This morning my Twitter and Facebook flooded with the happy news that best-selling author Rick Riordan (of Percy Jackson and the Olympians fame, among others) will be matching every donation made to Rosarium Publishing’s Indiegogo campaign till it ends in three days–up to $10,000!
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Yesterday my friend Neil Baker, publisher at April Moon Books, introduced me to blogger John Linwood Grant, who blogs at GreyDogTales. I wandered over to his corner of the internet, and was delighted to find a fascinating discussion of the Equation Chillers, a line of British horror anthologies I’d never heard of.
Right, let’s go back a few years. Nearly three decades, in fact. One of our finds of the late eighties was the short-lived Equation Chillers series. Sadly, only eight books were ever produced directly under the imprint. We have battered copies of all of them which we bought at the time, thank goodness.
They were, in a way, the precursor of the Wordsworth Editions, where lost, rare or unusual stories of the supernatural suddenly became available at an affordable price. Equation revived a whole haunted house full of Victorian and Edwardian short stories, and it’s worth noting all eight volumes here, with the occasional comment from us.
Anything in the spirit of the delightful Wordsworth Editions Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural (or, as we prefer to call them, TOMAToS) has my immediate attention. Check out John’s full article — with plenty of marvelous cover scans — here. And it looks like I’ll be spending some quality time at his website.
So, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has talked about Tony Hillerman here and Joe Leaphorn here. Leaphorn had featured in the first three novels: The Blessing Way, Dance Hall of the Dead and Listening Woman. This week, we turn our attention to Jim Chee
For his fourth Navajo Police novel, People of Darkness, Hillerman needed a less wise, less assimilated policeman. He actually considered flashing back to a younger Leaphorn but decided against that and instead created the younger, more naïve, Chee. He would hold for the next three books.
In addition to providing an alternative protagonist, Hillerman also changes the opening. In prior books, they begin outside, painting a picture of the reservation: Louis Horsman, on the run from the law, is setting traps to catch kangaroo rats (when he encounters a skinwalker – a witch). George Bowlegs is out running to practice for a Zuni religious ritual (and has a similarly unhappy encounter). And how about this descriptive passage to begin Listening Woman:
“The southwest wind picked up turbulence around the San Francisco Peaks, howled across the emptiness of the Moenkopi plateau, and made a thousand strange sounds in windows of the old Hopi villages at Shongopov and Second Mesa.”
But People of Darkness begins with somebody looking out her office window in a cancer clinic. Things certainly do get started with a bang!
Chee’s introduction is reminiscent of the opening scene of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. We have a “common” private investigator visiting a rich client of higher social standing. Rosemary Vines wants Chee to take some leave and find a box of keepsakes stolen from her husband. Her husband says it’s all a big mistake: no worry. Hillerman mixes in the Native American Church (the ones that caused the big legal furor over using peyote in their rituals).
Of all Hillerman’s books in the series, this one is most like a private eye novel and has a bit of a Ross MacDonald feel to it, as an event from long ago hangs over the current investigation.
Public domain is a tricky issue. We all know the horror stories of a certain bloodsucking literary estate who clings to the last remaining copyrights of their Victorian property and frequently demand exorbitant fees for usage in new works. There are also tales of a well-known property where a dubious claimant to the literary rights regularly files nuisance lawsuits and is often paid off by the big conglomerates just to avoid the hassle of dealing with the allegedly loopy individual in question. Both have generated their share of sympathy for the public domain cause.
Greedy bastards only interested in money and wealthy loons fighting to prove they own something they don’t are certainly unlikable characters. I know a good number of publishers and writers who thrive upon reviving properties that have slipped into public domain. So long as too many cooks aren’t in the kitchen churning out new soups with the same basic ingredients, it should be a harmonious situation that serves to keep the originals in print and grows fan interest in otherwise forgotten characters.
Anna Smaill is the author of one book of poetry, The Violinist in Spring, but beyond that I don’t know much about her. Except that her debut fantasy novel is being called “What might be the most distinctive debut of the decade” by Tor.com, and “A melodic, immersive dystopian tale set in a London where writing is lost and song has replaced story” by Kirkus Reviews. And Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks calls it “”A highly original dystopian masterpiece, an intricately imagined, exquisitely invoked world in which music instills order and ravages individuality.”
Sounds like I need to check it out. It goes on sale in hardcover this week from Quercus Books.
After the end of a brutal civil war, London is divided, with slums standing next to a walled city of elites. Monk-like masters are selected for special schooling and shut away for decades, learning to write beautiful compositions for the chimes, played citywide morning and night, to mute memory and keep the citizens trapped in ignorance.
A young orphan named Simon arrives in London with nothing but the vague sense of a half-forgotten promise, to locate someone. What he finds is a new family — a gang of scavengers that patrols the underbelly of the city looking for valuable metal to sell. Drawn in by an enigmatic and charismatic leader, a blind young man named Lucien with a gift for song, Simon forgets entirely what originally brought him to the place he has now made his home.
In this alternate London, the past is a mystery, each new day feels the same as the last, and before is considered “blasphony.” But Simon has a unique gift — the gift of retaining memories — that will lead him to discover a great injustice and take him far beyond the meager life as a member of Lucien’s gang. Before long he will be engaged in an epic struggle for justice, love, and freedom.
The Chimes will be published by Quercus on May 3, 2016. It is 287 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover artist is uncredited.
Early last week, Black Gate was nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of Best Fanzine. On Friday, we contacted the Awards Committee at MidAmeriCon II, the World Science Fiction Convention, to inform them that we have declined the nomination.
Why did we decline? While we won’t know the exact number of nominating ballots until the stats are released (after the Hugos are awarded), it’s clear that Black Gate largely benefited from Vox Day’s Rabid Puppy Hugo slate. As we reported Wednesday, roughly 80% of this year’s Hugo ballot was dictated by that slate — it swept six categories, including Short Story, Graphic Story, and Fanzine. Our choice to withdraw was informed by many of the same factors that led us to make the same decision last year.
It also seems fairly obvious that we cannot win. Of the 61 nominees the Puppy ballots placed on the Hugo ballot last year, only one, Guardians of the Galaxy, received an award. The Rabid Puppy brand, which BG is now unwillingly associated with, is so toxic that it’s virtually impossible to overcome that association without the equivalent of a $100 million advertising campaign. Those nominees who stubbornly argued otherwise last year, and attended the Hugo ceremony with high hopes, learned that the hard way, unceremoniously losing out to No Award in a painful rout across virtually every category. (Incidentally, I also voted No Award for most of the ballot.)
Several folks I admire, including George R.R. Martin and John Scalzi, are urging nominees not to withdraw, and for excellent reasons. However, the reason that’s paramount to me, my desire to step aside in favor of a worthy publication not on the slate, outweighs those considerations. A great many publications I deeply respect were completely swept aside by the Rabid Puppy ballot, including John DeNardo’s SF Signal, Rich Horton’s Strange at Ecbatan, Coming Attractions, and even last year’s winner — Journey Planet. By giving up our very slim chance at winning, we can give another deserving publication a shot. That seems like a fair exchange to me.
Good luck to all the nominees — I mean that. As usual, we’ll be covering the Awards, and the events leading up to them, here on the blog.
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I’ve been in the mood for fast-paced space opera recently. Something with big guns, bigger ships, and nasty aliens. I’m thinking Neal Asher.
The first book in his Transformation trilogy, Dark Intelligence, was published in February 2015. It introduced us to Thorvald Spear, dead for a hundred years after being betrayed by Penny Royal, the rogue AI sent to rescue his team on a hostile world. When Spear wakes up in a hospital, returned to life by strange technology, he finds the war versus the alien Prador has been over for a century. But Penny Royal is still on the loose, and Spear vows revenge at any cost.
Publishers Weekly called Dark Intelligence “Beautifully paced… space opera at a high peak of craftsmanship.” War Factory is the second volume in the trilogy, and the newest title set in Asher’s Polity universe (Prador Moon, The Line of Polity, Brass Man, The Skinner, and many others).
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Fletcher Vredenburgh kicks off our coverage of two very promising new publications this month in his regular magazine column: Cirsova, a magazine of sword and sorcery and science fiction, and Pulp Literature, which attempts to re-capture the high adventure spirit of the great pulp mags — and largely succeeds. Here’s Fletcher.
Two incredibly impressive magazines crossed my desk this past month: the very first issue of the brand new Cirsova, edited by P. Alexander, and Pulp Literature #10, edited by the triumvirate of Mel Anastasiou, Jennifer Landels, and Susan Pieters. Both are hefty collections (Cirsova is 95 pages and Pulp Literature is 229) and are available as e-books as well as real live paper versions.
P. Anderson may say that what ties the various stories in Cirsova together is a love for the glorious pulp adventures of the past. While that is clearly true, their truest similarity lies in the authors’ love of storytelling… Cirsova has built a stage for writers to tell stories with narrative force, audacious adventure, and outlandishly magnificent settings. If this is what the first issue looks like, I expect future ones will blow me away…
Pulp Literature has been around for several years now, having published ten thick issues… While it has only a few swords & sorcery stories, I was blown away by PL’s quality and richness… Pulp Literature is filled with a wide variety of genres. Senior citizen detectives, Jewish monsters in contemporary Ontario, poetry, all sorts of good things. Don’t let that literature tag scare you off. The editors’ love of pulp in so many varieties means they have a love of storytelling and don’t neglect it. How such a magazine has escaped wider notice eludes me.
In other news, we also reported that dark fantasy magazine The Dark is switching to monthly. Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Mid-April Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.
Tremors (1990)
Directed by Ron Underwood
Earl Bassett: What kind of fuse is that?
Burt Gummer: Cannon fuse
Earl Bassett: What the hell do you use it for?
Burt Gummer: My cannon!
Will Tremors, the movie, go down through the ages as a great and enduring work of art? Nah. Is it a pretty good monster movie and perhaps even one of the better examples of the breed? I would argue that it is.
Once upon a time — the Fifties, to be more specific — there was a flood of movies about giant critters of various shapes and sizes wreaking havoc in assorted and sundry ways. Once in a while the planets would align just so and someone might turn out a pretty decent one of these. Them, a yarn about rampaging giant ants, springs to mind.
The fiction in every issue of Lightspeed is gradually made available on the website as the month progresses; the last story in the newest issue became available on April 28th, and the entire issue is now yours to enjoy free. The April issue includes tales of supervillain ex-boyfriends, queens rescued from dragons, quantum challenges, and the first mating between humans and aliens.
Robert L Turner III reviewed the issue at Tangent Online:
In “Origin Story” by Carrie Vaughn we are introduced to Commerce City, a town overrun with heroes, supervillains, and vigilantes. Mary, the protagonist, is standing in line when she recognizes that the supervillain robbing the bank is none other than her ex-boyfriend Jason Trumble. The story is more a quick vignette about lost loves and rekindled (?) relationships than SF…
“The Birth Will Take Place on a Mutually Acceptable Research Vessel” by Matthew Bailey is the final entry for the month. In it, the first mating between Humans and the recently met Tharkan species is the subject. Told from the viewpoint of the expectant human mother, the story delves into the complexities of intercultural and interspecies communication. Bailey does a solid job of presenting the larger world through the eyes of the narrator and making the personal universal. The constant repetition of the idea of Self and Autonomy is well played against the unique situation of a first interspecies birth. Overall, the story, while not groundbreaking, is interesting and the best of the issue.
The cover artist this issue is Sam Schechter.