Black Gate – Page 784 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 1: Miss Hokusai and Ant-Man

Thursday, July 16, 2015 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Fantasia Festival The Fantasia International Film Festival opened in Montreal on Tuesday night, and this year, like last year, I’ll be covering it for Black Gate. This will be the 19th edition of Fantasia, one of the world’s largest genre-oriented film festivals, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of movies. As I did last time, I’m planning to keep a diary-style record discussing the films I see and also recapping some of the special events around them — a lot of screenings are accompanied by presentations, or by discussions with the creators, and I’ll pass along my notes on those.

There are over 135 feature films being presented at Fantasia this year, and looking over the schedule it feels like I want to see almost all of them. The nature of scheduling makes that impossible, but I’ll be striving to look at as many as I can. I’ll be trying to catch films I miss in the festival’s screening room, where I’ll be able to watch them on a computer monitor. That’s a different experience than seeing a movie on the big screen with a crowd, but it’s better than nothing.

Two theatres at Concordia University’s downtown campus serve as the main venues for the festival this year, and on Tuesday I saw two films in the big Hall Theatre. Both movies were warmly received by the crowd, and both seemed to me to be great successes in very different ways. Both, as it happened, were adaptations from comics. The first was an anime called Miss Hokusai from Japanese director Keiichi Hara, an adaptation of Hinako Sugiura’s Sarusuberi, about the daughter of the famed 19th-century artist Hokusai and her relationship with her father. The second was Marvel’s Ant-Man, directed by Peyton Reed. I’ll have more to say about that further below (short version: it’s much better than I’d have imagined an Ant-Man movie could be, and instantly became one of my favourites of the Marvel movies). First, a look at Miss Hokusai, and Fantasia’s opening ceremonies.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

Wednesday, July 15, 2015 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Everyone loves an underdog, and last month the underdog was definitely Irene Gallo, the Creative Director of Tor Books and Associate Publisher of Tor.com.

Ms. Gallo had a rough month in June, as she endured a series of scathing attacks from Sad Puppies, writers, and others who took offense to a personal comment she made to a friend on her Facebook page. The industry rallied strongly to her defense, however, and the two articles we wrote covering the affair, “Internet Explodes Around Irene Gallo” and “Support For Irene Gallo Continues to Grow” were by far the most-read posts at the BG blog in June. Based on the high volume of e-mail we received, BG readers largely sympathized with Ms. Gallo.

It seems that those of you who weren’t caught up with the latest controversies were busy writing. Our third most popular article last month was M Harold Page’s “Some Writing Advice That’s Mostly Useless (And Why).” His first article in the series, “Help! I Want to Write a Novel But Don’t Have Any Ideas!!!” was also in the Top 10.

Fourth on the list was Emily Mah’s interview and Kickstarter announcement, “Call for Backers! Tales of the Lost Citadel Campaign on Kickstarter, in Conjunction with a Video Interview with C.A. Suleiman, in the DARK!” Rounding out the Top Five was the most recent installment in our series of omnibus collections of interest to fantasy fans, “The Omnibus Volumes of Steven Brust: The Adventures of Vlad Taltos.”

Also in the Top Ten was our report on the Best New Fantasy Releases in June, the first “Dear Prudentia” advice column by Marie Bilodeau, and two reviews by Fletcher Vredenburgh: Death Angel’s Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner, and Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters edited by Janet Morris.

The complete list of Top Articles for June follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

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New Treasures: The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells

Wednesday, July 15, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Dan Wells’ novel, I Am Not A Serial Killer, featuring monster-killing teenage sociopath John Cleaver, was the first novel in a trilogy. It was followed by Mr. Monster (2010) and I Don’t Want To Kill You (2011). Wells became a New York Times bestseller with Ruins, the third novel in his YA Partials series. Now he returns to the John Cleaver series with the first novel in a brand new trilogy, The Devil’s Only Friend.

John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they’ve killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he’s always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can…

…but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war.

John doesn’t want the life he’s stuck with. He doesn’t want the FBI bossing him around, he doesn’t want his only friend imprisoned in a mental ward, and he doesn’t want to face the terrifying cannibal who calls himself The Hunter. John doesn’t want to kill people. But as the song says, you can’t always get what you want. John has learned that the hard way; his clothes have the stains to prove it.

When John again faces evil, he’ll know what he has to do.

I’m not the only reader in my house, and I have to admit I wasn’t the one who discovered The Devil’s Only Friend. My daughter brought it home from the bookstore on Saturday, and has been glued to it ever since. Maybe I’ll get her to do a review.

The Devil’s Only Friend was published simultaneously in hardcover and trade paperback by Tor Books on June 16, 2015. It is 304 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, $14.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital version.

Salamanca: Medieval Paintings and Preserved Arms in Spain’s Historic University Town

Wednesday, July 15, 2015 Sean McLachlan Comments 3 comments

The apse of Salamanca's Old Cathedral. Photo courtesy Lourdes Cardenal — The apse of Salamanca’s Old Cathedral. Photo courtesy Lourdes Cardenal

Salamanca is one of Spain’s better-preserved medieval cities. It’s famous for its university founded in c.1130 and chartered in 1218, numerous old stately homes, winding medieval streets, some great bookstores, and a cathedral renowned for its rare medieval paintings. The entire Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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The Omnibus Volumes of Murray Leinster

Wednesday, July 15, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Last week, in my article on The Omnibus Volumes of James H. Schmitz, I noted how Eric Flint edited seven omnibus volumes collecting the science fiction of James H. Schmitz, starting in 2000. Those books were successful enough that Eric expanded his project to include other great SF and fantasy writers of the mid-20th Century.

And boy, did he expand it. By the time he was done, Baen had published volumes dedicated to A. E. Van Vogt, Michael Shea, Howard L. Myers, Keith Laumer, Randall Garrett, Christopher Anvil, Cordwainer Smith, Lois McMaster Bujold, A. Bertam Chandler, P.C. Hogdell, Andre Norton, and many others. Today I want to look at the three volumes dedicated to Murray Leinster, “The Dean of Science Fiction,” whose work I think still has enormous appeal even today.

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Vintage Treasures: The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories-small

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories-back-small

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories is one of the oldest paperbacks I own. It is, in fact, one of the oldest fantasy paperbacks produced in the United States. It was published in 1941, just two years after Pocket Books released the first paperbacks in 1939, revolutionizing the American publishing industry. And like a lot of old things, it’s a little strange and doesn’t do things in a familiar way.

For one thing, as it was one of the first paperback anthologies ever produced, apparently no one thought the name of the editor was important. Some folks assume it was W. L. Parker, who wrote the intro, and others assume W. Bob Holland, but no one is really sure.

Also, it’s called The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories not because it contains The Haunted Hotel (by Wilkie Collins) and twenty-five more stories about ghosts, but because it’s actually a mash-up of two previously published books: the novel The Haunted Hotel (by Wilkie Collins), and Twenty-Five Ghost Stories. So naturally, the page numbering re-starts halfway through the book. In the early days of paperbacks, publishers were trying all kinds of wacky things. Except original titles, apparently. Because, hey, let’s not go crazy.

And another thing. Have a look at the strange back cover (click for a bigger image). Today, we think of the back cover as, you know, a great place to tell prospective buyers a little about the book in their hands. In 1941, you mostly told readers what the hell a paperback book was. You imparted critical information, like “opaque paper,” “delightful flexibility in handling,” and “stained on all three sides with fast book dyes.” It’s easy to mock the primitive publishers of 1941 today, but let’s face it — if they hadn’t sold their early readers on paperbacks, you and I would be reading books exclusively in hardcover and clay tablets.

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Bill Ward on Poul Anderson’s “Thud and Blunder” — Thirty Years Later

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Nearly seven years ago, Bill Ward wrote “On Thud and Blunder — Thirty Years Later,” one of the first articles ever posted at BlackGate.com. Here’s what he said, in part.

It’s been thirty years since Poul Anderson wrote his essay on the need for realism in heroic fantasy, ‘On Thud and Blunder,’ which you can read in its entirety at the SFWA site, and I think it holds up well even though the genre — and the perception of it — has changed greatly. ‘On Thud and Blunder’ originally appeared in the third installment of Andrew Offutt’s classic anthology series Swords Against Darkness; though it was in the excellent, if unimaginatively named, collection of Anderson’s called Fantasy that I first encountered it. But already at the time of my reading a whole generation of writers had made a name for themselves by following the dictates of realism and common sense in designing their fantasy worlds.

The essay begins with a satire of the genre that features a barbarian cleaving through armor with a fifty-pound sword and riding a horse as if it were a motorbike, among other ridiculous things. It’s the kind of thing that gave heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery a bad name, and perhaps the sort of thing that meant it would soon be eclipsed by a rising tide of ‘high fantasy’ in the eighties and nineties. But, in 1978, hf — as Anderson terms heroic fantasy in an abbreviation that seems to have never caught on — was an emerging star.

In the Comments section, James Enge wrote, “Thanks for this: I’m a big Anderson fan and it’s a pleasure to reread this article… it’s still the authentic points of concrete imagination that strike deep, and Anderson was a past master at those.”

Read the complete article here. We’ll be presenting more classic articles from BG‘s rich history over the next few months.

Apex Magazine #74 Now on Sale

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Congratulations to Ursula Vernon, whose story “Jackalope Wives” (Apex 56) won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story! Charlie Jane Anders at io9 called it “the most beautiful story I’ve read in ages.” Check it out here.

Columnist Charlotte Ashley reviews the Hugo Award short fiction nominees this month in her short fiction column in Apex #74, and she address the controversy head on:

I will not be coy and pretend I do not know that the contenders for this year’s Hugo Awards are controversial. The nominees in, especially, the short fiction categories have mostly been drawn from the “Rabid Puppies” slate: stories chosen to reflect the values of a vocal ideological minority in fandom, often published by them directly. These are stories that were largely unfamiliar to most readers of speculative fiction until very recently.

I intend to vote in the Hugo Awards, and while I am well aware that voting “No Award” in the face of a slate offered in bad faith is an option preferred by many of my peers, I prefer to make my decisions armed with well-informed reasons for my choices. I have opted to read the slates with a generous attitude, to determine for myself if there are any hidden gems in the corners of SFF that I have unfairly overlooked.

“On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2) is definitely not that gem. This is a straight-forward piece about a Methodist minister posted to a remote outpost on the planet Ymilas. The local aliens are a “low-tech highly-ritualized” people who live alongside the ghosts of their dead, called “Helpful Ancestors.”…

Read the compete article online here.

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Future Treasures: The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been a fan of Aliette de Bodard since the publication of her Aztec mystery novels, collected in Obsidian & Blood, so I was thrilled to have the chance to meet her at the Nebulas last month. She is articulate, funny, and absolutely charming in person, and I’m very excited about her upcoming fantasy novel, The House of Shattered Wings, to be published by Roc next month.

Aliette has won the Nebula Award (twice), the Locus Award, and the 2010 British Science Fiction Award, and has been nominated multiple times for the Hugo. The House of Shattered Wings is set in a devastated Paris ruled by fallen angels, and tells a tale of the War in Heaven, divine power and deep conspiracy…

In the late twentieth century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins, the aftermath of a Great War between arcane powers. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.

Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation — or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.

The House of Shattered Wings will be published by Roc on August 18, 2015. It is 402 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover art is uncredited.

A Brief Guide to Space Race Documentaries

Monday, July 13, 2015 William I. Lengeman III Comments 0 Comment

While I liked the space race movies I wrote about here recently, my preference is for documentaries. Fortunately, there are quite a few good examples of this breed. This isn’t a definitive listing, but rather a few of the better known space documentaries that are worth a look.

For All Mankind (1989)

It’s probably no accident that For All Mankind appeared in 1989, exactly two decades after humans first set foot on the moon. It focuses on the Apollo missions that culminated in several trips to the moon and features the usual array of archival footage, along with comments by Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Jim Lovell (Apollo 8/13), and 11 other Apollo astronauts. All of which is set to appropriately spacey music by ambient music pioneer, Brian Eno.

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