Black Gate – Page 602 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Does Netflix Know Me Better Than I Know Myself?

Monday, October 3, 2016 markrigney Comments 6 comments

It’s late. The rest of my family has gone off to bed. I, however, have some busy work to accomplish. Folding laundry, perhaps. Packing up some gifts to send to my nephews. So what form of media do I power up to help me pass the time? Netflix, of course. As of now, it’s movie night. And why not? Netflix knows precisely what I want to see. Right?

Based on my previous viewing habits, Netflix has provided a sumptuous spread, a whole raft of tempting suggestions. There’s even a section entitled “My List,” which confuses me no end, because several of the titles (Atari: Game Over and The Act Of Killing among them) are ones I’ve never heard of, much less added to a playlist.

In theory, Netflix knows me well. But do they? The first lineup of choices is headed “Because I watched Jessica Jones,” and because I delved into all things Marvel and fantastical, I am now expected to sample Daredevil, which I don’t plan to do because I generally don’t care for super heroes (Jessica Jones was well done, but overlong, and I never finished).

Sense 8 pops up next, a slick show with terrific performers, but its Matrix-makers have only one solution to all problems, and that’s force. Season one will do for me. Flash, no. Arrow, no. More superheroes! Blacklist? I saw the pilot, and I adore James Spader, but sometimes craft can swallow heart. I wasn’t tempted to watch episode two.

…

Read More Read More

Interzone #266 Now on Sale

Monday, October 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The September/October issue of Interzone magazine is now on sale, with a cover by 2016 cover artist Vincent Sammy, “Heaven Spots” (click the image at right for a bigger version.)

This issue is pretty intriguing. Or, at least, Kevin P Hallett’s Tangent Online review makes it sound pretty intriguing. Here’s Kevin on Malcolm Devlin’s “The End of Hope Street.”

The twelve houses on Hope Street faced a strange blight in this horror mystery novelette. One by one, the sinister blight consumed each house making it unlivable. Failure to leave resulted in death; failure to stay away resulted in death. The displaced residents found temporary sanctuary in the other houses on the street. In all but one, that is. For Daniel Dormer, the patriarch at number twelve, felt that all this had happened to his neighbours for a reason.

When Daniel’s house was the only one still livable, he had to face the consequences of his petty prejudices.

The author develops the characters well and uses the mystery to pull the reader through the story. The enigmatic blight hangs over everything leaving the reader with many questions to answer. A pleasant and intriguing tale.

And Tade Thompson’s “The Apologists.”

…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Bogart’s The Caine Mutiny

Monday, October 3, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 6 comments

I’m fortunate in that the powers that be at Black Gate let me roam way off topic once in a while. The fantasy stuff isn’t really a stretch, since that’s at the heart of Black Gate itself. Other times, I’m just talking about something I really like. Such as, say, Humphrey Bogart.

The first two posts (The Return of Doctor X and The Maltese Falcon) about the greatest actor of all time actually fit within the Black Gate milieu. The third (about Bogie and George Raft), not really. Today’s has a military tie-in, which is a sometimes Black Gate subject.

Bogart had broken through in 1941 and was still a superstar in 1954, when he made three very different types of movies. The second, Sabrina, was a light-hearted romantic comedy, costarring Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. I actually prefer the remake, with Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond and Gregory Kinnear.

The third, The Barefoot Contessa, was a ponderous, garish melodrama. Four-time Oscar winner Joseph Mankiewicz directed, with Ava Gardner and Edmond O’Brien co-starring. The movie collapses under its own weight.

Say it Again, Sam – Bogie only managed to secure one Oscar: for The African Queen. He certainly deserved more.

…

Read More Read More

The Fierce Love of Thieves: Thieves of Islar by James Shade

Sunday, October 2, 2016 Damien Moore Comments 3 comments

Some of us think of our siblings as friends for life. Those of us who have siblings also know that much of the time, your bonds can transcend friendship, and sometimes not in a good way. Both forms of love between siblings are lovingly rendered in James Shade’s debut novel, Thieves of Islar.

Young Jaeron, Chazd and Avrilla deAlto lose their father, Henri, in a tragic house fire. To avenge him, the siblings form a guild with their closest friends and relatives in order to squash his murderer under their feet. But that’s not the only mystery Jaeron intends to solve, unbeknownst to his siblings. And their father’s murderer has a diabolical plan in mind.

Shade has a brilliant way of painting exquisite portraits of his characters. His description of the deAlto’s Uncle Ardo and his regrets remains firmly lodged in my memory. Shade gives every character who appears in his tale a purpose, and he renders their purposes with tremendous care. There’s a reason why you’ll come away remembering the names of the core characters.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

Sunday, October 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, the opening novel in her 6-volume steampunk pulp Clockwork Century series, was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Her other novels include Fathom, Maplecroft, and the Eden Moore trilogy. Her latest is a contemporary haunted house tale, released in hardcover by Tor last month.

Music City Salvage is a family operation, owned and operated by Chuck Dutton: master stripper of doomed historic properties, and expert seller of all things old and crusty. But business is lean and times are tight, so he’s thrilled when the aged and esteemed Augusta Withrow appears in his office, bearing an offer he really ought to refuse. She has a massive family estate to unload — lock, stock, and barrel. For a check and a handshake, it’s all his.

It’s a big check. It’s a firm handshake. And it’s enough of a gold mine that he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project.

Dahlia preps a couple of trucks, takes a small crew, and they caravan down to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the ancient Withrow house is waiting — and so is a barn, a carriage house, and a small, overgrown cemetery that Augusta Withrow left out of the paperwork. Augusta Withrow left out a lot of things. The property is in unusually great shape for a condemned building. It’s empty, but it isn’t abandoned. Something in the Withrow mansion is angry and lost. This is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever, and there’s still plenty of room in the strange little family plot…

Cherie Priest’s The Family Plot is a haunted house story for the ages — atmospheric, scary, and strange, with a modern gothic sensibility that’s every bit as fresh as it is frightening.

The Family Plot was published by Tor Books on September 20, 2016. It is 365 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by FORT.

…

Read More Read More

The Wonders of Fairwood Press

Sunday, October 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

amaryllis-and-other-stories-by-carrie-vaughn-small

seven-wonders-of-a-once-and-future-world-and-other-stories-small

I first met Patrick Swenson, publisher and editorial mastermind at Fairwood Press, back in the late 90s. I think it might have been James Van Pelt who introduced us, after I wrote a review of Patrick’s magazine, TaleBones. I helped Patrick negotiate with a squatter who was sitting on the address he wanted for his website (unsuccessfully, as I recall.) At the time, Fairwood Press was a small press underdog, with only a handful of titles to its name, but a fast-growing reputation.

Fastforward about 17 years, to Worldcon in 2016. I was walking through the sprawling dealer’s room when I spotted Patrick sitting behind a table groaning under the weight of dozens and dozens of eye-catching science fiction and fantasy books, from some of the biggest names in the industry — including Robert Silverberg, Michael Bishop, Jay Lake, Carrie Vaughn, Devon Monk, Tom Piccirilli, Tina Connolly, James Van Pelt, and many others. Could this possibly be the same Fairwood Press?

Yes, as it turned out.

…

Read More Read More

Old Dark House Double Feature IV: Two Haunted Honeymoons

Saturday, October 1, 2016 William I. Lengeman III Comments 2 comments

For this Old Dark House Double Feature I’ve chosen two films that are unrelated except for the fact that they share a title — Haunted Honeymoon. You might rightly make the argument that the earlier of these movies is more of a standard whodunit than an old dark house movie, but the coincidence was too good for me to pass up.

Haunted Honeymoon
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)
Directed by Arthur B. Woods
Screenplay by Monckton Hoffe, Angus MacPhail, and Harold Goldman
Starring Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings

Dorothy Sayers isn’t really a household name nowadays but she was a rather well-known mystery writer during the so-called Golden Age of mysteries, which lasted for a few decades, starting more or less in the Twenties. Busman’s Honeymoon, the source for this movie, first saw the light of day as a play, in 1936. A year later Sayers converted it to a novel and a few years after that it made its way to the big screen. Over on this side of Atlantic the movie was given the name Haunted Honeymoon, since few of us Yanks probably known what a busman’s holiday is (a holiday where you spend doing the same kind of thing that you usually do for your job, says Merriam-Webster).

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Wall of Storms, Book II of The Dandelion Dynasty, by Ken Liu

Saturday, October 1, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu’s debut novel, was nominated for the Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It was also one of four launch titles for Saga Press, and it helped make that fledgling publisher one of the most respected publishing houses in the genre.

Next week Saga release The Wall of Storms, the second volume in what’s now being called The Dandelion Dynasty. It arrives in hardcover on October 4th. Here’s the description.

In the much-anticipated sequel to the “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR) Grace of Kings, Emperor Kuni Garu is faced with the invasion of an invincible army in his kingdom and must quickly find a way to defeat the intruders.

Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara, but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara — and chaos results.

But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara’s savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.

The Wall of Storms is 880 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Sam Weber. Read an interview with Ken, and an excerpt from the book, at io9.

Tabletop Terror: Pathfinder Edition

Saturday, October 1, 2016 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 6 comments

Humans hate to be frightened … except when we love it. There’s a small, sinister part of our brains that love terror and menace, not in real life so much as in our entertainment. This shows up regularly in our fiction and films, of course, as shelves are stocked with horror and thriller novels, as well as slasher flicks and suspenseful films and television series (some of which, I hear, even feature zombies).

Over this month leading up to Halloween, I’ll be focusing on how this horror element manifests itself in some great tabletop games which, among other things, can add immense fun to the Halloween holiday seas. (Am I the only one who celebrates all month long?)

To begin, I’d like to focus on some recent releases from one of my favorite RPG systems: Pathfinder RPG. While there has never been a shortage of monsters in the Pathfinder world of Golarion, over the last year they have had two major releases that really up the ante on the terror quotient, by introducing dynamic new game mechanics related to exploring these horrors. These manuals, together with their current Lovecraftian-themed horror Adventure Path series Strange Aeons [Paizo, Amazon], means that if you want to dive directly into a world full of terror and occult mysteries, you’ve got everything at your disposal to do so.

Occult Adventures

Released in August of 2015, Occult Adventures [Paizo, Amazon] formally introduces a psychic-based magical system into the Pathfinder RPG. These powers draw from the internal mental powers of the individual (or other individuals), rather than from the sources that fuel arcane or divine magic, and they provide a wealth of new approaches to magic to mix things up for people who have been playing wizards and clerics for several decades. In addition to six new psionics-based occult classes, and a variety of archetypes to offer psionic variations on existing classes, it introduces psychic magic, various new occult rules and mechanics, and occult-related equipment and magical items.

…

Read More Read More

A Long-Overdue Retrospective: The Best of Michael Moorcock

Friday, September 30, 2016 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Tachyon Publications released The Best of Michael Moorcock, edited by John Davey and Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, back in 2009, and I finally bought a copy last month. I don’t know what took me so long.

Moorcock has an enormous back catalog of fantasy; so vast I’ll never be able to read even a fraction of it. But this book finally gives me the opportunity I’ve wanted for years: to sample the full range of Moorcock’s storytelling craft in one compact volume, with some of his most famous stories — including his famous 1968 Nebula Award winning novella “Behold the Man,” the Elric tale “A Portrait in Ivory,” and the Jerry Cornelius story “The Visible Men.”

The book received rave notices when it first appeared. Bookgasm says it “Serves as a superb introduction to the boundless imagination of this unique and fascinating author,” and The Guardian calls it “A long-overdue retrospective.” And Booklist says it’s “A wild, fascinating batch of stories fairly balancing the fantastic and the nearly ordinary, and showcasing Moorcock’s talent very well.”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

…

Read More Read More