Black Gate – Page 432 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

In 500 Words or Less: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Friday, May 4, 2018 Brandon Crilly Comments 2 comments

The City of Brass
By S.A. Chakraborty
HarperCollins (544 pages, $16.99 paperback, $12.99 eBook, November 2017)

There are creatures and elements of the supernatural that appear in popular culture from time to time, earning a reaction of “ooh, look, it’s a ___________!” (At least from me; I don’t know about other people.) When I read the premise for City of Brass and saw that it focused on djinn and demons, I was intrigued right away – I mean, genies are cool.

The best part about Chakraborty’s take on djinn, ifrit and other associated beings is that they aren’t sensationalized or exoticized like we see on shows like Supernatural or Buffy. Between her personal background, a significant writing talent and what I can only imagine was a lot of research, Chakraborty creates a world that’s nuanced and detailed. It has exactly the vivid freshness we continue to need in the fantasy genre, as a balance for the variations on the same Eurocentric worldviews that are still widely common. When I teach my students about promoting diversity in speculative fiction, City of Brass will be one of the examples I hold up.

But the novel is much more than its world – at the end of the day, my interest is always characters. Our two main protagonists, Cairo street urchin Nahri and immortal warrior Dara, are great counterparts; they’re equally passionate and protective, but in different ways, and both are seeking to find their place in the world. I’ll admit that I groaned a bit at the first signs of romance between them (it begins early enough in the novel that I’m not really spoiling anything) but the way that this romance develops and progresses later doesn’t follow a typical narrative course, and so it won me over. Meanwhile, protagonist Alizayd’s journey is just as compelling, as he navigates loyalty to his family and his belief in what’s right, amid the cultural politics of the daeva.

That said, there’s so much built into City of Brass that I’d periodically lose track of certain details. For example, it’s mentioned early that Nahri aspires to escape Cairo and attend medical school; about a third of the novel later, when she’s working as a healer under very different circumstances and laments that old aspiration, I had to remind myself “Right, this is what she always wanted” because of how much had happened in between.

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Birthday Reviews: Shaenon K. Garrity’s “To Whatever”

Friday, May 4, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

The Cackle of Cthulhu-small — Cover by Dave Seeley

Shaenon K. Garrity was born on May 4, 1978.

Garrity is best known for creating the on-line comic Narbonic in 2000. She has also worked as an editor for Viz Media and has had a hand in numerous cartoons, comics, and manga. Garrity’s first prose short story “Prison Knife Fight” appeared in Machine of Death in 2010, and she has published additional short fiction over the years. In 2005 she received the Outstanding Writers Award from the Web Cartoonist’s Choice Awards. The same year she was named co-Lulu of the Year by the friends of Lulu.

Her story “To Whatever” originally appeared on episode #335 of The Drabblecast, edited by Norm Sherman, on August 17, 2014. It received its first print appearance in Alex Shvartsman’s collection The Cackle of Cthulhu, published by Baen Books in 2018.

The stories of the Cthulhu mythos are generally designed to touch on the horror of the unknown. Although this concept plays into Garrity’s epistolary story “To Whatever,” she also takes a look at the other side of the coin. Ethan is aware that there is something strange living in the walls of his apartment, but rather than allowing it to scare him away or drive him crazy, as so often happens in stories of the Cthulhu cycle, he befriends the creature, feeding it, playing games with it, and watching television with it, although he never looks at it.

Ethan’s roommate, however, becomes jealous when Ethan starts spending time with Willem, a new tenant in the building. Although Willem does begin to exhibit the signs of going through a more traditional Lovecraftian response to the proximity of an ancient one, because the story is told from Ethan’s point of view, the horror is sublimated.

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Goth Chick News: 168 Days to Halloween

Thursday, May 3, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

CinemaCon was held in Vegas last week and for those of you lucky enough to attend, you got a first look at footage from the upcoming (final, and we mean it this time) installment in the Halloween franchise. The rest of us are going to have to wait for it to be released publicly, which is happening soon.

Still, a lot of scoop came out of the annual four-day event. Here is what we now know about David Gordon Green’s October sequel to the original classic.

Things Jamie Lee Curtis said at CinemaCon, along with descriptions of the footage that flooded social media, have revealed the basic plot details. As we already knew, the new movie takes place 40 years after the events of the original, with all subsequent sequels ignored. Michael Myers has been locked up in an asylum since tormenting the teenaged Laurie back in 1978, but of course he escapes. Only this time, Laurie isn’t a helpless victim – this time, Laurie is “ready.”

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New Treasures: Star Destroyers, edited by Christopher Ruocchio and‎ Tony Daniel

Thursday, May 3, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Well, this is something of a guilty pleasure: an anthology with the subtitle Bigs Ships. Blowing Things Up. It’s the kind of thing you didn’t even know was missing from your life until you see it.

IN SPACE, SIZE MATTERS!

Boomers. Ships of the Line. Star Destroyers. The bigger the ship, the better the bang. From the dawn of history onward, commanding the most powerful ship around has been a dream of admirals, sultans, emperors, kings, generalissimos, and sea captains everywhere. For what the intimidation factor alone doesn’t achieve, a massive barrage from super-weapons probably will.

Thus it was, and ever shall be, even into the distant future. From the oceans of Earth, to beneath the ice of Europa, to the distant reaches of galactic empires, it is the great warships and their crews that sometimes keep civilization safe for the rest of us—but sometimes become an extinction-level event in and of themselves.

In “Superweapon” by David Drake, a fight for possession of an ancient alien warship will determine the fate of two vast interstellar powers. Then in “Hate in the Darkness” by Michael Z. Williamson, a team of libertarian Freeholders must think outside the box to do battle with the might of the United Nations and its powerful navy. And in “A Helping Hand,” Jody Lynn Nye posits an interstellar submarine on a rescue mission behind enemy lines — with the fate of an entire species hanging in the balance.

Big, bold, and edge-of-your-seat space opera and military science fiction from David Drake, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Michael Z. Williamson, Steve White, Robert Buettner, Susan R. Matthews, Dave Bara, and many more!

If you like modern space opera — and really, who doesn’t? — this book is Bean’s gift to you. It contains stories from 15 top-notch writers, most of whom have ongoing space opera series from a wide range of publishers, including Dave Bara (DAW), Christopher Ruocchio (DAW), Robert Buettner (Orbit), Mark L. Van Name (Baen), and many others. Here’s your chance to try a rich smorgasboard of writers under one cover, and maybe find yourself a few new favorites.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Tor.com Celebrates 50 Years of Locus Magazine

Thursday, May 3, 2018 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Over at Tor.com, Paul Weimer (who comments occasionally at Black Gate and elsewhere as PrinceJvstin) has written a fine tribute to one of my favorite magazines — Locus, the news magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field. He captures exactly what the magazine has meant to readers over the years, especially in the 80s and 90s when it was the trusted news source that tied together the entire genre.

In 1968, the legendary anthologist and editor Charles N. Brown created a one-sheet fanzine about news of the science fiction field. Brown’s intent was to use it to help the Boston Science Fiction group win its Worldcon bid. Brown enjoyed the experience so much that he continued the magazine through Noreascon I, the 29th Worldcon held in Boston in 1971 (where Locus won its first Hugo award). Brown continued to be the steward of Locus until his death in 2009. In that run, Locus won thirty Hugo awards, and for good reason…

Before the internet transformed how we get news and information, Locus, under Brown’s stewardship, and the assemblage of his team of columnists, grew and expanded its reach year after year until it became what I call the semiprozine of record. Locus became the go-to place for SFF news and information, backed up with a strong stable of reviews and interviews. Every issue of Locus was a window into the ever shifting and changing world of SFF.

The magazine was so important that, when we launched Black Gate in fall of 2000 with a very limited advertising budget, there was never any question about where we should spend it — on a full page ad in Locus. It paid us back handsomely.

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Birthday Reviews: Michael Cadnum’s “The Elf Trap”

Thursday, May 3, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Michael Cadnum was born on May 3, 1949.

His first novel Nightlight was published in 1990, and he published three more novels the next year. His other works include Ghostwright, The Judas Glass, and Nightsong: The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. In addition to novels and short fiction Cadnum also writes poetry, and he received a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship for his poetry. His short fiction has been collected in Can’t Catch Me and Other Twice-Told Tales, Earthquake Murder, and other collections. In novels Starfall and Nightsong deal with mythical themes, while In a Dark Wood and Forbidden Forest explore the Robin Hood mythos.

Cadnum’s story “Elf Trap” was originally published in the April 2001 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Gordon van Gelder. In 2006 Cadnum included the story in his collection Can’t Catch Me and Other Twice-Told Tales, published by Tachyon Publications.

“Elf Trap” is the story of Tina and Norman, a couple who are having some major problems with a rat infestation of their property, although it focuses on rats stealing food from their bird feeders. While Tina works on quilts, Norman’s occupation is to provide the voice for Wise Elf in a series produced by Disney.

Although Tina is worried about the rat problem, her more important concern is that it isn’t clear that Norman is able to discern between reality and the Wise Elf character who has endeared him to a generation of children. When they set a rat trap on their property, Norman becomes convinced that rather than catching a rat, they’ve accidentally caught and killed an elf, a possible delusion which Tina does not dissuade.

Although some aspects of their lives and relationship improve, Norman’s career and reputation take a powerful hit as he can’t deal with the thought that he caused the death of an elf, even inadvertently. Tina, in her own mind, takes credit for breaking Norman from his delusions that the elves are real, however she begins to question whether she or Norman had the more realistic view of the situation.

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Xbox Game Pass: Access Your New Game Library

Wednesday, May 2, 2018 Matt Drought Comments 0 Comment

You’ve bought a shiny new game console, set it up, and you’re ready to play. All you need now are games. Depending on what mood you’re in, you might want to play games from different genres. These genres can vary, from first person shooters, racing games, Role Playing Games, MMO’s and others. At an average cost of $59.99 per game (for new releases), it may take some time to build up a library of games to appease your gaming appetite.

There are low cost alternatives to help build your library: buying used games, borrowing games from your friends, or waiting for games to go on sale. Microsoft has recently created another low cost alternative, the Xbox Game Pass. The Xbox Game Pass is a subscription service that grants you access to (at this point) over 100 games. For $9.99 per month, you gain access to Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox games.

These games are downloadable to your hard drive, and can be played for as long as you’re a subscriber. The Xbox Game Pass includes games from a variety of publishers, such as Microsoft, Capcom, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Ubisoft.

If you haven’t played through the entire series of the Gears of War games, you can with the Xbox Game Pass. If you haven’t played the excellent Rise Of The Tomb Raider, you can with the Game Pass. Resident Evil, Devil May Cry 4, Metro Last Light, Super Street Fighter IV, and Halo 5 Guardians, are all examples of games included with the Xbox Game Pass.

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Two Castles in Slovenia

Wednesday, May 2, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

Mali Grad

In last week’s post about Zaprice Castle, Slovenia, we looked at a well-preserved Renaissance fortification protecting the important crossroads of Kamnik. Two earlier castles can also be visited in this town, is an easy day trip from the capital Ljubljana.

Mali Grad (“Little Castle”) is an obvious landmark visible from most of Kamnik. It’s situated atop a small hill overlooking the town. All that remains today is a reconstructed tower, a few foundations of walls, and a medieval chapel.

Mali Grad is first mentioned in 1202 but dates to perhaps a generation or two before then.

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The Amazing Magic Robot

Wednesday, May 2, 2018 Steve Carper Comments 4 comments

You and your friends sit around a table. You carefully take the Amazing Magic Robot from its niche in the box and set it in the middle of a circle of questions, making sure the tab fits into the slot. Spin the pointer to a question you want answered. Challenge your friends. Do they know? Let’s see if they’re right.

You pick up the robot and move it to the other circle, the one of answers. When you let go, the robot — magically! — moves all by itself and points to the correct answer. Every single time. You can’t fool it. The Amazing Magic Robot knows all. And speaks a dozen languages.

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Birthday Reviews: Anne Harris’s “The House”

Wednesday, May 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Anne Harris was born on May 2, 1964.

Harris’s first novel was The Nature of Smoke. In 1999, Harris received the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for her novel Accidental Creatures and her book Inventing Memory appeared on the 2005 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Long List. Her short story “Still Life with Boobs” was on the 2006 Nebula Award ballot for Best Short Story. More recently, she published the novels Amaranth and Ash and All the Colors of Love using the pseudonym Jessica Freely, and the novels of the Libyrinth sequence using the name Pearl North.

In “The House,” Harris creates a self-contained society that has arisen after some sort of undefined event which changed the nature of those who inhabited the house. Harris is never quite clear about what is happening in the titular house, or at least now who it is happening to. The house is apparently abandoned except for some sort of feral creatures living in it, possibly human, possibly animal. Some of them seem catlike, others snakelike, but their memories indicate some level of sentience and possibly humanity in their background.

The house’s inhabitant live in a strange game of King of the Mountain, which each of them attempting to gain access to the attic space and the windows onto the world which exist up there, a position held at the opening of the story by Azazel. In the story the main rivalry is between Harris’s narrator and Gustov, who seems to think he knows how to reach the attic and overthrow Azazel.

Because the concept of the House and its inhabitants is never really described to the reader, although the characters do seem to have a reasonably complete understanding of their situation, the story doesn’t entirely work if the reader tries to understand exactly what the situation is or what the inhabitants are. If the reader just accepts the house as a location for a quest and challenge between the narrator, Gustov, and Azazel, or even as a metaphor, the story works much better.

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