Black Gate – Page 518 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

July 2017 Issue of Shimmer Now on Sale

Saturday, July 15, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I think of Shimmer primarily as a magazine of contemporary fantasy. While they also publish science fiction (and “a dash of literary horror,” according to their guidelines), I generally consider them a home for fantasy with a decidedly modern spin.

They’re certainly not my go-to publication for sword & sorcery or adventure fantasy, anyway. So I was surprised and pleased to find them stake out some more familiar terrain with their latest issue. Here’s the description for the July 2017 issue, now on sale.

Sometimes, especially now, you need a dash of the old-fashioned adventure story. You’ll find a couple of those herein, but we’ve also thrown old-fashioned out the window, because we’re Shimmer, and that tends to be what we do.

I first heard about it from Martin Cahill, whose new adventure fantasy tale is in this issue.

My new short story, “Salamander Six-Guns,” is now live at Shimmer Magazine! If you like queer, weird westerns of desperate men fighting anthropomorphic alligator people on the shores of a terrible swamp, then this is the story for you! Special thanks to my Clarion Class of ’14, who critiqued this as the last story of our six weeks together, and without whose help this wouldn’t be the story it is. Werecorgis for life! Please give it a read, and let me know what you think.

Shimmer #38 also contains new fiction by Andrea Corbin, Heather Morris, and Victoria Sandbrook. I looked all over the website but couldn’t find any mention of who did the cover, but I’m pretty sure it’s Sandro Castelli.

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Peplum Populist: Short Takes on Three Streaming Titles

Saturday, July 15, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 2 comments

When I first set out to write articles about Italian peplum (sword-and-sandal) films, my intention was to excavate for worthwhile titles available from the quarry of low-quality streaming options. But my intention started to skid, and now I’m turning into the skid. I’ve already dealt with a quality film you can only get on DVD (Hercules, Samson & Ulysses) and a high-quality streaming film you shouldn’t watch (Colossus of the Stone Age). The more I sort through the archives of sword-and-sandal flicks on Amazon Video, the more limited I find the options for movies in even the most modestly acceptable presentation.

So while I continue to sift through streaming choices and look into DVDs from boutique labels, here are three short takes on films in the Amazon Video library (all free for Prime members) that don’t pass my normal picture quality threshold, but may be interesting to the Black Gate readers who can grit their teeth and struggle through blurred, pan-and-scan transfers.

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In 500 Words or Less: Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

Friday, July 14, 2017 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

Red Country
By Joe Abercrombie
Orbit (480 pages, $16.00 paperback, $9.99 eBook, October 2013)

One of my earlier reviews here focused on Best Served Cold, the first standalone novel in Joe Abercrombie’s First Law world (but the fourth overall, for anyone playing the home game). You might remember that I was a little disappointed, but I still gave Abercrombie’s second standalone, The Heroes, a chance and was pleasantly surprised. Recently I cracked open the third (and most recent) of these standalone novels, Red Country – and though I was a little nervous at the beginning of the novel, I’ve decided this might be the best First Law of them all.

Since it was stated in a lot of promos for the book, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Red Country presents the return of Logen Ninefingers, the conflicted and half-mad barbarian who was among the First Law trilogy’s stars. Presumed dead, the “Bloody-Nine” is living under an assumed name, though if you’re reading closely enough (and didn’t read the back cover) you’ll figure out in the first chapter who the cowardly “Lamb” really is. This was where I started to get worried, and decided that if Abercrombie was going to play some game at trying to be subtle with Lamb’s true identity, my review here would be very different.

But Abercrombie isn’t that kind of writer. Instead, Logen’s attempts to keep his past and his worse nature at bay becomes a key focus of the book, elegantly constructed in his interactions with the novel’s other characters, as the reader wonders when his loved ones will get the full story. The brief mentions of characters and events in previous books, and the moments when other characters admit that they know exactly who Logen is, are woven in expertly without certain names ever being mentioned.

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A Kick-ass Female Perspective on Comics That’s Disturbingly Close to Real-Life: The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente

Friday, July 14, 2017 Soyka Comments 4 comments

The Wonder Woman movie has received considerable buzz for depicting an interesting lead female character who actually has a personality, is not dependent on some guy to come to her rescue and truly is the star attraction; it even has a female director. It’s enough to make you forgive the silly and at this point yawn inducing CGI pyrotechnics between good and evil ending that is apparently sacrosanct in these sort of flicks. Look, I enjoyed the movie, but for all its merits it’s still a sad commentary of our times that Wonder Woman is considered somehow ground breaking. Problem is, compared to the latest crop of superhero movies (maybe even movies in general) the bar isn’t set very high.

You want some real kick-ass female perspective on the comic book world that’s disturbingly close to real-life? Check out The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente. This is a series of short stories set in shared alternate comic book universe (with characters such as Grimdark and Kid Mercury and Doctor Nocturne evoking various Marvel and DC Comics personages) linked by a sort of AA session in which deceased women (with one exception who for her own reasons hangs out among the unliving) take turns explaining how they ended up in Deadtown, i.e., thanks to some male superhero or supervillian exploit.

The title of the collection is a take-off of The Vagina Monologues — the Eve Ensler play about sex and body image told from the perspectives of a variety of women representing different ethnic, sexual and class identities — and comic book writer Gail Simone’s observation that comic book women are typically hypersexualized for a male audience and often end up “refrigerated” — killed, disabled, or otherwise rendered marginalized or powerless in order to advance a male character’s storyline. Indeed, in “Happy Birthday, Samantha Dane” the title character literally ends up in a refrigerator. (And, by the way, is just one of many great comic book kind of names that Valente invents for her cast of characters. Also by the way, it’s worth noting that in Wonder Woman a male character dies to advance our heroine’s story — perhaps an intentional inversion of the refrigerator motif?)

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New Treasures: An Oath of Dogs by Wendy N. Wagner

Friday, July 14, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Wendy N. Wagner is the Managing Editor for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, as well as an editor for the fabulous Destroy series of anthologies, including Women Destroy Science Fiction, Women Destroy Fantasy, and Queers Destroy Science Fiction. She’s had short stories in Nightmare and Fantasy Magazine, as well as the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Armored, and Shattered Shields. She’s also published two Pathfinder novels, Skinwalkers and Starspawn, the latter of which has been described as “Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft.”

Her latest is something very different, an “exoplanetary colony sci-fi trip riddled with mystery and conspiracy” (Jason LaPier). It’s the tale of Kate Stadish, an investigator on an alien world of strange sentient dogs, mill towns… and murder. Ferrett Steinmetz (author of the ‘Mancer series, which we covered here), says “An Oath of Dogs nails the rough-hewn feel of a frontier town, then mixes it up with intergalactic corporate intrigue and alien biology. It’s like Lake Wobegon mashed up with a Michael Crichton thriller.”

An Oath of Dogs was published by Angry Robot on July 4, 2017. It is 430 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Joey HiFi. Read Chapter One at Wagner’s website.

Goth Chick News: Forget Virtual Reality, Let’s Do This

Thursday, July 13, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

Some years ago while wandering around London in the evening, I had the very lucky pleasure of coming upon the grand opening of a new attraction called Alien War. Being an avid fan of the Alien franchise and having no idea what I was walking into, I allowed the realistically dressed interstellar marines manning the sidewalk outside, to convince me to check it out.

What I experienced for the next 20+ minutes would almost certainly require me to sign some sort of liability waver if it existed today; but it was such an unbelievable adrenaline rush that I queued up to do it twice more that night.

As I have nothing to compare it to in recent memory, I was happy to find several YouTube clips. Including the one below, which gives you an idea of what I’m talking about.

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The Tripartite Hero: Matt Wagner’s Mage

Thursday, July 13, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Mage: The Hero Denied #0 At the Emerald City Comicon in early March, Image Comics announced that starting in August they’d be publishing writer/artist Matt Wagner’s Mage: The Hero Denied, a 15-issue series with a half-length 0 issue and a double-sized conclusion. Hero Denied will be the final part of a trilogy Wagner began over thirty years ago, and I want to prepare for that last installment by looking back here at the first parts of the saga. The Mage books are two of the finest works of a great comics talent, urban fantasies mixing excellent action storytelling, a mastery of plot beats, and a sense of the mythic into gripping stories — and stories with a semi-autobiographical slant, no less.

Mage: The Hero Discovered was published by Comico from May 1984 to December 1986 (I read it in the three-volume 1987 Starblaze trade paperback collections). Wagner wrote, drew, and coloured the series, with letters by Bob Pinaha, and Sam Kieth inking from issue 6 through 15. The story follows Kevin Matchstick, inhabitant of the modern-day world, as he encounters a mysterious figure named Mirth who turns out to be a mage; Mirth introduces Matchstick to a grander and more terrifying world, one of wizardry and horrors, and leads him to the hidden truth of his nature and his link to a hero out of legend. Mage: The Hero Defined came out from Image from July 1997 through October 1999, again written and drawn by Wagner, this time with colours by Jeromy Cox and letters by Sean Konot. The series follows an older Matchstick through a stranger world of greater magics and other heroes; Matchstick meets another mage, faces consequences of his earlier actions, and discovers deeper truths about the archetypes behind him.

Always intended as a trilogy from the beginning of the story back in the 80s, the second and third chapters have necessarily been slow to follow because the story is in part an autobiography. Kevin Matchstick is the alter-ego of Matt Wagner: he’s drawn to resemble his creator, aspects of his story are fictionalisations (fantastifications?) of Wagner’s life, and other characters are analogues of people Wagner knows — and since Wagner’s a professional in comics, a number of the characters in the second series are thinly-disguised versions of other comics artists. The Hero Defined is therefore also an odd document of 1990s comics culture. If you don’t know the background, you don’t need to know it. If you do, you see another level to the story: artists become mythic heroes and villains. That works with the central concern of the tale — the transmutation of everyday life into archetypal struggle.

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John DeNardo on Your Best Bets for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in July

Thursday, July 13, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

The Best Horror of the Year Volume Nine-small

As regular readers know, I enjoy John DeNardo’s survey pieces on the best new books every month over at Kirkus Reviews. For July, he’s assembled what could well be the best batch of new releases so far this year. Here’s John.

Summer reading season is in full swing, and if you’d like to join the beach party, there’s plenty of entertainment to be found in the pages of science fiction, fantasy, and horror books. July’s cream of the crop includes stories about a robot hitman, a dark and previously unseen perspective on Peter Pan, a woman with supernatural abilities who goes up against Nazis, aliens in New York, flying shapeshifters, and more short stories than you can shake a stick at.

The list this month includes new books by Nancy Kress, Kay Kenyon, Carrie Vaughn, Martha Wells, Charles Stross, Naomi Kritzer, Christopher Rowe, Margaret St. Clair, William Browning Spencer, Adam Christopher, and many more. Here’s a few of the highlights.

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Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?

Thursday, July 13, 2017 M Harold Page Comments 14 comments

Conan Rogues in the House-small How is Conan not a Mary Sue?

The barbarian is pretty obviously Robert E Howard’s authorial self-projection into the Hyborian Age. Big, bellicose and amoral, but honourable and never mean. He’s mighty-thewed death on two legs, women fall into his arms, kingdoms fall at his feet. He male bonds when he falls into good company, and despite being a barbarian fish out of civilised water, he commands the loyalty of his men and the respect of those nobles worthy of respect.

He’s everything Robert E Howard was and wasn’t and might have been had the big Texan lived long enough to fight in WWII. (Imagine Howard as a veteran of Iwo Jima, and the great literature he would have written…)

Really, how is he not a Mary Sue? (He certainly fails a Mary Sue test)

And yet, Conan survived the oh-so-ironic later 20th century. One whiff of Thrud should consigned him to the company of Captain Future and Doc Savage: The ~~emperor~~ barbarian has no clothes on! He even weathered Terry Pratchett’s slash and burn through the genre.

Was it just that Howard invented Sword and Sorcery?

No. Conan’s literary longevity is more than just about being first with sandals on the ground.

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July/August 2017 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

Thursday, July 13, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

As I mentioned in my last magazine review, I’m a guy who tends to skim magazines. I’m looking for something new, something different, something… yeah, I have no idea what I’m looking for these days. I’m just impatient and I skim. Don’t hate me.

Tangent Online is my enabler. They publish up-to-date magazine reviews (that I skim), and these reviews tell me everything I need to know to form a plan of attack in, like, 45 seconds. For example, they tell me that the latest issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction has terrifically intriguing tales from Alexander Jablokov, Rich Larson, and James Gunn, among others. Asimov’s, prepare to be boarded.

This issue of a magazine which is celebrating forty years of publication features a balance of fast-paced, high-tech adventure stories and intimate character studies. Fittingly, a pair of linked stories by an author with nearly seven decades of experience combine both action and introspection.

Leading off the issue is “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry” by Alexander Jablokov. The setting is a planet where a large number of alien species live, often inhabiting structures left behind centuries ago by other beings. The narrator is hired to find out who leased a large portion of one such giant building, and why an exterminator died while working on a tunnel within it. She encounters a number of strange creatures while uncovering the mystery. The author creates a complex background and interesting alien biology…. “An Evening with Severyn Grimes” by Rich Larson is set in a future where a wealthy man can rent the body of a young, healthy man as a place to house his mind. The protagonist is hired by a group of terrorists who violently oppose this practice. Her consciousness is downloaded into the many linked computerized devices which fill this world in a plot to assassinate the man, but she has plans of her own… a fairly effective cyberpunk story.

First published in 1949 and named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2007, James Gunn proves that he is not just resting on his laurels with two stories set in his Transcendental universe. Both “Transcendental Mission: Riley’s Story” and “Weighty Matters: Tordor’s Story” depict the lives of characters who will eventually set out on a mission to discover the nature of a device which is rumored to produce perfection in any individual. The reader may be reminded of the pilgrims bound for Canterbury in Chaucer’s famous poem. Inevitably, both tales are expository and open-ended. The second story may be more interesting because the author creates an entire alien culture.

Read Victoria Silverwolf’s complete review of the latest Asimov’s SF here.

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