Black Gate – Page 742 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “Rudolph’s Performance Review”

Monday, December 14, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 1 comment

Last year around this time, I posted a short, short story I wrote, “Watson’s Christmas Trick,” which was based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s own “How Watson Learned the Trick.” If you missed that, click on over for a little Holmesian holiday fun. Or click on this post from last year, which looks at a few Holmes pastiches for the season, including one of my all time favorite anthologies, Holmes for the Holidays.

Though I don’t use it too often when I write fiction (maybe I should start writing my own character, instead of Sherlock Holmes, Solar Pons and Nero Wolfe…), I think that my ‘voice’ involves a solid dose of humor. And on that note, I give you “Rudolph’s Performance Review” You’d think the reindeer with the shiny red nose would have knocked his annual review out of the park after that foggy Christmas Eve, eh? Well, that Santa is one tough reviewer. Read on, and I wish you a safe, happy and blessed Merry Christmas.

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Robert E. Howard: Peering Behind the Veil of Life

Monday, December 14, 2015 William Patrick Maynard Comments 2 comments

NOTE: The following article was first published on May 9, 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.

“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” is Robert E. Howard at his most poetic.

His writing had taken a quantum leap forward in quality compared with his earlier Kull stories as he transitioned from working in familiar genres to blazing a trail none had attempted before him. More than his gift for well-turned phrases and evoking imagery so powerful, it literally sears itself in the reader’s mind; Howard reaches for a depth of character and achieves a work that is both psychologically and philosophically rewarding.

Sadly, as the author would later tell his friend, Clyde Smith he was disappointed in the result and resolved to never attempt anything so deep again.

The tale starts off with Kull, plagued with ennui and yearning for something more substantive than riches, power, and transient beauty. The brooding king rejects the company of loyal Brule, the Pict who won his respect and friendship in “The Shadow Kingdom,” but foolishly takes the advice of an alluring Eastern female.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip from Gemma Files

Sunday, December 13, 2015 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

Formerly a film critic, teacher, and screenwriter, Gemma Files is a Canadian horror author who’s published four novels, two short fiction collections, a story-cycle, and two chapbooks of speculative poetry.

Five of her stories were adapted into episodes of The Hunger, an erotic horror anthology series made for Showtime by Tony and Ridley Scott. Her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones” won the International Horror Guild’s 1999 Best Short Fiction award. She’s a two-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and has twice appeared in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her latest release is Experimental Film (a contemporary ghost story novel) from ChiZine Publications.

Plot vs. Character — What’s Your Opinion?

My opinion on Plot vs. Character is that you really do need time, space and wordage in order to explore both at once, like in a novel: a long-form, chaptered narrative which develops organically, changing as much through reaction as it does through action. That’s why, when I’m writing a short story, I often find myself making a calculated decision to sacrifice one for the other. It all depends on where you want to place your emphasis: if it’s a deeper exploration of character you’re after, that can mean an overall flattening and simplification of plot, whereas a complicated plot with lots of exposition involved doesn’t leave a lot of room for complex characters. Instead, you get a conglomerate of sketches as your main cast, trope-y but hopefully not cliché, people easily reduced to a few simple traits — the kind of people who show up in movie credits as Angry Librarian or Homeless Artist.

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The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol 3

Sunday, December 13, 2015 John R. Fultz Comments 3 comments

This series explores the Savage Sword of Conan collections from Dark Horse reprinting Marvel Comics’ premiere black-and-white fantasy mag from the 1970s. Click to read previous installments: Volume 1 / Volume 2

The third collected volume of Savage Sword of Conan includes issues #25 – 36 but begins with a short Barry Windsor-Smith piece that first ran in Savage Tales #2 a few years earlier. BWS adapts a Robert E. Howard poem called “Cimmeria” in a gorgeous 5-page feature. His black-and-white work is every bit as lush as his color work on the Conan the Barbarian comic (for which he is most well-known). The artists who did the black-and-white comic magazines of the 60s and 70s knew that drawing for a colorless publication demanded more from both pencilers and inkers. Especially inkers.

Savage Sword #25 was the last issue of 1977, hitting the stands while the original Star Wars movie mania was reaching its peak, and spiking sales of the Marvel Comics Star Wars title brought the company a new influx of capital. Roy Thomas had built an excellent Sword and Sorcery magazine during the turblent mid-70s, when publishers had to cut the number of pages in their comics and constantly raise their prices. This issue is another super job by Thomas, who faithfully adapts Howard’s “The Jewels of Gwahlur.” DC legend Dick Giordano steps in to illustrate this issue — seemingly from out of nowhere — and it’s obvious that Giordano is reaching for a Neal Adams-style Conan tale.

Adams had drawn a couple of landmark Conan tales by this time (in Savage Tales #4 and Savage Sword #14), and he left his unique imprint behind as usual — setting standards for other artists to follow. Giordano does a solid job on SS#25, but unless you’re an old-school fan of his work it comes off as Neal-Adams-Lite: a stiffer, less consistent version of the Neal Adams Conan from “Shadows in Zamboula.” Maybe if Giordano had stuck around he would have time to find his mojo on this book, but this feels like a filler issue. It has moments of greatness — certain panels and effects — but the consistency that marks John Buscema’s ongoing Savage Sword work is noticeably absent. The next issue solved this problem and started a new era of Conan greatness, thanks to the arrival of inker extraordinaire Tony DeZuniga.

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SyFy’s The Expanse Exclusive! An Interview with Actor Elias Toufexis

Sunday, December 13, 2015 Emily Mah Comments 4 comments

So, yes, I was a lucky dog and got to visit the set of The Expanse while they were shooting Season One, and I recently attended the cast and crew premiere of the show here in Santa Fe.

Given my good fortune, it seemed only right that I find some exclusive content to share with readers of Black Gate, so here it is.

Elias Toufexis plays Kenzo, a character that has a lot of fans concerned because he’s not in the books. In the interview we discuss how this character was developed especially for Elias by James SA Corey.

We also say as much as we can say about the show, which is mostly stories and anecdotes of what was going on behind the scenes. This is content you won’t get anywhere else!

While I had him on Skype, we also discussed his career as a video game actor in franchises such as Deus Ex and FarCry. To finish off the interview, I asked him all sorts of basic questions about how one builds a career as an actor, and he gives some excellent advice.

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Future Treasures: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Sunday, December 13, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m a sucker for an eye-catching cover. And Alexandra Bracken’s new novel, the opening volume in a new series featuring an accidental time-traveler, definitely qualifies. It will be published in hardcover by Disney-Hyperion in January.

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles, but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.

Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods — a powerful family in the Colonies — and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, his passenger, can find. In order to protect her, Nick must ensure she brings it back to them-whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home forever.

Alexandra Bracken is also the author of Star Wars: A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy and the Darkest Minds series. Passenger will be published by Disney-Hyperion on January 5, 2016. It is 496 pages, priced at $17.99 for both the hardcover and digital versions.

The December Fantasy Magazine Rack

Sunday, December 13, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

December is a great month to try some new magazines. We started our coverage of the British Fantasy Award-winning Holdfast with issue #7, and revealed the details on the massive Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Volume 1. Nick Ozment took a look at the special Horror Issue of the St. Paul-Minneapolis literary journal Whistling Shade, and Bob Byrne reported on facsimile editions of The Strand Magazine. For vintage fiction fans, Rich Horton cracked open a 56-year old copy of Amazing Science Fiction Stories from October 1959, with fiction by Harlan Ellison and Tom Purdom.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Late November 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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Celebrating the 220th Anniversary of the Wold Newton Event

Sunday, December 13, 2015 William Patrick Maynard Comments 2 comments

I have never disguised the fact that my fiction as well as much of my reading selections have been influenced by Wold Newton scholars. Whether one enjoys delving into the deeper world of holistic literary theories or not, there is so much information to be mined and speculation to consider that one could spend a lifetime devouring all of it. One of the foremost Wold Newton scholars active today, Win Scott Eckert today launches a new website on this, the 220th anniversary of the Wold Newton Event. woldnewtonfamily.com was created to provide “accurate and factual information on the canonical works by Philip José Farmer and on deuterocanonical works authorized by Mr. Farmer or his Literary Estate.” The following article defining what exactly is a Wold Newton tale was co-authored by Mr. Eckert with his fellow distinguished scholar and continuation author, Christopher Paul Carey. Thank you to John O’Neill for kindly allowing me to reprint their work here in commemoration of this important day for Wold Newtonians.

A Wold Newton tale must involve a character whom Philip José Farmer identified as a member of the Wold Newton Family, and/or it must add to our knowledge of the secret history that Farmer uncovered, which has come to be known as the “Wold Newton Universe.” It can also be a crossover story, but that is not required.

In recent years, generic crossover stories have come to be mistakenly referred to as “Wold Newton” tales. A mere crossover is not enough. With this in mind, a primer on Farmer’s discoveries regarding the Wold Newton Family is in order.

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Amazing Science Fiction Stories, October 1959: A Retro-Review

Saturday, December 12, 2015 Rich Horton Comments 0 Comment

Here’s an issue from the first year of Cele Goldsmith’s tenure, and a significant month for me – I was born October 5, 1959. It has an interesting mix of authors – the first (and arguably only) SF novel by a Grand Master, a fine early story by one of my personal favorite writers in the field, and four stories by obscure names (though one of those at least is a pseudonym for a fairly well-known writer).

The cover is by Leo Summers, and depicts some sort of anti-spaceship installation hidden in a small asteroid, firing on a spaceship. Interiors are by Summers and Finlay (with one uncredited). There is a cartoon by “Frosty.”

Norman Lobsenz contributes his usual brief editorial, this one referring to Eric Frank Russell’s attack on astronomy as an “inexact science.” S. E. Cotts’ book review column, The Spectroscope, was at this time only allotted two pages. The reviews are of George O. Smith’s The Fourth R (fairly positive), Brian Aldiss’ collection No Time Like Tomorrow (very positive), and Jeff Sutton’s Bombs in Orbit (mistitled, amusingly, Bombos in Orbit in the review), not too positively.

The letter column, “… Or So You Say”, has mostly short letters, with only one name I recognized (Paul Zimmer, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s brother). The other letter writers are Edward J. Lynch (liked Silverberg’s “Collision Course”), Paul Shingleton (hated “Collision Course”, even though Bob S. is his favorite author), W. C. Brandt (loved “Collision Course”), Zimmer (seemed snarky about Doc Smith though it’s hard to say), Dave Boyer (loved stories by Sheckley and Douglas), David Locke (hated Doc Smith), Clark Peterson (is in favor of book length novels in the magazine), and Harry Thomas (defending Doc Smith from his detractors). Those who know fandom better than I remember David Locke particularly, as an active fan and letter writer, and also Shingleton and Brandt.

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Collecting Karl Edward Wagner

Saturday, December 12, 2015 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

I’ve been enjoying gathering data for my informal survey of paperback prices for some of the most popular and collectible 20th Century science fiction and fantasy authors — mostly because it means shopping for vintage books on eBay. As I said in the last installment, I was a little surprised at the demand for Robert A. Heinlein, but at least I knew he’d be near the top of the list. He wasn’t at the top, however. Setting aside Phil K. Dick, so far the most expensive author I’ve collected recently is Karl Edward Wagner, whose collections sell for around $6.40/book, roughly a 30% premium over Heinlein.

32 books by Arthur C. Clarke	$27.00	$0.84/book
35 books by Isaac Asimov	$82.17	$2.35/book
51 books by Robert A. Heinlein	$255.00	$5.00/book
11 books by Karl Edward Wagner	$70.55	$6.41/book
56 books by Philip K. Dick	$536.99	$9.59/book

The 11 paperback books above sold on eBay on September 27 for $70.55, making Karl Edward Wagner the most expensive author in our survey so far, outside Phil Dick.

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