Black Gate – Page 707 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Feverish Dreams of Years Past: The 1980 Comics Annual

Sunday, January 10, 2016 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

The 1980 Comics Annual (I’ve decided to again delay my ongoing series of essays about C.S. Lewis, for a number of reasons. As it happens, though, there’s another piece I’ve been meaning to write for a while. So here it is.)

When I was very young I used to have a copy of an early example of a North American comics trade paperback: Potlatch Publication’s The 1980 Comics Annual. It’s an anthology of work from then-new Canadian comics creators. I remember being fascinated by the weird mix of stories in it, humour and science fiction and horror and fantasy and action. I lost that copy (as children do lose things), and for years afterward the stories lived in my mind as feverish dreams, images of panels I could not contextualise. At some point I found a copy in a back-issue bin and was able to read the thing again. Thanks to the internet, I’ve learned a bit about the background of the book and some of its contributors. But it’s still strange to me, a mixed bag of rough talent and accomplished stories. I’m going to describe the book and what I’ve found out about it, and I’d love to find out more from anyone else who can chip in.

Potlatch Publications was and is a small Canadian company under the editorship of Robert F. Nielsen. From 1975 to 1985 Potlatch put out a yearly series of books, the Canadian Children’s Annuals, based on English Boy’s Own and Girl’s Own books. I remember some of the CCA volumes; the cover of the 1980 volume in particular is burned into my mind. The Annuals mixed short articles, fiction, and comics. And in 1980, an editor named Ian Carr put together an annual for Potlatch entirely filled with comics, 128 pages, 64 of which were in colour. Some of the contributors came from the CCA books, and some (I think) from elsewhere.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Escaping the Darkness, or What to Do When Your Imaginary World Gives You Real Nightmares

Sunday, January 10, 2016 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

Virtually anyone who writes dark fantasy, horror, thrillers, or any other type of fiction with violent or disturbing subjects, sooner or later gets asked the question, “How do you write that kind of stuff?” While it may be couched as a question, it usually sounds like and is intended to be a moral judgement along the lines of, “That’s awful stuff, and only awful, dangerous, twisted people write that stuff (or so I believe), and I don’t think you’re awful, so please don’t write it anymore – you’re making me uncomfortable.”

However, that same question can be asked as a no-judgement, sincere query, one writer to another. That’s what happened when my Advanced Fantasy Writing class was doing a Q & A via Skype with Laura Anne Gilman, a Nebula nominated author, prolific novelist, and former NYC editor a few weeks ago. One of my students asked a really good question: “If you’re writing something really dark, and have to go to a really disturbing emotional place to do it; how do you get out of that headspace when you’re done?”

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New Treasures: Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, edited by Christopher Golden

Sunday, January 10, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Do you remember when vampires were terrifying creatures of the night? Not moody boyfriends who sparkled in sunlight, or lovers who assisted their tough private investigator girlfriends in a series of encounters with deadly yet also strangely sexy werewolves and other paranormal beasts?

I sure do. And so does Christopher Golden, editor of the new anthology Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, which gathers tales of terror in which vampires are figures of overwhelming terror once more. It includes brand new stories from Charlaine Harris, Scott Smith, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Michael Kortya, Kelley Armstrong, Brian Keene, David Wellington, Seanan McGuire, and Tim Lebbon. This is old-school vampire fiction, for fans who wouldn’t have it any other way.

Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror was published by Gallery Books on October 6, 2015. It is 544 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $13.99 for the digital edition. Click on the images above for larger versions of the front and back covers.

Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek (2009)

Sunday, January 10, 2016 William I. Lengeman III Comments 8 comments

Fans of Eighties new wave music might remember a song by Timbuk 3 called “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.” Which should have been the theme song for the J.J. Abrams “reboot” of Star Trek. I’d heard about the much maligned lens flares favored by Abrams but until I actually watched the movie I truly had no idea. It’s such an extreme exercise in cinematic brightness that I found myself fighting off a headache at a few points.

But enough of that. Let’s have a few words about reboots. I don’t care much for them. Nor do I care much for the concept, in general. Which can only come about when lawyers and accountants make decisions that should be made by “creative” types. Yes, I understand that the making of TV shows and movies is not a charitable endeavor but when a pretense of creativity isn’t present then what’s the point?

Which is the whiner’s way of saying that even though I was a fairly avid fan of the original Star Trek series I had no interest in watching the reboots. I might have never watched them if it hadn’t been for this movie rewatch project. But after tackling the first two “real” Star Trek movies I found myself getting curious about how the reboots had played out. So I skipped ahead in the chronology.

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Black Static #49 Now on Sale

Sunday, January 10, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m hearing reliable reports that Black Static #49, published in Britain and shipped across the pond to eager readers here in America, is now available around the country.

Issue #49 is cover-dated November/December, and contains six stories:

“Dirt Land” by Ralph Robert Moore
“Going To The Sun Mountain” by Thana Niveau
“The Toilet” by Stephen Hargadon
“Gramma Tells A Story” by Erinn L. Kemper
“The Ice Plague” by Tim Lees
“The Climb” by Simon Bestwick

The magazine’s regular columns include Coffinmaker’s Blues by Stephen Volk and Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker, plus two review columns: Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); and Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews). Their review columns are a model for anyone who wants to see how to do attractive magazine layout, with plenty of book covers, movie stills, and behind-the-scenes pics.

Issue 49 is nearly 100 pages and comes packed with new dark fantasy and horror, and top-notch art. Black Static is the sister magazine of Interzone (see the latest issue here); both are published by TTA Press in the UK. The distinguished Andy Cox is the editor of both.

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A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

Saturday, January 9, 2016 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Jonathan Strahan is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed editors in the genre. He’s edited the annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year since 2007, as well as some of our most highly regarded original anthologies — including the Infinity series (Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, etc) and the Fearsome books (Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics), all for Solaris. He’s also edited (with Terry Dowling) one of my favorite ongoing series, the five volumes in the monumental Early Jack Vance from Subterranean Press.

But the work that truly made me a Strahan fan was a brief (four volume) series he did exclusively for the Science Fiction Book Club, Best Short Novels. I’d been a member of the SFBC since the age of twelve but, after leaving Canada for grad school in 1987 and moving around after that, I’d let my membership lapse. I received plenty of invites to rejoin after settling here in St. Charles, but it was Strahan’s first volume in the series, Best Short Novels: 2004, that finally enticed me to do it. I’ve never regretted it.

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Future Treasures: A Gathering of Shadows, Book 2 of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Saturday, January 9, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

V.E. Schwab made a considerable splash with her first book from Tor, the superhero tale Vicious, which Matthew David Surridge called “a well-paced and sharply-structured novel” in his BG review. She began an ambitious two-volume series with A Darker Shade of Magic, published last year by Tor. The second and concluding volume, A Gathering of Shadows, arrives in hardcover next month.

A Darker Shade of Magic introduced us to Kell, a magician and ambassador who travels between parallel Londons, carrying royal correspondence between universes. He’s also a smuggler. When a thief named Delilah Bard robs him, and then saves him from a nasty fate, the two find themselves on the run, jumping between worlds. As the second volume begins, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events… as strange things begin to emerge from Black London, the place of which no one speaks.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Beyond the Black River”

Saturday, January 9, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward continue their re-read of The Conquering Sword of Conan by Robert E. Howard, the third omnibus volume collecting the complete tales of Conan, with “one of the most famous Conan stories of all,” and one of the last, “Beyond the Black River.” It was originally published in in the May-June 1935 issue of Weird Tales.

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,” the borderer said, still starring somberly at the Cimmerian. “Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarism must ultimately triumph.”

Bill: So concludes “Beyond the Black River,” a story that might almost be REH’s thesis on his philosophy of civilization. It is a story that introduces new elements to Conan’s world, demonstrating again how flexible and expandable REH’s Hyborian blueprint was even after sixteen complete short (and not so short) stories and a novel. But it also maintains a continuity with what has come before, giving us perilous adventure with supernatural antagonists and, of course, Conan being Conan.

Howard: I think it builds nicely on what we’ve seen before. As it happens, though, it’s not exactly a great introduction to Conan himself, or even the Hyborian Age… It’s very different from the preceding Conan stories, feeling very much like a tale of Indian warfare, and Conan himself, while busy doing incredible things, is almost a secondary character.

Read the complete exchange here.

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Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Friday, January 8, 2016 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

I’ve been on something of a Fletcher Pratt kick recently, ever since I purchased a fine collection of old paperbacks that included five of his books, including The Well of the Unicorn and Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (co-written with L. Sprague de Camp), both of which I recently wrote up as Vintage Treasures.

Way down in the bottom of that box was a copy of The Compleat Enchanter. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. Everyone who collects classic American fantasy has two or three (or five or six) copies of The Compleat Enchanter. It’s something of a classic, in a worn sort of way. It doesn’t get much attention these days, because it’s a light, humorous tale, the very opposite of the kind of thing that usually interests me. And so, out of habit, I didn’t give it much attention.

That was a mistake. I’ve ignored The Compleat Enchanter for the better part of 40 years, but when I finally picked it up this week I was quickly captivated. Yes, it is a screwball fantasy, about a psychology professor named Harold Shea who stumbles on equations that transport him into parallel universes, and who uses this ability to visit magical worlds shaped by the mythologies and legend of Earth. But it’s also crammed full of crisp dialog and surprising twists, and the unique charm of De Camp and Pratt, two American masters who were obviously having a lot of fun with the their creation.

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Become a Trader Among the Stars with Merchant of Venus

Friday, January 8, 2016 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

In 1988, during the golden age of Avalon Hill, the company published an unusual game called Merchant of Venus. The title, of course, was a play on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice… the game was set in a cluster of stars far from Earth, and Venus didn’t feature at all (It also had nothing to do with Frederik Pohl’s classic novella “The Merchant of Venus,” first published in the August 1972 Worlds of If, which featured the first appearance of the Heechee).

Unlike Avalon Hill’s other science fiction games — like Stellar Conquest and Alpha Omega — the focus of Merchant of Venus wasn’t crushing your opponents with massive fleets of warships. Players were explorers and traders in an unexplored part of the galaxy during a reawakening of galactic civilization, discovering long-lost pockets of civilization, and opening fabulously profitable trade routes. Playable with up to six players, the game also had an intriguing solitaire version, which featured action-heavy combat with a strange militaristic race. The Avalon Hill version was designed by Richard Hamblen, and has been out of print for nearly 30 years. Like most Avalon Hill games, it’s highly collectible now, with copies selling for $35-100 on eBay.

In 2012 Fantasy Flight Games, in partnership with Stronghold Games, released a deluxe edition of Merchant of Venus, with upgraded components and a two-sided game board. One side features the classic game by Richard Hamblen; flip it over, and you can play a more contemporary version of the game, with new rules by Robert A. Kouba.

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