Black Gate – Page 770 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

All of Time and Space and the Wonders and Horrors Therein: Frank Belknap Long’s “The Hounds of Tindalos”

Sunday, August 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’ve been enjoying Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth’s Lovecraft Reread over at Tor.com, and I was pleasantly surprised to see them deviate from the core Lovecraft canon to discuss one of the classics of the Cthulhu Mythos not written by Lovecraft himself: Frank Belknap Long’s “The Hounds of Tindalos.”

“The Hounds of Tindalos” was originally published in the March 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It can be found in several anthologies and collections, including the 1978 Jove paperback collection The Hounds of Tindalos, with a fine cover by Rowena (above; click for bigger version). You can find the complete text online here. As Anne says:

Frank Belknap Long was one of Lovecraft’s inner circle, and his “Hounds” is the first Mythos tale which Lovecraft neither wrote himself nor collaborated on. Perfect start for our consideration of the extra-Lovecraftian Mythos, that slow but unkillable creep of cosmic terror into other susceptible minds! Long would go on to create Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and to kill a fictionalized Lovecraft in “The Space-Eaters.” But the Hounds are probably his most famous creation. Lovecraft mentions them in “Whisperer in Darkness.” Writers as diverse as Brian Lumley, Roger Zelazny, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, William S. Burroughs, and John Ajvide Lindqvist have evoked them. They also haunt video and roleplaying games, metal songs, anime, illustration. Well, why shouldn’t the Hounds be pervasive? Have angles, they’ll travel, lean and athirst.

“Hounds” has always inflicted shivers on me. This reread, I was momentarily distracted by a few infelicities. The story strikes me as way too short for its expansive subject: all of time and space and the wonders and horrors therein.

Read the complete article here.

The Digest Enthusiast #2 Now on Sale

Sunday, August 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

I love a lot of aspects of the fantasy and science fiction genres — books, movies, TV shows, comics, conventions, board games, video games. But it was digest magazines like Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF that first brought me into the field, and which formed the heart of the genre for me. It was in the pages of those magazines that I first discovered my favorite authors, and was exposed to the news, reviews, interviews, art and gossip that gradually taught me just how rich the field was — and taught me to love it.

I share this experience with a lot of older fans, and that’s why you see so many reviews of old digest magazines like Galaxy, Venture, Amazing and Fantastic here at Black Gate. It’s not just that they contain great old fiction, but because the magazines are so vital to the history of the field. (And, let’s face it, because of the great cover art.) SF, fantasy and mystery digests are inexpensive and easy to collect, and at every decent-sized convention or trade show, there’s sure to be a few fans selling, buying, and swapping digest magazines.

So I was delighted to see the first issue of The Digest Enthusiast in January of this year. The debut issue was 116 pages and packed with articles on Galaxy, protective sleeves, Walter Gibson’s The Big Story, and much more, including interviews with F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder, Phyllis Galde, editor and publisher of Fate magazine, and more.

But before I could get around to ordering it, the second issue arrived — and this one’s even bigger. Weighing it at a whopping 151 pages, it contains articles on Borderline, the Astounding Trading Cards, The Mysterious Traveler Magazine, H.L Gold’s Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Archie Comics Digests, and much more. There’s also reviews of current magazines, including Monster! #15, Asimov’s July 2015, and the July issue of Analog. There’s even four pieces of original short fiction!

Needless to say, I ordered a copy of the second issue as soon as it was available. It arrived yesterday, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I especially appreciated the reviews of current digests, which I found well written and enthusiastic. Here’s Rudolph Schmidt on Black Gate blogger Derek Kunsken’s novella “Pollen From a Future Harvest,” in the July issue of Asimov’s.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “The Phoenix on the Sword”

Sunday, August 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Over at Howard Andrew Jones’ blog, Bill Ward and Howard Andrew Jones continue their re-read of the first Del Rey Conan volume, The Coming of Conan, with the very first Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” originally published in the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales magazine. Here’s Howard:

Look at the story’s opening quote. That’s practically the gold standard of quotes from imaginary historical sources. That fabulous “Know, O Prince” and all that follows has been imitated but rarely, if ever, equalled. This, fellow fantasy fans, is the way it’s done. Admittedly, there are a few phrases in the middle of the paragraph that are less inspired. I’m looking at “Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem.” Most of the rest of the quote paints lovely word pictures, but those phrases don’t remotely approach the poetic majesty of the rest — what does Zingara look like? What does Koth look like? But the rest is lovely, and the quality picks right back up with “dreaming west” and powers on to that fantastic finish, “Hither came Conan…”

Look at the opening line of the story: “Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn.” Damn. Why doesn’t anyone write like that any more? Howard sets the scene with sharp, sensory laden description. He’s a film director guiding the camera with a fantastic establishing shot.

Their first post on this topic discussed Howard’s “The Hyborian Age.” Read the complete exchange here.

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015 edited by Paula Guran

Saturday, August 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

What do Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine, Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress, and The Churn by James S.A. Corey all have in common?

They were all published individually, at prices ranging from $14.95 to $25 for the print editions (excepting The Churn, which isn’t even available in a print edition.) And they’re all included in Paula Guran’s delightful new anthology, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015 Edition, available now from Prime for just $19.95 in trade paperback.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas includes nine of the best short novels of the year, from Patrick Rothfuss, K. J. Parker, Mary Rickert, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, and others. Collected from anthologies, magazines, online sources, limited edition trade releases, and more obscure sources, the book is a terrific way to get introduced to some of the most exciting writing of the year in a single economical volume.

It’s no exaggeration to say that this is the single most anticipated book of the year for me, and I ordered a copy as soon as it was available.

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Martian Pirates, Brain Creatures, and Hive Minds: Rich Horton on Ray Cummings and John Brunner

Saturday, August 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

Rich Horton’s personal blog, Strange at Ecbatan, is a great place to hang out if (like us) you love vintage paperbacks and magazines. In addition to his reviews here at Black Gate (not to mention his editing duties for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, the 2015 Volume of which just arrived last month), Rich also reviews forgotten bestsellers, neglected classics, and obscure books by writers who later became highly regarded. This week he takes a look at an Ace Double from 1961.

This week’s Old Bestseller post is on a book that was by no means a bestseller — it’s another Ace Double review, this time a new one (for me) — the 1961 pairing of a rather dreadful 1932 pulp serial by Ray Cummings (Wandl the Invader) with one of John Brunner’s better early short novels (I Speak For Earth), written as by “Keith Woodcott.”

Wandl the Invader was serialized in Astounding in 1932. It was a sequel to Brigands of the Moon, which began its serialization in the third issue of Astounding, in 1930. It is set in a future in which space travel is well-established within the Solar System, and essentially human civilizations have been discovered on both Venus and Mars. (Interbreeding is possible, for instance.) A small planet called Wandl has appeared in the Solar System, and Gregg Haljan (hero of Brigands of the Moon) is recruited to captain a spaceship to resist the evil intentions of the planet’s inhabitants.

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Vintage Treasures: The Plantagenet Novels by Allen Andrews

Saturday, August 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Allen Andrews is the author of a number of fine British histories, including Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, The Whiskey Barons, The Air Marshals, and Wonders of Victorian Engineering. But for genre fans, he’s chiefly remembered for two light fantasy novels he produced in the 1980s: The Pig Plantagenet (1980) and Castle Crespin (1982), both reprinted in paperback by Tor with a pair of fine covers by Victoria Poyser.

The Pig Plantagenet is the tale of Plantagenet, a pig on a 13th century farm in Poitou, France, who schemes to ruin a great hunt that will slaughter all the wild pigs and other creatures surrounding the farm. The sequel focuses more on Fulgent the Fox, who has “fairly traditional designs on a local farmer’s poultry,” and who is also part of the local animal aristocracy. One thing leads to another, and soon two very different societies are locked in deadly conflict.

Both books drew strong comparisons to Watership Down and Animal Farm, which was doubtless inevitable with any fantasy featuring farm animals, but more astute reviewers saw more in these books, especially the rather clever way in which the author depicts a class-based animal society with surprising complexity.

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Sentient Crows, Weavermen, and the Mughal Empire: A Review of Outposts of Beyond, July 2015

Saturday, August 8, 2015 Nik Hawkins Comments 8 comments

Outposts of Beyond has a name that connotes intergalactic travel, parallel dimensions, and the dark, far-flung regions of the universe — all trappings of science fiction. So it comes as no surprise that, even though the magazine contains fiction and poetry in the SF and fantasy genres, it leans a little more toward the former, at least in the case of the July 2015 issue. But this is Black Gate, so I’ll stick with the fantasy content.

“Drakoni,” by Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz, is a real-world-meets-fairyland story that might have a certain amount of charm for the pre-teen and early-teen crowds. Ultimately, though, it didn’t strike me as very original and didn’t develop the protagonist effectively. And there’s a hint at her otherworldly nature at the beginning of the tale that never really gets resolved or explained, leaving a troubling loose end. I think the ending is supposed to be happy, but it only left me feeling sorry for the heroine, who seemed to be retreating from a lonely reality.

“Of Feather and Claw,” by Jason Lairamore, is a story of two lost children trying to return to their parents, but they’re stuck serving as pawns in a war between a pack of giant coyotes and a murder of sentient crows led by an over-sized corvid king. Their efforts fail, but help arrives in unexpected forms.

This tale had a delightful weirdness to it, but even weirdness can do with some basic realism in which to ground it. In some cases this was lacking, like when a child shows no reaction after suffering a horrific injury. This sense of detachment lent the story a folkloric or mythological feel, which may have been the point, but for me it was a bit jarring. Lairamore rounds the tale out nicely, though. Worth reading.

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Victor Milan Talks Planet Paradise, His Many Pen Names, and a Plastic Dinosaur with Metallic Paint on It

Friday, August 7, 2015 Emily Mah Comments 2 comments

I had the opportunity to sit down with Victor Milan last month to discuss his current release, The Dinosaur Lords. As a member of his writers group, I’ve read the early drafts of this novel and am very excited to see it in print. George RR Martin refers to it as “Game of Thrones meets Jurassic Park,” and that’s a pretty good synopsis.

Set on the lost Earth colony of Paradise, feudal society humans live among dinosaurs of all epochs – wild dinosaurs, tame dinosaurs, and even war-mount dinosaurs. Hence the awesome knight on dino-back image that graces the cover of the book. Combine this with the sudden manifestation of a mythical angel of doom, and you’ve got the kickoff event of the story.

While Victor Milan is a well-known, prolific author, many people don’t know how prolific. On top of the dozen novels out under his own name, he’s also written many, many more under pen names. His career so far spans thirty-one years of publishing history, including the infamous midlist apocalypse of the 1980’s. Together, he and I discuss the ups and downs of the business and his journey so far.

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Future Treasures: The Story of Kullervo by J. R. R. Tolkien

Friday, August 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

J. R. R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, but nonetheless he’s been tirelessly producing fantasy novels (and bestsellers) for the past forty years — including The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), the 12-volume History of Middle-earth (1983–1996), Mr. Bliss (1982), The Children of Húrin (2007), The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009), and Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (May 2014). A partial draft of Language and Human Nature, which Tolkien began co-writing with C.S. Lewis but never completed, was discovered at the Bodleian Library in 2009, and doubtless we’ll see that for sale at some point.

Seriously, the man’s library must have been crammed floor to ceiling with unpublished manuscripts when he passed away. I could never dream of equaling that level of productivity over 40 years, and I’m not dead.

The latest newly-discovered Tolkien manuscript to go on sale is the short novel The Story of Kullervo, to be published in digital format in the US by HarperCollins on August 27. It is the tale of an orphan boy with supernatural powers, raised by the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father. Kullervo is clearly the ancestor of Túrin Turambar, hero of The Silmarillion, but this version a more standalone tale. The manuscript was unpublished for many years, but previously appeared in 2010 in Tolkien Studies: Volume 7.

The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.

Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo,’ as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Jeffrey Shanks on The Worldbuilding of REH

Friday, August 7, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 5 comments

We are trying to look at as broad a range of topics related to Robert E. Howard as we can in this series. Characters, genres, events, themes: Black Gate really wants to showcase the many facets of the man and his works.

Today’s guest post is such an example. Jeff Shanks wrote the introduction to the just published facsimile edition of Howard’s essay, The Hyborian Age and is the REH consultant on Modiphius’ upcoming Conan RPG (we’re gonna have a post for that, too!). I can’t think of anyone better to write about one of my favorite subjects, world-building.

While Robert E. Howard is known as the creator of a number of memorable heroic protagonists, such as Kull of Atlantis, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and, of course, Conan the Cimmerian, his efforts as a pioneer in fantasy world-building are often overlooked. When it is remarked upon at all, Howard’s creation of the Hyborian Age of Conan is generally described as a fairly impromptu effort — a hodge-podge of fictitious kingdoms based on thinly-disguised real world historical analogues, thrown together hastily in early 1932 after the first Conan story was accepted by Weird Tales.

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