Black Gate – Page 716 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Collecting Robert A. Heinlein

Sunday, December 6, 2015 John ONeill Comments 28 comments

Over the past few weeks I’ve discussed some interesting patterns I’ve seen among paperback SF and fantasy collectors. These are hardly profound observations — they’re obvious to anyone who’s been collecting science fiction paperbacks for the past twenty years. But it has been interesting to see some well-known trends quantified.

The catalyst for all this was a sequence of similar online auctions by a single seller, for roughly comparable lots of paperback books by some of the most popular genre writers of the 20th Century. All were in virtually perfect shape — the kind of auctions that bring out die-hard collectors. The results were fairly predictable.

32 books by Arthur C. Clarke	$27.00
35 books by Isaac Asimov	$82.17
56 books by Philip K. Dick	$536.99

Click on the links to see the actual books in question. What we’re seeing here is a pretty fair representation of the popularly and demand for each of these writers some two to three decades after their deaths. So while there’s a wide disparity in prices, that’s to be expected. But I think the really interesting result came from the Heinlein auction.

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Thinking About What Makes The Shining and The Exorcist Work

Sunday, December 6, 2015 Derek Kunsken Comments 2 comments

Linda-Blair-in-The-Exorcist-1973 — Aw, man. This just ain’t right.

Sometimes in the course of growing as a writer, you fluke into a success before you grow the skills to consistently hit that success. My second-ever fiction sale was to Asimov’s Science Fiction in 2008 and over the following two-and-a-half years, I collected nothing but rejections from them.

My 2008 story had accidentally included enough good elements that it made it into the magazine, but I didn’t understand what those science fictional elements were or how to use them properly until about 2011.

I think the same thing happened to me with a story called “Dog’s Paw.” I thought I’d been writing a lit story when in fact, I had included horror elements that eventually got it published in a horror anthology, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, and a superb audio version at Pseudopod.org (British people make everything sound extra-good). After my experience with my 2008 Asimov’s story, I was under no illusions that I was a competent horror writer, just a lucky one.

This spring, I decided to try to write a horror story. Knowing my weakness, I deliberately tried to figure out what goes into a good horror story. And when I want to analyze story structure, I go first to movies, because I find it easier to see the moving parts.

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A Slick and Stylish Potpourri of Geeky Hipness: Ernest Cline’s Armada

Sunday, December 6, 2015 James McGlothlin Comments 2 comments

Armada
By Earnest Cline
Crown Books (368 pages, $26 in hardcover, July 14, 2015)

Ernest Cline’s 2011 debut novel Ready Player One was quite the achievement. As I said in my review earlier this year here at Black Gate, Ready Player One was more than just a cute cyberpunk romp. I think it showed real ingenuity, portraying what science fiction could be for a new generation. And I thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s no surprise to me that Steven Spielberg is slated to direct a movie version, hopefully sometime in the near future. I was incredibly excited about reading Ernest Cline’s second novel Armada.

There are quite a few similarities between Armada and Ready Player One. For example, Armada‘s protagonist, Zack Lightman, fits the standard NSA profile for contemporary geek: young loner who spends more time in a make-believe world of science fiction and fantasy books, movies, and videogames than he does in the “real” world. Zack particularly dreams of flying off on some grand space-faring adventure, mainly because he spends most of his time on a hugely popular online flight simulator called, coincidentally, Armada.

Zack later learns, however, along with everyone else on the planet, that the Armada game is actually a testing device for evaluating and then recruiting people for real spaceflight and warfare against an alien force. And — surprise, surprise — it turns out that Zack Lightman is one of the top players. Does this sound anything like The Last Starfighter to anyone? Similar, but not quite.

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Future Treasures: City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

Saturday, December 5, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs, the first volume in The Divine Cities, was nominated for the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards, and came in second for the Locus Award. That’s a very impressive trifecta, and not something you see very often. Tor.com described it as “an atmospheric and intrigue-filled novel of dead gods, buried histories, and a mysterious, protean city,” (and Peadar Ó Guilín called it “The best fantasy I’ve read so far this year. Great stuff”), and that’s what first sparked my interest. The second volume, City of Blades, arrives next month, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

A generation ago, the city of Voortyashtan was the stronghold of the god of war and death, the birthplace of fearsome supernatural sentinels who killed and subjugated millions.

Now, the city’s god is dead. The city itself lies in ruins. And to its new military occupiers, the once-powerful capital is a wasteland of sectarian violence and bloody uprisings.

So it makes perfect sense that General Turyin Mulaghesh — foul-mouthed hero of the battle of Bulikov, rumored war criminal, ally of an embattled Prime Minister — has been exiled there to count down the days until she can draw her pension and be forgotten.

At least, it makes the perfect cover story.

The truth is that the general has been pressed into service one last time, dispatched to investigate a discovery with the potential to change the world — or destroy it.

The trouble is that this old soldier isn’t sure she’s still got what it takes to be the hero.

City of Blades will be published by Broadway Books on January 26, 2016. It is 296 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

The Wasteland: Swan Song by Robert McCammon

Saturday, December 5, 2015 Sean Stiennon Comments 3 comments

Swan Song
By Robert McCammon
Pocket Books (956 pages, $4.95, June 1987)
Cover by Rowena Morrill

Post-apocalypse tales are a rising star these days. Mad Max: Fury Road is rightfully acknowledged as a high-water mark for action films. Most recently the release of Bethseda’s Fallout 4 has anyone who calls himself a gamer holed up for power-armored adventure in the American wasteland. Whether the apocalypses are caused by nuclear blasts, hordes of the undead, or simply climate change, they consistently capture the imagination of millions.

The appeal is easy to understand. Our imaginations suggest that the collapse of civilization would give us ordinary people a chance to be heroes, to transform our baseball bats into swords, to see our commuter vehicles transformed into heroes’ chariots. We spend idle time in fluorescent-lit cubicles wondering how we’d fare if a mushroom cloud rose over the horizon.

Most post-apocalyptic settings have a clear surface pessimism. The end of civilization isn’t generally something to smile at. But I think the genre’s enduring popularity can be found in an underlying optimism about the ability of (relatively) ordinary people to become heroes in the most extreme circumstances imaginable. The misery of radioactive mutations or mass deaths are the grim background which makes the courage and heroism of the survivors all the brighter.

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New Treasures: The Messenger of Fear Novels by Michael Grant

Saturday, December 5, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Michael Grant is the best selling author of Gone and BZRK. His latest series, which began with Messenger of Fear, follows the adventures of Mara, who wakes up in a graveyard and eventually becomes the Messenger’s apprentice, punishing the wicked who act out of selfishness and greed.

Messenger of Fear was reprinted in paperback in August and the sequel, The Tattooed Heart, was released in hardcover in September. Lisa McMann, bestselling author of the Wake trilogy, calls the first volume “A palpitating horror fantasy mash-up with a genius twist that blew my mind.” Sounds like this one’s worth investigating.

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Q26 Now Available

Saturday, December 5, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly made a big splash this month with the arrival of the long-awaited anthology of their first few years, The Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Volume 1.

But while that’s been grabbing the headlines, don’t forget that HFQ is one of the most reliable regular sources of new adventure fantasy, and that they just released their 26th quarterly issue. This one contains short stories by Robert Zoltan, Jon Byrne, and J.R. Restrick, and poetry by Mary Soon Lee, Eliza Victoria, and Ann Keith. Here’s the complete fiction TOC:

“The Voice of the Green Flame,” by J.R. Restrick. In a besieged city a king must make horrid decisions and plume ancient horrors. This story is S&S/Weird Fiction at its finest!

“Beggar’s Belief,” by Jon Byrne. Life among the dregs of society is not easy by any stretch, but there are those who master the difficulties and eke out their living. Among the dangers they face, one rises high above the rest — hope.

“The Blue Lamp,” by Robert Zoltan. Adventure fiction in the classic style, Zoltan’s tale will take you from the mundane and into a world of magic and mystery not seen since the glory days of the pulps.

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Kull and the Quest for Identity

Friday, December 4, 2015 William Patrick Maynard Comments 3 comments

NOTE: The following article was first published on April 18, 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 over 5 years and 250 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.

Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom” is a remarkable advancement upon “Exile of Atlantis” and the “Am-ra of the Ta’an” fragments. Howard’s first published story of what will later be known as the Pre-Cataclysmic Age leaves behind the derivative world of Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches to mine new territory in terms of character and setting as well as genre.

Kull, the barbarian who has recently seized the crown and now must struggle to keep it, marks a significant break from both Howard and the fantasy genre’s past while continuing to build upon the age-old theme of the outsider as noble savage. Howard was hardly the first young man who felt a sense of kinship with such characters. It is not hard to imagine the aspiring young writer, alienated in Cross Plains, pouring his feelings into the exiled Atlantean who remains an outcast even after rising to the throne of Valusia.

The story opens with Kull making a proper royal entrance. Unsurprisingly, the barbarian king’s empathy rests not with Valusia’s finest archers and trumpeters, but with the mercenaries paid to act as foot soldiers – men who show the king little respect, but who demonstrate integrity for all their brash honesty. This sets the stage for the introduction of Brule, the noble Pict destined to become Kull’s loyal companion. While Brule enters the series as a figure of suspicion, Kull soon modifies his opinion of the man’s character. Brule, like Kull, is a man of integrity.

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Vintage Treasures: Rudy Gutierrez Does Nalo Hopkinson

Friday, December 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

About fifteen years ago, I received an unsolicited fantasy story from a young author in Canada. I rejected it, and the author didn’t take the rejection well. She wrote me a pretty grumpy letter.

You sometimes get grumpy letters when you reject stories. Usually the best thing to do is ignore them. But I didn’t in this case, because the author had a point. It was an excellent story, and she knew it. The author’s name was Nalo Hopkinson, and I had rejected her story because of its frankly adult tone and content.

Well, she took me to task for that. Black Gate was brand new at the time, and Nalo challenged me for rejecting a story purely on the grounds of sexual content. She found it cowardly, and I didn’t blame her. That’s no way to build a reputation for a new magazine, she said. In my response, I told her I would have loved to publish her story — but not in Black Gate, which we had worked very hard to make suitable for readers 12 and up. I thought there was a clear market niche for a family-friendly fantasy magazine, and had set out to create one. Her story was very strong, but no so strong that I was willing to go back on the promises I’d made to our investors, distributors and advertisers. Nalo got that immediately, wrote me a warm and thoughtful response, and we hit it off. I’ve followed her career with great interest ever since — and what a stellar career it’s been.

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A Rose By Any Other Name?

Friday, December 4, 2015 Violette Malan Comments 4 comments

It was back when I was teaching a course on satire that I understood for the first time the true importance of characters’ names, and the titles of books. It’s more obvious, perhaps, in a satirical work than in any other, but names – whether of people or novels – are vitally important.

It behooves us as writers to pay them great attention.

To illustrate what I mean, let me show you an example from a satirical work that’s also considered SF, Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange. What’s the significance of the title? We all know what an orange is, don’t we? A type of citrus fruit that grows in semi-tropical areas, which can be eaten, or made into juice, or marmalade or some other specimen of usefulness.

We all know what a clockwork is. A mechanism designed and built by humans to run other items or machines, initially clocks (hence the name), but subsequently a variety of other things. On a large scale, they could run factories, on a small scale, toys. We still find people who would say a “wind-up” or “clockwork” toy, particularly a “clockwork man.”

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