Black Gate – Page 776 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Destroying Your Garden of Victory

Friday, October 2, 2015 mariebilodeau Comments 5 comments

Even princes make the time to destroy their gardens.

Winter is coming. Not in an unspecified amount of time, either. It’s coming, like, soon (ish). The days grow shorter, the winds howly-er, and the nights demand duvets. There’s not denying it, people. It’s time to Destroy your Garden of Victory.

… why destroy it? BECAUSE OTHERWISE WINTER WINS! If you do not burn your own house, and your neighbor burns it for you instead, does that neighbor then not win? But if you burn it first, and you stand beside it like a badass warrior, then you, my friend, win. You built the garden! Now you must destroy it!

So don’t wuss out – destroy your garden now!*

1. Have a Final Outdoor Battle

Nobody likes winter battles, let’s face it. They’re cold, blood gets all frozen, swords don’t wobble as effectively and the dangers of pneumonia are real. Plus, winter armor is heavy and uncomfortable. So, invite your neighbors for that final battle now! Be imaginative in how you taunt them to battle – remember, this is your last battle for probably half a year. Steal their sheep and sheer your flag into their side. Paint their fences an ugly color. Raise flags bearing insulting taunts. Just make it clear that the battle must take place in your garden and the winner gets the Victory Goat for the next six months. (Bonus: blood is great fertilizer for when you prepare next year’s Garden of Victory!)

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Vintage Treasures: The Cú Chulainn Novels of Gregory Frost

Friday, October 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 17 comments

Celtic fantasy has always been a popular sub-genre, but it really exploded in the 80s, in the capable hands of writers such as Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, C.J. Cherryh, Katharine Kerr, and R.A. MacAvoy, and with bestsellers like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon.

In 1986 new writer Gregory Frost — whose debut novel Lyrec had been published by Ace two years earlier, and been well received — retold the great Irish epic Tain Bo Cuailnge (“Cattle Raid of Cooley”), the tale of the hero of Ulster, Cú Chulainn, Ireland’s greatest champion, who at the age of 17 single-handedly defended his people against the invading army of the sorceress queen Maeve. This began a two-book cycle retelling many of the tales of Cú Chulainn: Tain, published in 1986, and its sequel Remscela, which appeared in 1988.

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Armored Rampage!

Friday, October 2, 2015 M Harold Page Comments 2 comments

SVT 256 — “Write what you know”, they said.

Somebody yells, “Form a wedge! Form a wedge!”

This is my last chance to experience something I’ve craved since reading Ronald Welch’s Sun of York back when I was twelve. I love my plate armor, but I’m now in my forties, a dad, and my days of hitting the road with my armor are numbered. (“Write what you know”, they said. So I had set out to know what I wanted to write about.)

“Let me go first!”

I take my place at the front of the knot of my friends in armor from different periods. Everybody jostles around and, without the benefit of NCOs, forms a rough triangle with me at the point.

Ahead, the Viking ranks stiffen, dress their shields. Locals mostly, and many of them students, so there’s a lot of quilted armor and even some linen shirts.

I grin into my visor. We’re older, heavier in build. One-to-one we outweigh them and we’ve concentrated our weight into a human battering ram…

…and yes, it’s a small multi-period medieval faire at St Andrews, Scotland. The weapons aren’t sharp. It’s not real.

But read on, because the experience was illuminating…

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Shimmer 27 Now on Sale

Friday, October 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Shimmer #27, cover-dated September 2015, offers four new stories. Two are currently available on the website; the last two will be available later this month.

“Dustbaby,” by Alix E. Harrow
There were signs. There are always signs, when the world ends.

“A July Story,” by K.L. Owens
Iron red, linseed-cured, and caked in salt, in a place where the mercury never crept much above fifty Fahrenheit, the two-room house chose to keep its back to the sea. A wise choice, given the facing of the windows and the predilections of the wind.

“Black Planet,” by Stephen Case (available October 6)
Em did not dream the world. When the lights went out and the absence of her brother in the room across the hall became palpable, it was simply there, hanging in the space above her bed. She would stare at its invisible form, spinning silent and unseen, until she slept.

“The Law of the Conservation of Hair,” by Rachael K. Jones (available October 20)
That it has long been our joke that our hair lengths are inversely proportional, and cannot exceed the same cumulative mass it possessed on the day we met.

See the complete issue here.

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Goth Chick News: The Best Scares Are Made In America Scares…

Thursday, October 1, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 3 comments

Over 40 years ago, Chicagoland brothers Phil and Bob Zagone realized that nothing ruined the chances of picking up a date on Halloween with a fantastic costume, faster than the sweaty mess you became under a rubber mask.

That — and there was no way to consume adult beverages while wearing one.

Committed to solving this age-old dilemma the brothers started working on several solutions which they eventually proposed to the Godfather of Halloween himself, Don Post of Don Post Studios in California.

Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), Mr. Post was too busy to consider their ideas, but advised the Zogones that if they were so keen to improve the mask industry, they were welcome to start their own company and have at it.

Which was precisely what Phil and Bob did in 1974, right here in their hometown of Chicago.

Welcome Black Gate readers, to the famous Zagone Studios Mask and Costume Company.

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Lionsgate Wins Bidding War for Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle

Thursday, October 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

As we reported in July, several major Hollywood studios — including Warner Bros., MGM and Lionsgate — were in a pitched bidding war for the rights to Patrick Rothfuss’ bestselling fantasy series The Kingkiller Chronicle. Now The Hollywood Reporter, and Rothufuss’ blog, are ‎reporting that Lionsgate‬ has won the rights to develop the series for film, TV, and video game platforms.

Lionsgate has closed a complex multi-platform rights deal picking up The Kingkiller Chronicle, the best-selling fantasy book series by Patrick Rothfuss. The deal sets up the simultaneous development of movies, television series and video games with the goal to adapt the many stories across the mediums at the same time.

It also caps off interest and dealmaking that has gone on since mid-July, when Rothfuss met with studios such as Warner Bros., MGM and Lionsgate, among others, at Comic-Con.

Robert Lawrence, whose credits include 1990s classic Clueless as well as the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Rock Star and the drama The Last Castle, will produce. Lawrence was an early chaser of the Kingkiller series and stayed on the series even when it was temporarily set up at Fox Television.

Terms were not disclosed. Read the report at The Hollywood Reporter here, and at Rothfuss’ blog here.

New Treasures: The Incorruptibles and Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs

Thursday, October 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

John Hornor Jacobs’ first novel was Southern Gods (2011), which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award. His new fantasy series began with The Incorruptibles (2014), and the second volume, Foreign Devils, was just published by Gollancz in the UK. Both novels feature the mercenaries Fisk and Shoe, in a fantasy western setting that mixes ancient Rome, savage elves, the wild west, daemons, and the Autumn Lords’ Empire, which hides a terrible truth at its heart.

Here’s Black Gate author Myke Cole on the first volume:

The Incorruptibles gives us the very thing we read fantasy for: something new. The Incorruptibles joins Red Country in what I hope will become a new sub-genre, the fantasy western. Westerns are American stories, and Jacobs’ Arkansas roots show in his gritty, hard-bitten tone. The Incorruptibles shakes like a rattlesnake, sings like a bullet, whispers like a tumbleweed dancing over hardscrabble.

And Pat Rothfuss on the same volume:

One part ancient Rome, two parts wild west, one part Faust. A pinch of Tolkien, of Lovecraft, of Dante. This is strange alchemy, a recipe I’ve never seen before. I wish more books were as fresh and brave as this.

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A Few Thoughts on Jack Cady’s The Off Season

Thursday, October 1, 2015 Gordon Van Gelder Comments 1 comment

I have not read all of Jack Cady’s novels (one is socked away in a cache of books meant for a time when I can enjoy more leisure reading), but I’ve read most of them and The Off Season is my favorite.

One reason is because I edited the book and twenty years later, I have only good memories of the experience. Perhaps the file for the book, somewhere in the basement of the Flatiron building in Manhattan, is full of contentious correspondence, but if so, those memories are buried deeper than that basement. I don’t remember any difficult negotiations, no spats over editing the book or the cover design. The Off Season was not a book that made anybody rich, but the experience of publishing it was one of many small joys.

(I do, by the way, remember a wonderfully cranky letter Jack sent me concerning copyediting. He said something to the effect of, “I’ve gone on the record of saying how much I hate the city of Chicago. Hate the weather, hate the architecture. When I was driving, I’d go miles out of my way to avoid that city. But my feelings for Chicago pale in comparison with my hatred for The Chicago Manual of Style.” I’m pretty sure, however, that Jack sent me that letter in regard to another work.)

There are other reasons why The Off Season is my favorite, but first, let me tell you a bit about Jack.

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Future Treasures: The Stephen King Companion: Four Decades of Fear from the Master of Horror by George Beahm

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I believe I’ve read more novels by Stephen King than by any other writer. King has done more to promote and publicize the horror genre — and, by association, his fellow horror writers — than any other person in the last half-century. His books are highly collectible, and he’s produced such an enormous body of work, some of it connected in enigmatic and cool ways, that he makes a fascinating study.

No surprise then that there have been many books about King. But I think George Beahm’s massive new volume The Stephen King Companion, an authoritative look at King’s personal life and professional career, from Carrie to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, is something special. It’s mind bogglingly complete, with lengthy chapters dedicated to each of his major works, and crammed full of photos and interesting tidbits — including a 16-page color section devoted to Micheal Whelan’s striking cover art.

But best of all, it’s extraordinarily readable, packed to the brim with all kinds of fascinating details, such as the phone call between King and Don Grant that finally got King to agree to reprint The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, and how King saw his first photos of his father. This is the kind of book you pick up to check a quick detail, and wind up reading for hours. Highly recommended, for both dedicated fans and casual readers alike.

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Where Truemen Struggle to Preserve Genetic Purity: The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 Sean McLachlan Comments 2 comments

Every now and then, fandom needs to take a good, hard look at itself. Considering the recent Hugo kerfuffle, I thought it a fine time to read Norman Spinrad’s famous skewering of fan culture, The Iron Dream.

First published in 1972, this is a masterpiece of metafiction. It is a book within a book, containing the 1955 Hugo Award winner Lord of the Swastika, written by none other than that famous science fiction writer, Adolph Hitler. We are informed that after dabbling in radical politics in Germany, Hitler moved to New York in 1919. In the 1930s he became a sought-after illustrator for pulp magazines and started writing fiction. He was popular in fannish circles for his fanzine work and for his witty banter at conventions.

His best-known work is Lord of the Swastika, a post-apocalyptic tale where the world has been ravaged by nuclear war and most people have become foul mutants. Luckily there is one nation, Heldon, where the Truemen struggle to preserve humanity’s genetic purity.

Enter Feric Jaggar, a Trueman whose family was exiled due to political machinations and forced to live among the mongrel horde. Lord of the Swastika is the tale of Jagger’s triumphant return to Heldon, where he unmasks a plot by the mutants to take over the country and sully the genetic purity of the last real humans. Jagger’s political star rises, the masses rallying around him as he first faces off against a corrupt government, then unites the nation around him in order to start a massive war to wipe the Earth clean of genetic inferiors once and for all.

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