Black Gate – Page 339 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A Weird Dungeon Crawl… IN SPAAACE: Metamorphosis Alpha Deluxe Collector’s Edition

Tuesday, February 12, 2019 Ryan Harvey Comments 8 comments

This oversized volume arrived in the mail last week: the Deluxe Collector’s edition of Metamorphosis Alpha, the first science-fiction roleplaying game. Originally published by TSR as a slender booklet in 1976, it’s essentially a weird dungeon crawl … IN SPAAACE! … taking inspiration from Brian Aldiss’s novel Non-Stop (which I love, BTW).

Its combination of radiation and mutant people/animals later formed the basis of Gamma World, one of the most out-there RPG settings ever. This volume contains the original Metamorphosis Alpha manual, an interview with creator James M. Ward, playtest notes, and all the supplemental material and errata published in Dragon and other RPG magazines of the time.

So why did I buy this? I’m one of those people who rarely plays RPGs (I don’t know enough people around me who want to) but enjoys reading RPG books as entertainment. I’m also interested in RPG history, since I came of age right as they did, during the advent of AD&D in the late ’70s. The only game system I would ever play is Fudge, the best universal system ever and wonderfully flexible, but that only makes it easier to read about other games and sourcebooks — they can all be run in Fudge!

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Future Treasures: The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Tuesday, February 12, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Ann Leckie knows how to make an entrance. Her debut novel Ancillary Justice (2013) won the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, and British Science Fiction Award, and she followed it in short order with three sequels: Ancillary Sword (2014), Ancillary Mercy (2015), and Provenance (2017).

Her fifth novel, and her debut fantasy, is one of the most anticipated books of the year. It arrives in hardcover from Orbit next week. Lev Grossman calls The Raven Tower “A powerhouse epic of humans and gods at war, deeply imagined and profoundly thrilling,” and Kirkus Reviews says:

It is a common fantasy trope to suggest gods gain strength through faith and worshipers and that they can employ that strength to bend reality. But few authors have really explored all the implications of what happens when multiple beings with that power come into conflict. There is so much story and careful thought packed into this short volume that it should correct anyone who believes a fully realized fantasy novel requires a minimum of 500 pages.

Here’s the description.

Gods meddle in the fates of men, men play with the fates of gods, and a pretender must be cast down from the throne in this masterful first fantasy novel from Ann Leckie, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.

For centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watches over his territory from atop a tower in the powerful port of Vastai. His will is enacted through the Raven’s Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. His magic is sustained via the blood sacrifice that every Lease must offer. And under the Raven’s watch, the city flourishes.

But the power of the Raven is weakening. A usurper has claimed the throne. The kingdom borders are tested by invaders who long for the prosperity that Vastai boasts. And they have made their own alliances with other gods.

It is into this unrest that the warrior Eolo — aide to Mawat, the true Lease — arrives. And in seeking to help Mawat reclaim his city, Eolo discovers that the Raven’s Tower holds a secret. Its foundations conceal a dark history that has been waiting to reveal itself… and to set in motion a chain of events that could destroy Iraden forever.

The Raven Tower will be published by Orbit Books on February 26, 2019. It is 432 pages, priced at $26 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Lauren Panepinto.

See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming fantasy here.

Analog, November 1979: A Retro-Review

Monday, February 11, 2019 Adrian Simmons Comments 2 comments

The November 1979 Analog has probably the least appealing magazine cover I’ve ever seen. By Richard Anderson, for the story “Phoenix.” However, when we get to the story itself, that guy… that guy has seen some things, man.

Guest Editorial, by G. Harry Stine.

So… Harry Stine is a writer, space advocate, and a major founder of model rocketry, and he is unhappy with this whole idea that humans will never break the light speed barrier. So, as you do, he writes a bit of a hatchet-job on Albert Einstein, or at least those people lacking enough imagination to assume Einstein didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

He was so successful at it, as a matter of fact, that a whole new cult of Keepers of the Faith have taken over and continue to look upon the Universe with the tunnel vision created by the blinders of their interpretations of Einstein’s work.

He goes on like this for easily 6 pages, hitting all the high points of various scientific ‘certainties’ that were exploded by later experimentations and observations. At least it wasn’t an article about telepathy…

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New Treasures: The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons

Monday, February 11, 2019 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

It’s tough being a debut fantasy writer. There are so many books being released every month, it’s very, very challenging for new voices to be heard. The thing that can really help is a starred review from one of the big four review sites — Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, or Booklist. Even a single starred review can mean the difference between a successful launch and vanishing without a trace.

Getting a pair of starred reviews is a very good omen, and three is extremely rare. I can only think of a handful of titles that pulled off the nearly-impossible trick of a clean sweep of all four — but that’s exactly what happened with Jenn Lyons’s new novel The Ruin of Kings. Library Journal called it “Stunning,” Booklist labeled it “Dazzling,” and Publishers Weekly called it ” intricate epic fantasy.” But my favorite review was from Kirkus, who said:

The story begins in a jail cell with a young man named Kihrin being guarded by Talon, a beautiful and monstrous shape-shifting assassin. Kihrin, awaiting what will surely be his death, begins telling her his life story. Talon complements Kihrin’s tale with her own memories of the past few years, and, together, they weave a jaw-dropping, action-packed story of betrayal, greed, and grand-scale conspiracy. It all begins when Kihrin — a thief who has been raised in the slums by a compassionate blind musician—witnesses a horrific murder while robbing a house…. While the comparisons to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle will be unavoidable — in terms of story structure and general narrative content — the potential of this projected five-book saga may be even greater. Although a cast of well-developed characters and an impressively intricate storyline power this novel, it’s Lyons’ audacious worldbuilding that makes for such an unforgettable read. In a sprawling, magic-filled world populated by gods, dragons, krakens, witches, demons, ghosts, shape-shifters, zombies, and so much more, Lyons ties it all together seamlessly to create literary magic.

Epic fantasy fans looking for a virtually un-put-down-able read should look no further.

The Ruin of Kings was published by Tor Books on February 5, 2019. It is 560 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover art is by Lars West. Read the complete first chapter at Tor.com.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Hither Came Conan: Morgan Holmes on “Iron Shadows in the Moon”

Monday, February 11, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 15 comments

Hither_ShadowsRuins — Mark Schultz from Del Rey’s **The Coming of Conan**

“Shadows in the Moonlight” (editor’s note: Howard’s original title was “Iron Shadows in the Moon”) was the eighth Conan story to appear in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Conan had turned out to be a popular character with Weird Tales readers. The character was so popular in fact that fellow Weird Tales writer, E. Hoffmann Price, later wrote that Conan had saved the magazine more than once.

“Shadows in the Moonlight” appeared in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales. This was an especially strong issue of the magazine. The contents included:

“Satan’s Garden” (Part 1 of 2)     E. Hoffmann Price (cover story)
“Black Thirst” C. L. Moore
“Corsairs of the Cosmos”              Edmond Hamilton
“Shadows in the Moonlight”        Robert E. Howard
“The Death of Malygris”                Clark Ashton Smith
“Behind the Screen”                       Dale Clark
“The Cane” Carl Jacobi
“Bells of Oceana” Arthur J. Burks
“In Mayan Splendor” (poem)      Frank Belknap Long

The 1930s Golden Age of Weird Tales was in full force with the three main first stringers present: Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and C. L. Moore. Carl Jacobi, while not a headliner author, always produced good-to-excellent horror stories. The Arthur J. Burks story is a reprint from 1927. Burks was the sort of middling writer along the lines of Otis Adelbert Kline and Seabury Quinn that editor Farnsworth Wright was comfortable publishing. The only real weak story was by Dale Clark. Farnsworth Wright has a penchant for barely competent and unmemorable stories of this sort.

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Gaming on the High Seas

Sunday, February 10, 2019 Jeff Stehman Comments 0 Comment

My wife on Labadee with… uh… not a board game

Gaming on the high seas! Or at least medium seas. My wife and I went on the 2019 Dice Tower Cruise, a sold-out floating board-gaming convention of 600 adults plus 200 children. Five days aboard the Independence of the Seas, with stops in Jamaica and Haiti and access to the Dice Tower library of games.

Some of those 600 adults and most of the children didn’t participate in the gaming action, and some only dabbled. It’s a cruise, with usual huge array of activities available. This makes it an excellent vacation getaway for gamers whose families are less than enthused about the hobby.

Independence of the Seas holds about 4,400 passengers, so the DTC was a sizeable group, warranting its own dining room. We had the conference center for round-the-clock gaming, and additional table space was available in various restaurants at certain times of day. We also had the big theater for recording a live episode of the Dice Tower podcast, and a smaller venue for a few other Dice Tower gatherings/shows.

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Vintage Treasures: Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, edited by Terry Carr

Sunday, February 10, 2019 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Classic Science Fiction The First Golden Age UK-small

Classic Science Fiction The First Golden Age UK back-small

Terry Carr may be my all-time favorite editor. His Creatures From Beyond (1975) was one of the very first SF anthologies I read in Junior High, and the sixteen volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year he produced remain a high water mark for the genre. Carr died in 1987, at the too-young age of 50, but I still read his books with enormous pleasure today.

It may be a sign of age (mine, not Carr’s), but I usually associate him with modern science fiction. So I was a little surprised to discover his anthology Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, which collects a dozen stories published in pulp magazines in 1940-41. This is not an easy book to find; it had a single hardcover printing from Harper & Row in 1978, a UK reprint from Robson a year later, and then promptly vanished. There’s been no paperback, no reprint since 1979, and no digital version. If I hadn’t stumbled on a copy on Amazon through blind luck back in 2011, I probably still wouldn’t know this book existed.

I love pulp SF, so it’s always nice to get a new selection of Golden Age tales, especially from an editor with Carr’s eye. Here he includes a handful of classics, like Asimov’s “Nightfall,” Kuttner’s “The Twonky,” and Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps,” and “–And He Built a Crooked House–,” but also stories I’ve never seen before, like Lester del Rey’s “The Smallest God,” Ross Rocklynne’s “Into the Darkness,” and Leigh Brackett’s “Child of the Green Light.”

But even more interesting than that, at least for me, is Carr’s lengthy editorial material exploring the history of SF’s Golden Age, the major personalities involved, and the stories behind the fiction. Easily 20% of this book (some 90 pages) is written by Carr, and he draws from a great many sources, including a lot of personal correspondence and interviews, to tell some fascinating anecdotes and illuminate the surprising history of some of the greatest science fiction ever written. This is a book that belongs in every serious library of pulp SF, alongside The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Asimov’s Before the Golden Age, and Healy and McComas’ Adventures in Time and Space.

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Ancient Gods, World in Darkness, Ragtag Band of Fighters: The Bound Gods Trilogy by Rachel Dunne

Saturday, February 9, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I made my Saturday bi-weekly trip to Barnes & Noble today, ostensibly to pick up the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which has a brand new Alaric the Minstrel novella by my friend Phyllis Eisenstein. While browsing the new releases half a dozen books caught my eye, including The Winter Road by Adrian Selby, The Lost by Kevin A. Munoz, and The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless. But the one that leaped into my hands was The Shattered Sun by Rachel Dunne, with the words A Bounds Gods Novel stamped on the cover, which certainly meant it was the umpteenth novel in series. This was on the back.

The epic sword-and-sorcery Bound Gods fantasy series comes to its dark conclusion in this thrilling story of a vibrant world whose fate lies in the hands of vengeful gods and bold warriors.

The world has been plunged into darkness… and only the scheming priest Joros might be able to bring back the sun.

With his ragtag band of fighters — a laconic warrior, a pair of street urchins, a ruthless priestess, and an unhinged sorcerer — Joros seeks to defeat the ancient gods newly released from their long imprisonment. But the Twins have champions of their own, and powers beyond knowing… and the only sure thing is that they won’t go down without a fight.

The fate of the world hangs in the balance as the Twins aim to enact revenge on the parents that imprisoned them, and the world that spurned them. The Long Night has begun, and the shadows hide many secrets — including that the Twins themselves may not be as powerful as they would have everyone think.

Joros and his allies must strike now — before the Twins can consolidate their power… and before they are allowed to shape the world in their vision.

Now, last thing I need is the final book in a series I’ve never heard of. But then again… there’s a lot that appeals to me here. Epic sword-and-sorcery. Desperate battle against ancient gods. World plunged into darkness, ragtag band of fighters. And Tony Mauro’s cover, with the stooped priest Joros and a mischievous imp familiar on his shoulder, is terrific. Ah, the hell with it. My house is already filled to the brim with fantasy novels. One more won’t hurt.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Jerry Pournelle

Saturday, February 9, 2019 Rich Horton Comments 9 comments

Analog December 1971 A Spaceship for the King-small

Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And Steven suggested that much as he is covering awards for 1980, I might cover awards for 1973 here in Black Gate.

It seems appropriate in a year that represents my dawning as an SF reader, I should cover the dawning of an award that since then has celebrated the dawning of what we (as fans) think might be a significant career. This is the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Some people think the full name of the award includes a parenthetical addition: (Not a Hugo). This is because the award is sponsored by Dell Magazines (publisher of Analog, where John Campbell was the long time Editor), but administered by the World Science Fiction Society, and as such voted on using the same process and schedule as the Hugo Awards.

The very first Campbell Award, in 1973, went to Jerry Pournelle. Writers are eligible for the award for the two years after their first professional SF/Fantasy publication. While Pournelle had published a thriller, Red Heroin, in 1969 under the name Wade Curtis, his first SF story was “Peace With Honor,” under his own name, in the May 1971 Analog. This was the first story in his Co-Dominion future history, and the first to feature John Christian Falkenberg, one of his primary heroes. His nomination was based on that story, on another Falkenberg story, “The Mercenary,” and on the novel A Spaceship for the King (set much later in the Co-Dominion universe), as well, perhaps, on three stories that appeared in Analog under the “Wade Curtis” name: “Ecology Now!”, “A Matter of Sovereignty,” and “Power to the People.”

I first encountered Pournelle with some stories in Analog in 1974, such as “Extreme Prejudice.” I soon searched out his earlier stories in back issues of Analog borrowed from my library, and I remember reading, with particular enjoyment, the serialized version of A Spaceship for the King.

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