Black Gate – Page 403 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Big Little SF Magazines of the 1970s

Sunday, August 5, 2018 Rich Horton Comments 4 comments

An earlier version of this article was published in Black Gate 10.

These columns are focused on the history of SF – and so far that has turned out to mean mostly discussion of 50s oriented subjects, with some leakage into nearer years. But now I’d like to take a look at a rather more recent, and rather less celebrated, period. The 1970s. The time of wide ties, leisure suits, and disco. And also the time I discovered SF, and the SF magazines.

My first look at real SF magazines is a moment I remember with a continued thrill. Sometime in late July 1974, in Alton Drugs in Naperville, IL, I wandered by the newsstand and my eyes lit on three magical covers: the August 1974 issues of Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF. That day I bought Analog. The cover story was “Enter a Pilgrim” by Gordon R. Dickson, with a striking, odd, John Schoenherr painting, featuring an alien with a lance and ceramic-appearing armor (a sort of Schoenherr trademark, that ceramic-like surface).

I read that issue quickly and the next day I bought Galaxy, which featured “The Day Before the Revolution,” an Ursula K. Le Guin story that would win a Hugo, as well as parts of two different serials – The Company of Glory by Edgar Pangborn and Orbitsville by Bob Shaw. Of course that issue was also read before the day was out, and the next day I bought F&SF – a very important issue in its own way: it featured John Varley’s first published story (or perhaps his co-first story, as we will see later.) It wasn’t long before I had added Amazing and Fantastic to the roster. Soon I was subscribing to several magazines, and buying the others each month at the newsstand.

Those five were all the major, well-distributed, magazines there were by 1975. Alas, I just missed seeing If, Galaxy’s long time companion: it was discontinued at the end of 1974, and for some reason my local newsstand didn’t carry it, at least not those last few months.

I had formed an opinion, based on received conventional wisdom, that the “Big Three” of SF magazines had been Astounding/Analog, F&SF, and Galaxy since 1950: certainly that was the case in 1975. (You will get an argument for many years prior to that, however: there are partisans for Startling Stories in the early 50s, for If at various times, especially during Frederik Pohl’s peak editorial period in the mid-60s, and for Amazing and Fantastic under Cele Goldsmith’s editorial hand in the early 60s.)

Galaxy, however, was in some financial trouble. Under Jim Baen’s editorship it enjoyed a couple of years as a truly wonderfully enjoyable magazine, but when he left the decline was swift. However, Galaxy’s place in the “Big Three” was quickly taken by Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. And throughout the 70s, the sister magazines Amazing and Fantastic, edited by Ted White, were the other major prozines.

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Birthday Reviews: Élisabeth Vonarburg’s “Cogito”

Sunday, August 5, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Élisabeth Vonarburg was born on August 5, 1947.

She has twice been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and once for the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award. Her greatest recognition came from the Canadian Casper/Aurora Awards, which she has won ten times. Vonarburg won the French language award in 1987 for her story “La Carte du Tendre” (“Readers of the Lost Art”). That same year, she received a second Aurora for her fannish contributions to Solaris. She won three additional short story Auroras for “Cogito” (1990), “Ici, des tigres” (1991), and “La Course de Kathryn” (2004) and five Auroras for Best book for Histoire de la Princesse et du Dragon (1991), Ailleurs et au Japon (1992), Chroniques de Pays des Mères (1993), Les Voyageurs malgré eux (1996), and Reine de Mémoire 4. La Princesse de Vengeance (2007). She won the Prix Rosny-Ainé and the Prix Boreal in 1982 for her novel Le Silence de la Cité. She also won the Boreal for Chroniques de Pays des Mères (1993), Les Rêves de la mer (1997), Reine de Mémoire 1. La Maisson d’oubli (2006) and Reine de Mémoire 4. La Princesse de Vengeance (2007). Prior to 1990, the Aurora Award was known as the Casper Award and in 2011, the Prix Aurora and Prix Boreal combined.

Vonarburg originally published “Cogito” in French in Imagine #46 in December 1988, and it was translated into English with the same title for Tesseracts 3, edited by Candas Jane Dorsey and Gerry Truscott in 1990. The next year, it was published in French in Vonarburg’s collection Ailleurs et au Japon. Algis Budrys reprinted the story in English in issue 21 of Tomorrow SF in 1996 and Vonarburg again included the French version in her 2013 collection La Musique du Soleil. The story received the 1990 Aurora Award for Meilleur nouvelle en français (Best Short-Form Work in French).

“Cogito” is a strangely chatty story about a young girl, Nathany, who is growing up on Cybland, a planet settled by humans who left Earth in search of a life made better through cybernetic implants. The narrator begins by describing Nathany’s life in her communal school, originally EdBlock 6 until her teachers determined that she was precocious and moved into SpecBlock D. As the story continues, the narrator takes breaks from the action, such as it is, to address the reader directly, providing the background for the world necessary to understand upcoming events.

Through the course of the story, Vonarburg reveals that people on Cybland have all five of their senses removed at a very young age and are implanted by “cybes,” which allow them not only to have heightened senses, but also to present themselves in any way they want while they can also switch around the way their senses interact with the world, creating their own personal synesthesia.

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Derek Reads Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing for the First Time

Saturday, August 4, 2018 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

In my continuing effort to cover many of the classic comic runs, this spring, after much reluctance, I went to my public library and took out the first few trades of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, published by DC comics in the early 1980s and marking the beginning of the British Invasion of comics (which I discussed in a previous post here).

I’ve talked about Alan Moore’s work a few times, like when I recently read Halo Jones for the first time, and when I mused about what a Watchmen-like look at the planetary romance genre might look like, in four parts I, II, III, IV.

I’ve also talked a bit about horror comics of the 1970s, when I looked at Marvel’s Son-of-Satan, and also this spring, I was reading Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula for the first time. I’m not going to blog about Tomb of Dracula, but Black Gate‘s William Patrick Maynard did a 13 part (!) series on it, starting here.

Part of my reluctance in starting Swamp Thing was partly because I was a superhero guy, and second of all, I wasn’t really sure what kind of story might be in the offering with a swamp monster. And once in a hotel in Cuba, with nothing else to do, and with nothing else on, I watched about 15 minutes of the Swamp Thing movie, which (a) didn’t impress me and (b) was based on pre-Moore material anyway.

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Don’t Let Go the Coat: The Greatcoats by Sebastien de Castell

Saturday, August 4, 2018 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Rather foolishly, I thought Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats trilogy was, er, a trilogy. But that was before the fourth novel, Tyrant’s Throne, showed up in hardcover last year. Jo Fletcher Books reprinted it in trade paperback on May 1 of this year, and this time it seems that de Castell has indeed bought his popular debut series to a close.

In her review of Knight’s Shadow Sarah Avery said,

De Castell is carving himself an enduring place in the fantasy canon…. Knight’s Shadow is so strong, the only way I can see the Greatcoats series failing to achieve eventual wide recognition as a classic is if the author meets an untimely demise.

Fortunately that hasn’t happened, and in fact de Castell just launched a brand new four-volume series, Spellslinger (which we discussed here). The second volume arrives this month, and the next two before the end of the year. With productivity like that, Sebastien de Castell may well be the hardest working man in fantasy.

Here’s the description for Tyrant’s Throne.

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Birthday Reviews: Rick Norwood’s “Portal”

Saturday, August 4, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Rick Norwood was born on August 4, 1942.

Norwood published his first piece of fiction in 1972, following up with several stories in 1982, and then began publishing fiction again in 2003 with “Portal.” He was active in the nderground comic scene, editing God Comics and writing essays and articles for various comic magazines and websites. He also earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics and has taught since the early 1980s.

“Portal” appeared in the sixth issue of Black Gate magazine, released in Fall 2003 and edited by John O’Neill. The story has not been reprinted.

Ostensibly, “Portal” is the story of Ian, an escaped serf who is eluding capture and working temporarily at a fair for Stolnesserene, who runs a Blade Maze, a chance for people to try to reach into a box containing a series of razors and blades to retrieve a sword. However, rather than focus solely on Ian, the stories jumps between him, his boss, Ian’s friend Tod, and Carver, an art dealer who is also on the fair circuit and is intent on retrieving the blade from the maze.

Norwood follows each of these characters to some extent, but in a manner that indicates there is more to the story than he is sharing, not necessarily in background, although that clearly has depth, but in the future. As such, “Portal” almost comes across as a vignette rather than a full story. The title takes its name from an ability that Ian has to create portals that open to other worlds. These portals are not fully understood by the inhabitants of Ian’s world and when he first opens one accidentally, his father berates him. In the course of “Portal,” Ian enters one of the doorways he creates, which may be the first time someone has gone through and come back, further pushing the idea that this story is part of a larger whole.

“Portal” has the feel of the opening chapter of a much longer work, whether a series of short stories set in the same world or a novel. Norwood introduces several characters as well as their situations and includes prediction about Ian and Tod without showing how their fate will play out or even if they will live up to the expectation laid before them. Ian’s backstory opens “Portal,” and although his concern at being captured runs through much of the story, it isn’t picked up again, further providing the feel that Norwood is positioning this story as the opening of a novel.

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Vintage Treasures: Conquerors from the Darkness by Robert Silverberg

Friday, August 3, 2018 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Conquerors from the Darkness Master of Life and Death Silverberg-small

Conquerors from the Darkness Master of Life and Death Silverberg-back-small

1979 Ace edition, paired with Master of Life and Death. Cover by Frazetta.

Robert Silverberg’s novella “Spawn of the Deadly Sea” appeared in the April 1957 issue of Science Fiction Adventures. He expanded it to novel length in 1965, retitling it Conquerors from the Darkness in the process. It wasn’t one of Silverberg’s more successful novels, at least from a commercial standpoint. Today it’s considered a juvenile, and it was reprinted only a handful of times, including a 1979 Ace paperback in which it was paired with Master of Life and Death and given a typically colorful Frank Frazetta cover (above).

In his introduction to the Ace edition Silverberg talks about Robert E. Howard, and it’s one of Silverberg’s few early SF novels with a clear Howard influence. Perhaps as a result, the book certainly has its fans. Here’s an extract from James Reasoner’s enthusiastic review on his blog.

Conquerors from the Darkness is exactly the sort of vivid, galloping action yarn that made me a science fiction fan in the first place. At first it seems like a heroic fantasy novel, set in some totally different universe than ours. The oceans cover the entire planet except for a few floating cities. The only commerce is between those cities, and keeping the seas safe for the merchant vessels is a Viking-like group known as the Sea-Lords. The hero of the novel, a young man named Dovirr, lives in one of the cities but wants to be a Sea-Lord and take to the oceans. He gets his wish and rapidly rises in the ranks, and along the way the reader learns that this is indeed Earth, a thousand years after alien invaders flooded the planet for reasons known only to them, preserving a little of humanity in those floating cities… the alien Star Beasts return to take over the planet again, and Dovirr and his comrades have to find some way to stop them with swords and sailing ships.

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When Is A Spinoff Not A Spinoff?

Friday, August 3, 2018 Violette Malan Comments 9 comments

It’s impossible to talk about remakes of any kind, as I do here, here, and here, without eventually having to consider spinoffs. I want to start by saying that by “spinoff” I mean that an existing character is given their own show, either after the end of the original series, or concurrently with it. And by TV franchises, on the other hand, I mean two or more different versions of the same show.

Aside: I think movie franchises are more a species of sequel. Star Trek? That’s tricky. Are they spinoffs? Reboots? Franchises? All of the above?

It looks as though comedies are the most likely type of TV program to be successfully spun off. If we go back to the early 1970’s we’ll find that All in the Family (1971-1979) was spun off into two series, The Jeffersons (1975-1985), and Maude (1972-1978). What people often overlook, is that the series Good Times (1974-1979) was actually spun off from Maude. Making All in the Family a kind of grandparent program.

These new series were all true spinoffs, going by my definition. Both George Jefferson and Maude Findlay were recurring characters on the original series who captured the interest of the audience enough that they were given their own shows. The same was true for Maude’s maid/housekeeper Florida, whose home life was spun off into Good Times. You’ll notice that there was a considerable amount of overlap in terms of TV seasons between all 4 shows.

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Birthday Reviews: Clifford D. Simak’s “Observer”

Friday, August 3, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Clifford D. Simak was born on August 3, 1904 and died on April 25, 1988.

Simak won the Hugo for Best Novelette in 1959 for “The Big Front Yard,” for Best Novel in 1964 for Way Station (a.k.a. Here Gather the Stars), and in 1981 for Best Short Story for “Grotto of the Dancing Deer,” which also won the Nebula Award. He also won a Retro-Hugo in 2014 for the novelette “Rule 18.” His novel City won the International Fantasy Award in 1953. He won the Jupiter Award for the novel A Heritage of Stars. Simak was the Guest of Honor at Noreascon I, the 29^th Worldcon, held in Boston in 1971. He was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1973 and in 1977, SFWA named him a Grand Master. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writer’s Association in 1988.

Simak published “Observer” in the May 1972 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, edited by Ben Bova, although it is possible the story was originally purchased by John W. Campbell, Jr. before his death. Simark included it in his 1988 collection Off-Planet and it was reprinted in Eternity Lost, volume 1 of the Stories of Clifford D. Simak published by Darkside Press. The story has most recently been reprinted in the Open Road Media collection of Simak’s work The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

“Observer” appears throughout most of its length to be a story without a human protagonist. The narrator is some sort of sentient who wakes on a planet and begins to figure out where he is and what his purpose is. The story is serious in nature, but the reader can’t help comparing the observer to the unlucky sperm whale called into existence in Douglas Adams’s The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It also becomes clear to the reader that the observer’s purpose is to check out new planets to determine if they are suitable for human settlement, and it has explored several planets over the years, although it doesn’t recall any of its previous existences. Reading the story in 2018, the sentient’s quest to figure out its purpose seems routine, although it quite possibly was fresh when Simak originally published the story.

The biggest question for a modern reader is the exact nature of the observer. In a modern story, it would be some form of AI, but in a story published in 1972, the observer was more likely to be some sort of robot or computerized probe. Simak eventually does reveal its nature and origin, but does so in a manner that feels anticlimactic and raises more questions than it answers.

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When Traveller Meets Tiptree: The Wayfarers Trilogy by Becky Chambers

Thursday, August 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet-small

I love a good science fiction series, though I don’t get to indulge that love very often. But I’ve got some vacation time coming up this month, and I plan to put it to good use. I’ve had to ruthlessly pare down my to-be-read pile to an achievable size (man, that was painful), and only one SF series survived the culling: Becky Chambers Wayfarers trilogy.

There’s been a lot of praise heaped on these books — including making numerous Best of the Year lists, and a Hugo nomination for the second volume, A Closed and Common Orbit — but what’s really drawn me to them has been the intriguing reviews. Niall Alexander at Tor.com called the opening novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, “A genuine joy,” and Publishers Weekly labeled the second “Superb work from one of the genre’s rising stars.” But I think my favorite review came from James Nicoll, who admitted up front that he read the first one expecting a Traveller novel.

I picked it up because, over on Livejournal, Heron61 said:

It’s basically what you’d get if you took Firefly (minus the unfortunate Civil War metaphors) or an average campaign of the Traveller RPG and focused more on interpersonal dynamics and character’s emotional lives, while substantially reducing the level of violence.

Yes, this book reminds me of Traveller… I was more strongly reminded of James Tiptree, Jr.’s short story “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side”… that is, if James Tiptree, Jr. instead of being relentlessly, inexorably depressing, had been a cheerful optimist. The book isn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was a refreshing change of pace.

The third volume, Record of a Spaceborn Few, arrived last week. I’ve been looking for something fun and different — and new — and this series very definitely fits the bill.

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New Treasures: A Study in Honor by Claire O’Dell

Thursday, August 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

A Study in Honor Claire O'Dell-back-small

Beth Bernobich is the author of the River of Souls trilogy (Passion Play, Queen’s Hunt, and Allegiance) and Fox and Phoenix (which Rich Horton reviewed for us here.) In his July wrap-up at Kirkus Reviews John DeNardo tipped me off to her latest, A Study in Honor, her first science fiction/mystery, and her first title released under the pen name Claire O’Dell:

Claire O’Dell’s futuristic mystery A Study in Honor is not set in space but is no less thrilling. It’s a gender-flipped re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes. In near future Washington, D.C., Dr. Janet Watson, recently and honorably discharged from the Civil War, teams up with covert agent Sara Holmes to find a murderer targeting veterans.

Early notices for the book have been excellent. Liz Bourke at Tor.com called it “a tense, gripping story, excellently paced, and Janet is an amazingly compelling narrator. This novel is really hard to put down, and I’m looking forward to the sequel with great anticipation.” And Publisher’s Weekly said,

This riveting mystery (fantasist Beth Bernobich’s first work under the O’Dell pseudonym), set in near-future Washington D.C., spotlights delightfully fresh adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous characters. After Dr. Janet Watson loses her arm in an attack by the New Confederacy, she is discharged from the Army and returns home. She meets the fascinating, if infuriating, Sara Holmes, and they become roommates in Georgetown, Va., where, as two black women, they are not entirely welcome. Watson observes troubling patterns in her new job at the VA, and these, along with prompts from Holmes’s top secret connections, send the women on a high-stakes search for answers… This is a real treat for fans of Conan Doyle and SF mysteries.

A Study in Honor was published by Harper Voyager on July 31, 2018. It is 304 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Chris McGrath. Read an excerpt at Unbound Worlds.