Black Gate – Page 665 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Future (Video Game) Treasures: Conan – Age of Exiles

Friday, March 25, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

Funcom is the developer of the MMO Age of Conan – Unchained. AoC is the only MMO I ever played more than a few times and stuck with. I think it’s an excellent game with a novel fighting system and superb graphics. It did a nice job of using the Conan world setting and I enjoyed playing it.

Sadly, as with most MMOs which aren’t named World of Warcraft, it just doesn’t have a ton of players. There were many times I would roam an area and only see one or two other characters. But it if you’re looking to check out an MMO, I highly recommend it.

Well, Funcom is bringing Conan to PCs and consoles with Conan Exiles:

An open-world survival game in the brutal lands of Conan the Barbarian.

You are an exile, one of thousands cast out to fend for themselves in a barbaric wasteland swept by terrible sandstorms and besieged on every side by enemies. Here you must fight to survive, build and dominate.
Hungry, thirsty and alone, your very first battle is that against the harsh environment. Grow crops or hunt animals for food. Harvest resources to build weapons and tools. Build a shelter to survive. Ride across a vast world and explore alone, or band together with other players to build entire settlements and strongholds to withstand fierce invasions.

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New Treasures: Skyborn, Book One of Seraphim by David Dalglish

Friday, March 25, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

American writer David Dalglish is the author of several popular series, including Shadowdance (six novels, starting with A Dance of Cloaks and A Dance of Blades, from Orbit), The Half-Orcs (seven books, starting with The Weight of Blood, self-published), and The Paladins (two volumes, also self-published). His latest is the opening volume of the new Seraphim trilogy, featuring floating islands holding the last remnants of humanity, and the elite winged soldiers who protect them.

Six islands float high above the Endless Ocean, where humanity’s final remnants are locked in brutal civil war.

Their parents slain in battle, twins Kael and Brenna Skyborn are training to be Seraphim, elite soldiers of aerial combat who wield elements of ice, fire, stone and lightning.

When the invasion comes, they will take to the skies, and claim their vengeance.

Skyborn was published by Orbit on November 17, 2015. It is 464 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. It will be followed by Fireborn (November 22, 2016), and Shadowborn. The covers are by Tommy Arnold.

The New Old West

Friday, March 25, 2016 Violette Malan Comments 3 comments

For years fantasy writers, and to some extent SF writers, have been looking for new worlds to write about, and wondering what the next big thing is going to be. I don’t mean just “are werewolves the new vampires” or what we can do to make zombies more interesting. Those are, if I can put it this way, single-trope problems.

More complicated is the general feeling that we’ve pretty much exhausted Celtic mythology as the magical/supernatural basis for our stories, and the pseudo-middle-ages as the setting of choice. Not to say that many wonderful stories aren’t still being told using those tropes – and being welcomed enthusiastically by mainstream audiences (even my Spanish cousins are reading/watching Juego de Tronos) but it’s getting more and more difficult to come up with something that feels fresh and innovative.

Of course we’ve already seen successful forays into non-white, non-western mythologies and cultures, but those of us who are white, and western, tend to tread carefully when we borrow from other cultures. No one wants to be guilty of any kind of appropriation.

On the other hand, we’ve also seen successful use of areas of western culture that don’t involve cousins of the Green Man. Dave Duncan’s Alchemist series successfully mines the European Renaissance, for example, while the success of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, set in the Napoleonic era, just proves how hungry we are to see dragons in a new light. And let’s not forget the Victorian Steampunk phenomenon, which has fired the imaginations of Fantasy and SF writers alike.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Double Stoker Nominee Michaelbrent Collings

Thursday, March 24, 2016 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

MbC and his look of smoldering intensity

Mr. Michaelbrent Collings is an internationally-bestselling author who also currently happens to be a double Stoker Award nominee for 2016.

His work The Deep is nominated for Superior Achievement in a Novel while The Ridealong is up for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. And though you might expect a horror writer with these types of creds to be long in the “EA Poe” persona and short in the humor department, Collings is… well… downright funny — which makes him perfect for fodder for a Goth Chick News interview, where it’s not about how many gallons of blood you can sling, but how entertaining you are.

So without further ado; everyone, this is Michaelbrent.

Michealbrent, meet everyone…

GC: How did you first get into writing? Was it to meet girls?

MC: It was definitely to meet the ladies. I’d go to parties, lean suave-like-Bond-style against the nearest booming woofer and lay down my opening line. Then, when I realized they couldn’t hear me because I was standing next to a frickin’ booming woofer, I’d move to a tweeter (yeah, I went to weird parties), and say, very casual-like, “So I researched today how to make a tent out of the face-skin of virgins.” I never did get a phone number, but I’m pretty sure they all talked about me when they ran to the bathroom.

No, strike that, I did get a phone number once. I thought it was pretty strange at first that it had eighteen digits, but the girl must have been an exchange student, because I got some kind of Chinese phone number and some other woman showed up at my house a few days later claiming to be my wife. It was really weird. Especially for my parents, who didn’t know how to feel about the fact that my wife was older than they were. Plus I still lived at home at the time.

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A Tale of Two Covers: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

Thursday, March 24, 2016 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

For this installment of A Tale of Two Covers, we look at my favorite book by one of my favorite writers: John Brunner’s Hugo Award-winning Stand on Zanzibar.

Stand on Zanzibar was published in 1969. I read it about a decade later, when I was in my mid-teens, and it pretty much blew my mind. It’s set in the far-distant future of 2010, when the Earth groans under the weight of a staggering seven billion souls, terrorists are the major threat facing America, China is a new economic superpower, erectile dysfunction and depression are treated with pills, and the head of state is President Obomi.

Pretty clear-eyed predictions (over the years, in fact, Brunner has been lauded for his amazing forecasting). But it wasn’t his predictive skills that drew me to the book — it was the brilliant structure. Brunner painted an astonishingly vivid picture of the future of our planet by interspersing his chapters with numerous brief vignettes, news items, book quotes, and snapshots of life all over the world. It was the most believable and compelling rendition of the future I’d ever encountered, and it has stayed with me for decades.

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March GigaNotoSaurus Features “Polyglossia” by Tamara Vardomskaya

Thursday, March 24, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

This month GigaNotoSaurus features Tamara Vardomskaya’s long story “Polyglossia,” which Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews described as follows:

This month’s story at GigaNotoSaurus is the longest of the year to date (though it being March that’s not saying too much) and tackles the complex nature of language. It is nice to read more longer stories, especially ones that really delve into the world building as this one does, providing a vivid picture of a breathing world. It’s one of the reasons that GigaNotoSaurus is such a treat to check out…

This is a story about language… It looks at people from very different situations, all brought together by language. A man who has lost the language of his mother. A woman who studies languages but cares little for the heritage of them… A boy who absorbs languages like a sponge, who sees each new language like a new city, full of adventures and secrets. There’s so much going on with this story and so much to see and enjoy, a world with layers of history and conflict that all come to a head here, in this story about a song…

And in the end I think that the story just works because it does such an elegant and nuanced job building its world… the cast is meticulously balanced and great… It’s an affirming, kinetic experience, about reaching out across the barriers that language can create to find common meaning. An excellent story!

Read the story free here, and read Charles’ complete review here.

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Art of the Genre: 24 Hours Remain on The Hidden Valoria Campaign

Thursday, March 24, 2016 Scott Taylor Comments 0 Comment

Art of the Genre continues to roll out Kickstarter after Kickstarter in their Folio series, this time teaming up with terrain production juggernaut Dwarven Forge to create The Hidden Valoria Campaign. Dwarven Forge architect Stefan Pokorny opens the doors to his personal gaming world of Mythras so that AotG‘s own wordsmith Scott Taylor can have a run at the world capital of Valoria. Stefan has always been a big fan of old fantasy pulp fiction, and along with Scott, the two have worked hard to produce a feel within Valoria of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, Howard’s Conan, and even some of the mosaic aspects of Asprin’s Sanctuary in Thieves’ World.

Utilizing Dwarven Forge terrain sets, Taylor takes the Folio from a pure tabletop RPG to a miniatures compatible 3D play system. Dungeons come alive with rubbish-strewn cellars, undead-inhabited crypts, monster-infested wizard towers, and even a gang-run ‘Brawl Club’ (First rule of Brawl Club, don’t talk about Brawl Club).

Boasting old school TSR-like removable module covers, two interior booklets (Gazetteer & Adventure), as well as 2D & 3D mapping, Folio #8 continues in the AotG tradition of gaming in both 1st Edition AD&D as well as the new 5th Edition D&D mechanic. Currently the project has achieved 6 Stretch Goals that help flesh out the Valorian neighborhood of The Patina Court, with a 7th & 8th Stretch Goal of a mini-adventure and full print production of Folio #9 still within reach. You can find the campaign and all the details of it here.

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How and Why You Should Withhold Information from the Reader

Thursday, March 24, 2016 M Harold Page Comments 0 Comment

Risen Empire — …quickly turns out to be *about* a secret.

You’re not supposed to withhold information known to a point-of-view character. Or to put it another way around:

If the viewpoint character knows something relevant, then by default share it with the reader.

Except that successful authors do this all the time!

It’s most common in thrillers where we follow the Bad Guys, but don’t find out who they are working for until the end. However, you also find it in SF&F. For example, Scott Westerfeld’s marvelous The Risen Empire quickly turns out to be about a secret. We see one team try to expose the secret and another — who know what it is — ruthlessly try to preserve it.

At this point, people will nod their heads and trot out the wisdom they’re supposed to trot out: Once you know the rules, then you can break them; go serve your apprenticeship.

However, that’s not very helpful if — for example — the story you are trying to write hinges on a big secret.

I think there’s quite a different set of rules at work. As you might guess, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all about the conflict.

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Future Treasures: Spira Mirabilis, Book 3 of The Wave Trilogy, by Aidan Harte

Wednesday, March 23, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

In her review of Irenicon, the opening novel in Aidan Harte’s Wave Trilogy, Sarah Avery wrote:

Welcome to Rasenna, a shining city-state turned failed state, where river spirits haunt the streets and mistake themselves for the citizens they’ve drowned. Rasenna’s people hide in their towers at night, and even by day fear the river their enemy wielded to cut their city in two…. Can a city recover from two decades of grief, madness, and self-destruction? Can these people change in time to save themselves? They’d better, because the rival city of sorcerous Engineers that smashed them before may well do so again…

Aidan Harte has been justly praised for his world-building in his debut novel. Irenicon is, almost, what we might get if Italo Calvino’s classic Invisible Cities had lingered for a few hundred pages in one of its gem-perfect vignettes… Irenicon would make a perfect action film. Aidan Harte gives us a pretty good view of the movie he must have seen in his mind while he was writing. The flashing banners of Rasenna’s homegrown martial art, the glorious decay of a city that breeds endless tension, the disturbing chill of Concord’s purity and the darkness at its foundation, and (oh my!) the uncanny otherness of the river spirits could be the making of a summer blockbuster.

Sounded pretty dang good to me, but I resisted the urge to dive in right away. Partly because I gave Sarah our only review copy. But mostly because these days I avoid trilogies until I can hold all three titles in my greedy little hands. That resolution became harder and harder to keep as the accolades continued to pile up (click on the back cover of the third volume, at right, for some examples). But my long wait is finally over. The Warring States, the second volume, was published on April 7, 2015, and the final book, Spira Mirabilis, will be released in two weeks… and our review copy arrived last week. Interns, hold all my calls. I’m on assignment.

Spira Mirabilis will be published by Jo Fletcher Books on April 5, 2016. It is 522 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover. The cover is by Ghost.

Screw ISIS! Here Are Five Great Reasons to Visit Brussels

Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

Belgian_Flag_(5089051595)

These colors don’t run! Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Well, the pseudo-Muslims are at it again, killing innocent people and trying to turn one of the world’s great faiths into a whacked-out death cult. It’s been 24 hours since the Brussels attacks and now people are mourning, the politicians are posturing, and the police are hunting down suspects. A few extra bombing runs against Islamic State are probably being planned too.

It is, sadly, all too predictable. We’ve seen this before and we will see it again. So I’d like to buck the vibe and take a look at what Brussels has to offer visitors. It’s a beautiful European capital that’s all too often overlooked by people headed to more popular destinations such as London and Paris. That’s a shame, because I’ve visited Belgium several times and have always enjoyed my visits to the city. It’s a fun place with great food, awesome beer, and plenty to see. The fundamentalists haven’t changed that and never will. Here are five things you won’t want to miss.

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