Black Gate – Page 673 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Build Your Very Own Fantasy Empire With Asmodee’s Hyperborea

Saturday, June 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

I have a certain fondness for epic fantasy games. You know the ones I’m talking about. The kind where you build vast armies, dress them up in matching clothes, and scooch them around, crushing civilizations.

I also have a fondness for saving money. And where these two interests intersect, I find a lot of personal joy. So recently I’ve been hunting up game bargains online, especially on Amazon, which has deep discounts on a number of fantasy boardgames. Why they do, I dunno. I don’t question it. I just give them my money, and get fabulous shinkwrapped treasures in return.

My most recent acquisition is Asmodee’s game of epic fantasy conquest, Hyperborea, which multiple online sellers are offering for about 60% off. It’s a 2–6 player board game that challenges players to build their mythical nation into the greatest empire in history. You do that by capturing land, defeating imposing monsters, exploiting strange technologies and magics, and building mighty armies. That you scooch around the map, crushing civilizations.

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Rebirth: DC’s Corrective Reboot

Saturday, June 4, 2016 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

The last time I blogged about a reboot, the word may have given people hives. But don’t reach for your anti-histamines yet. Well… keep them handy. Your reboot allergic reaction may not be triggered by a Corrective Reboot.

What the heck’s a corrective reboot? Well, it’s like corrective lenses.

I reviewed comics for weeklycomicbookreview.com from 2008-2010. I covered mostly DC, with a fair chunk of Dynamite (I love me my John Carter of Mars, The Lone Ranger, and Kato). I read Superman and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, but my favorite DC titles seemed to be Red Robin (Tim Drake), Batgirl (Stephanie Brown, mentored by Barbaba Gordon AKA Oracle) and Dick Grayson as Batman. I guess, looking back, I like it when sidekicks make good.

Shortly after I stopped reviewing, DC did a reboot called The New 52. Some of the continuity was preserved, but some wasn’t. As… counter-intuitive as that sounds, the result was that about ten years was shaved off of all the DCU and we lost some sidekicks and some relationships.

For example, prior to the New 52 reboot, enough time had passed for four Robins to have swung about in scaled Underoos (Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne). And of course, many of the DCU’s greatest buddy relationships (or romantic ones, in the case of Green Arrow and Black Canary) had time to form.

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New Treasures: Xenowealth by Tobias S. Buckell

Saturday, June 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I wasn’t actually aware that so many of Tobias S. Buckell’s acclaimed novels took place in the same universe until I stumbled on a copy of his collection Xenowealth. That kind of put it all together for me. His Locus-Award nominated first novel Crystal Rain (2006), his Nebula nominee Ragamuffin (2007), Sly Mongoose (2008), and his self-published The Apocalypse Ocean (2012) are all part of a series called The Benevolent Satrapy Universe… also know as the Xenowealth novels.

The Xenowealth novels have been widely acclaimed as high concept space opera, and this collection gathers tales featuring the same setting and characters… including “Manumission,” the origin story of Pepper, the dread-locked baddass from Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, “Placa del Fuego,” an extended excerpt from the last novel, Apocalypse Ocean, two new stories written just for this collection, and many others.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Eight – “Andaman — Second!”

Saturday, June 4, 2016 William Patrick Maynard Comments 3 comments

NOTE: The following article was first published on June 6, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for nearly 6 years and 270 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

“Andaman — Second!” was the seventh installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in April 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 18-20 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (originally re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication). Rohmer returned the series to its Holmesian roots by mining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” for inspiration. Conan Doyle’s case concerns stolen submarine plans taken from Cadogan West while Rohmer’s story involves stolen aero-torpedo plans taken from Norris West. “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” was published in 1912, just a few months before Rohmer wrote “Andaman — Second!” and shows that Sherlock Holmes was still very much a model for the Fu-Manchu series at this early stage.

The story starts out with Dr. Petrie in the final throes of fighting his feelings for Karamaneh. He tries telling himself that slavery in the 20th Century is an impossibility, but he cannot doubt Karamaneh’s account of her tragic life of bondage and enforced servitude. Try as he might to convince himself that she is too foreign to his values and culture and that she has been jaded and corrupted by her life and experiences, he cannot deny his heart. The reader’s expectation at this point is that Rohmer will bring the two lovers together once Petrie wins her freedom from Dr. Fu-Manchu. Of course, it is worth remembering that Rohmer delights in breaking with tradition. Happy Endings are never assured in his fiction.

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The Most Successful Anthology of 2015: Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Friday, June 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

It’s beginning to look as if Jonathan Strahan’s Meeting Infinity is the most successful SF anthology of 2015… at least if you use story reprints as your yardstick (which I kinda do).

Let’s examine the evidence. Rich Horton reprinted two stories from Meeting Infinity for his Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy:

“My Last Bringback” by John Barnes
“Drones” by Simon Ings

Neil Clarke reprinted a whopping four for his Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1, more than any other source except Asimov’s SF. Of course, they were a different four.

“In Blue Lily’s Wake” by Aliette de Bodard
“Outsider” by An Owomeyla
“Cocoons” by Nancy Kress
“The Cold Inequalities” by Yoon Ha Lee

Meanwhile Gardner Dozois picked a completely different set of three tales, for the upcoming 33rd volume of his Year’s Best Science Fiction

“The Falls: A Luna Story,” by Ian McDonald
“Emergence,” by Gwyneth Jones
“Rates of Change,” by James S.A. Corey

That’s a darned impressive hit rate… over 50% of the Table of Contents selected for Best of the Year volumes. I’m sure there’s an historical precedent if you look hard enough, but I can’t remember one. And I tried.

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May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

Friday, June 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The cover story in the May/June issue of F&SF is Ted Kosmatka’s cave man tale “The Stone War.” Kevin P Hallett reviews it at Tangent Online, saying:

This novelette length fantasy reveals a world where a stone man lives with total indifference to the people passing through. The one brutal truth is that he kills anyone who directly or indirectly attacks him. At first, the consequences seem unimportant and localized. Until a king determines to find a way to use the stone man as a weapon to forward his desire for conquest. However, that proves to be much more of a challenge than he imagined. An interesting new look at what deterrent means and trying to curb our impulse to grow at the expense of others… well-written and engaging.

In fact, Kevin seems to like a lot of the May/June issue. Here he is on Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Steamboat Gothic.”

A horror mystery about a Louisiana sheriff investigating the gruesome murder of a film crew. Sheriff Chew has his own agenda that blurs the lines around justice, using fake evidence to pin the crime of someone who deserved to be jailed – a Deep Southern view. However, the real criminal turns out to be someone even the sheriff didn’t imagine. Cowdrey’s style quickly pulls the reader into the story, getting them invested in the characters and storyline. An enjoyable story to be sure.

The cover is by Max Bertolini. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, Part IV: The Complete Morgaine

Friday, June 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Last year, in my series on The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, I mentioned The Morgaine Saga, a collection of the first three novels in her classic sword-and-sorcery series. That’s a fine book, but there are two problems with it. One, it doesn’t include the final novel, Exile’s Gate, and two, it’s been out of print for over a frickin’ decade.

Ah well… I guess when you’re a vintage paperback collector, you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The Morgaine Saga was a terrific book, and collectors were glad to get it (when we could find it). Gate of Ivrel, Cherryh’s first novel, and the first book in the series, was a breakout book for her. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer the year after it appeared, and it helped launch her entire career (for the intimate details of her start in the business, watch CJ’s talk at 2016 the Nebula Awards last month.)

In honor of CJ’s Grand Master at the Nebula’s, DAW gave out samples of her work to all the attendees. And I was surprised and delighted to find a copy of The Complete Morgaine among the giveaways. Published in trade paperback last year, it contains all four books for the first time in a single volume:

Gate of Ivrel (1976)
Well of Shiuan (1978)
Fires of Azeroth (1979)
Exile’s Gate (1988)

I guess it’s true what they say… good things come to he who waits. The Complete Morgaine was published in September 2015 by DAW Books. It is 816 pages, priced at $20, with a cover by Michael Whelan. It also contains an introduction by Andre Norton. We previously surveyed The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh (and there’s more than you think): Part I, Part II, and Part III.

The Fu Manchu That Almost Was

Friday, June 3, 2016 William Patrick Maynard Comments 1 comment

The late Harry Alan Towers is best remembered by Sax Rohmer fans for writing and producing five Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee and two Sumuru films starring Shirley Eaton in the 1960s. Towers would later write and produce a third Sumuru film starring Alexandra Kamp in 2003. This effort was a sci-fi reworking of the concept that owed little to Rohmer. What is less well known was that Towers had also spent years trying to make a sixth Fu Manchu film that would also have marked a significant break from its predecessors.

Towers’ original treatment was copyrighted and revised several times over the years. The project started life as Fu Manchu, Master of the World (1979) and was also registered under the titles, The Secret of Fu Manchu (1989), Fu Manchu, Emperor of Crime (1992), and Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu (1995). Towers came closest to seeing the project become reality when Vine International Pictures and LolaFilms teamed in 1999 to co-produce The Fiendish Trap of Fu Manchu (a title that perhaps sought to make atonement for the 1980 Peter Sellers spoof, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu).

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A Downed Pilot, a Mad Duke, and a Riddle in the Grove of Monsters: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

Thursday, June 2, 2016 Patty Templeton Comments 0 Comment

To my left, dwarf iris. To my right, lilacs. All around me, sunlight. Because truly, the only appropriate location to write a review of Frederic S. Durbin’s latest novel, A Green and Ancient Light, is in a garden with a blue sky above and a wisteria-tinged wind teasing by.

OK, OK. A sacred wood would also be suitable… but they are harder to find in Iowa. What’s not hard to find in Iowa? Cornfields. Which is where I procured my copy of A Green and Ancient Light, after it was shot there by a trebuchet. The book smelled of clouds after I ripped the package open. If you doubt me, I have a notice typed by Durbin himself on a 1935 L.C. Smith 8 to prove it.

Do I squeal now or later? How about always. I LOVE THIS BOOK. It left me breathless. I didn’t want to move after I finished it. Moving meant breaking a beautiful moment. Moving meant stepping out of the sublime. Moving meant letting go of a village that I wanted to live in. A Green and Ancient Light is SO GOOD.

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Art of the Genre: Gunsmith Light Novel Now on Kickstarter

Thursday, June 2, 2016 Scott Taylor Comments 0 Comment

AotG News!

Art of the Genre lead author Scott Taylor has just created his first science fiction novel to be released on the Kickstarter platform. This is the 8^th novel either written or edited by Taylor on the crowdfunding site, and the first since Airship of Fools in August 2014.

Taylor explains,

The concept for the novel was born from the Massively Multi-Player Online games that bloomed into popularity at the turn of the millennia, and expanded upon by works like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and Riki Kawahara’s Sword Art Online. I blend elements of modern day pop culture with aspects of William Gibson’s Neuromancer in the otherworldly setting of ASH. Here, unique player personalities must face the challenges of depression, the concept of second lives conflicting with lives in the real world, and the pressures of an extended ‘deep dive.’

The Gunsmith: Tales of a Time in ASH campaign ends on June 8^th, and can be supported on Kickstarter here.