Black Gate – Page 808 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Recoletta Novels by Carrie Patel

Thursday, July 30, 2015 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

I’m a sucker for a great fantasy setting. Plot, character, sparkling prose… these all appeal to me as much as the next guy. But give me a fresh, innovative setting, and you’ve got my attention from page one.

One of the most intriguing and innovative settings I’ve come across recently is the fantastical, gaslit underground city of Recoletta, where mankind huddles after a mysterious apocalypse, and whose true origins are shrouded in mystery. It is the setting for two novels (so far) from debut author Carrie Patel: The Buried Life and Cities and Thrones, both published this year by Angry Robot. Here’s a brief bit of enticing description from the starred review at Publishers Weekly:

With Regency-era sensibilities and Agatha Christie’s flair for the subtle conundrum, Patel’s debut novel introduces readers to a subterranean city of the future, centuries after what is dubbed ‘The Catastrophe’, and beautifully manages the delicate balance between entertainment and social commentary. The subtly fantastical story is resplendent with surprisingly deep villains, political corruption, and a gripping whodunit feel.

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The History of the Other Necronomicon

Thursday, July 30, 2015 William I. Lengeman III Comments 6 comments

(With sincerest apologies to H. P. Lovecraft)

Original title, Watdiz Rafaflafla — Rafaflafla being the word used by residents of the greater Pittsburgh area to designate that harrowing sound (made by insects and tiny flying horses) suppos’d to resemble the flatulence of daemons who have been tuned to the key of B flat.

Composed by Haminah Haminah H. Haminah, Esq., a sad clown and learned scholar of the Peoria, in the American caliphate of the Illinois, who is said to have flourished during the early period of the Flock of Seagulls and the A-ha, circa 1983 A.D. He visited the ruins of the Cleveland and he explored subterranean secrets of the Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of the Phoenix — the Hoolenah Whooleenah or “Artificially Irrigated Space” of the ancients, which is held to be inhabited by evil blue-haired spirits and sundry other monsters of the retirement catacombs. Of this desert many tedious and mediocre marvels are told by those who have much time on their hands and are usually about two and a half sheets to the wind.

In his last years H. Haminah dwelt in Topeka, where the Necronomicon II was written, and of his final death or disappearance (c. 1989 A.D.) many random and pointless things are told. He is said by Reebeeh Bopaloola (his biographer) to have been seized by an unspeakably vile monster with breath that would stop a tank in broad daylight in the produce aisle of the Safeway and devoured horribly before a smattering of bored witnesses. Who just wanted some arugula and really didn’t want to get mixed up in yet another one of those supermarket devouring incidents.

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Shimmer 26 Now on Sale

Thursday, July 30, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Shimmer #26, cover-dated July 2015, offers four new stories. Two are currently available on the website; the last two will be available in August.

“The Star Maiden,” Roshani Chokshi
A star maiden is not an actual star. If you split her open, you will find neither crumbled moons nor milky pearls. A star maiden is a sliver of heaven made flesh. She is an orphaned moonbeam clinging to one possession only: A dress.

“The Last Dinosaur,” Lavie Tidhar
As Mina drove, a hush fell over the city, gradually, in tiers, and the white fluffy clouds in the sky above London parted gently to open up a riverful of blue. It was a beautiful day for a ride. She hummed to herself, an old song, and her fingers tapped rhythm on the steering wheel.

“Serein,” Cat Hellisen (available 8/4)
I’ve imagined it endlessly: what Claire must have thought as she packed her bag. How leaving is easy, even if you lie and say oh god it’s hard it’s hard it’s hard. Make a clean break, leave everything, let loose your claim to possession: this is my house, this is my bed, these are my albums not shelved alphabetically because I tried and never could keep the world orderly, this is my little library built out of gifts and second-hand forgotten paperbacks.

“States of Emergency,” Erica L. Satifka (available 8/18)
In a no-tell motel just outside Billings, the psychotic cattle rancher known as Paranoid Jack freezes when he sees the baby-blue eyeball glowering at him from the mouthpiece of the Bakelite phone.

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See the Table of Contents for Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction, edited by Dominik Parisien

Thursday, July 30, 2015 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Editor Dominik Parisien has just announced the Table of Contents for his upcoming anthology Clockwork Canada, to be published by Exile Editions, a Canadian small press, next year.

Exile began publishing Canadian genre anthologies in 2013; so far they’ve published Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction (edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia), Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse (edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia), and New Canadian Noir (edited by Claude Lalumière and David Nickle). They are currently reading submissions for a fifth anthology: Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories, edited by Kelsi Morris and Kaitlin Tremblay.

Here’s the description:

Clockwork Canada runs the gamut of steampunk, showcasing a wide variety of genre elements, from purely technological contraptions to combinations of the mechanical and magical. The stories in the anthology reimagine important Canadian historical events, provide us with alternate Canadas, and gather inspiration from the Canadian landscape to make us wonder: what if history had gone a different way?

Clockwork Canada will contain fifteen stories; all are steampunk, and all are set in Canada. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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The Altarpiece of the Virgin of the Milk, the Breast of Spanish Renaissance Art

Wednesday, July 29, 2015 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

In a previous post about Salamanca, Spain, I talked about Salamanca cathedral’s rich collection of Medieval and Renaissance art, inlcuding a splended retablo and some rare wall paintings. Like many cathedrals in this country, it also houses a small museum of some of its treasures. One of the most unusual items is the Altarpiece of the Virgin of the Milk.

It dates to the second half of the 16th century and was produced by an unknown artist. At its center is a breastfeeding Virgin, “La Virgen de la Leche,” part of a tradition of such depictions dating back to at least the 12th century. She is surrounded by other images detailing her Bible story and also related religious figures. Above is her Coronation. On the upper left is the Annunciation, and to the upper right the Archangel Gabriel. To the left is the Assumption of Mary, to the right the Birth and Adoration of Jesus.

It gets weirder in the lower register, with Saint Agatha on the lower left offering a plate of breasts to Saints Cosmas and Damien. On the lower right Saint Margaret rounds out the picture.

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Wickedness of Old: Tales of Cthulhu Invictus, edited by Brian M. Sammons

Wednesday, July 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cthulhu Invictus, the popular 2009 Call of Cthulhu sourcebook from Chaosium, allows players to partake in mythos adventures in the hills and streets of ancient Rome. It was at least partially inspired by one of Lovecraft’s most famous dreams, described in a letter to Donald Wandrei dated Thursday, November 3, 1927. The letter survives (and the relevant fragment, now titled “The Very Old Folk,” is posted online here), and it relates an exceptionally vivid nightmare in which Lovecraft dreamt he was an ancient Roman named Lucius Caelius Rufus, investigating a terrible Iberian hill tribe.

He had killed himself when the horses screamed… He, who had been born and lived all his life in that region, and knew what men whispered about the hills. All the torches now began to dim, and the cries of frightened legionaries mingled with the unceasing screams of the tethered horses. The air grew perceptibly colder, more suddenly so than is usual at November’s brink, and seemed stirred by terrible undulations which I could not help connecting with the beating of huge wings…

Above the nighted screaming of men and horses that dæmonic drumming rose to louder pitch, whilst an ice-cold wind of shocking sentience and deliberateness swept down from those forbidden heights and coiled about each man separately, till all the cohort was struggling and screaming in the dark… Only old Scribonius Libo seemed resigned. He uttered words amidst the screaming, and they echo still in my ears… “Wickedness of old… it is wickedness of old…”

Tales of Cthulhu Invictus is an original anthology of Cthulhu Mythos fiction set in Ancient Rome, the setting of Cthulhu Invictus. It was funded as a stretch goal as part of a successful Kickstarter for De Horrore Cosmico. It is due to be published any day now by Golden Goblin Press.

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Vintage Treasures: The Torin Trilogy by Cherry Wilder

Wednesday, July 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cherry Wilder The Luck of Brin's Five-small

Cherry Wilder The Tapestry Warriors-small

Cherry Wilder had a relatively short career as fantasy writers go. Her first novel was The Luck of Brin’s Five (1977), which won the 1978 Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel, and was the first novel in The Torin Trilogy. She produced two other series, The Rulers of Hylor (four novels, published between 1984 and 2004) and two novels in the Rhomary Land series (in 1986 and 1996), several short stores, and that was it. She died in 2002.

Still, she is very fondly remembered as one of the shining lights of 80s fantasy. Although The Torin Trilogy has all the trappings of fantasy — including sorcerers, far-flung kingdoms, and mystical powers — at heart it’s actually science fiction. It’s the tale of Scott Gale, a space traveler from Earth who finds himself shipwrecked on the world of Torin, where he’s accepted as a family member by Brin’s Five. Before long he finds himself embroiled in a desperate battle against the feared man who rules much of the land, Strangler Tiath Pentroy.

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The Genre Game

Wednesday, July 29, 2015 Sarah Newton Comments 7 comments

Like many people, I have mixed feelings about genres – those pesky labels we use to sift and sort writing into neat little silos, isolated and bubbling away in incestuous fermentation. Both as a reader and a writer, I’ve never seen the world that way.

In some ways, thinking about genre reminds me of the “Honk if Pluto is a planet” campaign. For some, it’s a major, emotive issue if Pluto is categorized as a “planet”, or a “dwarf planet”, or a “Kuiper Belt object”, or something else entirely. But, ultimately, the designation affects nothing outside the minds of men: Pluto continues in its long, elliptical orbit, completely oblivious to the impassioned squirmings of one subgroup of carbon-based lifeforms on the third planet; it’s still beautiful, cold, distant, mysterious, regardless of the “planetary genre” we decide, in our assumed omnipotence, to place it in. It ain’t gonna vanish if we all look the other way.

So, genre. Is it hard science-fiction? Is it cyberpunk? Is it space opera? Dystopian? Maybe it’s all four? Or more? It’s a truism, but every written work stands on its own merits. You can sell it at Borders, Barnes and Noble, or Walmart; you can call it dark fantasy, low fantasy, heroic fantasy, swords and sorcery: it’s still the same book, even if the observers and surroundings differ. Genre is something which shelf-stackers and catalogue creators love – it neatly segments the literary world into easy-to-digest packets, with no ambiguity, a black-and-white demarcation of the soul. Like people trying to get their five pieces of fruit a day, it seems to make sense – until people start fighting over what a “piece of fruit” really is. Oranges – whole or segmented? Melons? How big’s a slice?

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Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 5: Teana: 10000 Years Later, Crimson Whale, and The Shamer’s Daughter

Tuesday, July 28, 2015 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Teana: 10000 Years Later One of the things people don’t tell you about getting older is that the more books you read and movies you see, the more likely you are to see those stories echoed in other stories. The new books and movies you come across remind to you of the older books and movies you already know. Sometimes there’s good reason for that, as artists try to engage in a dialogue with their forebears. Sometimes you’re just seeing things.

Saturday, July 25, was an interesting series of riddles for me at the Fantasia Festival. I saw three movies that day. Teana: 10000 Years Later is a high science-fantasy 3D CGI animated film from China. Crimson Whale is a traditionally-animated post-apocalypse fable from South Korea. And Denmark’s The Shamer’s Daughter is a live-action adaptation of the first volume of a Danish YA high fantasy. I enjoyed all of them, and saw what seemed to be nods to familiar works within each — though in some cases that might be my imagination running away with me.

Let’s start with Teana (AKA 10000 Years Later, originally Yi wan nian yi hou), which screened at the large Hall Theatre. It’s one of the most visually spectacular movies I’ve seen at Fantasia. Bursting with colour and invention, it moves quickly, introduces a ton of characters, creates a world, and tells an epic story with some very pointed social commentary. I’ve seen some mention online that it’s based on a Tibetan fable, but can find no more specific information than that. Personally, I found myself strongly reminded of The Lord of the Rings, as the film seemed to refer to Tolkien while also inverting certain aspects of his story.

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New Treasures: No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill

Tuesday, July 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

British horror writer Adam Nevill has been winning over fans here in the US, with books like Last Days and The House of Small Shadows (which Goth Chick reviewed for us here). His latest novel, No One Gets Out Alive, looks like it will continue that trend nicely. It was recently released in hardcover by St. Martin’s Press, and has just been nominated for a 2015 British Fantasy Award.

When Stephanie moves to the notoriously cheap Perry Bar neighborhood of Birmingham, she’s just happy to find an affordable room for rent that’s large enough not to deserve her previous room’s nickname, “the cell.” The eccentric — albeit slightly overly-friendly — landlord seems nice and welcoming enough, the ceilings are high, and all of the other tenants are also girls. Things aren’t great, but they’re stable. Or at least that’s what she tells herself when she impulsively hands over enough money to cover the first month’s rent and decides to give it a go.

But soon after she becomes uneasy about her rash decision. She hears things in the night. Feels them. Things… or people… who aren’t there in the light. Who couldn’t be there, because after-all, her door is locked every night, and the key is still in place in the morning. Concern soon turns to terror when the voices she hears and presence she feels each night become hostile. It’s clear that something very bad has happened in this house. And something even worse is happening now. Stephanie has to find a way out, before whatever’s going on in the house finds her first.

No One Gets Out Alive was published by St. Martin’s Press on April 28. It is 640 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.