Black Gate – Page 422 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Visit a Post-Apocalyptic South in Christopher Rowe’s Telling the Map

Monday, June 4, 2018 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Telling the Map Christopher Rowe back-small

I use a lot of resources — blogs, reviews, online bookstores, and more — to help me identify the books I should pay attention to every month. Most of them focus on novels though, and more and more often I’m finding that podcasts are the most reliable way to discover everything else. Case in point: last week, while re-listening the Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan’s 2017 end-of-the-year wrap-up for the Coode Street Podcast, I learned I’ve somehow overlooked Christopher Rowe’s Telling the Map, which both Gary and Jonathan selected as the best collection of the year. I ordered a copy immediately, and I hope to dig into it this week. Here’s what they said.

Gary Wolfe: These are terrific stories. It’s a kind of southern, post-apocalyptic south, a part of the country that we don’t see often represented often in fiction at all. They’re very interesting, subtle fictions, and there was a major new long story… I discovered things in it that I didn’t know about.

Jonathan Strahan: I think there were two great collections this year, absolute stone cold classics… My favorite collection of the year as well, because it seems like we are clones, is Telling the Map: Stories by Christoper Rowe from Small Beer. Rowe has a wonderful writing voice, this sort of southern Kentuckian kind of writing voice that he brings to his stories, and he has a very localized, community kind of storytelling. His stories are very intimate, and they deal with average-seeming people dealing with average-seeming experiences in extraordinary circumstances… The major new novella that’s in the book, “The Border State,” which is the sequel to “The Voluntary State,” is without a doubt one of the finest novellas of the year… I loved that book very much.

“The Voluntary State,” which appeared in Sci Fiction in May 2004, was nominated for the Sturgeon, Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards for Best Novelette. Listen to the complete podcast — which is crammed with tons of great recs for best novel, novella, anthology, and non-fiction book of 2017 — here.

With a (Black) Gat: Frederick Nebel’s Donahue

Monday, June 4, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 6 comments

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

Carroll John Daly’s action-packed adventures of Race Williams sold more copies of Black Mask than any other author’s stories. But editor Joe ‘Cap’ Shaw, who was willing to hold his nose and put Williams on the cover, considered the far more literate Dashiell Hammett to be the magazine’s cornerstone.

In January of 1930, the final installment of The Maltese Falcon appeared in Black Mask. A Continental Op story followed in February, then the next three months saw the stories that would become The Glass Key. But at the peak of his pulp abilities, Hammett left the genre. He was interested in the easy money of Hollywood and the better paying ‘slick’ magazines. He bid adieu to Black Mask in November of 1930.

Shaw had lost his best writer. The irreplaceable Hammett had to be replaced. He turned to Frederick Nebel, whose MacBride and Kennedy stories had appeared over a dozen times. That November issue of Black Mask included the thirty-sixth and final Continental Op story, “Death and Company.” It also featured “Rough Justice,” the first tale of Donahue of the Inter-State agency.

After the phenomenal success of The Maltese Falcon, Shaw had urged Hammett to write more stories featuring Sam Spade. Dash wasn’t interested and not only refused, but he shortly thereafter left the magazine forever. Though, he did write three more Spade stories in 1932 for the slicks. Shaw tagged the reliable Nebel to provide Black Mask readers with a tough private eye to replace the immensely popular Continental Op. The writer most certainly did that.

In “Rough Justice,” the Irish New York City PI, a former cop bounced from the force for being too honest, finds himself in sweltering St. Louis. In August of 1931 Donahue would return to the Arch City in “Spare the Rod.” In between, Nebel wrote a three-story serial of connected adventures that appeared in consecutive issues.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Nictzin Dyalhis’s “Heart of Atlantan”

Monday, June 4, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Nictzin Dyalhis was born on June 4, 1873 and died on May 8, 1942.

Dyalhis’s writing career began with the story “Who Keep the Desert Law” in 1922 and saw the publication of fewer than 20 stories over the next 18 years. His first story in Weird Tales, “When the Green Star Waned,” may have been the first use of the word “blaster” for a ray gun. Although L. Sprague de Camp has stated that Nictzin Dyalhis was his birthname and appears on his draft card, people have suggested that he changed the spelling of his last name from Dallas. Dyalhis also appears to have changed the date of his birth as suited him. One of the few members of the science fiction community to have actually met him was Willis Conover, Jr.

“Heart of Atlantan” first appeared in the September 1940 issue of Weird Tales, edited by D. McIlwraith. It remained out of print for 30 years before Lin Carter selected it for his anthology The Magic of Atlantis. In 1976, Peter Haining published a retrospective of Weird Tales and chose the story to represent Dyalhis’s contributions to the magazine. Wildside Press issued several of Dyalhis’s stories, including “Heart of Atlantan” in their e-book The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack: Volume 4 in 2015. The story most recently appears in The Sapphire Goddess, published in 2018 by DMR Books and edited by Dave Ritzlin. “Heart of Atlantan was Dyalhis’s final published story.

Framing techniques in weird fiction were a common device in the early pulp era, an attempt to give some sort of credence to the tale. The events didn’t often happen to the narrator, but to a friend, or were found in a book. In “Heart of Atlantan,” Henri d’Armond describes how he was having a conversation with his friend, Leonard Carman, about the possibility of lost ancient civilizations. Carman is convinced they exist and to prove his point calls a woman, Otilie, to join them. Bent, broken, ugly, and illiterate, Otilie has the ability to serve as a medium, writing messages from a lost race.

…

Read More Read More

The Dread Lurking Beneath the Surface: The Planetfall Trilogy by Emma Newman

Sunday, June 3, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I read Emma Newman’s Tor.com novella Brother’s Ruin (March 2017) on a plane last year, and quite enjoyed it. It’s the tale of a young woman who uses her hidden — and considerable — powers to help her brother masquerade as a mage, in an alternate Victorian era Britain where the all-powerful Royal Society of the Esoteric Arts snaps up anyone with magical gifts. The setting was nicely thought-out and deserved a follow-up, and indeed there is at least one more novella (Weaver’s Lament, October 2017) in what’s now being called the Industrial Magic series.

All that has made me keenly interested in her science fiction trilogy, which began with Planetfall in 2015. The first book was nominated for the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, and The New York Times called it “Transcendent.” After Atlas (2016) was a Publishers Weekly Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Clarke Award. The third book, Before Mars, was published in April; the LA Times calls it “A psychological thriller wearing the cloak of a gripping sci-fi story.”

But what are they about? Mystery, murder, the power of myth, and more. Over at Tor.com Robert H. Bedford reviewed the first book, saying:

Planetfall is at once a fascinating character study through Ren’s first person narrative and a novel that examines how secrets, no matter how deeply buried they are, can be extremely damaging things… especially in a small colony in a seeming utopia. Ren spends much of her day as the colony’s printer, responsible for overseeing an advanced 3-D printer which is used to repair damaged items or create new items when necessary. Any items. Ren’s obsession with repairing things is a mask for trying to repair the damages left in the wake of Lee’s disappearance, and an attempt to bury her own guilt in the tragic events which transpired nearly two decades ago…

I was very much reminded of C.J. Cherryh, especially her first Foreigner novel… In other ways, I was reminded of Mary Doria Russell’s powerful novel The Sparrow, and its sequel Children of God, in the way that science and religion are at odds with each other and how they work together to drive parts of the plot.

Newman’s prose has a haunting effect that hints at dread lurking beneath the surface, waiting to rear its disturbing head. When this prose is conveyed through Ren’s voice it makes for a compulsive, powerful read that is difficult to set aside… Beautifully and heartbreakingly wrought, Planetfall is a genius novel that is far more than its exterior belies; a distressing, harrowing novel that left a deep mark on me. It isn’t an easy, cheerful read, but it is a captivating story that can be very aptly be described as a must read.

All three novels are still in print from Ace. Read Chapter One of Planetfall at Tor.com.

Sail Through Space in a Whale: Honor Among Thieves by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre

Sunday, June 3, 2018 Elizabeth Galewski Comments 0 Comment

More than anything, teenager Zara Cole wants to be free. That’s why she lives on the streets, snatching purses and thieving, rather than immigrating to Mars with her mother and sister. She can’t stand the thought of being trapped in a dome. When a rich girl waltzes through Zara’s seedy neighborhood without taking the most basic precautions, she can’t resist a slash and grab.

But the rich girl isn’t the easy mark Zara thought it she’d be. Sure, the girl herself does nothing but scream. But it turns out her daddy’s the cruel and ruthless crime boss Deluca, who sends a goon to kill Zara and recover his goods. It’s probably quite the surprise for the goon when he’s the one who ends up dead, instead.

Zara’s got blood on her hands, but she doesn’t feel guilty. Still, it’s not obvious how she’s going to hide from Deluca, now that she not only has what he wants, but also dispatched one of his men. The safest place she can think of is a jail-like rehabilitation facility called Camp Kuna. To get herself sent there, she sneaks back into her juvenile group home, where her official guardian helps her create the necessary scene of violence.

But even donning her orange jumpsuit and getting locked in a cell doesn’t keep Zara out of Deluca’s reach. The crime boss bribes a fellow inmate – the closest thing Zara has to a friend in Camp Kuna – to murder her. When Zara survives the strangulation attempt, she realizes nowhere is safe.

Rescue comes in the strange form of the alien species called Leviathan, who are living spaceships that look like whales. In exchange for reversing the effects of global warming, the aliens require humanity to offer a hundred volunteers to travel inside them every year. Called the “Honors” program, the chosen humans become celebrities, feted worldwide as the best and the brightest. Nobody knows what the Honors do during their year of service, but the aliens usually pick eminent scientists and musicians. Until recently, when they picked two military strategists.

This year, they pick Zara.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Tony Richards’s “Discards”

Sunday, June 3, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Tony Richards was born on June 3, 1956.

Richards was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for his first novel, The Harvest Bride in 1988. His collection Going Back received a British Fantasy Award nomination in 2008.

“Discards” originally appears in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where editor Edward L. Ferman published it in the September 1983 issue. The next year it was translated into Italian for inclusion in Urania #964. The British Fantasy Society included the story in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue of Dark Horizons. Richard used the story in two collections of his work that were published in 2008: Passport to Purgatory and Shadows and Other Tales. The following year it appeared in the anthology The 4^th Book of Terror Tales, edited by John B. Ford and Paul Kane.

Richards breaks free from several of the expected norms of a speculative fiction short story, which sets it apart from most of what appears in the magazine. Robin Brookard was born into a middle class family, married, and had children, but what sets him apart is that he lost everything due to his addiction to alcohol. The story opens with him walking the streets of London trying to figure out where he is going to spend the night and realizing he’ll either have to sleep outdoors or find his way to a hostel. His pride doesn’t allow for the latter choice since it seems a more “official” acknowledgement of his state.

Brookard eventually finds a group of tramps gathered around a fire and he approaches them in hopes of keeping warm and finding some companionship. Something about the group doesn’t strike him as quite right, however, and he is torn between joining them and keeping his distance, partly because of the sense of wrongness and partly because being accepted into their group means admitting that he can no longer find his way back to the life he once had.

The group’s leader, known as Padre, explains to Brookard that gods are created and gain power when they have believers and indicates that the homeless of London, and in fact, the homeless around the world, have brought their own god into existence. The god he describes is a vengeful one, however, and their goal is to eventually overthrow the current world order. The introduction of the god of the homeless has an undertone of Lovecraftianism, but it doesn’t quite lead down that path.

…

Read More Read More

Caverna The Cave Farmers: The Most Fun You’ll Have Managing Animals, Minerals and Vegetables

Saturday, June 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I’ve heard a lot about the top-selling Agricola. It was the board game that finally ended Puerto Rico‘s five year-rein as the highest-rated game at BoardGameGeek, and it thoroughly dominated the rankings from September 2008 until March 2010. It certainly sounds like something I should investigate, but I have to admit it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm… I mean, just how much fun can it be to simulate a farming couple living in a two-room hut?

As you can probably imagine, I was much more intrigued by Agricola‘s sequel Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which changed up the setting and added a fantasy veneer, putting you in the role of dwarves leading tiny family clans in mountain caves. The reviews have been pretty promising; Shut Up & Sit Down said:

The sequel to Agricola is here, and it’s the heaviest and most expensive game we’ve ever reviewed. A titan of the table.

There’s no question. Caverna: The Cave Farmers is the most fun you’re going to have managing animals, minerals and vegetables.

Wait, are they being snarky? It’s hard to tell. Only one way to find out for sure.. I finally took the plunge and shelled out $80 for a copy of Caverna, and it arrived today. And wow, this thing is gigantic.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Particle Theory by Edward Bryant

Saturday, June 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Cover by Richard Powers

Edward Bryant died last year, at the age of 71. He was widely acclaimed for his short fiction, and published some 121 stories between 1970 and 2017. He won back-to-back Nebulas, for “Stone” (1978) and “giANTS” (1979). Wikipedia notes that “By 1973, he had gained acclaim for stories with a conversational style that mask rather dark realities,” and that seems right to me. His produced a single novel, Phoenix Without Ashes (1975), co-written with Harlan Ellison. After his death Mad Cow Press published the tribute anthology Edward Bryant’s Sphere of Influence, with fiction by Connie Willis, Steve Rasnic Tem, Kevin J. Anderson, Lucy Taylor, Bruce Holland Rogers, and many others.

I knew Bryant chiefly as a book reviewer, and he was excellent, somehow blending both a discerning eye for fiction with an infectious enthusiasm for the genre. He published many hundreds of reviews — have a look at his entry at the Internet Science Fiction Database, and you’ll begin to appreciate just how deeply Bryant explored the fiction he loved. I was a regular reader of his book columns at Locus (1989-2006), Twilight Zone Magazine, (1987-89), and especially Cemetery Dance (1990-98).

Recently I’ve become more interested in reading his short stories, though. He published half a dozen collections, including Among the Dead and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse (1973), Cinnabar (1976), and Predators and Other Stories (2014). But his major collection appears to be Particle Theory (Timescape Books, 1981), which includes both of his Nebula Award-winning tales, plus no less than five other Nebula nominees (the title story, “Strata,” “The Thermals of August,” “Shark,” “The Hibakusha Gallery”) and three Hugo nominees (“The Thermals of August,” “Stone,” and “giANTS”).

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Lester del Rey’s “Fade-Out”

Saturday, June 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Cover by John PIcacio — **Cover by John Picacio**

Lester del Rey was born on June 2, 1915 and died on May 10, 1993.

In 1972, he received the Skylark Award from NESFA. He and wife Judy-Lynn del Rey won the Milford Award in 1982 and del Rey won the coveted Balrog Award in 1985. He was named a Grand Master by SFWA in 1991. Along with his wife, del Rey ran Del Rey Books, for which he was nominated for a Special World Fantasy Award four times. Four of his stories, “Into They Hands,” “Helen O’Loy,” “The Faithful,” and “Nerves” have been nominated for Retro-Hugos.

“Fade-Out” was originally published in Harry Warner’s fanzine Spaceways. When del Rey published The Early del Rey in 1975, he claimed that he remembered an early story that appeared in Spaceways, but could not remember the title. He relegated the story, which he no longer had, to the dust bin of history. When I was editing the two volume Selected Stories of Lester del Rey for NESFA Press, I came across the reference to “Fade-Out” and decided that, although the collections were not meant to be complete (about 1/3 of his short fiction was not included), I wouldn’t feel successful until I had tracked down the story and at least considered it for inclusion. It was reprinted in 2010 in Robots and Magic: Volume 2 of Selected Short Stories of Lester del Rey.

Jack Kirbey is an inventor who takes the Tibetan concoctions of his partner, Tse-Shan, and packages them for western consumption. Unfortunately, the two men have had only limited success, partly because they sold the rights to their first tonic, Tibetan Hair Invigorator, to an unscrupulous businessman, Burroughs. On the verge of being thrown out of their apartment and penniless, Kirbey begin experimenting with an invisibility potion that Tse-Shan told him about.

Invisible, Kirbey decides to play ghost and visit the businessman who took advantage of them, trying to set things right and make sure they will have all the money they need. Del Rey describes his trip from their apartment to the reseller and back. Unfortunately, the effects of the potion on Kirbey seem to follow the needs of the plot at any given moment. Generally, Kirbey is unable to touch anything. He can’t call for an elevator, open a door, are signal for a trolley to stop. At the same time, he needs to be careful he doesn’t bump anyone and has to avoid people sitting on him, so while his invisibility is intact, the commensurate incorporeality seems to come and go.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French

Friday, June 1, 2018 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

I find it fascinating how buzz can grow for certain books, weeks and even months before they’re published. I’m talking about real buzz, grass-roots stuff, reader reviews on public sites, not just high-profile blurbs on the back of the book.

I was flat-out astonished to see the early buzz for Jonathan French’s orc epic The Grey Bastards, coming in hardcover June 19 from Crown. Nearly three weeks from publication it already has 54 reviews at Amazon, and a whopping 473 ratings at Goodreads. That’s off the charts, especially for an unknown author with only two previous small press releases to his credit. It wasn’t until I dug a bit deeper (and had already selected it to feature today) that I realized the Crown edition is a reprint of a 2015 small press original from Ballymalis Press. Still, that’s plenty unusual all on its own, so I decided to go ahead and feature it today anyway. Here’s the description.

Call them outcasts, call them savages — they’ve been called worse, by their own mothers — but Jackal is proud to be a Grey Bastard.

He and his fellow half-orcs patrol the barren wastes of the Lot Lands, spilling their own damned blood to keep civilized folk safe. A rabble of hard-talking, hog-riding, whore-mongering brawlers they may be, but the Bastards are Jackal’s sworn brothers, fighting at his side in a land where there’s no room for softness. And once Jackal’s in charge — as soon as he can unseat the Bastards’ tyrannical, seemingly unkillable founder — there’s a few things they’ll do different. Better.

Or at least, that’s the plan. Until the fallout from a deadly showdown makes Jackal start investigating the Lot Lands for himself. Soon, he’s wondering if his feelings have blinded him to ugly truths about this world, and the Bastards’ place in it.

In a quest for answers that takes him from decaying dungeons to the frontlines of an ancient feud, Jackal finds himself battling invading orcs, rampaging centaurs, and grubby human conspiracies alike — along with a host of dark magics so terrifying they’d give even the heartiest Bastard pause. Finally, Jackal must ride to confront a threat that’s lain in wait for generations, even as he wonders whether the Bastards can — or should — survive.

Delivered with a generous wink to Sons of Anarchy, featuring sneaky-smart worldbuilding and gobs of fearsomely foul-mouthed charm, The Grey Bastards is a grimy, pulpy, masterpiece — and a raunchy, swaggering, cunningly clever adventure that’s like nothing you’ve read before.

The Grey Bastards will be published by Crown on June 19, 2018. It is 432 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. Anyone out there read this in the earlier edition?