Black Gate – Page 732 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A New Star Trek TV Series is in the Works

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Hollywood Reporter is reporting that a new Star Trek TV series is in development, for broadcast in early 2017.

The new series will be the sixth live-action show to be based on Gene Roddenberry’s original creation, which ran from 1966-67 on NBC. It will be produced by Alex Kurtzman, co-writer of the 2009 reboot Star Trek and its sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, for CBS Television Studios. It is scheduled to premiere in January 2017 with a preview episode on CBS, before it moves exclusively to CBS All Access, an on-demand and streaming service.

The new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966… A search is under way for a writer to take on the cult hit. The franchise is poised to celebrate its 50th anniversary as the original series debuted Sept. 8, 1966…

CBS TV Studios distributed the original series, which was produced by Paramount Television and Desilu Productions. Created by Gene Roddenberry and starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, the series ran for three seasons and 79 episodes from 1966-67 on NBC and became a monster hit via syndication. It spawned an animated series (1973-74), a series of feature films — starting in 1979 — and four TV follow-ups including The Next Generation (1987-1994), Deep Space Nine (1993-99), Voyager (1995-2001) and Enterprise (2001-05).

News of a new Star Trek TV series comes as the franchise has been mired in rights issues between CBS and Paramount after Viacom merged with CBS in 2000. CBS Corp. absorbed Paramount for television, while Paramount Studios — the company that distributed the films — went to Viacom.

No news yet on what time frame the series will take place it, although it is reportedly not linked to the new movie franchise. Read the complete article here. (Hat tip to io9 for the news.)

Vintage Treasures: Cautionary Tales by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

There’s nothing quite like finally laying your hands on a book that’s eluded you for years. That happened this week with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s first collection, Cautionary Tales, published in paperback by Warner Books in 1980 with a moody and gorgeous cover by Leo & Diane Dillon, showing a group of aliens and humans conducting a (surprisingly effective) seance. Cautionary Tales collects 13 science fiction and dark fantasy stories published between 1971 and 1978 in magazines like Galaxy and IF, and anthologies like Chrysalis. and Faster Than Light.

It has an introduction by none other than James Tiptree, Jr, only recently revealed as ex-Army major and CIA operative Alice Sheldon in 1980. Tiptree writes:

If you are looking for the jolly engineering dilemmas of plastic space jocks on the Aldebaran mail run, look elsewhere. You will indeed find a spaceship here, but what goes on among the all-too-real crew of “Dead in Irons” is harsh human shame, a story of innocence compelled to participate in ghastly deeds, able at the end only to strike one lost blow of vengeance. Deftly touched behind the grind of pain is a convincing extrapolation of the star civilization that bore it.

On the other hand, and just to surprise you, Yarbro has given here what is the only merry, even charming tale of After the Holocaust that I can recall: “Frog Pond,” And for still another facet, view the curdlingly mundane problems besetting a lady ghoul attempting to gain access to the city morgue, in “Disturb Not My Slumbering Fair.” (It should be noted that Yarbro does a brisk business in vampires in another of her many lines of work.) But for pure alien beauty, remarkably seen through alien eyes, “Un Bel Di” is quite unforgettable, even apart from the cruelty that is perpetrated there.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Haining’s The Final Adventures of SH

Monday, November 2, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 1 comment

There are a LOT of books, fiction and non, about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle that are worthy of standing alongside the sixty-story Canon of original Holmes tales. Today, we’re going to look at one I particularly like.

Barnes and Noble has been reproducing classic works for years and selling them at affordable prices. Their editions are a great way to get folks introduced to the classics.

But their output ranges father afield, and my Sherlockian bookshelf includes several of their titles, such as The Sherlock Holmes Companion, The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

This last book is similar to the out of print and often difficult to find Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha by Jack Tracy. Both books include the “almost Sherlock Holmes” stories and plays that don’t fit in the Canon, but are certainly in the neighborhood. Back before you could find everything you ever wanted to look for on the Internet, The Final Adventures was quite the resource.

The introduction discusses the pieces that make up the book and you will find some interesting tidbits (much of which was previously in Tracy’s book).

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Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The annual Nebula Awards Showcase volumes, which have been published every year since 1966, gather the most acclaimed short fiction our industry produces each year — including all the Nebula Award winners, and many of the runners-up — as well as author appreciations, yearly wrap-ups, novel excerpts, and other fascinating articles. The 2015 volume contains some of the most talked-about fiction of the past several years, including Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” Sophia Samatar’s “Selkie Stories Are For Losers,” Aliette de Bodard’s “The Waiting Stars,” and many others. Here’s the description.

The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories of the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The editor, selected by SFWA’s anthology Committee (chaired by Mike Resnick), is American science fiction and fantasy writer Greg Bear, author of over thirty novels, including the Nebula Award-winning Darwin’s Radio and Moving Mars. This year’s volume includes the winners of the Andre Norton, Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, as well as the Nebula Award winners, and features Ann Leckie, Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Aliette de Bodard, and Vylar Kaftan, with additional articles and poems by authors such as Robin Wayne Bailey, Samuel R. Delany, Terry A. Garey, Deborah P Kolodji, and Andrew Robert Sutton.

We covered the previous volume, Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson, last May (and the TOCs for the now-classic first three volumes are here). Read all about this year’s Nebula winners here.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 will be published by Pyr Books December 8, 2015. It is 347 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Martin Mundt

Sunday, November 1, 2015 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

This week’s Pro-Tip comes from Martin Mundt, who has a cult following among attendees of live readings series in Chicago, and fans of dark, twisted, humorous horror. His third short story collection, Synchronized Sleepwalking, has just come out.

To Outline or Not to Outline — What Works for You?

I don’t know if I approach the concept of outlining a story in the same way as anyone else. I start with an idea, and then I begin brainstorming about it, coming up with scenes, characters, dialogue and descriptions that seem appropriate. These can be anywhere from one sentence to one page long. Somewhere along the line of writing down these bits and pieces of the story – whether they’re bits and pieces I end up using or not – I end up figuring out the story and the characters. I normally end up with between 4 and 20 pages of notes, and I usually get the opening and closing scenes near the beginning of the process. The bulk, but not all, of the scenes, in the middle of the story, come later. Then I arrange the scenes in order, and fit them all together from beginning to end.

So, it’s not an outline actually, but it’s the way I’ve always written stories, and probably one of the reasons my stories sound a little off. For good or bad, I can’t say.

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When the End of the World is a Mercy Killing: Cthulhu Apocalypse

Sunday, November 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Pelgrane Press has produced some of my favorite RPGs and game adventures over the last few years, including The Dying Earth, 13th Age, and the brilliant Ashen Stars. Their latest release, Cthulhu Apocalypse, is a trio of linked adventures for Trail of Cthulhu, which suppose that that the world ended on November 2nd, 1936 and, now that the stars are right, horrific aliens — and darker things — have claimed the remains of the planet.

Cthulhu Apocalypse consists of three standalone products. The first, The Dead White World, contains five linked adventures in the aftermath of disaster that take Investigators through Britain, across the sea to America, and beyond the veils of reality as they struggle to survive. The Apocalypse Machine is a sandbox setting for the award-winning Gumshoe system, which gives Game Masters the tools to create their own global catastrophe, from the first strange rumblings to the final, cataclysmic event. And the third, Slaves of the Mother, contains three long adventures set years later, as the few survivors find their humanity cracking and moulting in the process of becoming something new.

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Finding One Girl in the Whole Solar System: Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance

Sunday, November 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cat Valente changed the way I collect books.

Actually, there’s a bit of a story there. I first met Cat at the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2005. We had tiny side-by-side booths in the back corner of the vast Dealer’s Room. I was hawking the first few issues of my fledgling adventure fantasy magazine, and she was selling her first books, including her novel The Labyrinth, and her poetry collection Apocrypha. We hit it off immediately. At the end of the con I bought a copy of The Labyrinth, and she autographed it for me. “I’ve only signed a few of these,” she admitted. “And I never know what to write.”

Fast forward to 2006, at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas. Cat’s fourth novel, In the Night Garden, had just been released, and everyone was talking about it. It would eventually receive a World Fantasy Award nomination, and win the Tiptree Award. I bought a copy, and asked her to sign it. “I still don’t know what to write when I autograph books,” she confessed. “What should I say?”

“Well, if you’re leaving it up to me,” I said, “I think you should write, ‘To My One True Love, John.'” Cat laughed, scribbled something in the book, and I left happy.

Now, I bring a lot of books home when I go to conventions. I mean, a lot. Boxes filled with books. I sit in my big green chair and unpack them happily, humming to myself. Sometimes my wife Alice will come and watch disapprovingly, and comment how some of the money I used could also have come in handy feeding and clothing our children. Rarely, as she is going on in this manner, a book will catch her eye. Even more rarely, as happened in this instance, she will open a book. And it just so happened that this time she opened my brand new copy of In the Night Garden.

“Who is Catherynne M. Valente?” my darling wife asked, in a casual voice that ten years of marriage had taught me was absolutely not-at-all-casual.

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October Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

Sunday, November 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Issue 45 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated October 2015, is now available.

In his editorial Frost & Fire, editor Curtis Ellett repeats his call for volunteers to help him select the contents of a Best of Swords and Sorcery Magazine anthology:

I have long been considering putting together an anthology of the best stories that have appeared in Swords & Sorcery. At this point it is likely to consist of stories from the first four years, which will end with issue 48 in January. One sticking point is that I don’t want to do the choosing. I’ve had the sole responsibility of choosing the stories that have appeared in Swords & Sorcery, I want someone else to judge them now. Three to five someones, in fact. One brave soul has contacted me to volunteer. If you would like to join him on this editorial board, please contact me at the above email address. The job will pay nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done and your name in the book.

If you’re interested, contact Curtis at editor@swordsandsorcerymagazine.com.

Each issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue contains stories by Rob Francis and Daniel Hand.

Here’s the complete table of contents, with story links.

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Shin Megami Tensei and a Different Take on JRPGs, Part 2: The Side Stories

Sunday, November 1, 2015 Josh Bycer Comments 0 Comment

Previously I talked about what made the main branch of the Shin Megami Tensei series so amazing when it comes to Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) design. While the series has been going strong for over two decades at this point, it doesn’t have anywhere near the same number of titles as Final Fantasy. The reason has to do with how the developers have expanded things with side stories.

Side Stories

The concept of a side story is something we see a lot from Japan: Where a story takes place within the same universe or features the same themes as the main narrative, but has something unique to distinguish it. Some other video game examples are the various titles in the Kingdom Hearts series, or direct sequels such as Final Fantasy X-2.

Due to some side stories remaining exclusive to Japan (at least at this time,) we’re going to focus on the ones that have been ported to the US. With that said, we have several side stories to talk about and I want to save the most popular for last.

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New Treasures: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Saturday, October 31, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

In her review for NPR, Black Gate blogger Amal El-Mohtar raves about Seth Dickinson’s debut fantasy novel from Tor, the tale of a young woman from a conquered people who tries to transform a vast empire from within:

To read The Traitor Baru Cormorant is to sink inexorably into a book that should not be anywhere near as absorbing as it is — to realize that the white-knuckled grip with which you hold it was provoked by several consecutive pages of loans, taxes and commodity trading. It seems impossible that the economics of a fantasy world should be so viscerally riveting, but they are, and it’s incredible: You think you’re on solid ground right up until you feel that ground closing around your throat.

Literally breathtaking… Baru Cormorant as a character is magnificent. I found it impossible not to root for her even amid horrors of her making, to grieve with her and for her at various points, to clench my fists in her defense and in desperate need for her to stay whole. There is so much to admire and so much to mourn throughout the building tragedy of this novel… A crucial, necessary book ― a book that looks unflinchingly into the self-replicating virus of empire, asks the hardest questions, and dares to answer them.

Read the complete review here. We first covered the book here.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant was published by Tor Books on September 15, 2015. It is 400 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Sam Weber. Read an excerpt at Tor.com.