Black Gate – Page 209 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

Friday, November 6, 2020 Sue Granquist Comments 12 comments

Marc Miller created Traveller back in 1977, and over the last forty years it’s become pretty much the de facto science fiction role playing game. It’s certainly the one to beat, anyway.

A few years back Marc Miller launched a Kickstarter to fund the publication of the Traveller novel Agent of the Imperium. It was a huge success. raising $35,113 from 970 backers, and the book appeared in 2015. Like most Kickstarter-funded book projects however, it’s early success didn’t immediately translate into a lot of readers.

Baen Books is hoping to rectify that with a 2020 reissue, which arrived this week in a handsome new trade paperback edition. Here’s an excerpt from Shannon Appelcline’s thoughtful review at RPG.Net.

Jonathan Bland is a dead man, but he lives on in a technological wafer that allows him to exist again for 30 days at a time as an Agent of the Imperium. When called upon, he continues the work of the Imperial Quarantine Agency — which as often as not requires the scrubbing of dangerous planets. Jonathan Bland is a dead man, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped learning… The threats of Agent of the Imperium include rogue robots, virulent diseases, and psionic infections, but at its core it’s a journey into the heart of a man who lives the most unusual life imaginable….

Agent of the Imperium is a troubleshooter novel, much like the Retief series (1967+) that Miller has listed as an influence on Traveller. Here, you can see the connection; where Keith Laumer wrote silly tales of a diplomatic troubleshooter, Miller instead offers the serious and sometimes grim tales of a quarantine troubleshooter in the Official Traveller Universe….

It is surprising that Marc Miller is able to incorporate so many elements of the Traveller universe in such an effortless, organic way. Vilani, psionics, newts, stasis globes, Geonee, naval officers, Threep, and amber zones. They’re all here, and they never feel gratuitous. Somehow, Miller is able both to fill Agent of the Imperium with the wonders of the Third Imperium and to convince us that he had to include those many and varied elements to give us the complete story…. Agent of the Imperium also does a great job of depicting Traveller‘s history. Because his book is set so far before the Golden Age, Miller is able to easily introduce historic elements such as the Frontier Wars and the Emperors of the Flag that could be backstory for any Traveller game… At the same time, Miller also foreshadows some of the future problems of the Imperium — great mysteries from the final days of the classic game. It’s an impressive (and surprising) trick.

Agent of the Imperium was published by Baen Books on November 3, 2020. It is 368 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $8.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Alan Pollack. Read a generous sample at the Baen website.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Goth Chick News: Prior Parasites, a Look Back at Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956

Thursday, November 5, 2020 Sue Granquist Comments 6 comments

It’s probably an analogy that falls firmly under the category of “graveyard humor,” but all the recent Covid headlines keeps reminding me of the tag line for the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers film from 1956:

“You’re next!”

Well, let’s certainly hope not. But the sci-fi movie we are currently all living in seems to beg for a lookback at the iconic film. These days, something about a black and white thriller seems more comforting and nostalgic than ever, and the 1956 Invasion, the very first in the list of several screen adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers, has a whole lot of backstory to explore.

First, a quick refresher on the plot.

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Vintage Treasures: The Calling of Bara by Sheila Sullivan

Thursday, November 5, 2020 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

The Calling of Bara (Avon, 1981, cover uncredited)

I like to use my Vintage Treasures columns to highlight overlooked classics of SF and fantasy, or books that mean something special to me. But every once in a while I’ll stumble on a complete mystery, a book I’ve never previously come across in over four decades of collecting. Are these titles worth showcasing? Of course they are! You even have to ask?

Which brings us to The Calling of Bara, a 1981 Avon paperback I found in a collection I bought on eBay over the summer. Never seen it before, and never heard of the author, Sheila Sullivan, either. But it’s clearly dressed up as a mainstream fantasy — and it even has an enthusiastic blurb on the cover by the great Peter Beagle (“”A haunting, scary, highly original book.”) Plus, it’s got a post apocalyptic, ruined-Earth vibe, and that’s a plus. That was enough to send me on the hunt for online mentions, and eventually I found this 40-year-old Kirkus Review in the faded memory banks of an old Univac machine at the U. of I:

When Con, the child Bara bears in 2044 — after all 20th century western civilization had crumbled away — is five years old, Bara hears voices within her demanding she bring Con to Ireland. They are pursued by Con’s father, the savage White Michael, travel through wild lands and tribes, until, after being joined by Bara’s man Tam, they are welcomed in Ireland by the ruling class of telepaths which had called them. Con, with his unique powers, will one day head this elite who are debating whether or not to restore 20th century civilization, while the evil principle, White Michael, waits in the wings. Atmospheric and moderately involving if you haven’t been there before.

Atmospheric and involving… evil principle… crumbling ruins. What the hell, my needs are simple. I’ll try it.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Beyond Captain Blood: Three by Sabatini

Wednesday, November 4, 2020 Lawrence Ellsworth Comments 5 comments

The Sea Hawk (Warner Bros, 1940)

We’ve already covered Errol Flynn’s breakthrough swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) in this series, and you’ve probably seen and savored it, but you might not be familiar with Rafael Sabatini, the author who wrote the novel it was so memorably adapted from. In the Nineteenth Century Alexandre Dumas père was the king of historical adventure, but in the Twentieth Century that crown passed to Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950). Born in Italy, Sabatini was raised and schooled in Britain, Italy, and Switzerland, and was fluent in at least five languages. He settled in England in the early 1890s and in 1902 published The Suitors of Yvonne, the first of thirty-one historical novels, pretty much all of which can be classified as swashbucklers. In fact, in the early twentieth century the name Sabatini practically defined the genre. (He’s the only author who’s included twice in my Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure anthology.)

Sabatini’s novels were perfect film fodder; a half-dozen of them made it to the screen in the silent era, and after the success of Flynn’s Captain Blood Hollywood revisited Sabatini’s backlist for another round in the forties and fifties. The three covered below are the best of the lot — and two of them are as good as it gets!

The Sea Hawk

Rating: ***** (Essential)
Origin: USA, 1940
Director: Michael Curtiz
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

Shortly after the success of Captain Blood (1935), Warner Bros. optioned Blood author Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk as a follow-up vehicle for Errol Flynn; but production was postponed, partly because the plot of Hawk was too similar to that of Blood. Several years passed, war between Britain and Germany began to appear inevitable, and the British production of Fire Over England (1937) provided a model for an American approach to the same historical events.

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Samuel R. Delany on The Shores Beneath, edited by James Sallis

Wednesday, November 4, 2020 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Shores Beneath (Avon, August 1971). Cover by Ron Walotsky

It’s been a good few weeks for obscure SF anthologies. Sunday I talked about the 50-year old Swords & Sorcery anthology Swords Against Tomorrow, which Alan Brown at Tor.com unexpectedly reviewed recently. And two weeks ago the great Samuel R. Delany posted this on Facebook, about James Sallis’ long-forgotten 1971 anthology The Shores Beneath, which collected four tales by Delany, Thomas M. Disch, John Sladek, and Roger Zelazny.

This 1971 collection of four long stories is a collection that made me very happy to be in — though all the stories have been reprinted, it never got the introduction that the editor had promised when he first sold the idea of the book to Avon. I wonder if that has anything to do with why the book was never reprinted.

“The Asian Shore” [by Disch] is an upsetting tale about racism again Muslims. [Zelazny’s] “The Graveyard Heart” is an SF vampire tale. To flip through [John Sladek’s] “Masterson and the Clerks” is to encounter a text that looks just like Aeolus chapter in Ulysses — and to read it is to realize it presents the same theme. The extra information about my own story is actually on the back — it won a Hugo Award (and a Nebula) which is probably why it also got the wonderful Walotsky cover. But might it have [helped] to add that it was a fairly early tale about same-sex desire…? Might even that much extra information have kept the collection itself in print for more than the year it was widely available?

The book dates from the time when Zelazny and I had the same agent — and when Avon was doing some of the most literary books in English. (I assume the in-house editor on the book was George Ernsberger, if not Peter Mayer himself.)

The saddest words of tongue or pen
Are the words “it might have been.”

The Shores Beneath was published by Avon Books in August 1971. It is 192 pages, priced at $0.75. The cover is by Ron Walotsky. It has never been reprinted, and there is no digital edition. See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

Return to the World of The Three Musketeers in Blood Royal by Alexandre Dumas

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Need a break from obsessively following US election results tonight? I have just the thing: Blood Royal, the latest entry in the acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels by our very own Lawrence Ellsworth, is on sale today.

I’ve really been enjoying Lawrence’s Cinema of Swords series here at Black Gate. But his day job is even cooler: he’s been bringing Alexandre Dumas’s classic novels of swashbuckling intrigue back into print in exciting and handsome new editions, complete with modern translations.

The latest, Blood Royal, continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends. It follows The Red Sphinx and the newly translated The Three Musketeers; here’s what Lawrence told us about it last week.

Blood Royal is the second volume of Dumas’s Twenty Years After; there hadn’t been a significant new English translation of this novel in over a century, which was reason enough to take on the challenge, but the truth is I did it because it was so much fun.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’s greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill-ride Dumas is famous for — while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask.

In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be re-formed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas’s oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters, and an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.

Blood Royal was published today by Pegasus Books. It is 496 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $17.99 in digital formats.

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

In Defense of Corum, Elric’s Brother-from-a-Vadhagh-Mother

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 Greg Mele Comments 11 comments

The Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (Berkley, 1971). Covers by David McCall Johnston.

Wow, I don’t think I could agree less with a column.

Michael Moorcock is one of the tower giants of sword & sorcery and New Wave SciFi; a member of early Conan fandom who by 16 was a published author and editor, and has spent 64 years writing a vast body of work. Most of this work chronicles snapshots of his Multiverse, and the struggles of the Eternal Champion, the tortured, ever-reincarnating hero of the Cosmic Balance in the struggle between Law and Chaos. And, of course, no aspect of that hero is more famous than Elric, Doomed Prince of Melnibone, wielder of the demonic, soul-stealing rune-sword, Stormbringer. No character has perhaps come to symbolize Sword & Sorcery more, other than Conan himself (*maybe* Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser) than Elric.

Only, as Lin Carter wrote in Flashing Swords! #2:

In 1965 followed an Elric novel called Stormbringer, wherein Moorcock made the tactical error of killing off his hero and terminating the series by the simple method of blowing up the universe. Since then Mike has created many another fantasy hero, but he has recently confessed to me that he is tired of making up carbon copies of Elric: hence this story, and the good news that he is back at work, fitting new Elric tales in among the ones written almost a decade earlier…

And so, Moorcock began writing about other incarnations of the Eternal Champion (and retconning some of his earlier characters to become such). It’s quite a pantheon, but some characters are far better known than others. After our Albino Prince, the most famous must be Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry/Jhary/jeremiah Cornelius, and Erekosë, who alone of the various incarnations, recalls his past lives, and his dark fate. It’s a mixed pantheon to be sure, with a wildly varying quality of work — I find The Jewel in the Skull, first of the Hawkmoon novels, to be one of the best novels Moorcock wrote, but still can’t get through the Jerry Cornelius tales.

But for me, none of the other incarnations quite work the way Corum Jhaelen Irsei, the Prince in the Scarlet Robe does.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Psych of the Dead

Monday, November 2, 2020 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

I could not figure out what to write about today. I re-watched Paul Newman’s Harper, and thought about a post on that – especially since I recently re-read the autobiography of screenwriter William Goldman. And I saw Unholy Partners, a good hardboiled newspaper flick with Edward G. Robinson and Edward Arnold. I re-watched three versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles (Ian Richardson, Peter Cushing, and Jeremy Brett), and Bruce Campbell’s My Name is Bruce. I read Mark Latham’s Sherlock Holmes – Van Helsing novel, Betrayal in Blood. I started Robert E. Howard’s Cormac Mac Art stories, which I’d not read yet. I even started typing about Fortnite, the phenomenon with over 350 MILLION registered accounts – I play as a way to connect with my soon-to-be teenage son. But none of those subjects ‘clicked’ for this week.

I was sitting, looking at the well over a thousand books in my home office drawing a blank. I had a case of writer’s malaise. For Halloween, I watched a couple episodes of Psych, and I’ve decided to write about that. This isn’t one of my in-depth series’ looks, like I wrote for Leverage, and Hell on Wheels. But we’ll still talk about one of my favorite detective shows.

The premise of Psych is that Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday) has Sherlock Holmes-like powers of observation. Growing up, his dad (a terrific co-starring performance by Corbin Bernsen) was a hard-nosed cop who taught his son by locking him in the trunk of the car, challenging him in a restaurant to close his eyes and tell him how many diners are wearing hats, and the like. In the pilot, circumstances force Sean to pretend those observational skills are actually psychic revelations. He has to continue the charade to avoid jail. It sounds ridiculous, but they make it work well enough in the pilot.

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Witches, Sorcerers, and Space Citadels: Alan Brown on Swords Against Tomorrow, edited by Robert Hoskins

Sunday, November 1, 2020 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

Swords Against Tomorrow (Signet / New American Library, August 1970). Cover by Gene Szafran.

I’ve been enjoying Alan Brown’s classic science fiction reviews at Tor.com. In just the last few months he’s looked at Masters of the Vortex by E. E. “Doc” Smith, H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pirates of Venus, Sterling E. Lanier’s Hiero’s Journey, and Murray Leinster’s Med Ship. That’s a pretty satisfying journey through some great 20th Century SF right there (depending on how generously you’re disposed towards “Doc” Smith, I grant you).

But I was especially intrigued by his lengthy review of Robert Hoskins’ 1970 sword & sorcery anthology Swords Against Tomorrow, a long-forgotten volume that contained five long stories by Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, Lin Carter, John Jakes, and Leigh Brackett, including a pair of reprints from Planet Stories and an original novelette from Lin Carter. All but one are reprints — including a standalone novella by Anderson, a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser adventure, a Brak the Barbarian story, and a tale in Brackett’s famous Venus series.

This is a fine little paperback that introduced readers to some of the most popular heroic fantasy series of the era in the early 70s, and I certainly didn’t expect to see it featured so prominently at the premier genre site over half a century after it was published.

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Rebuild Civilization on a Savage and Alien Earth in Midnight Legion from Studio 9

Sunday, November 1, 2020 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Midnight Legion box set from Studio 9 (2016). Art by C. Aaron Kreader.

It’s been a busy year, between changing jobs in April, managing a fledging writing career as Todd McAulty, running Black Gate, and coping with a pandemic. I don’t get to read as much as I used to, and I definitely don’t get to game as much. I especially regret not having the chance to dig into some of the new generation of solo RPGs, like Four Against Darkness and Into the Dungeon.

But I did spend a few shekels to try Midnight Legion, a very promising post apocalyptic solo gamebook series with a strong Metamorphosis Alpha vibe. Created by writer Aaron J. Emmel and artist C. Aaron Kreader and published by Evanston, Illinois-based Studio 9, Midnight Legion is a three-book series featuring an amnesiac android who awakens on a vastly changed Earth peopled with strange creatures and deadly mutant plants, and must piece together the clues to his original mission. You get everything you need to start in the intro Midnight Legion box set, published in 2016 with this description on the back:

You are an elite, android agent of an ancient, clandestine group who is forced awake after hundreds of years of stasis. Your memory is gone, and you can’t recall your purpose. You will need to solve puzzles and choose whether to use combat, stealth, or sixth sense and diplomacy to unlock your mission and the secrets of the world you knew.

The Midnight Legion is an interactive story where player(s) choose how to respond to what happens next. Created for solo play, with a 2-player option, this three book game series promises hours of gaming. Starting with Book 1: Operation Deep Sleep, everything you need to begin is contained in this boxed set.

The second gamebook, The World Reborn followed in 2017, and the final volume Portal of Life in 2019. Together they form an ambitious and compelling science fiction adventure that I’m anxious to dig into.

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