Goth Chick News: This Is Seriously Incredible (and Kind of Disturbing)

Goth Chick News: This Is Seriously Incredible (and Kind of Disturbing)

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@danruse

I am very much a newbie to the world of artificial intelligence (AI), but I’m finding it infinitely fascinating. Like most people, I started with ChatGPT and then started playing around with Bard and other competitors. The possibilities are mind-bending and frightening in nearly equal measure, but I have started incorporating it into my work life, albeit slowly. I even tried asking ChatGPT to write a GCN article, but thankfully you’d notice the difference between it and me, or at least until AI gets a better sense of humor.

The latest thing I’ve been digging into is AI interpreting images. For instance, there is an AI tool called Midjourney which creates images from text prompts. For a basic plan of $96 per year, you purchase time on Midjourney’s powerful Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to interpret and process your text prompts. In response to your prompts (i.e. “New York in the summer”), Midjourney creates four graphic interpretations of what it thinks you asked it for. You can then zero in on the image closest to your liking, and perfect/enhance it further.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Zatoichi at Large

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Zatoichi at Large

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Zatoichi and the Chess Expert (Japan, 1965)

Looking over my notes for the forthcoming Cinema of Swords collection (to be published by Applause Books on June 15th), I realized that there were several five-star entries in the Zatoichi series, absolute gems, that I’d never covered here at Black Gate. Worse, I hadn’t devoted an article to the blind swordsman in almost two years, and there might be newer readers who hadn’t been introduced to Shintaro Katsu and his samurai-era yakuza outlaw hero.

Well, we can’t have that. Herewith are three top-notch features from the Zatoichi series — try any one of them, and then just see if you can stop yourself from watching the rest.

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Left Behind: The Last of Us, Episode Seven

Left Behind: The Last of Us, Episode Seven

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Hello! We’re back with another episode review! This one, judging by the title, is based entirely on what was a DLC to the original game that explored Ellie’s backstory. I’m excited about this one… in a very masochistic way (honestly, the DLC left me sobbing). C’est parti!

I may have mentioned before, but I will again, how much I love the guitar introduction. I remember the game introduction being the same thing, though that might be my memory mixing things up (I do know it was guitar, and I’m reasonably certain it’s the same exact tune, but I’m open to being wrong.)

Winter proper. In the game, we open to a rabbit getting skewered by Ellie’s arrow. It’s probably for the best we don’t see that in the show.

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Talking Tolkien: Religious Themes in Lord of the Rings – Joe Bonadonna

Talking Tolkien: Religious Themes in Lord of the Rings – Joe Bonadonna

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Talking Tolkien is back and it’s Black Gater Joe Bonadonna, musing on religious themes in Lord of the Rings. Since Tolkien set out to compose a mythology for England, and was himself a devout Catholic, it’s no surprise that the topic of religion is certainly relevant to his work. Take it away, Joe…

First, I want to say that I am most definitely not an expert on Tolkien’s writings and his history of Middle-earth. Certainly, the myriad fans of Tolkien’s work will be familiar with the ideas and concepts that are laid out in this article. Most of what I set down here will be obvious to Tolkien fans and aficionados. I’m not really adding anything new here; this is just an exploration of themes I’ve always found interesting, and whenever I find myself in a discussion with other fans of Lord of the Rings, I always find myself bringing up the topic of religious ideas in the books, and the fact that there are no churches or other holy places. (It can be argued that all Middle-earth — every forest, every river, every mountain, every pasture is sacred, I suppose.)

Why aren’t there any priests, nuns or priestesses in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings? Do Hobbits go to church? Do Elves worship at a temple? Do dwarves belong to a mosque or synagogue? Do they all pray to Eru/Ilúvatar? And where do they go to pray? A special house of worship or is anywhere they pray become a sacred place?

Those are some of the questions I inevitably ask.

Since first reading The Hobbit in 1968, I’ve read it only one other time; I’ve read Lord of the Rings three times, but have only read The Silmarillion once. When The Children of Hurin was first published, I read that. I am pretty unfamiliar with the professor’s other works, however. My sources used in research for this article are: Ruth S. Noel’s The Mythology of Middle-Earth, Robert Foster’s The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, Paul H. Kocher’s Master of Middle-Earth, William Ready’s Understanding Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter’s Tolkien: The Complete Biography, as well as The Hobbit, The Return of the King, and The Silmarillion.

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Retro Review: Two F&SFs from Robert P. Mills’ Editorship

Retro Review: Two F&SFs from Robert P. Mills’ Editorship

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The November 1958 and May 1961 issues of The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction. Covers by John Pederson and Ed Emshwiller

I’ve recently looked at a few issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early to mid-50s, when Anthony Boucher (at first in collaboration with J. Francis McComas) was the editor. Boucher left that post with the August 1958 issue, and Robert P. Mills took over. (Mills had been the editor of F&SF’s sister magazine Venture for its ten-issue stint running bimonthly from January 1957 through July 1958.) He edited F&SF until the March 1962 issue.

These two issues, then, neatly mark a period early in his term, and one in the last year of his term. So it seems like a good idea to consider them together. (If truth be told, though, I bought these for another reason — they feature two of the very best stories from the first phase of Carol Emshwiller’s career.)

Let’s look quickly at the TOCs of the two issues.

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Lin Carter’s Forgotten Anthologies: Kingdoms of Sorcery and Realms of Wizardry

Lin Carter’s Forgotten Anthologies: Kingdoms of Sorcery and Realms of Wizardry

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Lin Carter’s anthologies of Adult Fantasy: Kingdoms of Sorcery and
Realms of Wizardry (Doubleday, 1976). Covers by John Cayea and Robert Aulicino

Lin Carter was an exceptional editor, and one of the most important figures in 20th Century American fantasy. As Managing Editor of the seminal Ballantine Adult Fantasy imprint, he was responsible for publishing virtually one new title every month — and he did exactly that, tirelessly producing 83 volumes between August 1965 and April 1974. In the late 70s and early 80s he became one of the most important anthology editors in the genre, helming three major anthology series: Flashing Swords! (five volumes, 1973-1981), The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories (six volumes, 1975-1980), and the paperback incarnation of Weird Tales (four volumes, 1980-83).

But the early 70s was really Carter’s heyday, at least in terms of anthologies. In those days he was producing two to three every year, including terrific books like Golden Cities, Far (1970), Discoveries in Fantasy (1972), and Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy (1972), all of which were original paperbacks.

In 1976 Carter published his final anthologies of adult fantasy, Kingdoms of Sorcery and Realms of Wizardry. Unlike virtually every other anthology he published, these were hardcover originals — and in fact were never reprinted in paperback. But like the others they were assembled with exacting care, crammed full of dozens of entertaining and informative short essays introducing the tales. While they are much less talked about than his later titles, these are delightful books, with plenty to enchant modern readers — those few who know about them, anyway. I’m here to do what I can to correct that.

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A Tale of the Last Free Humans: Fletcher Vredenburgh on Jack Vance’s “The Dragon Masters”

A Tale of the Last Free Humans: Fletcher Vredenburgh on Jack Vance’s “The Dragon Masters”

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Various covers for Jack Vance’s novella “The Dragon Masters” over the years: the
original appearance in the August 1962 Galaxy, the 1972 Ace Double, and the 1981
Ace paperback edition. Cover art by Jack Gaughan, Josh Kirby, and David B. Mattingly

Over at Goodman Games Bill Ward, Howard Andrew Jones and a team of thousands have assembled a world-class fantasy blog around their magnificent magazine Tales From the Magician’s Skull. Recent articles include Bill Ward’s delightful survey of the Classic Covers of Jack Williamson, Jeff Goad’s Appendix N-inspired dive into the work of Fletcher Pratt, and Ngo Vinh-Hoi’s appreciation of pulp master Stanley G. Weinbaum.

But the piece that really grabbed my attention was part of their recent series on the amazing Jack Vance. Black Gate‘s own Fletcher Vredenburgh has a look at Vance’s Hugo Award-winning novella “The Dragon Masters,” calling it “a fantastic introduction to the science fiction of Jack Vance… one of the great writers of fantasy and science fiction.”

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New Treasures: Darker Than Weird by John R. Fultz

New Treasures: Darker Than Weird by John R. Fultz

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Darker Than Weird by John R. Fultz (Jackanapes Press, April 15, 2023). Cover art & interior illustrations by Dan Sauer

I devoured John R. Fultz’s 2021 Worlds Beyond Worlds collection (Black Gate review link). His action-fueled, weird short fiction has graced many venues like Weird Tales & Weirdbook, and his novel The Testament of Tall Eagle (and The Son of Tall Eagle) and the Books of the Shaper series have garnered praise from pillars in the field:

“A master of his craft.” —DON WEBB, Author of Building Strange Temples

“Fultz delivers the goods.” —HOWARD ANDREW JONES, Author of The Ring-Sworn Trilogy

“An author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building.” —The Library Journal

Longtime Black Gate readers will recall John R. Fultz illustrated & published a series on this site called Skulls (Chapter One Link). I interviewed him back in 2017 for the Beauty in Weird Fiction series (right before that was picked up by Black Gate; keep an eye out for a re-interview in the coming year!).

With cover art & interior illustrations by Dan Sauer, John R. Fultz releases another dark & weird collection; well, specifically, it’s Darker than Weird – Fourteen Tales of Horror (Just released April 15th, 2023 by Jackanapes Press; available from the publisher and Amazon).

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Friends From an Alien Universe: Buying Perry Rhodan Art

Friends From an Alien Universe: Buying Perry Rhodan Art

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Original art for Perry Rhodan #415 (August 15, 1969) by Johnny Bruck

As a teenager in the late 1970’s, my favorite science fiction series was Perry Rhodan. Although the U.S. editions ceased in 1979 after #137, in its native Germany the series continues to this day in various forms, with over 3200 installments in the main series and counting.

Some of the earliest SF art I ever collected, starting at the old Chicago Comicon in the late 1980’s, were U.S. Perry Rhodan covers by artists Gray Morrow and George Wilson. In Germany up to that time, the primary cover artist was Johnny Bruck (a few of which were reprinted on early printings of some of the U.S. editions). For decades I tried to find Bruck PR covers, but with no success.

About six months ago, an avid SF art collector in Switzerland, Markus Rohrwild, began to post loads of Bruck PR covers on the Comic Art Fans site. He was friends with Bruck’s widow and had acquired hundreds of paintings from her. I eventually reached out to him to see if any might be for sale, and I was extremely pleased when he agreed to sell some to me.

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New Treasures: Figurehead by Carly Holmes

New Treasures: Figurehead by Carly Holmes

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Figurehead by Carly Holmes (Parthian Books, September 5, 2022). Cover design by Syncopated Pandemonium

It’s good to know a lot of writers on social media. Back in April I saw a terse 10-word Facebook post from Mark Morris that simply read:

Books Read in 2023 no 24: FIGUREHEAD by Carly Holmes

That was it. Well, that and an image of the cover, a silhouette of a fox and a tree, and that humblebrag about reading 24 books by April 24. Everybody hates a show-off (especially people like me, who are hoping to get out of single digits by the end of May).

Nonetheless, I was intrigued enough to investigate further. Figurehead is a collection by west Wales author Carly Holmes, and the more I learned, the more interesting it got. By the end of the week I had a copy of my very own, and I settled in to check it out.

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