Vintage Treasures: Sword & Sorceress, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Vintage Treasures: Sword & Sorceress, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Sword & Sorceress Anthologies-small

Sword and Sorcery has a rich history of anthology series. Lin Carter’s seminal Flashing Swords and Andy Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness are probably the most famous examples, but in terms of longevity and influence on the field I think they’re both eclipsed by Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress anthologies. The first one appeared from DAW Books in 1984, and there’s been a new volume every year since, with a single three-year gap between 2004-07. Last year’s Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress, edited by Elisabeth Waters, was #31.

The series is critical to the history of the field for more than its longevity, however. Unlike Carter and Offutt, who invited established authors to fill their pages, Bradley and her fellow editors opened their volumes up to submissions, and the results were pretty extraordinary. Numerous young writers who would go on to great things, many of them women, were discovered or promoted very early in their career in the pages of S&S, including Emma Bull, Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, Diana L. Paxson, Laurell K. Hamilton, Phyllis Ann Karr, Rachel Pollack, Vera Nazarian, Deborah J. Ross, Elizabeth Moon, Janet Fox, Laura J. Underwood, Rosemary Edghill, Syne Mitchell, Devon Monk, Carrie Vaughn, and many, many others. You could make a pretty compelling case that Sword & Sorceress (together with its sister publication, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine) dramatically remade modern fantasy, and may be the single greatest influence on 21st Century American fantasy so far.

The first volumes of S&S came out just as I entered grad school and my reading time dropped precipitously. So I missed out on al the excitement, but it’s not too late to catch up. I found the above collection of the first nine volumes (plus VIII and XV) in great shape on eBay, and bought it for $20, about two bucks per book — about half the original cover price. That’s a heck of a bargain for a lot of great reading.

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Future Treasures: Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey

Future Treasures: Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey

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Persepolis Rising-smallJames S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham (the Long Price Quartet) and writer Ty Franck. Their Expanse series, a New York Times bestseller, is one of the most popular SF series on the shelves at the moment. It has been filmed as The Expanse, a breakout hit for the SyFy channel, which was just renewed for a third season.

At six volumes this is a substantial reading project already. The seventh novel, Persepolis Rising, arrives in hardcover next month from Orbit.

AN OLD ENEMY RETURNS

In the thousand-sun network of humanity’s expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace.

In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.

New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity — and of the Rocinante — unexpectedly and forever…

Here’s the complete list of novels.

The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon’s Ashes
Persepolis Rising

Persepolis Rising will be published by Orbit on December 5, 2017. It is 560 pages, priced at $28 on hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Daniel Dociu. See all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and Fantasy here.

The November Fantasy Magazine Rack

The November Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Black Static November December 2017-small Clarkesworld November 2017-small Galaxy's Edge November 2017-small Nightmare November 2017-small
Interzone November December 2017-small The Dark November 2017-small Occult Detective Quarterly 3-small Uncanny November December 2017-small

A fine crop of magazines this month, with original fiction by Nancy Kress, Brian M. Sammons, Barry N. Malzberg, Mercedes Lackey, Tina Connelly, Karin Tideck, Sue Burke, and many others. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in early November (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Black Static — fiction by Ruth EJ Booth, Ralph Robert Moore, Mel Kassel, Carly Holmes, Andrew Humphrey, and Georgina Bruce. Cover by Tara Bush
Clarkesworld — new fiction by D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Sue Burke, Mike Buckley, Suzanne Walker, and Nicoletta Vallorani, plus two reprints
Galaxy’s Edge — issue #29 has an original fiction from Nancy Kress, Sandra M. Odell, Barry N. Malzberg, Kevin J. Anderson, Mercedes Lackey, Larry Hodges, and many others
Nightmare — original fiction from Will Ludwigsen and Karin Lowachee, along with reprints by Molly Tanzer and Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Interzone — fresh fiction from Laura Mauro, Rachael Cupp, Dan Grace, Erica L. Satifka, R. Boyczuk, and 2017 James White Award Winner Stewart Horn
The Dark — new fiction from Octavia Cade and L Chan, and reprints from Neil Williamson and Lisa L. Hannett
Occult Detective Quarterly — issue #3 has new fiction by William Meikle. Brian M. Sammons, S.L. Edwards, Aaron Smith, and many others — plus plenty of reviews. and “Robert E. Howard’s Weird Detectives” by Bobby Derie
Uncanny — all new fiction from Karin Tidbeck, Sarah Monette, Tina Connelly, and others, plus reprints by Zen Cho and Rachel Swirsky

Click any of the thumbnail images above for bigger images. Our late October Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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I Was Paper Trained by Philip K. Dick

I Was Paper Trained by Philip K. Dick

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My oldest son Sam loves the movie Blade Runner above almost any other, and so he was at least provisionally interested when the recent and long-delayed sequel, Blade Runner 2049 hit the theaters. Myself, I didn’t care much one way or the other. I like the original movie well enough (though it’s not the touchstone for me that it seems to be for many others) but as for the sequel, well… the two hours that will forever go down in infamy as Prometheus did a lot to damage my moviegoing relationship with Ridley Scott, which was never that warm to begin with. (I know Scott was “just” the executive producer on 2049, but still. Once someone has charged you twelve dollars for the privilege of farting in your face, you don’t forget it.)

In any case, the merits of the movies are beside the point. It has long irked me, as a science fiction fan and as a father, that Sam’s enthusiasm for Blade Runner has always been untempered by any encounter with Philip K. Dick’s actual novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or indeed, with anything by the man who I regard as the greatest of all science fiction writers. Before you call Child Protective Services, please know that I didn’t fail in every way as a parent — Sam has a wife and a home and a job, he can tie his shoes and put together a coherent English sentence, he’s kind to animals and considerate to everyone he meets, at least until he finds out who they voted for, and he’s a hell of a cook. He’s a fine and productive person and my pride in him is unbounded… but really, c’mon — Phillip K. Dick!

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Series Wrap-Up

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Series Wrap-Up

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Last week I concluded my book-by-book look at Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar novels, the prehistoric world inside the Earth’s crust where the stationary sun eradicates the passage of time. The complete series consists of seven books:

Compared to Burroughs’s other two long-running science-fiction series, Mars/Barsoom and Venus/Amtor, Pellucidar is more difficult to summarize. The Venus novels were written over a short period of time during the end of Burroughs’s career and all feature the same hero, Carson Napier. There are no Venus classics, with the best (Lost on Venus) only middling and the rest ranging from bland to unreadable. The Mars series presents a vast canvas that arcs across Burroughs’s career, but it’s the most consistently high quality of any of his series, including the Tarzan novels, so it’s not too difficult to give it a broad analysis that primarily looks at changes in protagonists.

The Pellucidar books, however, present conundrums when consumed in a short period. Like Mars, Pellucidar spans the major phases of ERB’s career: success in the ‘teens, a stabilizing period in the twenties, a steepening decline throughout the thirties, a World War II revival, and a “lost” story and final volume published posthumously in the sixties. Unlike Mars, Burroughs visited Pellucidar sporadically, with a fourteen-year lapse after the first two paired novels, and later a seven-year gap.

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Ragnarok Publications Cancels Forthcoming Books

Ragnarok Publications Cancels Forthcoming Books

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Blackguards-small Jovienne-small With Sword and Pistol-small

John R. Fultz recently alerted us to some unfortunate news: Ragnarok Publications, the independent small press behind the acclaimed anthologies Blackguards and Kaiju Rising: Rise of Monsters, has officially canceled their slate of upcoming novels. This affects several books we were really looking forward to, including John’s upcoming Son of Tall Eagle, the sequel to The Testament of Tall Eagle. Here’s part of the announcement posted on the Ragnarok website yesterday:

It’s time for a hard decision.

In order for us to get our feet under us again, we have to reboot in a way. It’s extremely unfortunate and we wrestled with this decision, but for now, we’re closing down the majority of our novel contracts. We feel like the authors we work with are family and this is the last thing we wanted to do — hurt our family. We love and believe in all the novels we’ve published, but we simply cannot afford to keep them in print, nor can we afford to put out new novels at the level of quality that we are known for.

Here’s the complete text of the announcement from publisher Jeremy Mohler.

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Tom Sutton’s Creepy Things

Tom Sutton’s Creepy Things

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Creepy ThingsNobody does good horror anthology comics any longer. Oh sure, some micro-press might release an issue here and there every couple of years, but it’s not like the days when you could go to any drug store in the country and find a dozen different horror collections on the spinner racks. Horror anthology comics first got big in the 1950s, before the Comics Code brought an end to all of that gory goodness. Flash forward to the Bronze Age of Comics (beginning roughly some time in the early 1970s), when the children who’d read Golden Age comics had grown up and gone into the industry for themselves. Bronze Age horror comics borrowed heavily from Golden Age titles like Tales from the Crypt and Chamber of Chills. But since they could never match those titles for outright gore (the Comics Code still being in place), they instead relied on sheer weirdness. And if you’re researching weird 1970s horror (which I frequently do), you’re going to run across the name Tom Sutton.

Just like in the 1950s, every comic book publisher in the 1970s printed at least a couple of horror anthology titles and each title achieved a different level of success. DC Comics had almost a dozen different titles at the height of the horror boom (House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Witching Hour, Weird War Tales, Secrets of Sinister House, Ghosts, Secrets of Haunted House, Tales of Forbidden Mansion, Weird Mystery Tales, Unexpected). Marvel Comics had fewer anthology titles, specializing instead in recurring monster books (Werewolf by Night, Monster of Frankenstein, Tomb of Dracula). Warren slipped around the Comics Code by publishing black-and-white oversized “magazines” that could have more violence and nudity (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella). And all but forgotten in the comics shuffle is Charlton Comics, always less popular than Marvel, DC, or Warren. Part of the problem was that Charlton notoriously offered some of the lowest pay rates to artists and writers, making them less popular for the A-list talent.

On the other hand, what Charlton could offer was far less editorial interference. As long as the art and story didn’t violate the Comics Code, they gave their artists and writers a free hand to tell whatever stories they wanted. It’s likely one of the reasons that comic legends like Steve Ditko frequently worked with them. And it’s why Tom Sutton’s most interesting work was done for their titles (The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves, Ghost Manor, Haunted Love, Ghostly Haunts, Midnight Tales, Haunted, Monster Hunters). The folks at Yoe Books have collected sixteen of those stories in a stunning hardcover collection. It opens with an overview of Sutton’s career written by Michael Ambrose, followed by a selection of old cover illustrations, then the first story.

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Wordsmiths: Black Gate Interviews Steven Erikson at Can*Con 2017

Wordsmiths: Black Gate Interviews Steven Erikson at Can*Con 2017

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As I’ve mentioned periodically here, I’m part of the planning committee for Can*Con, Ottawa’s annual conference on science fiction, fantasy and horror writing, and specifically help to develop each year’s program. This year I had the amazing opportunity to sit down for a live interview with Canadian fantasy writer Steven Erikson, author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen and Willful Child series and one of our 2017 Guests of Honor. And we even recorded it!

Above is the entirety of my interview with Steven, discussing his previous work, his writing process, the fantasy genre in general, and what’s coming next from this prolific author. The chance to chat with him was a huge privilege and an absolute blast, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

You can check out Steven’s work at www.steven-erikson.com or his new Facebook author page, and see our previous coverage of his work here at Black Gate.

Also check out Can*Con at can-con.org/cc (@CanConSF on Twitter) and keep an eye out for dates and guests for 2018!

Many thanks to Silver Stag Studios for filming this interview. Scope them out here (@SilverStagStdio on Twitter).

Goth Chick News: King Kong Goes to Broadway

Goth Chick News: King Kong Goes to Broadway

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King Kong Alive on Broadway

Hot on the heels of Universal putting an end to the whole concept of reinventing their classic movie monsters via a Dark Universe, one larger-than-life character seems to be enjoying a fairly successful renaissance.

Kong: Skull Island, which was released in March of this year, was considered a moderate box office success and generated enough revenue to keep plans on track for follow-on films. Universal also added a new attraction to the Orlando theme park in the form of Skull Island: Reign of Kong, which as of October when I visited, still required a fast-pass to avoid a nearly 2-hour wait. And it was awesome.

So far, so good.

But the most exciting news is coming out of the city which is most famously associated with the big guy himself, in the form of King Kong: Alive on Broadway.

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Saucer Country

Saucer Country

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Saucer-Country-smallRead this book. Go to your nearest comic shop and pick up the trade paperback collection. Don’t know where your nearest comic shop is located? Go to the Comic Shop Locator, type in your zip code and find out. Is it just easier to order a copy online and have it delivered to your home? Then go to IDW Publishing and order a copy. You can even order a digital copy if you don’t want to wait for delivery.

Why do you need to read this book? Because this comic book is about what’s going on right now.

The story begins with Arcadia Alvarado, governor of New Mexico and Presidential candidate. It’s a story about a woman running for President. It’s a story about the daughter of Mexican immigrants. It’s also a story about a woman who was abducted by aliens. So, yeah, this is a comic book (written in 2012, by the way) that deals with the possibility of a woman running for President as the candidate of a major political party. It’s also a comic book about a Presidential campaign where immigration reform is a key issue. It’s also a comic book about a Presidential campaign mired in conspiracy theories that leave people uncertain about what to believe. But that’s not what’s going on right now. That’s what went on in 2016.

Arcadia Alvarado was forcibly removed from her car by strangers. She was stripped naked and had a foreign object inserted in her anus. She was told afterwards that no one would believe her story if she said what happened and even if someone did believe her, there was nothing anyone could do about it. Either way, if she tells anyone about what happened, she believes that her career will be over.

Saucer Country is a story about rape. It’s about a group of powerful individuals who routinely abuse people and suffer no consequences for their actions. It’s about victims too afraid to speak out until one woman finds the courage to name her abusers. And it’s about the friends, family, and co-workers who urge her to stay quiet for her own good. If none of that sounds hauntingly familiar, you haven’t been paying attention to current events.

Saucer Country is more relevant today than when it was originally written. Find a copy and see for yourself.

Michael Penkas is an infrequent contributor to Black Gate. His mystery novel, Mistress Bunny and the Cancelled Client, is available in lots of different places. He maintains a website that you should check out.