Black Gate – Page 227 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Goofballs in Harem Pants

Wednesday, September 2, 2020 Lawrence Ellsworth Comments 8 comments

This week we’re looking at the spate of Arabian Nights fantasies that came out of Hollywood during World War II, when cinema audiences were looking for colorful distractions from the grim news of the war. And boy howdy, were these films ever colorful distractions, bizarre and often wacky in ways that seem incredible by current standards.

The example was set, not by Hollywood, but by the 1940 British production of The Thief of Bagdad, a serious fantasy film that established the whole genre. We’ll start with that and then introduce Hollywood’s increasingly strange variations on the theme. Hang on to your turbans!

The Thief of Bagdad

Rating: ****
Origin: UK, 1940
Directors: Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan
Source: Criterion Collection DVD

Everybody loves this movie. It’s got heart, magic, music, adventure, romance, and ambitious special effects that alternate between stupendous and hilarious. Hang it, even I love this movie. And yet, to be perfectly frank, it’s a bit of a mess.

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Vintage Treasures: Merchanter’s Luck by C.J. Cherryh

Wednesday, September 2, 2020 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

Merchanter’s Luck (DAW, 1982). Cover by Barclay Shaw

I haven’t covered many C.J. Cherryh novels in my ongoing Vintage Treasures project, and that seems like a serious oversight. Cherryh was a constant presence on the paperback racks in my youth. She sold her first novel Brothers of Earth to Donald A. Wollheim at DAW in 1975; since then she’s published more than 80 science fiction and fantasy books, including the most ambitious and successful first contact saga in science fiction, The Foreigner Series. Volume 21, Divergence, arrives in hardcover next week.

I recently picked up a copy of the author’s 1982 paperback original Merchanter’s Luck, and I thought it would be a good place to start. It’s the first novel in her Company Wars saga, set in the Alliance-Union universe where humanity has split into three space-faring power blocs: Union, the Merchanter’s Alliance and Earth. I remembered Jo Walton’s Tor.com review of Merchanter’s Luck from a decade ago, enticingly titled “A girl on a haunted spaceship.” Here’s an excerpt.

Ben JB and I were talking about Gothics, and Ben JB asked if you could have a Gothic on a spaceship. My immediate response was Merchanter’s Luck, a 1982 novel by C.J. Cherryh. It has a girl and a haunted spaceship and a mysterious man with lots of secrets in his past. But on re-reading it, I have to admit that it doesn’t quite work as a Gothic… Allison is far from a gothic heroine — she’s empowered, and most of the time in the novel she is the one in the position of power. She goes onto the spaceship and goes into abandoned cabins, full of the possessions of the dead, but she doesn’t go alone. She’s not virginal, not isolated, and never helpless…

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Weird Tales Deep Read: November 1934

Tuesday, September 1, 2020 Aaron Starr Comments 0 Comment

Weird Tales, November 1934. Cover by Margaret Brundage (for “Queen of the Lillin”)

We’re back on more familiar ground with this issue of Weird Tales from its classic period. More familiar authors are represented, and although not every story is a classic the editors at least avoided any real stumbles this. The issue grades out to a 2.1, which all in all is pretty decent.

Both Howard and Lovecraft appear, although the Lovecraft tale is a reprint and the Howard is the last installment of a serial. E. Hoffman Price, Paul Ernst, and August Derleth, seasoned pulp veterans all, also contributed stories. Price tale’s is part of his Pierre d’Atois stories; , d’Atois, like another Frenchman who appears in a series of WT stories, is an occult detective. The Ernst is one of his slighter efforts. The Derleth is somewhat more unusual, although, as is common, also rather slight. We have to cover already trodden ground with two serials this time around. I’ve included the information on those stories for those who haven’t read all the posts in this series.

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Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020 edited by Jonathan Strahan

Tuesday, September 1, 2020 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The Year's Best Science Fiction Volume 1 The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020-small

The Year's Best Science Fiction Volume 1 The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020-back-small

Cover design by Richard Yoo (click to embiggen)

Jonathan Strahan’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 1 feels like a beginning. Probably because it is a beginning, in more ways than one. Jonathan has been editing Year’s Best books since 2003, and he curated thirteen volumes of the excellent Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, the first seven with Night Shade (2007-2013) and the last six with Solaris (2014-19). He’s now switched publishers to Saga Press/Gallery Books, and with that transformation comes other changes as well.

Most obvious is a switch in title, to The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020, a reset in the numbering scheme (back to #1), and a refocus (dropping fantasy altogether). But the most interesting alteration (to me, anyway) is foreshadowed by the touching dedication:

In memory of my dear friend Gardner Dozois (1947-2018), who would have loved these stories.

With the title change, it seems to me that Jonathan assumes the mantle of Dozios (who edited 35 volumes of his own The Year’s Best Science Fiction between 1984-2018), and the duties and responsibilities that go with it. For example, Gardner’s introductions to his volumes were legendary, an annual summation of the Year in Science Fiction that fans looked forward to and read with relish. Jonathan’s summations have always been more modest — his intro to last year’s edition was a humble 8 pages — but with this one, titled A New Beginning, Jonathan stretches his legs admirably. His introduction to The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 1 clocks in at 23 pages, room to weigh in not just on the best stories of the year, but the finest novels, collections, anthologies, magazines, and nonfiction, and well as report on rumblings in publishing, deaths in the field, award news, and more. Jonathan is a natural at this kind of opinionated writing, and he nails it.

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Maximizing the Crunch: Dystopia 23

Monday, August 31, 2020 Patrick Kanouse Comments 0 Comment

In my last article, I reviewed one of the most rules light systems I have ever read. Some game masters (GMs) and players like games with a hefty amount of crunch — that is, game mechanics that require dice rolling or calculations and with a level of specific details for certain types of tasks. Dystopia 23 may take this to the most extreme I have ever experience. The Primer is 149 pages. By comparison, the quick start rules for The Expanse were 42 pages. For The Witcher TRPG (called Easy Mode) they were 32. For Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit, two booklets were a total of 98 pages — including a lot of flavor text. In terms of crunch, Dystopia 23 pummels those quick start rules into the ground.

When the Dicegeeks podcast interviewed Dystopia 23’s creator, Jason Carruth, he made no bones about how he loved to see a lot of crunch in a game. He reveled in the joy of designing crunchy games.

Before I cover the mechanics, however, let’s talk about the setting. Dystopia 23 covers familiar cyberpunk ground. The game takes place in the 23rd century. After economic collapses and mismanagement, the corporations have become the power in the world. Hordes of impoverished people struggle in the sprawls — vast favelas and slums that buttress up to the walled cities where the middle and upper classes live. Sprawls are unpoliced anarchy, which gangs and other various power brokers seize upon to exert control, often with as careless disregard of human lives as corporations. Even the cities are divided, with corporations having purchased areas for their exclusive use.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Steven H Silver Asks ‘Can You Name This Hardboiled Flick?’

Monday, August 31, 2020 Bob Byrne Comments 9 comments

A hallmark of my success here at Black Gate has been to get other writers, with actual talent, to write for my column. I accomplish that feat again today as fellow Black Gater Steven H Silver takes a look at a classic film and gives it a hardboiled review. You may not immediately guess what film he’s looking at, although I’d bet you’ve heard of it before. Take it away, Steven!

I’m going to look at one of the stranger “Gat” films. With action taking place in a variety of places, ranging from a state room on an ocean liner to a swanky long island party to a rousing conclusion in a barn.

Rockliffe Fellows plays “Big Joe” Helton, an older mob boss who is returned from Europe aboard an ocean liner with his daughter, Mary, played by Ruth Hall. Also on board the ship is Alky Briggs, played by Harry Woods, Briggs is accompanied by his wife, Lucille, portrayed by Thelma Todd, right at the midpoint of her career. Oddly enough, aside from these women, both of these men seem to be traveling without any members of their gangs, although they both are able to rectify that oversight.

We’re first introduced to Briggs in his cabin, where his wife, Lucille is complaining that he has been ignoring her on the voyage. Briggs makes it clear that he isn’t making a play for any other woman, rather his purpose for being on the ship is because he has determined that being alone on the ocean is the perfect time to attempt to muscle in on Helton’s territory. Here is a huge difference between Lucille’s language and Briggs. The writers have given Thelma Todd natural dialogue and she delivers it well. Briggs’ lines are written almost as a parody of a movie gangster, with no recognition that he and Lucille are in an actual relationship and Woods delivers them in a such a stereotypical manner that the only conclusion a viewer can have is that he’s decided to play tough-guy Briggs as a satire.

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Uncanny Origins

Sunday, August 30, 2020 Uncanny Magazine Comments 0 Comment

We here at Uncanny Magazine we are in the middle of the Uncanny Magazine Year 7: Space Unicorns Shine On Together Kickstarter, and after six years of bringing our Hugo Award-winning magazine featuring passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, provocative nonfiction, and a deep investment in the diverse SF/F culture, along with a Parsec Award-winning monthly podcast to readers and listeners, we asked each other, how did we get here?

Specifically, what science fiction and fantasy works started each of us down the path of becoming SF/F interviewers, editors, podcasters, and writers?

Podcast Producer Erika Ensign

SF/F was baked into my very bones. I’m told that mother and father, tried-and-true nerds themselves, went to see Star Wars when I was in utero. I’m not entirely certain that counts as a formative experience, but I like to claim it anyway. Some of my very earliest memories are watching Doctor Who with my mom (or sneakily, from the top of the stairs when I was supposed to be in bed) and listening to my dad read A Wrinkle in Time to my siblings and me. I truly don’t remember a time before SF/F came into my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Andrew Liptak on 20 Sci-fi and Fantasy Books to Check Out in August

Sunday, August 30, 2020 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Seven Devils by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May-small

Cover art: uncredited, Dan dos Santos, and Anthony Ramondo (click to embiggen)

I’ve grown to rely on Andrew Liptak’s newsletter to keep me up-to-date on the latest releases, especially during the era of the pandemic. He’s got a keen eye, and roves far and wide to compile a list of the best new books every month. His list of August’s most noteworthy titles does not disappoint, with new releases from Carrie Vaughn, Tamsyn Muir, Seth Dickinson, L. Penelope, Lavie Tidhar, Lisbeth Campbell, Marina J. Lostetter, Emily Tesh, Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick, Karen Osborne, Carole Stivers, and Ashley Blooms. Here’s a few of the highlights.

By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar (Tor Books, 416 pages, $27.99/$14.99 digital, August 11, 2020)

Over the years, I’ve really enjoyed Lavie Tidhar’s work — particularly The Violent Century and Unholy Land. (I still need to read Central Station). He likes to play with tropes, upending conventional characters and stories, and his next is an intriguing-sounding take on the King Arthur mythos.

Tidhar puts a gritty edge to the Arthurian legend, portraying Arthur and his companions as gangsters and criminals running drugs and weapons through a London that’s been abandoned by Rome. Writing for Locus, Ian Mond writes that “For all its foul language and radical deconstruction, of which I’ve provided only a taste (you should see what Tidhar does with the Holy Grail), By Force Alone isn’t a desecration of the Arthurian romances. Instead, he pays homage to the writers and poets who took their turn in adapting and refining Monmouth’s text.”

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 18: Juggernaut and Magneto – For The Very First Time!

Saturday, August 29, 2020 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

screenshot_20200730__V88Da

Welcome to part 18 of my Quixotic reread of the X-Men, starting with issue #1 in 1963. We’re now in 1976 and I ended my last post partway through #101 because Phoenix’s introduction is the real climax of the last arc and it made sense to stop there.

After Phoenix’ appearance and the hospital reunions, a new story arc starts, insofar as one can ever say a story starts or ends in Claremont’s braided narrative. In this post, I’m going to cover the last half of Uncanny X-Men #101 to the end of issue #104 because it covers the new X-Men’s meeting with two hugely important and iconic villains: the Juggernaut and Magneto.

Personally, this set of stories fits into my life in that I read issue #101 in French in B&W as an 11 year old in 1982, and couldn’t afford to read issue #102-#104 until the summer of 1987 when they were reprinted in the Classic X-Men. So I’d been waiting 6 years for these stories. The Classic X-Men reprint series was great — it allowed me to fill out all the story gaps in my collection; by then, by trading with friends or buying from the comic shops in Toronto, I’d already gotten a complete run from #134 onward.

With Phoenix in the hospital in issue #101 (October, 1976) the X-Men, led by Banshee, go to Ireland on a forced vacation. Jean needs rest and support the Scott and Professor X can offer, and the new X-Men need to get out from underfoot.

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New Treasures: grotesquerie by Richard Gavin

Saturday, August 29, 2020 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Mike Davis (click to embiggen)

Undertow Publications commands my attention these days. Editor Michael Kelly has a truly keen eye for fiction, and he’s published some of the most acclaimed short story collections of Weird Horror in the last decade, including Simon Strantzas’s Nothing is Everything, V. H. Leslie’s Skein and Bone, and Kay Chronister’s Thin Places. On Tuesday he adds another to that impressive list, grotesquerie by Richard Gavin.

Gavin is the author of five previous collections, including Omens (Mythos Books, 2007), At Fear’s Altar (Hippocampus Press, 2012), and Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness (Three Hands Press, 2016). Ramsey Campbell said, “Richard Gavin’s tales are genuinely evocative of the strange and alien,” and Publishers Weekly reviewed grotesquerie warmly last month, saying:

The 16 dark tales in this collection from Gavin (Sylvan Dread) are distinctive and macabre… The strongest — including “Neithernor,” in which a man stumbles upon his cousin’s uncanny art show at a strange gallery; “Scold’s Bridle: A Cruelty,” about a mask used as a torture device; and “Three Knocks on a Buried Door,” about a man who discovers an elaborate residence occupied by a mysterious being just beneath his apartment building — are richly articulated nightmares that will delight horror fans… the heady, transportive atmosphere of many of these stories… will put readers in mind of both classic weird fiction and the supernatural mysteries of the 1970s. Dedicated weird fiction readers will find this worth a look.

grotesquerie will be published by Undertow Publications on September 1, 2020. It is 292 pages, priced at $17.99 in paperback and $5.99 in digital formats. The hypnotic cover is by Mike Davis. Order copies directly from Undertow.

See all our recent New Treasures here.