly withdrawn due to accusations of bloc voting. The controversy that swirled around it as a result tainted both authors and, while I have no direct knowledge, I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that it may be why we saw no additional novels from Beese or Hamilton.

And that’s a shame — especially since, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the public shaming that resulted was largely (or perhaps wholly) undeserved. Mike Glyer at File 770 did some fine investigative journalism into what he called the 1989 Hugo Controversy in 2017; here’s a summary of his findings.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Good, the Bad, and Mifune

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Good, the Bad, and Mifune

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Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai had done well for Toho Pictures so Kurosawa was encouraged to produce other samurai-era films, and during the late Fifties and early Sixties he alternated making historicals with crime films. Kurosawa was at the height of his creative powers, with a brilliant production team that was devoted to him, and a reliable revolving cast topped by his go-to lead, the versatile and charismatic Toshiro Mifune. These movies had a huge influence on American and European films of the Sixties and Seventies, an influence that persists today several creative generations later. These are deep films, richly nuanced and technically impressive — but best of all, they’re so much fun to watch.

The Hidden Fortress

Rating: *****
Origin: Japan, 1958
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Source: Amazon streaming video

The sound bite on The Hidden Fortress is that it’s the Kurosawa film that inspired Star Wars, but if you go into it expecting to see some kind of samurai cognate to the Skywalker saga, you’re going to be disappointed, and worse, you may overlook the very real pleasures this film has to offer. Yes, Hidden Fortress did inspire some aspects of George Lucas’s approach to Star Wars, but just put that aside and let this movie win you over on its own terms.

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Omni Magazine, November 1979: A Retro-Review

Omni Magazine, November 1979: A Retro-Review

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Worst Cover Ever

I will admit that I was very nervous about delving into Omni Magazine. For years, decades! I’ve heard people talk about Omni in breathless tones of awe! Yet I knew very little about it. Not to say that it was entirely unknown to me; I have distinct memories, back in like 1983, of being at the doctor’s office and they had several issues of Omni in the waiting room. I even flipped through some of them. Here is what I remember:

Omni Magazine was owned by Bob Guiccione, who also owned Penthouse Magazine, and Omni was full of ads for Penthouse. Like it should have come with a little placard that gave you instructions on how to rent a PO box and a chart where you could tick off the years/months until you turned 18 and could get a subscription to Penthouse… ahem… not that I ever did anything like that myself.

The November 1979 Omni was remarkably free from ads for Penthouse, so maybe it was a mid-80s thing?

Another thing that gave me pause about Omni was that it was huge! Not the four by six of the pulps, and not the ¼ inch thick Galileo, either. There is no other way to say it, Omni had a girth that I wasn’t sure I could handle.

Turns out that I needn’t have worried — easily half of Omni is advertising and the other half is a quarter advertising; cigarettes, mostly, but a fair share of whiskey and cars, too. Of the remaining space, a large portion of it is given up to articles and pseudoscience essays. At the end of the day, November 1979 Omni has very little fiction, only two pieces, although it also has two sci-fi related pictorials. I don’t know if this fiction desert is standard fare for the magazine or if it was a one-off.

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