Black Gate – Page 584 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Hammers, Chemo and Disapproving Dads: Marvel’s Thor

Saturday, December 24, 2016 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

Working on novels and such took me away from some of the main Marvel storylines just before Secret Wars until just after Civil War II (so I just missed a lot). I’m in the process of catching up on some Marvel real estate.

Lately I’ve been reading The Mighty Thor (they’re up to issue #13) and The Unworthy Thor (they’re up to issue #2).

For you completists, Thor goes way back to Journey Into Mystery #83, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made up the Asgardian god and made him fight aliens. Thor has been a popular character in Marvel who, along with Hercules, brought the divine to the Marvel Universe.

Asgard and Tales of Asgard brought in a ton of new characters into Thor’s orbit in the 1970s. The 1980s gave Thor a huge boost under creator Walt Simonson who defined the character for many modern readers.

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December 2016 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

Saturday, December 24, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The last 2016 issue of Nightmare is now available. And it looks like a good one, with original fiction from Dale Bailey and Livia Llewellyn, and reprints by Brian Evenson and Priya Sridhar. Here’s Charles Payseur’s assessment at Quick Sip Reviews:

The two stories in the December Nightmare magazine certainly show what makes speculative horror so captivating — revealing the uncomfortable truths and darkness that exists all around us, giving it physical form, and then making us face it. These are both stories that lean more fantasy than science fiction, pulling on some older traditions, of werewolves and Lovecraftian horror. While both are in some ways monster stories, though, they are also both stories that deal with youth, that feature main characters on the verge of adulthood, and reveal how quickly roles can be reversed when adults try to control the next generation. These are viscerally dark and violent stories but also deep insights into people and fears.

Read his complete review here. The complete contests of the issue are listed below.

Original Stories

“I Was a Teenage Werewolf” by Dale Bailey
Before Miss Ferguson found Maude Lewis’ body in the school gym, none of us believed in the teenage werewolf. There had been rumors, of course. There always are. But many of us viewed Miss Ferguson’s discovery as confirmation of our worst fears. Not everyone shared our certainty. There had been only a fingernail paring of moon that late February night, and a small but vocal minority of us argued that this precluded the possibility that Maude’s killer had been a lycanthrope.

“The Low, Dark Edge of Life” by Livia Llewellyn
Translator’s note: these are the only extant, unburned, and legible (for the most part) pages retrieved from what was apparently the diary of one Lilianett van Hamal, an American girl who apparently lodged at the Grand Béguinage shortly before the Great Summoning of 1878 that left much of the city of Leuven in ruins. No other items from before that event have been recovered from what is now the Leuven Exclusion Zone, which as of this date remains permanently off-limits to the outside world.

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Future Treasures: The Skill of Our Hands, Book 2 of The Incrementalists, by Steven Brust and Skyler White

Saturday, December 24, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I missed The Incrementalists, the new novel from Steven Brust (the Vlad Taltos series) and Skyler White (In Dreams Begin) when it came out in hardcover from Tor in 2013. But folks who were more on the ball than I did not — such as John Scalzi (“Secret societies, immortality, murder mysteries and Las Vegas all in one book? Shut up and take my money”) and David Pitt at Booklist, who wrote:

A secret society has existed for millennia, operating under the surface of society. The Incrementalists are improving the world by making slight adjustments that make human existence a bit better than it might have been… But now they have a major problem on their hands. One of their own, who recently died, might have been murdered, and the woman who was given her memories paradoxically doesn’t seem to be able to remember her. Even worse, it looks like the dead woman has somehow manipulated the Incrementalists (or, to be more precise, Phil, who has loved her for centuries) into putting her memories into a very specific young woman for a very specific and quite troubling, possibly catastrophic, reason… cleverly constructed, populated with characters readers will enjoy hanging out with, and packed with twists and nifty surprises. If you have to call it something, call it genius at work.

The second volume, The Skill of Our Hands, arrives in hardcover from Tor on January 24th.

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Hammer Films for Your Holiday Joy: Rasputin the Mad Monk

Saturday, December 24, 2016 Ryan Harvey Comments 1 comment

When October disappears over the horizon, horror movie DVDs and Blu-rays go into hiding, and streaming services store their terror title watchlists away for another day. But a certain type of off-kilter movie survives through the end of the year. The winter holidays usher in bizarre “ironic” seasonal favorites. You’ll probably watch Die Hard. Me, I’m a fan of Batman Returns when it comes to dark festive cheer. And Gremlins. We can add The Krampus to the list of holiday-themed horror flicks. Your family may insist on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, although if you’re of my mind you’d prefer your cartoony Christmas violence via Home Alone. Or In Bruges. The Lord of the Rings films have a certain holiday vibe, and the same goes for the Harry Potter saga. If you want to take in a Bond movie for the Yuletide, there’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service … although you may wish to shut it off two minutes before the end.

But is there a place for Britain’s legendary Hammer Film Productions during Winter Solstice? After the 31st of October, do the Hammer DVDs and Blu-rays need to stay put by the Demon Elf on the Shelf?

No, I say! Hammer has a seasonal holiday treat, Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966). Okay, maybe only I consider it a holiday watch, but I’d like to share it with you.

Rasputin the Mad Monk is not a horror film. I have to make this clear upfront. Although released in many territories on a double bill with The Reptile and later paired with The Devil Rides Out on its first DVD release, Rasputin the Mad Monk is a historical melodrama with violent flourishes. Because the Hammer name is so synonymous today with “horror,” we forget that Hammer Film Productions was a busy studio that also put out comedies, science fiction, crime dramas, psychological thrillers, historical costume pictures, and adventure movies. Their reputation for horror ended up affecting the marketing of some non-horror fare: The Hounds of the Baskervilles (1959), a straight Sherlock Holmes adaptation, was sold with a drooling spectral wolfshead on the posters. Captain Clegg (1962), a swashbuckler about smugglers, was rechristened Night Creatures in the U.S. for no reason except that the distributor had that title lying around and wanted an excuse to use it.

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Unearthly Desires in an Unruly World: Cornelia Funke’s Living Shadows

Friday, December 23, 2016 Damien Moore Comments 0 Comment

In Living Shadows, the second book in Cornelia Funke’s wondrous Mirrorworld trilogy (currently being repackaged and reissued in the US as the Reckless trilogy), death haunts every page. We follow Jacob Reckless, our protagonist, as he attempts to rid himself of the moth devouring his heart. Given to him by the Red Fairy whom he carelessly betrayed, it begins to fill his body with excruciating pain. He must find an ancient crossbow belonging to an infamous witch slayer and a willing volunteer to shoot him in the heart. An equally ancient spell cast on it enables a third shot to resurrect its victim. Unfortunately, someone else intends to keep it for himself, and when Jacob encounters his dauntless rival, the world as he knows it threatens to crush his bones.

Funke bakes a layer cake of darkness and unconditional love with a haunting fairy tale icing that keeps you embedded in the story. You fall in love with the characters and feel their deepest emotions. In particular, Jacob’s simmering romance with his eternal companion, Fox (whose real name you learn once again in this volume) ensnares you. The moments where it comes close to a boiling point make you remember why fairy tale romance has captivated readers since the first storytellers entertained their audiences.

Theirs being the central romance in the story differentiates the series from so many others in the YA genre. Love triangles enchant their biggest fans and ensure the longevity of a series, but there comes a time when devoted YA readers roll their eyes. Focusing on one relationship betwen two compelling characters who fear each other’s deaths more than their own allows your imagination the freedom to savor their journey. When villains get in the way of their love, it’s just as fun of a ride, if not more.

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New Treasures: Worst Contact, edited by Hank Davis

Friday, December 23, 2016 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

No one out there today is doing the work Hank Davis is doing — collecting vintage SF and fantasy into handsome mass market anthologies.

Yes, Paula Guran (Street Magicks, Weird Detectives) and Neil Clarke (Galactic Empires) are producing great reprint anthologies — but they both focus almost exclusively on 21st Century authors. Davis is the one serious editor left still plumbing the pulps and vintage SF magazines of the mid-20th Century, and putting authors like Murray Leinster, John W. Campbell, and Poul Anderson into mass market. His recent books (including Things From Outer Space and In Space No One Can Hear You Scream) include some of my very favorite recent anthologies.

While we’re on the topic (and since it’s, y’know, timely), I should also mention he’s also the only SF editor in recent days to do Christmas anthologies, like A Cosmic Christmas and A Cosmic Christmas 2 You.

His first anthology of 2016 was Worst Contact, a collection of tales of alien contact gone wrong. It contains two of my all-time favorite SF stories, Terry Bisson’s brilliant “They’re Made Out of Meat,” the story of an alien survey team that makes a profoudly disturbing discovery on the backwater planet Earth, and Fredric Brown’s chilling and powerful “Puppet Show,” in which the US Army is called in to greet a strange alien and his donkey walking out of the desert.

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The December Fantasy Magazine Rack

Friday, December 23, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

It’s a nice mix of winter reading this month (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere anyway…. for everyone else, it’s summer reading!) There’s a big double issue of Cemetery Dance, the annual (and always big) Weird Fiction Review, a new issue of GrimDark, and regular issues of Asimov’s SF, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, The Dark, and Uncanny.

That’s not all we have for you, of course. For vintage fiction fans we have a Retro-Review of the November 1961 Amazing Stories, and a report from Howard Andrew Jones on the new line of premium Weird Tales reprints from Goodman Games.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Late November Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $35/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

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Always Winter, Never Christmas?

Friday, December 23, 2016 Violette Malan Comments 6 comments

Just a short post this week, since I’m sure we all want to get back to our holiday celebrations.

And speaking of which, I’m sure that everyone who remembers The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as well as I do knows where today’s title comes from. The first time that Lucy finds herself in in Narnia, she meets Tumnus the faun, who tells her that because of the power of the White Queen, in Narnia it’s always winter, but never Christmas.

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Modular: A New Kind of Monster Manual: Volo’s Guide to Monsters

Thursday, December 22, 2016 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 3 comments

At this point there have been scads of manuals with monsters for Dungeons & Dragons, going all the way back to the ’70s and that little booklet titled Monsters and Treasure. But last month a new kind of Monster Manual for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons crept onto the scene, and it’s different from any official D&D monster book that I’ve ever held.

You don’t often see the word “innovative” anywhere close to the word “monster” but I think I might just have to try it: this is an innovative look at how to use monsters in a D&D game. And if 5e isn’t your thing, it could be of use in most retro-clones and related D&D-like games as well. It could help your local DM bring the game’s monsters to more terrifying life.

It’s not just about monsters as stat blocks. It even begins with a framing story, in that it’s purportedly a lore book from a scholar of the fantastic and bearer of unlikely names, Volothamp Geddarm. Some reviewers seem to have been disappointed that Volo’s own comments (as well of those of a dissenting scholar) are only peppered through the manual, having seemingly missed that a manual written entirely by a biased and unreliable narrator might render all its information questionable while in game.

The book is divided into six broad sections, and, unlike the 5e Monster Manual itself, is well-indexed. Not only is there an index of monster stat blocks, there’s a list of the lairs in the book, and Appendix C provides listings of creature by type, by challenge rating, and by environment. Hopefully somewhere online there’s an official listing of ALL 5e monsters listed by these categories, for the ones in this book cover only the creatures included within.

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Modular: How to Introduce Kids to Tabletop Role-Playing #1: Picking a System and Genre

Thursday, December 22, 2016 M Harold Page Comments 2 comments

Dungeon Master's Guide-small — …perhaps in a fit of nostalgia, you made a Christmas present to yourself

It’s Christmas. You’ve got everybody together. Perhaps you’ve all watched Stranger Things and now you have the urge to dust down your dice, dig out the Dungeon Masters’ Guide and introduce whatever kids just happen to be lying around to the imaginative world of your youth.

Or perhaps in a fit of nostalgia, you made a Christmas present to yourself of a recently published role-playing game, but the only available players right now are under 12. Or perhaps you’re like me, a life long player, and this is just a good moment to share the joy.

So how do you go about introducing kids to tabletop role-playing?

Really very easily, as it happens. The youngest child I’ve GM’d for was my 5-year-old-daughter when she crashed a party of 9-year olds, found all the traps and made off with the loot. Having done this a few times and talked to other gamer-parents, I’ve noticed a few things…

(Geek and Sundry beat me to the punch on this one (link), but my take is slightly different.)

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