Black Gate – Page 511 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell

Sunday, October 15, 2017 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

Last year author Nathan Ballingrud dashed off a brief Facebook post about Michael McDowell’s 6-volume Blackwater series, originally published in paperback by Avon in 1983. Nathan said, in part:

I’m in the midst of reading Blackwater, by Michael McDowell. It is, you might say, as if The Shadow over Innsmouth was written as a generational family saga set in rural Alabama. It is strange, funny, warm, and frightening, and a true pleasure to read.

That triggered a lengthy quest for the books, which I chronicled here. I was never able to track down all six volumes, although I did manage to locate the Science Fiction omnibus collection of the first three. So I was very pleased to hear that the industrious folks at Valancourt Books have published a massive one-volume edition of the entire series. It was released in hardcover and trade paperback earlier this month; both editions feature a full wraparound cover by MS Corley.

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Questing in New York! New York ComicCon 2017

Saturday, October 14, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

You may recall that my first trip to New York *ever* was in April, and I blogged about it in A Babe in the Woods: Derek’s Literary Adventures in New York! Well, the training wheels are off and I went on a full grail quest this time around, at New York Comic Con!

I had two major reasons to go to NYCC. First, I enjoy blogging about comics, and interviewing comic creators. So, as a blogger for Black Gate, there were a lot of people I wanted to meet. Second, my prose writing career (short stories and novels) has been going well, but I’ve also wanted to write comic books since I was 10 years old. I’m working on a comic story for a small press anthology right now, but also I went to see what other opportunities there might be.

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The October Fantasy Magazine Rack

Saturday, October 14, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

One thing I cherish about the zines in this genre is their endless diversity. We have gritty SF and fantasy (Grimdark magazine), literary adventure fantasy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies), Canadian speculative fiction (Lackington’s), contemporary horror (Black Static), pulp replicas (Magazine of Horror #36), and much, much more. Best of all, we have writers capable of crossing all those boundaries — such as the amazing Natalia Theodoridou, who appears in no less than three magazines this month (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, and Shimmer). Here are the magazines that grabbed my attention in October (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Apex Magazine — Issue #101, with new fiction from Dennis Danvers, Lavie Tidhar, Annie Neugebauer, and others
Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Natalia Theodoridou, Emily B. Cataneo, plus a podcast and a reprint by Samantha Murray
Black Static — with creepy tales by Carole Johnstone, Tim Lees, Ray Cluley, and Stephen Hargadon
Clarkesworld — new fiction from Jack Skillingstead, Natalia Theodoridou, Xia Jia, Genevieve Valentine, and others
Grimdark — fresh fiction from Richard A. Knaak, S. Andrew Swann, David M. Hoenig
Lackington’s — “Diseases” Issue, with stories by Evelyn Deshane, Nin Harris, Dayna K. Smith, Adrian Simmons, and Kat Weave
Magazine of Horror #33 — a reprint of the classic magazine from 1970, with fiction by Clark Ashton Smith, Paul Ernst, Arthur Styron, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, Robert E. Howard, and others
Shimmer — great new stuff from Sonya Taaffe, Brian Holguin, Maria Haskins, and the ubiquitous Natalia Theodoridou

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

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October Is Hammer Country: The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

Saturday, October 14, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 3 comments

On the second week of October, Hammer Films gave to me … one Oliver Reed werewolf, and I guess that’s all I need.

By 1961, the Gothic horror machine at Hammer Film Productions had unleashed Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy. Now partnered with Universal International and free to use the studio’s classic monsters, it was inevitable that Hammer tackled The Wolf Man next. Universal, however, purchased the rights to Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris and asked Hammer to adapt that. Instead of a Hammerized version of the tragedy of Lawrence Talbot, we got a much different type of lycanthrope movie, The Curse of the Werewolf. Which is fine, because The Curse of the Werewolf is pretty darn great. Director Terence Fisher and the production team working out of Bray Studios were in peak form, and Oliver Reed, in his first starring role, ripped ferociously into a part so suited to his talents that it feels like the start of a comedy bit.

There was no feasible way for Hammer to make a straight adaptation of The Werewolf of Paris on a $100,000 budget. Producer Anthony Hinds was stunned when he first read the novel to discover epic scenes of warfare and street fighting in the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. With no money to hire a screenwriter, Hinds took on the job himself, using the writing pseudonym “John Elder” for the first time, and looked for a way to squeeze a werewolf script into the budget. One cost-saving maneuver was relocating the story from nineteenth-century France to eighteenth-century Spain so the movie could be shot back-to-back on the sets for The Rape of Sabena, a Spanish Inquisition movie co-financed with Columbia. Hammer chairman James Carreras canceled The Rape of Sabena because of concerns raised by the British Board of Film Censorship, but the sets were already built, so The Curse of the Werewolf continued ahead with the Spanish setting. It would also run into grief with the BBFC; considering some of the sexually violent content, it’s amazing The Curse of the Werewolf made it through production while the Inquisition movie never got off the blocks.

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Future Treasures: The Art of the Pulps edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg

Friday, October 13, 2017 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Ed Hulse, editor and co-founder of pulp zine Blood ‘n Thunder, collector extraordinaire Robert Weinberg, and collector (and Black Gate blogger) Doug Ellis have teamed up to produce what may be my most anticipated book of 2017: The Art of the Pulps, a gorgeous 240-page celebration of the magazines that gave birth to the heart and soul of modern Pop Culture. Miss this book at your peril.

Experts in the ten major Pulp genres, from action Pulps to spicy Pulps and more, chart for the first time the complete history of Pulp magazines — the stories and their writers, the graphics and their artists, and, of course, the publishers, their market, and readers.

Each chapter in the book, which is illustrated with more than 400 examples of the best Pulp graphics (many from the editors’ collections — among the world’s largest) is organized in a clear and accessible way, starting with an introductory overview of the genre, followed by a selection of the best covers and interior graphics, organized chronologically through the chapter. All images are fully captioned (many are in essence “nutshell” histories in themselves). Two special features in each chapter focus on topics of particular interest (such as extended profiles of Daisy Bacon, Pulp author and editor of Love Story, the hugely successful romance Pulp, and of Harry Steeger, co-founder of Popular Publications in 1930 and originator of the “Shudder Pulp” genre).

With an overall introduction on “The Birth of the Pulps” by Doug Ellis, and with two additional chapters focusing on the great Pulp writers and the great Pulp artists, The Art of the Pulps covers every aspect of this fascinating genre; it is the first definitive visual history of the Pulps.

F. Paul Wilson provides the Foreword. The Art of the Pulps will be published by IDW Publishing on October 24, 2017. It is 240 pages, priced at $49.99 in hardcover. There is no digital edition.

Battlefield Looters in the Kingdom of the Dead: The Corpse-Rat King Novels by Lee Battersby

Thursday, October 12, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I bought Lee Battersby’s debut novel The Corpse-Rat King back in 2013, mostly because it had skeletal warriors on the cover. As a child raised on Ray Harryhausen movies, that was pretty much irresistible.

I totally missed the sequel, The Marching Dead, released in March 2013. I corrected that mistake last month, and settled in with the book last night. In this installment professional battlefield looters Marius dos Hellespont and his apprentice Gerd, together with Gerd’s not-dead-enough Granny, journey across the continent to solve the riddle of why the dead have stopped dying, and to return them to the afterlife where they belong. Both books were paperback originals from Angry Robot with covers by Nick Castle; here’s the publishing deets.

The Corpse-Rat King (416 pages, $7.99 paperback/$1.99 digital, August 28, 2012)
The Marching Dead (411 pages, $7.99 paperback/$2.99 digital, March 26, 2013)

Battersby’s most recent book is the YA fantasy Magrit, published last year by Walker Books. He’s also produced one collection, Through Soft Air (Prime Books, 2006).

Fantastic Stories of Imagination, January and February 1964: A Retro-Review

Thursday, October 12, 2017 Rich Horton Comments 6 comments

Fantastic Stories of Imagination January 1964-small

Fantastic Stories of Imagination February 1964-small

These issues are significant in that they include the serialization of a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novella — but not just any novella: this includes the first and nearly only contribution to the series from Leiber’s original collaborator, and supposed model for the Mouser, Harry Fischer.

Each cover is by Ed Emshwiller, and they both illustrate the serial. The interiors in January are by Emsh, Lutjens (first name perhaps Peter?), Dan Adkins, Lee Brown Coye, and Virgil Finlay. In February they are from the same folks except for Coye.

The editorials concern, in January, Harry Fischer’s role in the creation of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and in February, serious research in both the US and the Soviet Union into telepathy. There is a brief book review column in January, by S. E. Cotts, in which she praises Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial very highly, and is somewhat more reserved on R. DeWitt Miller’s Stranger Than Life, one of those books about “unexplainable events.” The February issue includes a lettercol, According to You, with letters from Bill Wolfenbarger (praise for Schomburg, and for the more horrific side of fantasy), E. E. Evers (much disdain for the November 1961 issue, even for the Le Guin story), and Norman Masters (hated Sharkey’s “The Aftertime,” likes Le Guin).

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Old School Steampunk: Reading The Steam Man of the Plains (1883)

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 Sean McLachlan Comments 3 comments

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In the days before television, movies, or even pulp magazines, readers who wanted exciting fantastic fare read dime novels. This style of popular literature lasted from about 1860 to 1930, before the pulps finally killed them off. In those 70 years, countless series and titles were published — mysteries, Westerns, historical dramas, romances, and even steampunk.

Yes, steampunk goes right back to the age of steam. I recently read one of the most popular titles, the 1883 edition of The Steam Man of the Plains, published by the Five Cent Wide-Awake Library, a series directed specifically at adolescent boys. You can read it online at Northern Illinois University’s excellent online collection of dime novels.

Warning: spoilers follow!

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Modular: A First Look at Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 M Harold Page Comments 0 Comment

256 New COREBOOK Mockup — Clearly a labor of love

Yes, you read that right!

Elite Dangerous, the current incarnation of the granddaddy of all immersive video games, now has its own tabletop roleplaying game, and I’m sitting here with a review copy.

The problem with the video game is that, even with the new ability to land on airless worlds and trundle around in AFVs, it’s essentially space exploration on the radio. You don’t get to land on the worlds with interesting cultures and brawl with gangsters or tread the mean streets, or avoid being the main course at a barbaric religious ceremony. A tabletop roleplaying game has the potential to supply those missing experiences. But does the franchise really need its own game? (As you’ll see, “Yes, actually.”)

EDRPG 256 Book Spread 1 — Well written, beautifully illustrated

Frankly, I half-expected Elite Dangerous Role Playing Game (EDRPG) to be a cynically put together I can’t believe it’s not Traveller-lite (please don’t send round lawyers with pulse lasers) with a detailed trade mini-game. Instead I found myself reading what’s clearly a labor of love that emulates a different corner of the Star Punk genre, and does so with an emphasis — in the core rules — on what you do when you’re not trading. It’s also loaded with material pitched for beginner GM’s, but — again in the core rules — assumes some familiarity with the computer game; not disastrous, but confusing if you haven’t played Elite seriously in four decades (I’m told there will be free material on the website to help with this).

Given Elite Dangerous has 2-3 million players, and a cult of enthusiasts who enjoy the “shared” part of “shared escapism,” Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game promises to be an instant modern classic. It’s a good thing, then, that the game mechanics are elegant, but more refined than innovative, which is what you want in something obviously intended as a workhorse to support happy years of sandbox gaming.

Let me unpack some of that.

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Support an Exciting New Magazine of Sword & Sorcery: Tales From the Magician’s Skull

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Here’s the best news I’ve heard all month: Goodman Games, publisher of the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics line of old-school RPG adventures, has launched a brand new magazine of Sword & Sorcery, Tales From the Magician’s Skull. The editor chosen to helm this groundbreaking project? None other than our very own Howard Andrew Jones. Here’s Howard with the scoop.

A gong shivers…
The mists part to reveal a grisly object lying upon a mound of rubble, a browned and ancient head with one glowing, malefic eye…
It speaks, in a voice of cold command: “Silence, mortal dogs! It is time now for
TALES FROM THE MAGICIAN’S SKULL!
Goodman Games [has launched] the Kickstarter for the exciting new sword-and-sorcery magazine inspired by Appendix N. I am mightily pleased to be the magazine’s editor, and I’ve had a blast assembling it with Joseph Goodman. We’ve been working together for almost a year, and I’ve got to tell you that the result is GLORIOUS. Just check out that Jim Pavalec cover.

The first issue, with stories by James Enge, John C. Hocking, Chris Willrich, Howard Andrew Jones, C.L. Werner and others, truly is a knockout. The Kickstarter funded in less than 24 hours, and continues to gather momentum. Make a pledge, and make sure you get your copy of the the first issue of what’s sure to be one of the most important magazine launches of the decade. And check back here this week for a 3-way interview with publisher Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the grinning skull itself!