Black Gate – Page 225 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Fodder for the Imagination: Nothing is Canon

Tuesday, September 8, 2020 S.M. Carrière Comments 7 comments

space-4888643_1920

Good morning, Readers!

There has been, shall we say, a vigorous discussion happening online about speculative fiction, and whose favourites ought to be considered canon and thusly paid homage for all eternity, regardless of either their fraught legacies or the brilliance of newer fiction. For myself, I find it particularly odd that speculative fiction, particularly science fiction, famous for writing about the future should have adherents that are so backwards-looking. These people insist that past fiction should be heralded as beacons of the genre, and all future writers should know everything about these works.

Except that they don’t. Not really.

I’m not the only one to feel this way. John Scalzi has written a couple of blog posts along these lines recently, and I find I agree with him. It isn’t necessary for up and coming writers to know everything about writers or stories of the past. They’re writing fiction, not a dissertation on the history and development of fiction.

And more, with a world that is privy now to a greater pool of stories; a great influx of them having little to do with the distinctly European roots and focus of fictions past. From primary sources, including archaeology and repositories of mythologies previously unknown to us, to modern writers drawing on their own cultural traditions and morays, what old white men wrote back in the day is decreasingly relevant.

…

Read More Read More

An Inaudible Blast from the Past: Silent Death — The Game of Spaceship Combat (Part 1)

Monday, September 7, 2020 Tony Den Comments 6 comments

Silent Death – Metal Express original box set (Iron Crown Enterprises, 1990). Art by Angus McKie

What do a fantasy miniatures line and a contemporary science fiction novel have in common? Not much at a glance, but if you put on your Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency hat and apply the theory of The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things, a relatively straight line can be drawn between the two.

A recent post here at Black Gate about Chaos Vector, an exquisite looking new novel by Megan E. O‘Keefe, got my attention. While I dearly want to lay my hands on it (and its forerunner, Velocity Weapon), what really piqued my interest was the beautiful SPAC (Single Person Attack Craft) with its forward swept wings on the cover.

You see, it looks quite a bit like a ship called a Talon, from the beloved space combat game Silent Death. Which triggered this article, and a step back in time to the late 1980s…

Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) was a game publisher known mostly for their successful Middle Earth Role Playing line and the complex Rolemaster fantasy role playing game. They released the Rolemaster Future Lore book in 1985 , which subsequently spawned the SpaceMaster Science Fiction line (stay with me here). Star Strike, a space combat game for SpaceMaster, was created by Kevin Barrett and released in 1988. That could have been the end of it, and this article could be covering Star Strike, a game I’ve only read about…

It did not end there! While Star Strike was relatively successful for its time, it was dogged by its heritage. Even though it was a fast-paced space combat game, its association with the notoriously crunchy SpaceMaster came at a cost. While Rolemaster and SpaceMaster had loyal fan bases, plenty of gamers found them to be overly complex and rules heavy.

…

Read More Read More

William Goldman’s Hollywood Adventures

Monday, September 7, 2020 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

Today, I’m going to take a week off from A (Black) Gat in the Hand. And no, not to dust off The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. I constantly read. Often related to my weekly column here at Black Gate. A thousand words every Monday morning takes some research. And I like to ‘read now’ to start future projects. And I read ‘how to’ books to try and bolster my fledgling attempts at writing fiction. And I do Bible study. So, I don’t read ‘just to read’ that much these days. Which is fine. I like reading the stuff I do. But sometimes, I just want to pull something off of the shelves solely for enjoyment’s sake. And it’s often something which I’ve read before.

I read two books just for fun last week. And since a big part of why I write for Black Gate is to introduce people to things I think they might be interested in, I’m going to talk about those two books. William Goldman, who passed away in 2018, was a very successful screenwriter (that’s short for ‘screenplay writer’ – Nero Wolfe would not approve!). Harper, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Marathon Man, A Bridge Too Far, Misery, Maverick, Absolute Power: the guy knew what he was doing. And he was a novelist first – not only did he write the screenplay for The Princess Bride, he adapted it from his own novel.

In 1983, Goldman published the best-selling Adventures in the Screen Trade. It is simply a FANTASTIC book. It is an honest, compelling memoir from a Hollywood insider who remained an outsider (he never lived in California. He would go there to work, but he always returned to NYC). And the book contains insights into screenwriting, as well. I read it about twenty years ago when I decided to teach myself how to write screenplays (I’ve written a couple. That’s all we need to say about that). I really liked it.

And last week, re-reading it, I liked it even more. In 2000, there was a followup: Which Lie Did I Tell?. And it is also a fun, absorbing read. Anybody who enjoys movies should read these books.

Goldman was sure The Great Waldo Pepper was going to be huge. And as he’s sitting in a screening, he realizes why it didn’t fly (see what I did there? Helps if you actually saw the movie). He dishes the inside scoop on the battle over the hobbling scene in Misery (if you haven’t read King’s story, the source material is brutal). We learn that Clint Eastwood stood in line to get his lunch at the cafeteria while filming and producing Absolute Power. Just like a normal person. Goldman explains why he walked out on The Right Stuff (the only time he quit a project).

…

Read More Read More

A Salute to a Science Fiction Bookseller

Sunday, September 6, 2020 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Infinite Dreams by John Haldeman (Avon 1979, cover by Clyde Caldwell),
Chrysalis Volume 2, edited by Roy Torgeson (Zebra 1978, cover by Colin Hay)

Based on the email I get, a lot of Black Gate readers assume that I pull my Vintage Treasures out of the Cave of Wonders in my basement. It’s true that there’s a lot of paperback books down there (crammed up to the rafters in places), but the truth is that most of the books I choose to highlight in my regular Vintage Treasures column are recent acquisitions. I have a lot of regular sellers I trust, and one of them is North Dakota eBay seller pandoratim (Tim Friesen), whom I’ve purchased several titles from over the years (including Joe Haldeman’s first collection Infinite Dreams, which I talked about last year).

So I was a little dismayed to have my most recent purchase from Tim, Roy Torgeson’s 1978 anthology Chrysalis 2, canceled on Tuesday. In a cryptic message sent through eBay, Tim told me, “I am about to cancel your order because my health has deteriorated to the point where I can’t fulfill orders. I apologize for this poor handling of your order.” I wasn’t too concerned about the book, but I was concerned about a message like that from a trusted bookseller who’s sent me some fine volumes over the years. So I sent Tim this message.

Oh no! I’m so sorry to hear that. Don’t worry about the book at all. I appreciate you letting me know. I hope this is something you can recover from eventually. Readers need to stick together. I hope you’ll drop me a note letting me know you’re getting better. I’m at john@blackgate.com.

I was deeply saddened to get this response this morning.

Hi John, thanks a lot for writing. I’m sorry to say it’s not. I’ve gone into Palliative Care and likely have just a couple of weeks left. One of the great pleasures I gained from selling on eBay was getting to know repeat customers, like yourself. It’s one of my few regrets. However, it was my turn to draw the short straw, and I’m at peace with our decision. Best wishes to you going forward, John, please take care as you can during these crazy pandemic-filled and toxicly politicized days. It’s been a pleasure working with you,

sincerely,
Tim Friesen

There’s very little I can do for Tim, from three states away. But I can do this. In front of the collective community of Black Gate readers, I would like to thank Tim Friesen, for the great care he took with his books over the years, and the obvious joy he took in sharing them with so many others. In many ways I think that’s the highest calling a book lover can have — not simply to collect and preserve great books, but to do the real work of parting with them, and put them safely in other hands.

We salute you, Tim. Safe voyages from here.

A Dead Colony and a Deep Space Mystery: The Memory War by Karen Osborne

Sunday, September 6, 2020 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Here’s something interesting — an ambitious two-book space opera from debut novelist Karen Osborne. Opening novel Architects of Memory, which Publishers Weekly calls “a twisty, political space opera about corporate espionage and alien contact,” will be released in trade paperback on Tuesday. Book Two, Engines of Oblivion, arrives in February.

Here’s a snippet from the feature review of the first book at The Nerd Daily.

Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne is a stellar debut that explores the corruption in capitalism and what we will go through to protect the ones we love.

Salvage pilot, Ashland Jackson, just wants to finish her company indenture and get the citizenship she desperately needs to gain access to the treatment for the celestium sickness that is quickly killing her. When Ash and the crew of the Twenty-Five stumbled upon a mysterious weapon while on a salvage op, they are thrown into a world of corporate espionage and betrayals. As buried secrets and alliances become revealed, Ash and the crew must figure out who to trust and how to keep the weapon out of the wrong hands….

Architects of Memory is a good debut that leads me to believe Karen Osborne will definitely be taking up space on my favourites of science fiction bookcase. Her subtle way of building up characters brings them to life in ways that few authors can achieve. If you are looking for a science fiction story with authentic characters, twisty plots, a stuffed unicorn toy, and plenty of action and feels, then this is the one for you!

Here’s a peek at the back cover for Architects of Memory, and complete publishing deets both volumes.

…

Read More Read More

A Science Fiction Catastrophe

Saturday, September 5, 2020 Thomas Parker Comments 1 comment

Just another day living with COVID

When is this going to end? Will it ever truly be over? I certainly don’t know and I don’t know of anyone who does. Neither can I claim that I was prepared when the COVID era suddenly leaped out of the ground and threw itself at our throats like Ray Harryhausen’s murderous skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, though I do like to think that we science fiction readers were taken just a little less by surprise than most folks were.

Before this happened, we’d at least spent time (in the literary sense) with people who have foreseen disasters like the one we’re living through. Perhaps no theme is more common to the genre, and any science fiction fan worth his or her salt has whole shelves full of books that describe the human race wrestling with apocalyptic attacks that come out of nowhere and change everything. (I know you were hoping the science fiction that would be realized during your lifetime would be contact with a benevolent alien civilization or antigravity cars or an endless power supply that you could carry in your pocket, not this. Me too.)

Maybe that’s why the opening of H.G. Wells’s great book (and the granddaddy of all such end-of-the-world nightmares), The War of the Worlds, has been much on my mind lately.

…

Read More Read More

Bigfoot, Uplifted Creatures, and the Largest Black Hole in the Universe: September/October Print SF Magazines

Saturday, September 5, 2020 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Analog Science Fiction September October 2020-small

Asimov's Science Fiction September October 2020-small

The Magazone of Fantasy and Science Fiction September October 2020-small

Covers by Soo Lee, Maurizio Manzieri, and Bob Eggleton

When Illinois went into lockdown in March, and retail stores and movie theatres closed, life changed pretty quick. I thought an indefinite nationwide lockdown might be the death knell for the print magazines I’d been reading for decades, not to mention my local bookstores and comic shops. And yeah, I felt I little shallow for being preoccupied with that while tens of thousands of people were dying.

Nonetheless, I’m relieved to see that, with the pandemic (sorta?) under control and the hope of a vaccine on the horizon, stores in St. Charles are gradually re-opening, I can visit my local comic shop again, and the print magazines I love are back on the shelves.

I’m especially relieved because none of the steps I suggested back in April to worried readers worked at all. Chuck Timpko reported he was able to contact the Customer Service team at Asimov’s and Analog and order individual issues; I tried the same thing, but never saw any magazines. I vowed to support F&SF with a subscription, but I never saw that either. So I’m back to haunting the magazine racks at Barnes & Noble, wearing a face mask and furtively looking for the latest issues.

…

Read More Read More

Rogue Blades Author: 1975: The Year of the Cormac

Friday, September 4, 2020 Ty Johnston Comments 3 comments

The following is an excerpt from Keith J. Taylor’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

It has often been said that Robert E. Howard’s main heroes were largely cut to the same pattern — tall, powerful Gaels or proto-Gaels, black-haired, blue-eyed, mighty in combat, scowling and somber. Conan himself fits that description, as does Kull of Atlantis, Turlogh Dubh O’Brien, the less-than-idealistic Norman-Irish crusader Cormac FitzGeoffrey — and Cormac Mac Art, though the latter has “narrow eyes of a cold steel-grey” rather than blue ones.

There are other types, certainly. James Allison’s former incarnations are all Nordic. Bran Mak Morn, the dark, compact Pict committed to a losing fight for his people, is of Mediterranean race. Solomon Kane, though he has black hair and pale, icy eyes, is not particularly Celtic.

The black-haired, blue-eyed Gaels, much alike as they are physically, show greater variation in character and personality than they sometimes receive credit for. Kull seems asexual (“He had never been a lover”) and although a great fighter, he often broods on the nature of existence and reality, the difference between appearance and what truly is, even whether anything truly is.

Conan is decidedly not asexual! His interest in lovely women is active and frequent. Nor is he concerned with the difference between seeming and reality. “If life is illusion, I am no less an illusion, and so it is real to me,” he says to Bêlit, and leaves it at that, untroubled. Although, like Kull, he becomes a king who was once an outlaw barbarian, he does not constantly feel like a misfit in the civilized kingdom he rules, and even acquires a sense of responsibility and loyalty to his adopted land. Turlogh O’Brien, who flourishes in the early 11th century after the battle of Clontarf, doesn’t have much of a love life, but then he spends most of his time as an outcast from his clan, fighting for bare survival, outlawed on false charges. Nevertheless, he remains loyal to his people when, for instance, one of them is kidnapped by Vikings — for whom he feels an “almost insane hatred.”

…

Read More Read More

Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu Part Eleven

Friday, September 4, 2020 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

Master of Kung Fu was a critically acclaimed series in 1977, but one which was burning out its creators in their efforts to maintain the high standard of quality in an industry that required juggling numerous assignments each month in order to earn a living. Artist Paul Gulacy had recently departed over the pressure and writer Doug Moench was struggling to keep up with deadlines as well. The series had just concluded an epic eight-part story arc with issue #51 that saw Shang-Chi separated from both his estranged father, Fu Manchu and the mentor who had become his father figure, Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Readers eager to find out what would happen next in Shang-Chi’s life would have to wait 90 days as issue #52 was a flashback to an untold and largely comedic adventure set a year earlier in the continuity while issue #53 was a reprint.

Issue #52 saw the return of Groucho Marx as cabbie, Rufus T. Hackstabber now paired with W. C. Fields as his equally disreputable cousin, Quigley J. Warmflash in a misadventure that seemed better suited to Steve Gerber’s contemporaneous Howard the Duck series. This Moroccan interlude involved the return of rogue Si-Fan agent Tiger-Claw seeking Fu Manchu’s elixir vitae which he believes is hidden inside an elusive antique statuette of an elephant. The story is a fun mash-up of The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Casablanca, and The Maltese Falcon. A man-sized statue of the Black Bird itself can be glimpsed among the bric-a-brac crowding Warmflash’s curio shop. The story features not one, but two spectacular crashes of Hackstabber’s taxi cab and also provides Warmflash with a lovely (but rather dim) nightclub singer/belly dancer daughter, Dinah. A hoot to be sure and returning guest artist Keith Pollard did an excellent job capturing the likenesses of two Golden Age of Hollywood comedy legends, but Tiger-Claw’s return was squandered amidst the barrage of laughs and outrageousness on display.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: The Beautiful Horror of Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth

Thursday, September 3, 2020 Sue Granquist Comments 7 comments

I could not leave the topic of early aughts nightmare-inducing films without bringing up this one. As rife with symbolism as it is horrors, Guillermo Del Toro’s 2007 dark fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth is a simple story which explores complex and sometimes violent themes about human morality and free will. When I Googled “symbolism of Pan’s Labyrinth” I literally got back 35K responses, including several university thesis papers.

If you skipped this one because it is filmed entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles, I urge you to give it a go. Del Toro went to great lengths to avoid making this a main-stream English language film, including turning down several big-budget studios. He personally created the subtitles to ensure his meanings were translated perfectly, and gave up his entire salary, including back-end points, to see this film make it to production. The result is a visually stunning fairytale, which has been twisted for an adult audience. For example, after the first week Pan’s Labyrinth played in theaters in Mexico and Spain, signs were put outside the venues warning the audience about the graphic violence and urging parents not to bring children to see it.

…

Read More Read More