Black Gate – Page 375 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Birthday Reviews: Walter Jon Williams’s “The Fate Line”

Tuesday, October 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Walter Jon Williams was born on October 215, 1953

Williams received the Nebula Award for best novelette in 2001 for “Daddy’s World” and for novella in 2005 for “The Green Leopard Plague.” In 1997 he won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for his story “Foreign Devils.” His works have also been nominated for the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

“The Fate Line” was published in the Fred Saberhagen festschrift Golden Reflections in 2011, edited by Robert E. Vardeman and Joan Spicci Saberhagen. The story is set in the same universe as Saberhagen’s 1979 novel The Mask of the Sun and has not been reprinted.

Williams take on the setting is one of constantly shifting expectations. It opens with Perseus, the illegitimate son of one of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, plundering a tomb at the orders of his half-brother, the Pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes, in order to find the wealth needed to fight the rebels and foreigners who threatened the dynasty. Perseus worries that both success or failure would bring about his own death, but when he found the immeasurable wealth of Ahmose, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, he began to see a way out of his dilemma.

Williams quickly shifts the focus to Demetrios, a disentimed soldier who is working for the Quechuans of The Mask of the Sun in their time-war against the Tenocha. In one of the timelines, Cuzco-81, there is an Egyptian empire that threatens the Quechuans and Demetrios and a team are sent back in time to stop the Ptolemaic dynasty from establishing a foothold that lasts thousands of years. The team suffers almost instant failure when Demetrios meets Elpidos, a man who has knowledge about Demetrios, but who can’t share too much. Demetrios does realize that if he intends any harm to Ptolemy, the pharaoh will learn of it and Demetrios will fail.

Unable to return to his own time and knowing that his mission is stymied, Demetrios tries to figure out how to best establish himself in ancient Alexandria. Taking inspiration from his aunt, he sets himself up as a cheiromancer. When his predictions come true, he draws the attention of those close to the court and is eventually able to learn the secret of Ptolemy’s great luck, which ties in to Saberhagen’s novel, and come up with a way to siderail the timeline’s history without doing anything to harm the king.

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New Treasures: The Dreaming Stars by Tim Pratt, Book 2 of The Axiom

Monday, October 1, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Tim Pratt is a Senior Editor for Locus magazine. He won the Hugo Award for his short story “Impossible Dreams” (Asimov’s SF, July 2006). As T. A. Pratt he’s the author of the 10-volume Marla Mason fantasy series (Blood Engines, Poison Sleep, etc.), under the name Tim Prett he’s published The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, the Pathfinder Tales novels Liar’s Island and Liar’s Bargain, and much more.

The Wrong Stars looks like his breakout book (see our coverage here). It was published by Angry Robot last year, and Sam Reader at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi Blog raved about it, saying “Through his wit, dialogue, and vast, varied cast, Tim Pratt has created a space opera for today… while still delivering the sense of wonder that made you love the genre.” The second novel in what’s now being called The Axiom series, The Dreaming Stars, arrived right on schedule last month.

Ancient aliens, the Axiom, will kill us all – when they wake up. In deep space, a swarm of nanoparticles threatens the colonies, transforming everything it meets into computronium – including the colonists. The crew of the White Raven investigate, and discover an Axiom facility filled with aliens hibernating while their minds roam a vast virtual reality. Sebastien wakes up, claiming his altered brain architecture can help the crew deactivate the swarm – from inside the Axiom simulation. To protect humanity, Callie must trust him, but if Sebastien still plans to dominate the universe using Axiom tech, they could be in a whole lot of trouble…

The Dreaming Stars was published by Angry Robot on September 4, 2018. It is 384 pages, priced at $8.99 in paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Paul Scott Canavan. Read the complete first chapter here.

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: More Cool & Lam From Hard Case Crime!

Monday, October 1, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

“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

In 1938, Erle Stanley Gardner was struggling with his Perry Mason series, though it was successful and he’d written about a dozen books. His agent had died and he clashed with the man’s widow (she took over the business) to the damage of his reputation and ability to sell to other markets.

The prolific pulpster and novelist decided a new approach. He would write a book about a mismatched pair of private eyes and send it to his publisher under an assumed name. I like this guy!

Following his usual pattern, he churned out a novel in three months and send The Bigger They Come to William Morrow & Company. Nobody knew it was written by Gardner. After it was accepted, Gardner told the president, Thayer Hobson, that he was actually A.A. Fair. It remained a secret for some time.

Gardner wrote thirty Cool and Lam novels in thirty-one years (The second one was rejected by the publisher). He was already putting out four novels nearly every year when he started this series, along with much other writing: both fiction and non. I wrote about the series here.

Bertha Cool is a big, profane, money-centric, tough as nails woman. She brought the undersized but brainy Donald Lam into the agency she got from her husband when he died. Lam proves to be a money maker and indispensable to the business and forces his way into a partnership. It’s a mismatched paring that works perfectly on the page, though I don’t know how Lam puts up with her.

On October 23rd, Hard Case Crime is reprinting The Count of Nine, the eighteenth book and out of print for almost forty years. It had earlier reprinted the thirteenth book, Top of the Heap. And Hard Case published, for the first time ever, that rejected second novel, The Knife Slipped.
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Birthday Reviews: Donald A. Wollheim’s “Blueprint”

Monday, October 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Donald A. Wollheim was born on October 1, 1914 and died on November 2, 1990.

Wollheim entered science fiction fandom at its birth and was responsible for a meeting in Philadelphia between New York and Philadelphia science fiction fans which is considered by some to be the first science fiction convention. He was a member of the Science Fiction League, founded the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA), and the Futurians. He was one of the Futurians not allowed into the first Worldcon as part of the “Exclusion Act.” In the 1940s, he began working as an editor as well as a writer, editing for Avon Books and later Ace before starting up his own line, DAW Books. From 1965 through his death, Wollheim edited an annual World’s Best SF anthology series.

In 1975, Aussiecon One, the 33^rd Worldcon, presented Wollheim with a Special Award for being the “Fan Who Has Done Everything.” Wollheim was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1975 Wollheim won a World Fantasy Special Professional Award in 1981 for DAW Books and a Special Convention Award in 1986. He also won the Milford Lifetime Achievement Award in 1980, the I-Con Award and Forry Award in 1987. He and his wife, Elsie, earned a British Fantasy Special Award in 1984. In 2002, he was inducted posthumously into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in 2010, SFWA awarded him the Solstice Award, which was accepted by his daughter, Betsy. Wollheim was the Guest of Honor at Nolacon II, the 46^th Worldcon in 1988.

Wollheim used a variety of pseudonyms, including Martin Borrow, Graham Conway, Millard Verne Gordon, David Grinnell, Martin Pearson, Allan Warland, W. Malcolm White, and Lawrence Woods. He collaborated, as author and editor, with George Ernsberger, Forrest J Ackerman, Terry Carr, Arthur W. Saha, C.M. Kornbluth, Robert A. W. Lowndes, John Michel, and Lin Carter.

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Birthday Reviews: September Index

Monday, October 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Tomorrow Speculative Fiction 23 November 1996-small

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index
June index
July index
August index

September 1, C.J. Cherryh: “The Unshadowed Land”
September 2, Roland J. Green: “Strings”
September 3, Jack Wodhams: “Freeway”
September 4, Rick Wilber: “Greggie’s Cup”
September 5, James McKimmey, Jr.: “Planet of Dreams”
September 6, China Miéville: “Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopedia”

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of September 2018

Sunday, September 30, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Geez, it’s the last day of the month already. I’m used to failing at my ambitious monthly reading plans, but at least I usually try. This month has been so busy that I haven’t even been able to keep track of all the great books I missed, much less crack any of them open.

September still has a few hours left, and I’m going to use that time to educate myself. And the best resource for that are book blogs like The Verge, Unbound Worlds, Kirkus Reviews, and especially the excellent Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, which has gradually become my go-to source for the best new releases. This month Jeff Somers does his usual top-notch job, pointing me to 26 tantalizing titles I might have otherwise overlooked. Here’s the best of them.

The Hidden Sun by Jaine Fenn (Angry Robot, 448 pages, $12.99 trade paperback/$8.99 digital, September 4)

Fenn is as known for her short fiction as she is for her Hidden Empire novel series — and for her tendency to take stories in unexpected directions, whether on the micro-scale in short stories or the macro-scale of novels. [In] Hidden Sun Fenn kicks off an all new series set in a universe of shadowlands and bright alien skylands. Rhia Harlyn is a well-born woman in the shadowland Shen, struggling against old-fashioned sexism as she pursues scientific knowledge. She gets a tragic opportunity to use his skill for research and discovery after her brother vanishes. She sets off to the skylands to seek the truth behind his disappearance and finds herself caught between a rebel and a cult leader on an alluring, dangerous world.

Jaine Fenn won the British Science Fiction for her short fiction. She’s the author of the 5-volume Hidden Empire series, published in the UK by Gollancz, which does not yet have a US publisher. The Hidden Sun is the first volume of a 2-part series titled Shadowlands; the sequel, Broken Shadow, will be released on April 4. This is her first US release; if it does well, I hope that means we get to see a lot more of her.

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Vicarious Roleplaying

Sunday, September 30, 2018 Jeff Stehman Comments 2 comments

Dungeons & Dragons has become a spectator game, and regularly scheduled, live-streamed D&D games are legion. The voice actors of Critical Role, led by Matthew Mercer, are probably the best known. Their weekly live game has around 30,000 viewers, and each episode gets hundreds of thousands of follow-up views on YouTube.

I’m trying to keep up with Critical Role‘s new Mighty Nein campaign, but it’s 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there. If I had three to four hours a week to watch a live RPG, I’d have three to four hours to play an RPG.

I do, however, have time for podcasts. In fact, between chores, the gym, and the occasional road trip, I average about fifteen hours of podcasts a week. I have a regular list of fiction, gaming, and news podcasts to fill most of that time. However, in the fall, with all the chores that must be completed before winter arrives, my regular list falls very short.

Enter actual-play D&D podcasts. There are many. Most I’ve sampled are not to my liking, but here are the few that stuck with me beyond a few samplings.

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Birthday Reviews: Theodora Goss’s “Singing of Mount Abora”

Sunday, September 30, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Theodora Goss was born on September 30, 1968.

Goss has won two Rhysling Awards for Long Poem. The first was in 2004 for “Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks” and the second for “Rose Child” in 2017. She has also twice been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Mythopoeic, the Seiun, and the World Fantasy Award, winning the last once. She has additionally been nominated for the William L. Crawford/IAFA Fantasy Award, the SLF Foundation Award, and the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial Award.

Goss wrote “Singing of Mount Abora” for John Klima’s anthology Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories in 2007. The story was picked up by Rich Horton for Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition and by Jonathan Strahan for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two. It was late reprinted in Lightspeed by John Joseph Adams in the July 2012 issue. The story won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction in 2008.

“Singing of Mount Abora” was written for an anthology in which all the stories are inspired by words that were the winning entries in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, so it is appropriate that Goss’s language is a feature in the story, which was based on the word “Dulcimer,” which won the contest for Kim Calvin in 1949. The story is also based on lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” notably “ A damsel with a dulcimer/In a vision once I saw:/It was an Abyssinian maid/And on her dulcimer she played,/Singing of Mount Abora.”

Goss weaves together two tales set in three different times. The first is the story of Kamora, a woman in ancient China who has fallen in love with the Cloud Dragon, but cannot marry him until she convinces the Empress to let her leave. The second story tells of Sabra, a literature student who is beginning to fall in love with another student, Michael, much to her distant mother’s disdain. Both Kamora and Sabra must overcome obstacles set by the Empress or Sabra’s mother in order to have the chance to be with their loves.

The story of Kamora and the Cloud Dragon reads like a fable. Kamora is in service to the Empress who won’t let her leave until she can find someone who will entertain her as much as Kamora has. Kamora goes on a quest, starting with her uncle, the man who made her dulcimer. Known for his cleverness, he sends her to a distant mountaintop where she can meet the Stone Woman who may be able to help her, for the right price.

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Pathfinder Playtest Update

Saturday, September 29, 2018 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 0 Comment

Since Gen Con 2018, the Pathfinder Playtest has been in full swing, testing the new rule system that will form the basis for Pathfinder Second Edition, slated to release at Gen Con 2019. The game looks to streamline the system, and create a more coherent play experience across the diverse options that players of Pathfinder have available.

Participating in the Playtest

The major materials – the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook and the Doomsday Dawn adventure book, as well as supplements like the Playtest Bestiary and pregenerated characters – are all available for free download from Paizo.com, so that anyone can participate in the playtest experience. Feedback is provided through the messageboards on the Paizo forum and also by entering survey data when you’ve run someone through an adventure or scenario.

In addition to the download of the Rulebook, you should also download the Rulebook Update sheet. This is updated regularly – every couple of weeks so far – and includes ongoing modifications to the rules, which are to be incorporated immediately. The biggest change was a pretty comprehensive revamp of the Death & Dying rules, although they’ve since gone in and modified some of the classes a bit, added an additional healing option for the Medicine skill, and made other changes as needed.

The Doomsday Dawn adventure book has a series of 7 adventures that are linked together in a campaign style, set over a period of ten years, but you don’t always play the same characters. The adventures begin at first level and then skip levels as you proceed. The characters you play at first level show up in subsequent adventures, at higher levels, but in between you play with some different characters, with some adventures focusing more on outdoor adventures or healing characters. The goal is that playing through the entire adventure, you’ll have an opportunity to test out lots of different play styles and aspects of the game.

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New Horror Comics: Harrow County and Witch Creek Road

Saturday, September 29, 2018 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

One of the forms of fantasy I’m interested in is horror. I can’t say I quite understand how it works, not enough for me to write it well consistently. So I’ve been looking at different works of horror, trying to learn. I blogged about Marvel’s horror comic Carnage, older horror comics like Eerie, year’s best collections like Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror Volume 8, movies like The Exorcist and The Shining, and classics like DC’s Swamp Thing.

Lately my reading has turned to Dark Horse’s Harrow County, by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Cook. It’s been heavily lauded in the comics press, has tons of great creators singing its praises, and I’ve been discovering it with delight.

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