Black Gate – Page 728 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Vintage Treasures: A Lower Deep by Tom Piccirilli

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I read Tom Piccirilli’s A Choir of Ill Children in 2004, and it sent me scrambling to find his other novels. The first I came across was his 2001 novel A Lower Deep, the tale of the Necromancer and his demonic companion Self, who wander the spectral highways as the Necromancer attempts to prevent Armageddon.

The Publishers Weekly review offered a nice summary, but also warned about the novel’s graphic content:

The Necromancer must battle the leader of his old coven, Jebediah DeLancre, who has created a new band of witches intent on forcing Christ to return to Earth prematurely. When Jebediah offers to raise Danielle, the Necromancer’s only love, from the dead in exchange for his cooperation, he finds himself torn between good and evil… a stream of characters, spirits and demons wander in and out of this disturbing tale, including Michael the Archangel, who is wrested from the stomach of the Necromancer’s father. Piccirilli (The Night Class) attempts to lighten the story up with Self’s flippant one-liners, but a glut of gory details will keep readers squirming. This tale is not for the fainthearted…

Piccirilli was also the author of Deep into the Darkness Peering (1999), November Mourns (2005), Headstone City (2006), and The Midnight Road (2007), among others. He died earlier this year.

A Lower Deep was published by Leisure Books in October 2001. It is 363 pages, priced at $5.99 in paperback. A digital edition was released in 2011 by Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink. The cover is uncredited.

Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 4 comments

Joy Chant’s first novel, Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970), was published when she was only twenty-five years old. In the afterword to a later novel she explains how the world of her stories, Vandarei, grew out of fantasies she made up for herself as a child. At one point she made herself the great and majestic Queen of this world. The story of three siblings — Oliver, Penelope, and Nicholas — pulled out of England into the land of Vandarei, it reads a little like the Chronicles of Narnia crossed with The Lord of the Rings and wrung through Alan Garner’s darker fantasies.

The novel has often been dismissed as a mere clone of Tolkien’s work — most recently right here at Black Gate by Brian Murphy — but RMBM is a book that has also received tremendous praise over the decades. In his introduction to the first American edition, published as part of his Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, Lin Carter refers to it as a masterpiece. James Stoddard, author of The High House, calls it the best fantasy novel no one reads. It was the second recipient of the Mythopoeic Award back in 1972.

I first read RMBM about fifteen years ago, but retained only the dimmest memories of it. Rereading it, I will say it is one of the best works of epic high fantasy I’ve ever read. While not the toil of a lifetime, Chant draws on the same deep body of European mythology and archetypal characters as Tolkien with similar power and effect. Maybe due to its roots in her childhood imagination and definitely out of a deep well of talent, in Vanderei, its people, and its legends, Chant created a deeply heartfelt and fantastic world.

A mysterious figure lurking along the garden path sends the children out of this world and into Vandarei out of grave necessity. Penelope and Nicholas materialize along a path trod by the grave and steely princess In’serinna and her retinue. Oliver arrives among the nomadic Khentors and their single-horned horses. All the children have a part to play in an upcoming struggle for the future of Vandarei. Oliver, especially, will find himself tested to his limits.

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Future Treasures: The Rising by Ian Tregillis

Monday, November 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Ian Tregillis is the author of the Milkweed alternate history trilogy for Tor (Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, and Necessary Evil), and Something More Than Night, a murder mystery set in heaven. Emily Mah interviewed him for us in 2012.

His latest fantasy series is The Alchemy Wars trilogy, an epic tale of liberation and war. The first novel, The Mechanical, was released in March; Publishers Weekly called it “Superb alternate history filled with clockwork men and ethical questions on the nature of free will… rich characters and gripping story really make this tale soar,” and it was cited by Flavorwire as one of the 10 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels of 2015 (So Far). The second, The Rising, will be released early next month.

Jax, a rogue Clakker, has wreaked havoc upon the Clockmakers’ Guild by destroying the Grand Forge. Reborn in the flames, he must begin his life as a free Clakker, but liberation proves its own burden.

Berenice, formerly the legendary spymaster of New France, mastermind behind her nation’s attempts to undermine the Dutch Hegemony — has been banished from her homeland and captured by the Clockmakers Guild’s draconian secret police force.

Meanwhile, Captain Hugo Longchamp is faced with rallying the beleaguered and untested defenders of Marseilles-in-the-West for the inevitable onslaught from the Brasswork Throne and its army of mechanical soldiers.

The Rising will be published by Orbit Books on December 1, 2015. It is 480 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Warring Supercomputers, Deep Space, and Cold Equations: 5 Tales from Tomorrow

Monday, November 9, 2015 William I. Lengeman III Comments 0 Comment

5 Tales from Tomorrow
Edited by T. E. Dikty
Crest Books (176 pages, $0.35, December 1957)
Cover by Richard Powers

T.E. Dikty edited a bunch of SF anthologies, mostly throughout the Fifties and many in collaboration with Everett F. Bleiler. Aside from Clifford Simak and perhaps one-hit wonder Tom Godwin, the names in this volume are not quite the SF A-list, but the results are mostly not bad.

“Push-Button Passion,” by Albert Compton Friborg

As I was reading this story I couldn’t help wondering if Friborg was the pseudonym for a better known author – Kurt Vonnegut. It has that whimsical, satirical feel that one tends to associate with Vonnegut. Turns out that it is indeed a pseudonym, but for an academic named Bud Foote, whose SF output was limited to this and one other short story, also published in the Fifties.

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Cemetery Dance 73 Now on Sale

Monday, November 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

There aren’t a lot of print horror magazines left, so I’m grateful we still have Cemetery Dance. It was founded by Richard Chizmar in 1988, while he was still in college, and it is still edited by him today. Cemetery Dance Publications began to publish books in 1992, and quickly outgrew the magazine, but CD Publications has continued to publish approximately two issues a year of the magazine for the past 27 years.

Issue #73 is cover-dated December 2015, and is currently for sale on the CD website (although the issue is listed as forthcoming.) It has new fiction from Gerard Houarner, Keith Minnion, Michael Wehunt, Nik Houser, and Amanda C. Davis. Here’s the complete contents.

Fiction

“A Devil Inside” by Gerard Houarner
“Down There” by Keith Minnion
“The Inconsolable” by Michael Wehunt
“Citizen Flame” by Nik Houser
“Voices Without Voices, Words With No Words” by Amanda C. Davis

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Of Necromancers & Frog Gods – Part One (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Monday, November 9, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 11 comments

NECROMANCER GAMES

OGL and D20

When Wizards of the Coast rolled out the Open Game License for 3^rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, a plethora of third party companies would produce products, leaving players with a seemingly unlimited number of options available for purchase. A few were great, more were terrible and most were in between.

That period was known as the d20 boom, which inevitably led to a d20 bust and is explained in depth in Shannon Appelcline’s tremendous, four-volume RPG history, Designers and Dragons. If you have any interest in role playing history, you will love those books (they are broken up into decades: The Seventies, Eighties, Nineties and Two Thousands).

Along the way, many new and existing companies entered the official Dungeons and Dragons world. One of the most popular and successful was Necromancer Games, founded by Clark Peterson and Bill Webb. Under a different name, Necromancer’s offspring is a major player in the RPG scene today.

The Open Gaming License (OGL) made the 3^rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons mechanics permanently “open use” and the basis of a System Reference Document (SRD). The OGL was accompanied by the d20 license, which verified that third party products were compatible with 3^rd Edition.

The OGL and d20 licenses had distinguishing characteristics and somebody more versed than I in the intricacies should write a post on that whole shebang. Suffice to say here, companies began rolling out d20 products from day one.

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New Treasures: Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Monday, November 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cassandra Rose Clarke is the author of The Wizard’s Promise and The Assassin’s Curse series. Her first novel for adults, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Her latest novel, Our Lady of the Ice, is one of the most intriguing titles to cross my desk this season — featuring a female PI, ruthless gangsters, and robots agitating for independence in an Argentinian colony in Antarctica.

In Argentine Antarctica, Eliana Gomez is the only female PI in Hope City — a domed colony dependent on electricity (and maintenance robots) for heat, light, and survival in the icy deserts of the continent. At the center is an old amusement park — now home only to the androids once programmed to entertain — but Hope City’s days as a tourist destination are long over. Now the City produces atomic power for the mainland while local factions agitate for independence and a local mobster, Ignacio Cabrera, runs a brisk black-market trade in illegally imported food.

Eliana doesn’t care about politics. She doesn’t even care — much — that her boyfriend, Diego, works as muscle for Cabrera. She just wants to save enough money to escape Hope City. But when an aristocrat hires Eliana to protect an explosive personal secret, Eliana finds herself caught up in the political tensions threatening to tear Hope City apart. In the clash of backstabbing politicians, violent freedom fighters, a gangster who will stop at nothing to protect his interests, and a newly sentient robot underclass intent on a very different independence, Eliana finds her job coming into deadly conflict with Diego’s, just as the electricity that keeps Hope City from freezing begins to fail…

From the inner workings of the mob to the story of a revolution to the amazing settings, this story has got it all. Ultimately, however, Our Lady of the Ice questions what it means to be human, what it means to be free, and whether we’re ever able to transcend our pasts and our programming to find true independence.

Our Lady of the Ice was published by Saga Press on October 27, 2015. It is 421 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $13.99 for the digital edition.

2015 World Fantasy Award Winners Announced

Sunday, November 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Unlike last year, I was unable to attend the World Fantasy Convention, but from all reports it was just as exciting and rewarding as ever. They presented the World Fantasy Awards right on time at the end of the convention, and I’m happy to be able to share the winners with you.

For the last several years the coveted Life Achievement Award has been given to two recipients, and this year the judges continued that tradition, presenting the award to both Ramsey Campbell and Sheri S. Tepper for their outstanding service to the fantasy field.

The winners were selected by a panel of judges. This year’s winners of the World Fantasy Awards are:

Novel

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (Random House)

Novella

We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)

Short Fiction

Do You Like to Look at Monsters?, Scott Nicolay (chapbook, Fedogan & Bremer)

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: 1st Person and Tight Limited 3rd – A Closely Related Duo

Sunday, November 8, 2015 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

This is Part 4 in the Choosing Your Narrative POV Series.

We’re continuing our examination of eight POV approaches commonly used in Fantasy. This week you’ll find our second and third POV forms – First Person and Tight Limited 3rd – are so similar they’re virtually identical twins. Think of the I vs. He or She pronouns as names: the equivalent to dubbing twins Mary and Carrie.

1st Person

This uses the I/Me/My pronouns. This can be a very powerful and intimate point of view.

But it can come across as self-indulgent and can slow the pacing of the story. It is more difficult than it first looks to do it successfully, though it’s not nearly as difficult as 2nd Person.

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The November Fantasy Magazine Rack

Sunday, November 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Lots of magazine news in early November. The huge Kickstarter-funded Queers Destroy Horror! special issue of Nightmare shipped, and small press magazine Crossed Genres announced that it will close with the December issue. In reviews, Learned Foote took a look at Emil Ostrovski’s “Tragic Business” in the October Lightspeed, and Richard Horton examined the January 1962 issue of Fantastic, with fiction by Randall Garrett and Erle Stanley Gardner, in his latest retro-review.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our mid-October Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $12.95/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

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