Black Gate – Page 777 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 4: Therapy for a Vampire, Bridgend, Assassination Classroom, Ludo, and Who Killed Captain Alex?: Uganda’s First Action Movie

Friday, July 24, 2015 Matthew David Surridge Comments 2 comments

Therapy for a Vampire Late last Friday night, the 17th of July (or early the next morning, to be precise), I was unable to keep from smiling as my city was cheerfully demolished by a crew of Ugandans, cheered on by a Fantasia Festival crowd. It was a wonderful end to an already very surreal day.

After having gotten not quite enough sleep the night before, I was at my fifth movie of the day. Even more than usual, each film had been wildly at odds with the one before it. I’d started at 12:45 with the Austrian period comedy Therapy for a Vampire, in which one of the undead seeks psychological help from Sigmund Freud. I followed that with Bridgend, a dark teen drama with some horror overtones, based on true events. Both of those had been at the small De Sève Theatre, and after a bite to eat, I went to the big Hall Theatre at 7:40 to watch the Japanese comedy Assassination Classroom, in which prep school students try to kill their alien professor before he blows up the Earth. After that, I ran back across the street to catch the world première of the transgressive Indian horror film Ludo. And then stuck around to watch the presentation of Who Killed Captain Alex?: Uganda’s First Action Movie. Which also involved the destruction of Montréal.

But let me go through these things in full, starting with Therapy for a Vampire. In fact, I’ll start a bit before that, with a short film that was screened before the main feature: The Mill at Calder’s End. Directed by Kevin McTurk from his own story, with a script by Ryan Murphy, it’s a gothic horror film set in the late Victorian or Edwardian era. And it’s done with puppets. They’re highly detailed — the IMDB tells me “36 inch tall bunraku rod puppets” — and convey the atmosphere wonderfully. The story follows a young man who’s inherited the family lands, along with the curse accompanying said lands. He investigates, and faces the same horror his ancestors faced before him.

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Weirdbook Returns in October…

Friday, July 24, 2015 John R. Fultz Comments 7 comments

“It’s alive! Alive!!!!!”

Weirdbook is coming back to life. New editor Doug Draa has done an immense job of resurrecting Paul Ganley’s classic weird fantasy mag.

Weirdbook #31 will be the first issue since 1997, and it’s slated for an October release from its new publisher Wildside Press.

On the left is a look at the front cover by Dusan Kostic. Click for a bigger version.

The back cover (right) will be a piece by the great Stephen E. Fabian, who did all the covers for the original WB run.

This issue is sort of a bridge between the magazine’s past and its future.

Here’s a look at the Table of Contents for Weirdbook #31.

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New Treasures: Storm and Steel by Jon Sprunk

Friday, July 24, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Storm and Steel, the long-awaited sequel to Blood and Iron, was published last month by Pyr. In her feature review of the first volume, Sarah Avery wrote:

Of all the wild re-envisionings of the Crusades I’ve seen lately, Jon Sprunk’s Blood and Iron may be the wildest. His alternate-universe Europeans are recognizably European, but the opposing culture they face is that of a Babylonian Empire that never fell. And why has this Babylon-by-another-name persisted for thousands of years, so powerful that only its own internal strife can shake it? Because its royals actually have the supernatural powers and demi-god ancestry that the ruling class of our world’s Fertile Crescent claimed…

Jon Sprunk’s book takes the prize for strange worldbuilding. The Akeshian Empire is approximately what the Akkadian Empire might have looked like, had each of its major cities lasted as long and urbanized as complexly as Rome did. When monotheism comes to Akeshia, it arrives as a local heresy run amok, rather than as a foreign faith attracting converts. Akeshia’s gods are not kind gods; its semi-divine ruling caste are not nice people. However, when our hero comes to understand them from something closer to their own perspective, he finds much to admire and many people worth trying to save from the civil war that is beginning to take shape around him…

Blood and Iron is overall a strong book, full of powerful imagery and a vivid sense of place, with intriguing historical what-ifs and a sense of moral urgency to match its sense of moral complexity.

Jon Sprunk is also the author of the popular Shadow Saga (Shadow’s Son, Shadow’s Lure, Shadow’s Master), and expectations are running high for the second volume of his new trilogy, The Book of the Black Earth.

Storm and Steel was published by Pyr on June 2, 2015. It is 479 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jason Chan. Learn more at Pyr Books or read our exclusive excerpt of the first novel here.

Chuck Wendig Writes an Open Letter: “Dear Guy Who is Mad Because I Wrote a Gay Character in a Book”

Friday, July 24, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Chuck Wendig, author of Star Wars: Aftermath, Blackbirds, and The Blue Blazes, has written an open letter to a fan who complained because one of his characters was gay:

Earlier today I got a bit of hate mail — though I guess hate mail is strong, as the writer of said email was not like, threatening to murder me with a brick or anything — from what appears to be a male, adult reader of my young adult series. In particular, he read the third book in the series, which came out last week: The Harvest.

I won’t reprint the email here, but he said, and I quote, “I didn’t like that you had a main gay character reviling [sic] in a homosexual sexual relationship.” (Reveling, I guess he means?) He feels I “corrupted” the book with the presence of “gay male relationships.” He then added that he feels I was jumping on some kind of “bandwagon,” which I assume (he did not clarify) means that I was doing this to fill some kind of diversity bingo card. Finally, he concluded that it “didn’t matter” or “effect [sic] the story” that the character was gay so why include it at all?

Here is my response that I won’t actually bother sending to him, but maybe he’ll read it here.

Read Chuck’s complete response here.

Kelly Swails reviewed Blackbirds for us (“Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds is Punch-You-in-the-Face Good“), and James McGlothlin looked at The Blues Blazes (“Goblins, Demons, Zombies and Fights Aplenty: A Review of The Blue Blazes.”)

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Wally Conger on “Rogues in the House”

Friday, July 24, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

One of the cool things about being an active member in the Sherlock Holmes community is that I run across a broad spectrum of people with other common interests outside of the world’s first private consulting detective. Wally Conger and I have had back and forth conversations on versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles and other topics.

We may not agree on season three of Sherlock, but we do both enjoy reading Conan. So, I asked him to review “Rogues in the House,” which I knew he had just read. He was kind enough to do just that…

By the time Robert E. Howard launched into writing “Rogues in the House” in January 1933, he already had 10 Conan tales under his belt. He was very comfortable with the character.

In fact, upon publication of the story in the January 1934 issue of Weird Tales, Howard wrote to fellow writer Clark Ashton Smith:

Glad you liked ‘Rogues in the House.’ That was one of those yarns which seemed to write itself. I didn’t rewrite it even once. As I remember I only erased and changed one word in it, and then sent it in just as it was written. I had a splitting sick headache, too, when I wrote the first half, but that didn’t seem to affect my work any.

I wish to thunder I could write with equal ease all the time. Ordinarily I revise even my Conan yarns once or twice, and the other stuff I hammer out by main strength.

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July 2015 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

Friday, July 24, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The July issue of the online magazine Nightmare is now available.

Fiction this month includes original short stories from Alison Littlewood and Nate Southard, and reprints from Lisa Tuttle and Christopher Golden:

Original Stories

“Wolves and Witches and Bears” by Alison Littlewood
“The Cork Won’t Stay” by Nate Southard

Reprints

“Replacements” by Lisa Tuttle (originally published in Metahorror, 1992)
“Under Cover Of Night” by Christopher Golden (Originally published in Five Strokes to Midnight, 2007)

The non-fiction this issue includes the latest installment in their long-running horror column, “The H Word” (“The Politics of Horror”), plus author spotlights, a showcase on cover artist Dennis Carlsson, an editorial, and a feature interview with Kc Wayland & David Cummings.

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Goth Chick News: It’s Halloween in July

Thursday, July 23, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

If you recall, a verbal thrashing from Editor and Big Cheese John O’Neill, resulted in we here at Goth Chick News publishing a thorough accounting of our whereabouts throughout the year. The purpose being less about flaunting the enviable circles Black Gate photog Chris Z and I roll in (i.e Days of the Dead and Walker Stalker Con) and more about attempting to squeeze some additional expense account funds out of the boss.

That strategy went about how you would expect.

What we didn’t expect was additional invitations to some new events celebrating their inaugural year here in the Windy City. And since the invitations were local, we’ll be able to further stretch the Black Gate expense account which basically consists of some Starbucks gift cards tossed during the St. Patrick’s Day parade and several hundred game play tokens from Dave and Busters.

Haunted attraction industry icon and all around nice guy Leonard Pickel, launched a new haunts and Halloween conference here in Chicago, called Chicago Frights, which Chris Z and I had the pleasure of perusing this last weekend.

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Hugh Hancock and Why Geeks Love Lovecraftian Magic

Thursday, July 23, 2015 M Harold Page Comments 4 comments

If you like the short film, you might enjoy his — NSFW– Carcosa Lovecraftian web comic.

How come geeks like Lovecraftian magic so much?

Writing on Charles Stross’s blog, Hugh Hancock, Machinima guru turned live-action filmmaker and web comic — um — maker(?) who — disclaimer! — has been a mate since he threw me through a pile of chairs, thus curing the suspected RSI in my shoulder — thinks it’s because Lovecraft pings the things that horrify geeks:

What if too much knowledge really was bad?

What if there were no life hack to divert the apocalypse?

What if the Inquisition were right?!!?

Obviously he’s onto something. It is all pretty horrifying and creates a wonderful double bind; we readers simultaneously want the protagonist to satisfy our curiosity, and at the same time want them to flee the horrid fate that will result.

However, I think there’s more than Horror at work.

Before I go on to explain why, go and watch his short Lovecraftian film HOWTO Demon Summoning so we have a common reference point (and because it’s funny and horrific, and makes surprising use of CGI given Hugh is an indy filmmaker).

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Vintage Treasures: Midnight Pleasures by Robert Bloch

Thursday, July 23, 2015 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Robert Bloch isn’t a name that gets tossed around much these days. Even before his death in 1994, he was primarily known as the author of Psycho, and this one fact overshadowed most of his other accomplishments.

But Bloch was also the author of hundreds of short stories, and over 30 novels, virtually all of which are out of print today. He was one of the most gifted and prolific short story writers in the horror field, and his best short stories are compact treasures. He won a Hugo Award for his 1958 story “That Hell-Bound Train,” and multiple Bram Stoker awards (for the 1993 collection The Early Fears, the novelette “The Scent of Vinegar,” and his 1993 memoir Once Around the Bloch.)

He received a World Fantasy Award in 1975 for Lifetime Achievement, and a Lifetime Achievement Bram Stoker Award in 1990.

Bloch was also one of the youngest members of The Lovecraft Circle, those writers who corresponded with and often consciously emulated H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was one of the first to encourage Bloch’s writing, and a lot of Bloch’s early work for the pulps was Cthulhu Mythos fiction (most of which was gathered in his 1981 collection Mysteries of the Worm.)

Midnight Pleasures is one of Bloch’s last fiction collections (two more appeared before his death: Fear and Trembling in 1989, and The Early Fears in 1994). It’s a fine sample of late horror fiction from one of the best short story writers the genre has seen.

It was nominated for a 1987 Bram Stoker Award for Fiction Collection (it lost out to The Essential Ellison). It contains chiefly later short work, dating from 1977-1985, published in anthologies like New Terrors 2, Shadows, Masques, Analog Yearbook, Dark Forces, Chrysalis 3, and others.

It also includes one pulp story (from the August 1939 issue of Weird Tales), and two stories that appear here for the first time: “Comeback” and “Die–Nasty.”

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Ancient Worlds: Greek Comedy and the Surprising Origins of SFF

Thursday, July 23, 2015 Elizabeth Cady Comments 2 comments

Laughter is one of the defining traits of higher primates, ourselves included. While I’m pretty sure my dog can grin, I have yet to hear him giggle. His attempts at humor are pretty weak, too. But for those of us in the opposable thumbs club, humor is a near-universal. What makes someone laugh may vary from culture to culture and across time, but our love of laughter is a constant.

This was as true of the Ancient Athenians as it is of us. Our word, comedy, is in fact a Greek word that contains the ideas of partying or festival-going and poetry. And the Greeks loved comedy. Today I want to talk specifically about Old Comedy, which you probably know (if you know it at all) from the works of Aristophanes.

Aristophanes would have gotten along well with Jon Stewart. Old Comedy was highly topical: it was deeply political, satirical, and fond of poking fun at the powerful. It made use of mythological themes and characters, but unlike our surviving tragedies usually took place in a relatively modern, if highly fanciful, setting. The plots were absolutely ludicrous, and the jokes made pointed reference to contemporary politics. So much so that, should you choose to read any old comedy (and you should: it’s worth the effort), I’m going to break with my usual custom and suggest you get a highly annotated, solid, scholarly edition to do so. In most genres, I advise people to go with readability. But with Aristophanes, you’ll need the footnote that explains that a certain individual was famous for his blowjobs rather than his active performance for anal sex if you want to get the joke in the backyard scene of Ecclesiazusae.

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