Black Gate – Page 520 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A Book That Makes You Yearn to be Stranded on a Desert Island: Modern Classics of Fantasy edited by Gardner Dozois

Sunday, July 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Like most of you folks, I used to have more reading time. Like, a ton more reading time. Whole summer vacations just lazing around with my feet on the furniture and my nose in an epic fantasy. Nowadays I’m lucky to negotiate a three-day weekend and, believe me, that kind of reading time is much too precious to devote to a single author. Yes, reading vacations still tend to be devoted to big books — I haven’t broken that habit– but these days more often than not they’re thick anthologies that let me sample a wide range of writers. And usually anthologies curated by an editor who’s earned my trust.

That’s why I’m so partial to Gardner Dozois. He’s got great taste, for one thing. For another, he produces big books, the kind you can plan a vacation around. One of my favorites is his massive survey anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy, which is the kind of book that makes you wish you could be stranded on a desert island. Sure, I’d probably go hungry and miss the internet. But if it meant I finally had 15 uninterrupted hours to read this thing cover to cover, it’d totally be worth it.

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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology…

Saturday, July 8, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

I know this is a fantasy blog, but for this one I want to appeal to the third (and most famous) of Clarke’s laws, which is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” because I want to talk about the scienciest, most extrapolatey, most out there science fiction, which isn’t overtly different from fantasy except in aesthetic.

This comes from my musings about writing a story set in orbit of a neutron star, and also because I was recently discussing with a friend where to find the hardest SF.

I get a lot of ideas when I read other authors. I love seeing what science people know and transform into story, and I love seeing that unique kind of creative ambition.

Some caveats: When I looked in my book shelf for examples to show a friend, I came up with three authors and six titles. My shelves don’t have every book, and so I’ll certainly miss some stunning works.

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Vintage Treasures: Starship/Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss

Saturday, July 8, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Joe Wehrle’s terrific review of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse short story cycle in the latest issue of The Digest Enthusiast piqued my interest in other Aldiss classics. There’s certainly a lot to consider — Aldiss has written some thirty novels, including The Dark Light Years (1964), Report on Probability A (1968), Barefoot in the Head (1969), The Eighty-Minute Hour (1974), The Malacia Tapestry (1976), and The Helliconia Trilogy, just to mention a few. His most recent novel Finches of Mars was published in 2012, and his short story “Abundances Above” appeared in Postscripts 36/37 last year, shortly before the author’s 91st birthday (!!).

But any serious study of Brian Aldiss should probably start with his first novel Non-Stop, published in 1958. The tale of a generation ship whose inhabitants have degenerated into near barbarism, it was an instant classic, and remained in print for over five decades. The novel was re-titled Starship for its 1959 appearance in the US; that title stuck through multiple editions. I’ve collected a sample of a half-dozen of my favorite covers above, starting with the 1963 Signet paperback (top left, cover by Paul Lehr) and progressing through the decades to the 1989 Carroll & Graf edition (bottom middle, art by Tony Roberts) and the SF Masterworks edition (2000, cover by Fred Gambino).

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The Man of Legends by Kenneth Johnson: Q&A with the Author, Part 2

Saturday, July 8, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 3 comments

Kenneth Johnson’s new book, The Man of Legends is now available at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

Last week I posted the first part of my interview with Kenneth Johnson, author of the recently released novel The Man of Legends, focusing on the new book and its inspirations. But Kenneth Johnson’s long career as a writer, producer, and director of television and movies deserves its own section. Shows like The Incredible Hulk, Alien Nation, The Bionic Woman, and V: The Original Series are gems among 1970s and ‘80s science-fiction television and continue to have an enormous influence today. I expected to hear some interesting stories about making those programs when I interviewed him, especially considering how timely some of them continue to be (seriously, go give V: The Original Miniseries as look again and you’ll be stunned at how much its themes stand out), but I didn’t expect to hear a story about Richard Nixon as well!

Q&A with Kenneth Johnson, Part 2

You mentioned you were one of the youngest producers on the lot when you were working at Universal. You were in your early thirties when you produced The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, and The Incredible Hulk.

Yeah, and I had had half a career before that. I came out of the Drama Department at what is now Carnegie Mellon University, then Carnegie Tech, which had a sort of renowned Department of Drama. I was a graduate in directing; there was no film or TV or anything like that. It was strictly “theater!” you know. Everybody there, except me, sort of looked down on TV and film. Everybody except me and a couple other guys: Jamie Cromwell, a wonderful and well-known actor out here who played the farmer in Babe and so many other things since then; and my dear friend Steven Bochco, who was a classmate and came to California a little bit ahead of me and helped me get my foot in the door at Universal.

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A Novel You’ve Been Waiting For Your Whole Life, and Then Some: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

Friday, July 7, 2017 Damien Moore Comments 0 Comment

What if a genius decided to combine a fantastical feminist romp with a classic whodunnit of the mackintosh-wearing era… and tossed in some madcap Dickensian adventure?

You’d have yourself The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss, a 400-page extravaganza featuring five women you have dreamed of in your heart of hearts but have never seen on paper. Better yet, they’re the daughters of legendary characters from classic fantasy and science fiction.

When Mary Jekyll’s mother dies, the young inheritor of her meager estate discovers her father — Henry Jekyll himself — associated with a troubling league of gentlemen endowed with brilliant scientific ambition. With the help of Diana Hyde, a feral and headstrong spitfire (and daughter of Mr. Hyde), and a miraculous and unwilling scientific marvel named Beatrice, whom her revered father has tainted with poison from noxious plants, Mary embarks on a quest to discover just what her father’s band of brothers sought to accomplish.

Along the way, they enlist the help of an exemplary detective named Sherlock Holmes, his cherished assistant, Watson, and Catherine Moreau, daughter of the most barbaric and daring scientist of them all. Unless you factor Doctor Victor Frankenstein into the equation… whom, now that we mention him, happens to be the father of the last partner in crime, a kindhearted giantess named Justine who harbors a tale potent enough to warrant a novel of its own.

I appreciate Goss’s innumerable acts of kindness toward readers who have not yet read the classic works of literature to which she has paid tribute. (I confess, I am guilty as charged. Dear friends have told me in the past that I need to read Frankenstein, and I agree. It must happen). By doing so, Goss has eschewed the How Much Do You Know About This Facet of Nerddom? quiz routinely thrust upon so many innocent fans, allowing her readers to bask in the wisdom and whimsy of her characters instead.

Additionally, Goss honors the infamous gentlemen who have carried their stories through the years with the fierce compassion of an author reckoning with the staggering contradictions of the human species. And these men have to contend with their fair share of reckoning. That is, the ones who survive.

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Old New Pulp: Byron Preiss’ Weird Heroes

Friday, July 7, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 2 comments

Weird Heroes Volume 1 Weird Heroes was a series of eight books put out by Byron Preiss Visual Publications from 1975 through 1977, a copiously-illustrated mix of novels and short stories that aimed at creating a new kind of pulp fiction with new kinds of pulp heroes. The series had a specific set of ideals for its heroes, linked with an appreciative but not uncritical love of pulp fiction from the 1920s through 40s. Well-known creators from comics and science fiction contributed to the books, and one character would spawn a six-volume series of his own. And yet Preiss’ long-term plans for Weird Heroes were cut short with the eighth volume, and today it’s hard to find much discussion of the books online (though they’re well-remembered when they are discussed). That absence is a little surprising, as a whole new generation of writers has come along with an interest in creating new pulps. Now that we’re separated from Weird Heroes by about the amount of time it was separated from the original pulps, it’s well worth a look back at its truncated run.

Editor Byron Preiss was only 21 years old when he founded Byron Preiss Visual Publications in 1974, and the company began putting out two series of illustrated paperbacks the next year, Weird Heroes and Fiction Illustrated (which ran for four volumes with a fifth issued under a different name). Both were packaged by BPVP to be published by Pyramid Books. Weird Heroes started its run with two anthologies of short fiction that, according to Preiss’ introductions to both books, were conceived as a single volume but divided up due to length constraints. Over the course of the series’ run, it published work by Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Harlan Ellison, and Michael Moorcock, alongside art by Jim Steranko, Alex Niño, Neal Adams, and P. Craig Russell.

In the editorial matter within the first book, Preiss laid out what he hoped to do with the series. Across a general introduction, a historical discussion of “old American pulp,” and an interview with Fritz Leiber later on in the book, Preiss articulated a specific sense of what old pulps did well, what they did poorly, what he wanted to take from them, and what he wanted to improve on. He also wrote about presenting an alternative to the heroes that had emerged up to that point in 1970s popular culture. Broadly, he wanted to recapture the storytelling thrills of pulp fiction and its sense of wonder, while avoiding its misogyny and racism — and unlike what he saw in both the pulps and much 1970s hero fiction, he wanted to find a way to resolve stories and conflicts without the use of violence and murder.

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Where Do You Get Yours?

Friday, July 7, 2017 Violette Malan Comments 6 comments

Newton They say it’s the question most often asked of writers, but to be honest, no one has ever asked me where I got my ideas. Maybe I’ve been asked where a specific idea came from, but that was more of a “how did you think of that?”

Every idea comes from somewhere different. Harlan Ellison said he used to tell people he got his ideas from a post office box in . . . was it Peoria? Brooklyn? Sometimes how you got the idea isn’t very interesting, so you make up a good story to explain it when someone asks. Sometimes you can’t identify the somewhere until after the idea has been used. And sometimes you can’t identify it at all.

I’m fairly certain that Newton did start thinking about theories of gravity and motion by watching objects fall – though I’m not so sure about the part where the apple conked him on the head. Was he the object “at rest” when he came up with the laws that cover inertia? Did the equal-and-opposite-reaction stuff come from playing billiards? I don’t know. I know more about Berkeley than I do about Newton, and we all know where the Bishop got his ideas.

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Goth Chick News: What if Noah Brought More Than Animals on the Ark…?

Thursday, July 6, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

Admittedly, I’m a sucker for old-fashioned, biblical-inspired horror. There’s something about texts that old that seems to add a layer of plausibility to a story. Once, following a very odd conversation with a minister’s wife attending my college, I spent one whole summer researching obscure ancient religious texts in which you can find the inspiration for most of your nightmares.

Okay, so I didn’t get out much in those days.

But what remains is an attraction to stories like Constantine, The Seventh Sign and The Rite for their otherworldly creepiness, so when I got word of a fairly new release by Christopher Golden called Ararat, I dashed right out to get my hands on a copy.

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Star Punk Story Building in Interplanetary Hunter

Thursday, July 6, 2017 M Harold Page Comments 0 Comment

Interplanetary Hunter Barnes — I caved and bought some old Pulp.

I caved and bought some old Pulp.

I couldn’t help it. I was at Eastercon and in the dealers room, and there was Durdles Books with shelves and boxes that took me back to my early teens trawling used bookstores and charity shops for volumes with spaceships on the cover.

And since I started writing my The Eternal Dome of the Unknowable series, I’ve been exploring the roots of what I call Star Punk, the covers were cool… so I came home with some faded paperbacks of yesteryear.

One of these was Interplanetary Hunter by Arthur K Barnes.

What hooked me was the lovely Monster Manual-style insets describing the various creatures. It was actually published before roleplaying was thing in 1956 (mine is the 1972 Ace reprint), and compiled from stories that went out in magazines from 1937-1946, making it technically Golden Age.

And it tells.

It’s definitely in the category of classics you shouldn’t recommend to young people (I talked about this in my first ever BG article!). It’s a good light read, the style and lead-in may be fast and furious — pulpy goodness — but it suffers from Quaint Future and some Quaint Delivery, including excruciatingly detailed science and pseudoscience, complete with equations.

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 3 edited by David Afsharirad

Thursday, July 6, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

When you read as many Year’s Best volumes as I do, you come to accept a certain amount of story overlap. Yes, most of the editors do their best to coordinate with each other, but this is still a pretty small field, and with more than a half dozen Year’s Best titles every year, some repetition is to be expected. That’s one of the strengths of David Afsharirad’s Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF — he walks his own path, and in the three years he’s been doing this, I’m not sure there’s been any overlap with his fellow editors. Here’s the TOC for the newest installment, now on sale.

Preface by David Afsharirad
Introduction by David Weber
“Cadet Cruise” by David Drake (Baen.com, May 2016)
“Tethers” by William Ledbetter (Baen.com, November 2018)
“Unlinkage” by Eric Del Carlo (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2016)
“Not in Vain” by Kacey Ezell (Black Tide Rising, 2016)
“Between Nine and Eleven” by Adam Roberts (Crises and Conflicts, 2016)
“Sephine and the Leviathan” by Jack Schouten (Clarkesworld, Issue 118, July 2016)
“The Good Food” by Michael Ezell (Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy’s Edge, 2016)
“If I Could Give This Time Machine Zero Stars, I Would” by James Wesley Rogers (Unidentified Funny Objects 5, 2016)
“Wise Child” by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee (Baen.com, June 2016)
“Starhome” by Michael Z. Williamson (Baen.com, October 2016)
“The Art of Failure” by Robert Dawson (Compelling Science Fiction, Issue 1, April/May 2016)
“The Last Tank Commander” by Allen Stroud (Crises and Conflicts, 2016)
“One Giant Leap” by Jay Werkheiser (Strange Horizons, November 21 2016)
“The Immortals: Anchorage” by David Adams (Beyond the Stars: A Planet Too Far, 2016)
“Backup Man” by Paul Di Filippo (Terraform, April 7 2016)

The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 3 was published by Baen on June 6, 2017. It is 336 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $8.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Greg Bobrowski. We covered the first volume here, and the second volume here. Read story samples at the Baen website.