Black Gate – Page 229 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Thank You — Yes You — For Helping Fill Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s Cosmic Corsairs

Tuesday, August 18, 2020 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Cosmic Corsairs (Baen, August 4, 2020). Cover by Tom Kidd

I was minding my own business at Barnes and Noble last week, picking up random books and opening them to the Acknowledgements page, as one does. And what should I find in Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s new Cosmic Corsairs anthology?

For help and advice, many thanks to John O’Neil and his Black Gate webzine, R.K. Robinson, Jason McGregor, Chris Willrich, Rich Horton, Marie Bilodeau, and others I’m unforgivably forgetting.

I was very touched. Yeah, they misspelled my name slightly, but I wasn’t the source of good advice anyway. As Hank and Chris note, it was really you, the readers of Black Gate, who chipped in with great suggestions when we sent out a call for suggestions here last year:

Help Hank Davis fill a Space Pirate Anthology

Hank has been a friend of BG for many years, and we’re huge fans of his. His most excellent anthologies for Baen include The Baen Big Book of Monsters (2014), Worst Contact (2016), Things from Outer Space (2016), The Best of Gordon R. Dickson, Volume 1 (2017), and Space Pioneers, with Christopher Ruocchio (2018).

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The Party Always Comes First

Monday, August 17, 2020 Patrick Kanouse Comments 0 Comment

One often learns about small, independent, or quirky games from game store owners or fellow RPG enthusiasts. So it was from a friend and player in my ongoing Star Wars campaign that I heard about Party First by Gamenomicon published in November 2019. This rules light game has some intriguing mechanics and a setting waiting to be fleshed out by the ambitious game master.

After reading it, I imagined a group of friends were together one evening and wanted to roleplay, but they did not have their rule books and did not want to be weighed down with a lot of runway to get to a game. Pure speculation, but it has that feel that players can pick it up fast and be gaming in minutes. The book is only 46 pages. 46. I do not have a source book on my self that is that short, and while the brevity speaks to a rules light devotion that does not mean that the system is not well thought out or complete.

The setting is a familiar yet alternative Earth. I have long been interested in history, and World War I, the fall of the Russian Empire, and Rasputin have always been of interest. Party First hits all of that sweet spot for me. However, it is not Earth. Countries and people have recognizable but different names. Rus for Russia. Anglia for England. Dervish Empire for the Ottoman Empire (another particular area of history I enjoy). Vladislav Lesnik for Vladimir Lenin. All of these are laid out in an alternative history.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ ‘Have One on the House’

Monday, August 17, 2020 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era termsp for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I’ve said many times that Norbert Davis is on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore. He’s not the first face carved in hardboiled stone, but he’s one of only four that are. Max Latin is my favorite Davis character, and he appeared in five issues of Dime Detective. There were five Benjamin Martin stories – all in Detective Tales. It was William (Bail Bond) Dodd that was Davis’ frequently recurring character. There were eight stories in Dime Detective between February, 1940 through December, 1943.

Dodd is a physically unprepossessing bail bondsman. He doesn’t actively seek out trouble. You can’t even call his adventures cases. “Have one on the House” was in the March, 1942 issue of Dime Detective. That issue also included a Steve Midnight story from John K. Butler. Midnight was a broke former playboy who found adventures as a night shift cabbie. There was also a Bookie Barnes story from Robert Reeves. Reeves broke into Black Mask in 1940 at the age of 28. He was serving with a bomber unit in the Philippines when he died in 1945, only one month before the war ended. He had continued to write while in the service. His budding career was cut tragically short.

Back to Dodd! Norbert Davis is remembered as perhaps the best at screwball hardboiled. However, then and now, that carries a stigma and he is generally dismissed because of it. And it’s both inaccurate and unfair. He could write straight hardboiled, like “The Red Goose,” which Raymond Chandler praised as influencing him when he decided to become a writer. But what Davis did so well was inject humor into his hardboiled stories, without overwhelming them with it. That’s the case with the Bail-Bond Dodd stories. It’s not that the characters are funny – it’s the situations that Dodd (and his assistant, Meekins) find themselves in.

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Unbearable Utopias and Harrowing Adventures on Alien Planets: The Best of Jack Williamson

Sunday, August 16, 2020 James McGlothlin Comments 3 comments

The Best of Jack Williamson (Del Rey, 1978). Cover by Ralph McQuarrie

The Best of Jack Williamson (1978) was, according to my research, the fifteenth installment in Lester Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) provided the introduction (his second in the series, he also did the intro for The Best of C. M. Kornbluth). Jack Williamson (1908–2006), who was still living at the time, does the Afterword. The famous sci-fi artist Ralph McQuarrie (1929–2012) provides his first (and only) cover in the series.

Jack Williamson’s writing career spans close to a century! He began professionally writing all the way back in the Hugo Gernsback “scientifiction” pulps, and continued all the way up to and beyond the Star Trek/Star Wars science fiction popularization of the late Twentieth Century. In addition to winning several awards such as the Hugos and Nebulas, the Science Fiction Writers of America named Williamson its second Grand Master in 1976, the first being Robert Heinlein (1907–1988). Also, in 1994 Williamson received a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 1996 he was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He received various other awards before his death in 2006 at the ripe old age of 98.

Given this long and illustrious career, it beggars no disbelief that the fourteen stories in The Best of Jack Williamson represent over fifty years of his writing. Presented in chronological order, the earliest stories are pure juvenile pulps and progress up through the “New Wave”-ish/Harlan Ellison era to darker themes and more mature stories. Though The Best of Jack Williamson is clearly the work of one science fiction writer, it can also be seen as a sort of panoramic history of science fiction in the Twentieth Century in general. Williamson was diverse but various themes seem to recur.

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The Art of Author Branding: The Berkley Poul Anderson

Sunday, August 16, 2020 John ONeill Comments 30 comments

The first six of what would eventually be fourteen Berkley Poul Anderson paperbacks with this design,
including the first three books of the Polesotechnic League. Covers by Rick Sternbach
(Satan’s World) and Richard Powers (all others). July 1976 – December 1977

Back in May, inspired by Mark R. Kelly’s review of one of the very first science fiction novels I ever read, the 1977 Ace paperback edition of Robert Silverberg’s Collision Course, I took an extended look at Silverberg’s mid-70s career at Ace, and how the marketing department gave his books a distinct visual identity — one very different from the way his novels were later packaged at Berkley, Bantam, Tor and others.

In many ways this kind of author branding reached its zenith in the late 70s, and in the Comments section of that article there were plenty of suggestions for examples I should look at next. Joseph Hoopman suggested Avon’s black-bordered Roger Zelazny (great choice!) and their vintage A. Merritt, Charles Martel mentioned the distinctive Laser Books cover series by Kelly Freas, Thomas Parker expressed fondness for Frank Frazetta’s Ace paperback covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Bob Byrne suggested Tim Hildebrandt’s gorgeous covers for the first half-dozen Garrett, PI books by Glen Cook, among other ideas.

All good choices, and if fortune holds I’ll look at many of them. But today I want to highlight a set of paperbacks more contemporary to the Ace Robert Silverberg — the 14 Poul Anderson volumes published by Berkley and Berkley Medallion between 1976 – ’79.

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 17 – 1976: Sentinels in Space and the Rise of Phoenix!

Saturday, August 15, 2020 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

Welcome to part 17 of my quixotic reread of the Uncanny X-Men, beginning in 1963. I’m seeing how far I can go. Issues #97 to #101 are special for me because they loom large in my personal experience of collecting the backstory. This post covers a special period for X-Men and Marvel history too.

The introduction of Phoenix as the new incarnation of original x-man Jean Grey was a gigantic development, with impacts on the Marvel Universe that continue to play out in comics in 2020. An argument could be made that the creation of Phoenix was as significant an event as the creation of characters like Wolverine or the Silver Surfer. Each character opened up new kinds of stories to be told in the Marvel Universe.

Issue #97 (February, 1976) was created by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum with Sam Grainger on inks, whom I personally find too rough to catch the finesse of Cockrum’s pencils. The issue opens with alien space ships and a huge space opera battle.

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Vintage Treasures: To Open the Sky by Robert Silverberg

Saturday, August 15, 2020 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

To Open the Sky by Robert Silverberg (Sphere, 1977). Cover by Peter Elson

I’m on something of a Robert Silverberg kick. It started when Mark Kelly reviewed Silverberg’s early novel Collision Course for us back in April, one of the first SF novels I ever read, and in a haze of nostalgia I ended up taking an extended look at all six Silverberg novels packaged up by Ace in that magical year of 1977. More recently I’ve been collecting some of his earlier books, and finding all kinds of interesting artifacts, like the 1969 anthology Dark Stars, and the 1967 fix-up novel To Open the Sky, assembled from five novelettes originally published in Galaxy magazine.

To Open the Sky is the saga of two religions that emerge in the 21st Century, both of which worship technology and atomic power. Over nearly a century the mysterious origins of both religions, and the secret ambitions of their founders, are gradually revealed. It’s the kind of epoch-spanning, tech-focused SF that isn’t written any more. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite review, a short but insightful piece by Thomas M. Wagner at sff180.

A fine example of pre-1970s Bob Silverberg, To Open the Sky is the absorbing story of an overpopulated and economically depressed world clinging to the outcome of a religious schism for its salvation. But is the schism itself a pure public relations ploy, a staged affair whose intricacies are known only to its elusive and enigmatic founder?…

Silverberg effectively constructs a narrative on an epic scale — nearly a century of time between 2077 and 2164 — within a taut 200 or so pages, demonstrating once again that the present-day tendency towards bloat in SF and fantasy publishing is not necessarily the only way to convey big ideas set against a big canvas. Noel Vorst is the founder of a new religious movement rooted squarely in science. Though there is plenty of spiritualist window dressing to appeal to the emotional needs of the disaffected, the promises of the Vorsters are materialist to a fault. There is the promise of potential immortality, as well as the ultimate colonization of the stars, both unfulfilled so far due to limitations of technology.

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Undertow Publications Announces Weird Horror Magazine

Friday, August 14, 2020 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Weird Horror issue 1, coming in October. Cover art by Sam Heimer

Undertow Publications is one of the finest small presses in operation today. We’ve covered several of their excellent recent releases, including Shadows & Tall Trees 8, the hardcover journal The Silent Garden, Simon Strantzas’ Nothing is Everything and All the Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma.

The mad genius behind Undertow is Canadian Michael Kelly, editor and publisher extraordinaire (and a mean writer in his own right). Last month Michael made this announcement on Facebook:

Friends, am very happy to announce the contributors to the inaugural issue of Weird Horror, coming this October.

David Bowman, Shikhar Dixit, Steve Duffy, Inna Effress, Tom Goldstein, Orrin Grey, John Langan, Suzan Palumbo, Ian Rogers, Naben Ruthnum, Lysette Stevenson, Simon Strantzas, Steve Toase.

We’re bringing you a 7″ x 10″ glossy pulp fiction magazine of fun and terror. Pricing and final specs coming soon.

Cover art by Sam Heimer.

This is fantastic news indeed. Michael has proved his editorial acumen time and again in the horror field — with Shadows and Tall Trees, five volumes of the highly acclaimed Year’s Best Weird Fiction anthology series, and anthologies like Apparitions (Undertow, 2009). Having Michael at the helm of a major new magazine of weird horror is tremendously promising.

The second issue of Weird Horror is promised for March 2021, and issue 3 in October 2021. Read all the details here.

Goth Chick News: My On-Again, Off-Again Relationship with Ridley Scott Continues…

Thursday, August 13, 2020 Sue Granquist Comments 7 comments

There is no director for whom I have more mixed feelings than Ridley Scott. On one hand, he is responsible for some of my favorite movies of all time such as Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator. On the other, he is also responsible for several films on the rock bottom of my list such as Kingdom of Heaven, Exodus; Gods and Kings, and the two Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien Covenant – neither of which I will likely ever forgive him for. I wish I could easily delineate and say as long as Scott sticks to science fiction, he’s generally good, but no joy.

So, it is with mixed feelings that I dig into his latest project, Raised by Wolves.

Originally created for Turner Network Television (TNT) the project was recently moved to the streaming service HBO Max as a 10-episode miniseries. This marks Scott’s debut on the American small screen as he is personally directing the first two episodes, while acting as executive producer for the rest.

Scott has done a fair job of keeping the plot of Raised by Wolves a secret. From what I’ve learned, you think you’re getting the gist from the trailer and the official synopsis, but from what I can piece together, the storyline goes much deeper and darker.

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The Fate of Intelligence: Chad Oliver’s The Winds of Time

Thursday, August 13, 2020 Mark R. Kelly Comments 0 Comment

The Winds of Time by Chad Oliver; First Edition: Doubleday, 1957.
Cover art Dick Shelton. (Click to enlarge)

The Winds of Time
by Chad Oliver
Doubleday (192 pages, $3.95, hardcover, April 1957)
Cover art Dick Shelton

This science fiction novel from 1957 is by an author known for anthropologically informed works (Wikipedia; SFE). He was an anthropologist himself, and thus one of the few science fiction writers who was also a scientist.

Oliver published nine novels from the early 1950s into the 1990s, not all of them SF. His work is currently in print only through several titles in the UK Gateway line and in three omnibus volumes from NESFA Press.

The present volume is currently available as a Gateway e-book (not listed on the SF Gateway page linked above), and in a 1997 omnibus of three “time travel” novels for White Wolf/Borealis, Three in Time, edited by Jack Dann, Pamela Sargent, and George Zebrowski, which is currently available on Amazon. I note this because generally I try to cover in these reviews only books that are readily available in some current, unused edition, and the last title serves to qualify this Oliver novel. (Though I broke this rule with my look back at Silverberg’s Collision Course a few months back.) In any event, I think it’s fair to say that Chad Oliver, while still remembered, isn’t remembered as among the Great SF Authors of all time, or even of the 1950s. Yet this novel is interesting nevertheless for its display of the standard SF furniture of the 1950s (as I discussed with Silverberg’s novel), and also for its anticipation of the quandary behind Fermi’s celebrated Paradox.

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