Black Gate – Page 733 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Hallowe’en Post-Mortem 2015: Needle Found in Candy!

Thursday, November 5, 2015 Nick Ozment Comments 8 comments

Photo of a pin found in Halloween candy in Brainerd. Photo courtesy of the Brainerd Police Department *Diligent reader: Please read to end of this blog post for an update to this story

I was watching the news the day after Hallowe’en and was distressed by two stories. The first was about a five-year-old boy who was hit by a car in Minneapolis and died from his injuries. Tragic, but it did not surprise me. Given the circumstances, it’s as predictable as knowing that every year during hunting season somebody somewhere is going to be accidentally shot in the woods. We hope that maybe this year everyone will come home safely, and if not, that it doesn’t happen to one of our own or anyone we know.

The second story took me by complete surprise. What really upset my apple cart was a report out of Brainerd that some kid had found a needle in a Three Musketeers fun-size candy!

The reason the second story came as such a shock is that I have informed people for years that the whole razor-blade or needle in the candy story is an urban legend. It is one that has been reinforced periodically by well-meaning local police departments and (lazy) journalists, causing hysteria that whips parents into a bag-checking frenzy. They comb through the stash checking each individual piece. There are even some local medical centers that offer free x-ray screenings of Hallowe’en candy! The number of cases where these efforts have averted a child inadvertently getting a free but unwanted tongue piercing? Zero. Nada. Zilch. Because it’s never happened. The time and resources would be just as well used sending search crews down into the sewer looking for alligators. Urban legend.

…Until now, I thought, with a sinking heart. Here is a case, apparently, of an urban legend being copy-catted by someone and now entering the banal realm of fact.

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Fantastic Stories of the Imagination September-October Issue Now Available

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Warren Lapine’s new magazine venture Fantastic Stories began publishing in August 2014. If the name sounds familiar, it’s probably because the magazine evolved from the fondly-remembered digest Fantastic Stories, published from 1952-1980 by Ziff-Davis as a companion to Amazing Stories. The new version continues the numbering scheme from the original, starting with issue #219 (August 2014).

Fantastic ceased publication in 1980 when owner (and Dungeons & Dragons publisher) TSR folded it into Amazing Stories. In 1999, the name and logo were briefly revived as the new title for Edward J. McFadden’s Pirate Writings magazine, also published by Warren Lapine’s DNA Publications, starting with issue #16 (Spring 2000). That magazine died in October 2005 and, for a time, the name died with it.

Obviously Lapine couldn’t bear to have the name lie fallow for long. The new Fantastic Stories of the Imagination is a free webzine that publishes original and reprint science fiction and fantasy from both established authors and up-and-coming talent, as well as reviews and commentary. An ebook version is available for all major publishing platforms, and the publisher also produces a yearly omnibus anthology.

The September-October issue, #230, contains two short stories by Dario Ciriello and Beth Cato, flash fiction, and reviews by Carole McDonnell, Adam-Troy Castro, Steven Sawicki, and Gillian Daniels. See the complete TOC here.

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination is edited by Warren Lapine and published by Wilder Publications. It is available free online, and in a variety of digital formats for $2.99. Check out all the details at the website.

We last covered Fantastic Stories with Rich Horton’s retro-reviews of the June 1965 issue, and our look at the anthology Fantastic Stories: Tales of the Weird & Wondrous (with a survey of dozens of covers from the 50s and 60s).

Our mid-October Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.

SFFWorld Announces Kickstarter for Ecotones Ecological SF Anthology

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

The folks over at SFFWorld are working on their latest in a series of themed “pro-am” anthologies. These anthologies bring together big names, rising stars, and relative unknowns around a common theme. This year’s book, Ecotones, is taking a speculative look at ecological issues with stories by Lauren Beukes, Tobias S. Buckell, and Ken Liu. It will come out in December 2015. Other authors include Matthew Hughes, Stephen Palmer, Daniel Ausema, Victor Espinosa, Andrew Leon Hudson (also the editor), Kurt Hunt, Christina Klarenbeek, Jonathan Laidlow, Igor Ljubuncic, P. J. Richards, and Rebecca Schwarz.

(Full disclosure: Contributor/editor Andrew Leon Hudson is a friend of mine here in Madrid. He’s also my most obnoxious beta reader, so he’s serious about clean prose.)

You can check the project’s teaser page to learn more about the stories, which appear to span the realm of speculative fiction from space opera to urban fantasy.

SFFWorld is trying to raise £1,000 to cover costs and pay the authors via a Kickstarter campaign. As inducements they’re offering the anthology, plus bundles including their three previous anthologies and other goodies. Rewards start at the £3 mark, which is cheap for a Kickstarter. While the authors have already been offered a nominal fee, the Kickstarter is pushing for additional £2,500 and £5,000 goals in order to pay them semi-pro or pro rates.

The Kickstarter is on for the entire month of November.

Click here to help the Kickstarter. Check the anthology’s blog for more information and updates.

Sean McLachlan is the author of the historical fantasy novel A Fine Likeness, set in Civil War Missouri, and several other titles, including his action series set in World War One, Trench Raiders. His historical fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence, was published by Black Gate. Find out more about him on his blog and Amazon author’s page.

Crossed Genres Magazine Will Close After December Issue

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Crossed Genres Magazine, the online magazine of science fiction and fantasy with a twist, has announced that its December issue will be its last.

We regret to announce that Crossed Genres Magazine will be closing after issue 36 in December… the magazine has run out of funds to continue. In April 2014 we ran a successful Kickstarter to keep CG Magazine going, but once another year had passed, roughly 90 percent of those who’d pledged to the Kickstarter chose not to renew their memberships. New memberships have been no more than a trickle since…

We considered a lot of other options to try and keep CG Magazine open, but ultimately none of them were viable without further sacrificing our lives and well-being. We’ve now been running CG, and the magazine, for 7 years (with a year’s break for the zine in the middle), and we have no choice but to scale back.

We’re incredibly proud of what CG Magazine managed to accomplish. Providing a SFWA-qualifying venue for talented voices typically under-represented in SFF was always our goal, and we believe we accomplished that…

Crossed Genres Magazine is edited by Bart R. Leib, Kay T. Holt, and Kelly Jennings; past editors include Jaym Gates and Natania Barron. The magazine is published monthly and is free to read online; its first issue appeared September, 2008. The genre (or theme) of the magazine changed each issue; genres included Time Travel, Tragedy, Superhero, Robots and Mystery. The magazine renamed itself Crossed Genres 2.0 and started over at issue #1, Boundaries, in January 2013. Crossed Genres Publications also publishes novels and anthologies, including Salsa Nocturna and the acclaimed Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. We last covered Crossed Genres with issue #25.

Read the complete announcement here.

New Treasures: The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Kim Newman is the author of the classic vampire novel Anno Dracula and its many sequels (including The Bloody Red Baron, Johnny Alucard, and Dracula Cha Cha Cha).

His newest novel is a YA tale set in a boarding school for girls with supernatural abilities in the 1920s, a tale of daring adventure after lights out… and a sinister and deadly conspiracy.

A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school, Drearcliff Grange in Somerset.

Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special, the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians. Several of the pupils also have special gifts like Amy’s, and when one of the girls in her dormitory is abducted by a mysterious group in black hoods, Amy forms a secret, superpowered society called the Moth Club to rescue their friend. They soon discover that the Hooded Conspiracy runs through the School, and it’s up to the Moth Club to get to the heart of it.

The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School was published by Titan Books on October 20, 2015. It is 410 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Amazing15.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

A Prophet Without Honor: J.G. Ballard

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 Thomas Parker Comments 9 comments

After the past several months of Socratic dialogue/pie fight/drunken Hell’s Angels motorcycle-chain melee (in other words, after dozens of articles and hundreds – thousands? – of comments on the Hugo debacle, for you late arrivers), we here at Black Gate have firmly answered the nonmusical question, “What are awards good for?” In a nutshell, we have established that awards can help writers find a wider audience, they can provide a bit of financial leverage for those who win them, and perhaps most of all, they can be tangible forms of validation and encouragement for those whose work is often difficult, lonely, and (unless your name starts with George, has two middle initials, and ends with Martin) financially unrewarding.

All of that being said however, consider this: Tolstoy never won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (He was passed over ten times.) Cary Grant never took home a Best Actor Oscar. Martin Scorsese didn’t win Best Director for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, or Goodfellas — he won for The Departed (do you really want to argue that one, tough guy?) and Howard Hawks, the director of Red River, The Big Sleep, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not, Rio Bravo, and (unofficially) The Thing From Another World, was never even nominated.

F. Scott Fitzgerald never won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction — but Edna Ferber did, the year The Great Gatsby was published. The Best Picture Oscar of 1952 went to The Greatest Show on Earth. (I’ll spare you some Googling and tell you that it’s a Cecil B. DeMille circus picture. Now you just take a minute and think about that.) Try watching The Greatest Show on Earth today — just try. Only don’t do it alone; you’ll definitely want someone present to hear all of your witty zingers and rude asides, or to perform the Heimlich Maneuver if you choke on a buffalo wing during the epic train derailment scene, in which Jimmy Stewart scales unheard-of heights of tragic heroism… all in clown make-up.

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Sasquatch, Chupacabra, and Haunted Puppets: Beasts by Brendan Detzner

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

Far from being a review, what I want to offer you is a warning. If you find yourself in possession of this collection, take precautions to limit the number of stories you finish in one sitting. One or two should be safe. Any more than that and your view of the world around you will begin to … shift. Perhaps you think you’ll avoid misadventure by perusing only the more sedate “normal” selections in this volume.

So which stories in this collection are normal?

Can’t you guess? Consider:

In The Fall – Are monsters born or made? In a struggle between the supernatural and the mad, can there be any doubt who will win every time?

The Chupacabra Versus Sasquatch Variations 1-9 – No matter the time or place, two ancient foes continue to fight, having long forgotten why.

Spirits of the Wind – They are never far and, though we rarely see them, they are always watching us. Always waiting to touch our lives.

A Day And Two Nights When I Was Twenty – Of course, they’re not always content to lightly touch our lives. Sometimes, they want to give us a push.

The Return of Uncle Hungry’s Pizza Time Fun Band – At least clowns can wash away their make-up when the celebrations are finished. For puppets, the smiles stay forever painted in place. And when all the parties are finished, what horrid things they have to say to each other.

I-65 – One of the ironies of rage is that we think our vision is most clear, but that’s when things are most often not what they seem. And forgiveness is not always enough to dispel that illusion.

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The New Yorker on the Tangled Cultural Roots of Dungeons & Dragons

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

In a lengthy and sometimes rambling article for The New Yorker, Jon Michaud reviews Michael Witwer’s new biography Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, with particular focus on the anti-D&D satanic scares of the late 70s, and the apparently surprising fact that Gygax was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. Ultimately though, he finds Gygax a worthy subject for a 320-page biography.

Gygax was an ur-nerd who not only changed the way games are played but who also endured a tumultuous business career that, in the right hands, could make as compelling a story as that of Steve Jobs. He was a high-school dropout who lost his father when he was still young, never had a driver’s license, married early, had six children, two wives, turned an obsession with military war-gaming into a worldwide phenomenon, started a successful company from which he was later pushed out only to return and then be bought out once again. Following a well-trodden path, he went to Hollywood, where he briefly prospered, snorting cocaine and hosting pool parties at King Vidor’s mansion, before failing, miserably, to get a motion picture made. His influence can be seen in everything from video games to The Hunger Games. Like Debbie in Jack Chick’s Dark Dungeons, Gygax, who died in 2008, made his way back to God at the end of his life, writing in January of that year, “All I am is another fellow human that has at last, after many wrong paths and failed attempts, found Jesus Christ.”

Read the complete article here.

Future Treasures: Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Lawrence M. Schoen has been nominated for the Nebula Award three times, and the Hugo Award once, and anticipation is high for his next novel: Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, a far-future SF tale in which humans are long gone but anthropomorphic elephants, exiled to the ghetto world of Barsk, speak with the dead. I met Lawrence at the Nebula Awards banquet earlier this year, and he was kind enough to give me an advance copy. The early reviews contains some of the most effusive praise I’ve seen for a novel this year, with Karl Schroeder calling it “A compulsive page-turner and immensely enjoyable,” Robert J. Sawyer describing it as “Weird, wise, and worldly… a triumph,” and James L. Cambias proclaiming it “Captivating… [a] heartwarming story in a unique and fantastic world… as rich and mysterious as Dune.” Do yourself a favor and grab a copy when it arrives next month.

An historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds.

In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity’s genius-animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races, and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend. The most coveted of these drugs is koph, which allows a small number of users to interact with the recently deceased and learn their secrets.

To break the Fant’s control of koph, an offworld shadow group attempts to force the Fant to surrender their knowledge. Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to question his deceased best friend, who years ago mysteriously committed suicide. In so doing, Jorl unearths a secret the powers that be would prefer to keep buried forever. Meanwhile, his dead friend’s son, a physically challenged young Fant named Pizlo, is driven by disturbing visions to take his first unsteady steps toward an uncertain future.

Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard will be published by Tor Books on December 29, 2015. It is 384 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The marvelous cover is by Victo Ngai.

Against Despair: Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 22 comments

“To the Lords of Revelstone, I am Lord Foul the Despiser; to the Giants of Seareach, Satansheart and Soulcrusher, The Ramen name me Fangthane. In the dreams of the Bloodguard, I am Corruption. But the people of the Land call me the Gray Slayer.”

Lord Foul to Thomas Covenant

Lord Foul’s Bane came out in 1977, one of two books pulled from the submissions pile by the del Reys in their search for another Tolkien. The first was the Lord of the Rings-derived The Sword of Shannara (reviewed here), which makes total sense. But this? It’s a work full of crushing despair along with a miserable and unpleasant protagonist who refuses to be the hero people want and need. He also rapes a 16-year old girl. This is not the rolling green hills of Middle-earth and hobbits.

I can remember the reactions of people in my circle. My father hated it all around. My friend’s mom, a high school English teacher, loathed it as well, supposedly for its criminally bad prose alone. I myself found it dense, impenetrable, and dull. I was only twelve but I had already read LotR twice, so I just assumed it was no good. The only person I knew who read it and its sequels was a friend who read any and all fantasy without a drop of discrimination.

Even today much of the reaction toward Donaldson’s series is negative. In Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels, David Pringle describes it as an “unearned epic.” During Cora Buhlert’s dustup with Theo Beale over morality in fantasy she said she could never get past Covenant being a rapist. James Nicoll wrote that Covenant should win a “special lifetime achievement award” for the “most unlikeable supposedly sympathetic protagonist.”

I finally read Lord Foul’s Bane a few years ago and found it a fascinating book. I got sidetracked from reading the rest of the initial trilogy but my present desire to read some epic high fantasy brought me back to it. Also, my friend, Jack D., keeps asking me if I’ve read these and if not why not. I don’t think he reads a ton of fantasy so his love for Donaldson’s work is something that I found especially intriguing. So I went back and came away a captive of Donaldson’s strange first novel.

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