Black Gate – Page 743 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Morgan Holmes on Armies of the Hyborian Age: The Cimmerians

Sunday, October 11, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

Because of REH’s broad diversity in writing, there are a multitude of areas to explore. And as you know from our ‘Discovering Robert Howard’ series, there are a lot of folks who write excellent stuff on so many different areas. Another example is today’s poster, Morgan Holmes. If you’re interested in what I think of as ‘military stuff and Conan,’ he’s writing what you want to read. Like this post!

The Cimmerians are one of the great barbarian peoples of the Hyborian Age. They are also off stage in the Conan stories, though they figure prominently in “The Hyborian Age” essay. Putting together an idea how the Cimmerians fought and perhaps how they looked is a bit of detective work and some supposition.

Robert E. Howard’s Cimmerians are descendents of refugees from Atlantis. From the Kull stories, the Atlanteans are a vigorous, warlike people. In a death grip with the Picts after the Cataclysm, they sink to apedom and then work their way back to barbarism from a sub-savage bestial existence. Tall, dark-haired, with blue or gray eyes, you can see the same type in Ireland today.

Cimmeria itself is described in the first version of “Phoenix on the Sword:” “It is all of hills, heavily wooded, and the trees are strangely dusky, so that even by day all the land looks dark and menacing.”

There is mention of cold winds and snow. Cimmeria is a hard land that breeds a hard people. Natural selection has produced a tough people inured to hardship. Names of Cimmerians given are all Gaelic. The Irish and Highland Scots are the pure blooded descendents of the Cimmerians thousands of years later according to “The Hyborian Age.”

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New Treasures: The Silent End by Samuel Sattin

Saturday, October 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Samuel Sattin’s first novel, League of Somebodies, was labeled “One of the most important novels of 2013” by Pop Matters. His second novel, The Silent End, has been called “a young adult novel that’s right over the plate for pop culture fans” by Bleeding Cool. It’s not hard to see why. This is the kind of book that immediately snares your attention. Here’s the first sentence of the book description:

In a mist-covered town in the Pacific Northwest, three teenagers find themselves pitted against an unearthly menace that dwells beneath the foundations of their high school…

So far the reviews have been terrific. Here’s Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver and Big Machine:

Imagine if Halloween had been written by The Kids in The Hall instead of John Carpenter and you start to understand the wild, mesmerizing mash up that is The Silent End. Monsters and monstrous fathers, missing mothers and young love — somehow all of this and much more fits wonderfully into this book. It manages to be scary and sweet and very, very fine. Sam Sattin is a talent and this novel is a joy.

The Silent End was published by Ragnarok Publications on August 9, 2015. It 506 pages, priced at $20.95 in hardcover and $4.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by M.S. Corley. Read the first chapter at Comic Vine.

Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era

Saturday, October 10, 2015 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

dr strange 1 — The brilliant, eerie worlds of Dr. Strange.

I’ve always liked Dr. Strange. Issue #43 was one of the first four comics my mother gave me in 1980. Stephen Strange is a lonely, stoic hero whose scope of danger and action is nearly always cosmic, and whose inner demons are as powerful as anything he faces with magic.

By the time I was finishing high school, my collection had grown to the point that I had a pretty good grip on his adventures from his first appearance in 1963 to his loss of everything in the late 80s.

Our fearless leader John O’Neill blogged recently about the news of the Dr. Strange movie. I don’t know how I feel about the movie — I have a lot of trouble with disappointing adaptations, but like I did with the Adam Warlock books, I’d like to take a retrospective look on my favorite comic sorcerer.

In my head, the classic Dr. Strange can be broken into three periods. In this post, I’ll look at the establishment of the Dr. Strange mythos in the Lee-Ditko era (roughly Strange Tales #130-#141).

In the early 1960s, there were essentially two creative engines at Marvel. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had created Thor, the Hulk, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had created Spider-Man.

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Vintage Treasures: Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder

Saturday, October 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Women of Wonder The Contemporary Years-small

In 1973, author Pamela Sargent began to assemble stories for a groundbreaking anthology: Women of Wonder, collecting science fiction stories by women, about woman. It was the first anthology of its kind, and as you can probably imagine, Sergeant ran into some obstacles when she tried to sell it. Here’s Ms. Sargent:

For over two years, I tried to find a publisher for Women of Wonder, and the reactions of editors were instructive. A few editors thought the idea was wonderful but decided not to do the book anyway. Some editors found the book absurd, a couple doubted whether I could find enough good stories to fill the book, and one editor didn’t think there was a large enough audience for such an anthology.

But the audience was there, and so were the authors.

That’s taken from the introduction to the fourth volume in the series, Women of Wonder: The Classic Years, published by Harcourt Brace in 1995.

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Last Chance to Win a Copy of Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard

Saturday, October 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last week, we told you that you had a chance to win one of two pre-release copies of Jonathan L. Howard’s upcoming novel of Lovecraftian mystery, Carter & Lovecraft, on sale later this month from Thomas Dunne Books.

How do you enter? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “Carter & Lovecraft” and a one-sentence suggestion for the ideal Lovecraft team-up — and what dark horrors your dream team should investigate. That’s it; that’s all that stands between you and a copy of one of the most anticipated fantasy novels of the year. Two winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries and we’ll announce the winners here on the Black Gate blog the week before the novel is released. What could possibly be easier? But time is running out — the contest closes shortly. Here’s the book blurb:

Daniel Carter used to be a homicide detective, but his last case — the hunt for a serial killer — went wrong in strange ways and soured the job for him. Now he’s a private investigator trying to live a quiet life. Strangeness, however, has not finished with him. First he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he’s never heard of, along with an indignant bookseller who doesn’t want a new boss. She’s Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer from Providence who told tales of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, creatures and entities beyond the understanding of man. Then people start dying in impossible ways, and while Carter doesn’t want to be involved, but he’s beginning to suspect that someone else wants him to be. As he reluctantly investigates, he discovers that Lovecraft’s tales were more than just fiction, and he must accept another unexpected, and far more unwanted inheritance.

No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Eat your vegetables. Carter & Lovecraft will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on October 20, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. See more details at Jonathan’s website.

Future Treasures: A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe

Saturday, October 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

A new novel by Gene Wolfe is always an event. He has been honored with virtually every award our field has to offer, including the Rhysling Award, BSFA Award, August Derleth Award, Campbell Award, two Nebula Awards, four World Fantasy awards, and six Locus Awards. He has received eighteen Nebula award nominations and eight Hugo Award nominations.

His latest, A Borrowed Man, is a new science fiction novel arriving in hardcover from Tor on October 20.

It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.

A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.

If I had a dime for every time someone said “And then the plot gets complicated” with regards to a Gene Wolfe novel, I’d have a supertanker full of dimes.

A Borrowed Man will be published by Tor Books on October 20, 2015. It is 304 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital edition. You can read an excerpt in the eBook edition of the latest issue of Lightspeed magazine.

Time Flies: Reflections on Reading Fantasy

Friday, October 9, 2015 Matthew David Surridge Comments 2 comments

Reading Strange Matters Time flies when you’re having fun. My first post on Black Gate went up a bit more than five years ago, a piece about storytelling, role-playing games, and what happened when I ran a group of friends through the original Temple of Elemental Evil D&D module. A couple weeks later I began a run of weekly posts with a discussion of Arthur Howden Smith’s too-often-overlooked historical pulp adventure collection Grey Maiden. A couple weeks after that I finally got around to introducing myself properly.

And in that post I asked a question I’m still trying to answer. Why am I drawn to fantasy? As I put it then: “Why am I so passionate about these stories?” And, as I wondered in the comments, what is fantasy, anyway? About a year later I took a stab at answering at least the first question. I noted that ‘escapism’ didn’t seem like a good answer, that ‘fantasy’ to me is an extremely broad field, and that when I’m disappointed in a fantasy story it’s often because the story’s not fantastic enough — not strange enough, not deeply enough invested in the world it creates. Fantasy’s draw for me, I thought, has to do with its ability to create its own reality, and to organise facts and experience in a distinct way. And with its relation to language and myth: from a certain perspective, a metaphor is a fantasy. Fantasy is, to me, a way of constructing symbols and meaning.

A few years on, I think I can take that answer a little further. I’ve been going over my essays for Black Gate to prepare a series of ebook collections — the first of which, looking at fantasy novels in the twenty-first century, is now available at Amazon and Kobo (and if anybody is gracious enough to buy it, I’d love to hear any reactions in comments to this post). I’m hoping to get a second collection out by Christmas, with more to follow. Preparing them I find myself thinking about those original questions. Why is fantasy more powerful to me than mimetic fiction? What is there in fantasy’s relation to meaning that appeals to me? What follows is an attempt to expand on my earlier answers; it’s entirely personal, and perhaps self-indulgent. This is me trying to work out for myself how I react to stories. It might be useful food for thought for others. It might not.

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Try the First Chapter of Swords Versus Tanks 1: “Armored Heroes Clash Across the Centuries!”

Friday, October 9, 2015 Comments 0 Comment

SVT 256 — …thirty five tons of grey-painted steel with a pair of 60mm howitzers projecting like abortive arms from sponson side-turrets.

Swords Versus Tanks 1: “Armored heroes clash across the centuries!” spent most of its first week in the Amazon US Top 20 Steampunk books. Now with book two out (“Vikings battle Zeppelins while forbidden desires spark!“), so I think book 1’s first chapter merits a showing on Black Gate.

Here goes…

Chapter 1

Sir Ranulph’s prowess won him an heroic death, but it was Albrecht’s artistic vision that granted him immortality.
— K Lucy, “Exhibition Review: Four Hundred Years of Sir Ranulph Dacre” (Kinghaven Times, 1890)

Kingdom of Westerland, Earldom of Dacre, Unicorn Hill, Autumn 1490

Sparks crackled over the great monolith. Ozone washed from its facets and wafted through the chill autumn air of Unicorn Hill.

In the stone’s long shadow, unicorns sniffed, scented power, and — driven by some genetic memory — edged closer. A white stallion snorted and lowered his spiralled horn to meet the challenge.

The monolith flickered out of existence. In its place appeared a window into the future. The hilltop was a place of russet-leaved trees and lush grass, but the world beyond the shimmering pane of not-stuff was one of grey tarmac, corrugated iron, and tanks.

Lots of tanks.

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October 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

Friday, October 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

In his editorial this month, John Joseph Adams takes a few minutes to highlight a few of his accomplishments in the past month. It’s an impressive list.

In case you missed the news last month, we won another Hugo!… Lightspeed took home the rocket for Best Semiprozine, but also, just as exciting, there were two other Lightspeed Hugo victories: Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s story from Lightspeed, “The Day the World Turned Upside Down,” won the Hugo for Best Novelette, and one of our illustrators, Elizabeth Leggett, won the Hugo for Best Fan Artist. Congrats to them both, and thanks to everyone who voted for all of us… We won the Hugo for Best Semiprozine last year as well, but most of our team wasn’t able to be in London to accept the award in person (none of us except for our podcast producer, Stefan Rudnicki, were able to make it), so having all of us there in person this year made it extra special for us.

In related news, I also personally won an Alfie Award (for Best Editor, Short Form), a new, possibly one-off award presented by George R.R. Martin. It was created in response to controversy this year over the Hugo nominations… (They’re made out of vintage car hood ornaments, which closely resemble the original shape of the first Hugo Awards.)

This month is the debut of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, part of the prestigious Best American series. In it, guest editor Joe Hill and I present the top twenty stories of 2014 (ten science fiction, ten fantasy).

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Emil Ostrovski and Nike Sulway, and fantasy reprints by Kevin Brockmeier and Delia Sherman, and original SF by Maria Dahvana Headley and Adrian Tchaikovsky, plus SF reprints by An Owomoyela and Gregory Benford. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with security expert and futurist Marc Goodman, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus novella reprint of James Tiptree Jr.’s “Slow Music,” and a pair of novel excerpts.

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Hey! Let’s Not Get TOO Cozy

Friday, October 9, 2015 Violette Malan Comments 5 comments

Last time I wrote about cozy mysteries and whether we might have the equivalent subgenre in Fantasy or SF, and I got a couple of suggestions among the comments that intrigued me more than a little. Now obviously, our version of such a thing wouldn’t have the same conventions and elements as the cozy mystery – there likely wouldn’t be a murder, for one thing – and fellow BG blogger Sarah Avery reminded me of a cozy convention I’d forgotten, that the protagonist is never in any real danger. That doesn’t hold true for any subgenre of either Fantasy or SF, where every character is playing for keeps. As readers, we might feel sure that the main character(s) won’t die, but we often find that living has cost them a great deal.

So, are there Fantasy and SF equivalents to the cozy mystery?

One suggestion we batted around a little was the idea of the “intimate” Fantasy novel. This would be one in which the personal stakes might be very high, but in which the global stakes are minor, or don’t exist at all. This is less unusual for our genres then it used to be.

Just by chance the novel that reached the top of my to-be-read pile most recently was Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to this one, but I’m now recommending it to anyone who holds still long enough – including you. Right from the start, as you can see from the cover art I’ve included, the novel has been compared to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and in that manner, it’s certainly “intimate” in the sense that we’re talking about.

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