Nazi Film Review: Hitlerjunge Quex

Nazi Film Review: Hitlerjunge Quex

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hitlerjunge-quex

When the Nazi Party took over in 1933, Germany was already a leading nation for film production. From the late 1910s through the early 1930s, its silent films and early talkies were seen all across Europe and were popular in the United States as well. But the year saw a major change in the nation’s film industry as well as its political makeup. Like with every other industry, movie making had to subordinate itself to the goals of National Socialism.

The Nazi party’s first targets were Communists and Socialists, who had fought against them for control of the streets. Many lives were lost on both sides during this era of riots, and one of the more famous of those was a member of the Hitler Youth named Heini Völker, who was killed while distributing Nazi flyers in a Communist neighborhood. There had already been a popular book about the boy published in 1932 titled Hitlerjunge Quex. (“Quex” means “quicksilver”, a nickname Heini got for being such an eager worker). This was turned into a film in the first year Hitler was in power.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 172 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 172 Now Available

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 172-smallI love a good weird western. So you can imagine how intrigued I was by the latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Scott H. Andrews’ magazine of literary adventure fantasy. It’s a special weird western issue, celebrating the release of their new themed anthology Ceaseless West. Issue 172 contains three new stories, a reprint, a podcast, and more.

“Splitskin” by E. Catherine Tobler
My love reveled in winter’s sunbroken days, when the light spills to the fresh-fallen snow to stab a person in the eyes. Gugán flit from path to stone, a trickster comfortable with his Raven heritage. I, as Eagle, startled at every shift of snow, caught always unawares in the bright sun as he pelted me with clumps of melting cold.

“Swallowing Silver” by Erin Cashier
John Halpern knew it should be a heavy weight on his conscience, to wake up and know that he was going to kill a thing that used to be a man. Whether it was or wasn’t was a topic of much internal contemplation for him as he walked up the long path to his brother-in-law’s house to ask for help. The fact that his brother-in-law was himself a devil-man did not escape him.

“The Snake-Oil Salesman and the Prophet’s Head” by Shannon Peavey
Leaving Leo alone, with his brother’s head. Leo stepped closer to the jar. Cary’s white-blond hair floated up from his skull, the tips waving slightly. It looked like strands of spiderweb, or exposed nerves. “You still telling people things they don’t want to hear?” He tapped on the glass. As if he might rouse it to speech.

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You Gotta Know When to Fold ‘Em

You Gotta Know When to Fold ‘Em

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ODY-C 4-smallIn my review of issue #4 of Ody-C  I said that it might be my last. I read Issue #5 hoping to be proven wrong.

I wasn’t.

Artistically, Ody-C is still strong, and a lot of people out there are going to love it. I’m just not one of them. What I love about Homer and the direction Fraction and Ward are taking the work are two very different things. And that’s ok. That’s how re-creations work. But as someone who has far less time to read than things she wants to read, this is going to have to drop off the list for now to make room for something else.

And that in turn made me wonder: what is it that makes you, as a reader, stop reading? When I was younger I always finished books, even when I didn’t like them. I wanted to really dissect what I didn’t like about them. I’m also just too curious to go without finding out how a story ends.

As I’ve gotten older, though, the reasons I drop a book or series have multiplied. There are those that I simply don’t like, like Ody-C. There are those that I’ve just gotten tired of, like a TV series that shall remain unnamed but is in its tenth season and probably ought to go. Even the actors look tired of their parts, my favorite side characters are gone, and the sense of peril has completely drained away.

(OK I lied. It’s Supernatural. Bobby’s gone, Ellen and Jo are gone in a way I’m still angry about, and there are only so many times your main characters can die before it stops meaning anything. Also, I think they have run out of new monsters.)

And maybe it’s age leading to crankiness, but there are storylines and characters I’m getting tired of. I’m really, terribly bored with ‘very tough on the outside and won’t accept any help but deeply emotionally vulnerable on the inside with a load of childhood traumas’. Of all available genders. This makes reading entire genres difficult.

But again, these are my objections. What are yours? What makes you drop something: a show, a comic, a book? And what could bring you back to it?

Vintage Treasures: Under the Moons of Mars, edited by Sam Moskowitz

Vintage Treasures: Under the Moons of Mars, edited by Sam Moskowitz

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Under the Moons of Mars Moskowitz-smallSome folks I know date the creation of modern SF and Fantasy to Star Trek in the mid-60, or the release of Star Wars in 1977. Those who are a little more knowledgeable date it to the first issue of Amazing Stories, in April 1926.

Folks who are really knowledgeable date it even earlier, to the “Scientific Romances” that became popular in early pulp magazines — so popular, in fact, that a young entrepreneur named Hugo Gernsback decided that the time was right for a magazine devoted exclusively to them. That magazine was Amazing Stories, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When editors first began combing the old pulps for stories to anthologize in the late 40 and early 50s, virtually all of them began with Amazing Stories #1. There was a great deal of popular SF and fantasy published well before that, but it was overlooked. And, as the decades went by, it was gradually forgotten.

Where did it appear? I have no idea — the really knowledgeable could tell you, but I’m not one of them. As we look backwards through history, my vision goes dark right around Lost in Space.

Fortunately, the great genre historian Sam Moskowitz was one of the really knowledgeable. And he used his vast knowledge for good. Specifically, he used it to assemble the anthology Under the Moons of Mars, which collected some of the very best of the early science fiction and fantasy from the days before there were magazines dedicated to such things — including stories and novel excerpts from Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, Ray Cummings, Murray Leinster, Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint, and many others.

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The Vorrh, Redux

The Vorrh, Redux

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The Vorrh-smallEarly in 2013 I wrote a post about The Vorrh, a novel by sculptor, artist, and poet Brian Catling. I thought it was a powerful, fascinating book that defied easy categorisation; epic fantasy or epic horror, magic realism or magic surrealism, it seemed bigger and stranger than whatever one might think to call it. Set mostly in Africa and mostly in the years after World War I, it deals with a forest called the Vorrh, where reality and time and logic become confused. A hunter tries to cross the forest, another man tries to stop him, yet another man tries to stop the second. Meanwhile, in a colonial German city that exists inside the forest, a young cyclops is educated by peculiar automata. Alternating with these plot strands we follow the fictionalised life of the actual Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge, as well as the unreal experiences of the quite real French surrealist writer Raymond Roussel, whose equally real 1910 novel Impressions d’Afrique first introduced the Vorrh.

Catling’s novel first came out in late 2012. Now, almost three years later, it’s being republished (as reported here by Black Gate supreme overlord John O’Neil). Catling’s edited the book extensively, slimming it down and moving sections around. He’s also found a new publisher. The original version of the book came from UK small press Honest Publishing; the new one’s published by Vintage.

The edits make a more direct narrative. The maze-like interleaving of scenes and moments has been reworked into an armature of chapters. Crucially, though, much of the original’s tonal strangeness remains. The prose has been pruned of some detail, some paradox, and some side reflections, and this tends to make the story clearer. Many of the losses were fascinating bits of writing in and of themselves, but also complicated sentences, paragraphs, or concepts. Sometimes those complications were worthwhile. But if the new Vorrh is a little less rich, it’s also much more vivid.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1952: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952-smallWith this issue, Galaxy completed its second year of publication. That’s 24 issues of top-notch science fiction. It’s tough to match that stamina, and I applaud H.L. Gold, his staff, the authors, and the artists for staying the course.

“Delay in Transit” by F. L. Wallace — Denton Cassal is a sales engineer, traveling toward the center of the galaxy to solicit a top scientist to work for his company on an instant communication device. His journey takes him through Tunney 21, a planet inhabited mostly by Goldophians, who look somewhat like seals. Equipped with an AI device named Dimanche, Cassal is able to read people based on their body chemistry and temperature. He’s being pursued, but Dimanche’s intelligence and advice give Cassal confidence, provided he’s willing to listen.

This piece was reprinted in Bodyguard and Four Other Short Science Fiction Novels From Galaxy edited by H. L. Gold in 1962. In this issue, however, it was credited as a novella. I liked the use of the AI as well as the setting of Tunney 21. Wallace also does a nice job with the pacing.

“The Snowball Efect” by Katherine MacLean — To prove the value of sociology (and his own department), Wilton Caswell meets with the university president to create a list of rules for an organization to employ in order to grow membership. If an organization adopts the rules and shows growth, then the president has quantitative proof of the depatment’s value; the underlying principles of philosophy can promote success to all graduates. Caswell and the president choose the Watashaw Sewing Circle for their experiment and then withdraw to see what happens. It turns out that the rules work. They work so well, in fact, that the sewing group expands into a broader organization — one focused on civic welfare and politics.

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Catching Up With Numenera

Catching Up With Numenera

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Numenera-smallI got to know Monte Cook back when Black Gate was still publishing fiction. He’s a talented writer, and he sent me a short story I would have loved to have published. Alas, the magazine was already dying at that point, and we weren’t able to do business.

But I’ve kept an eye on his publishing ventures and, like everyone else, was astounded when his Numenera Kickstarter raised an almost unprecedented $517,255 in September 2012. He used the money to launch Monte Cook Games, which in August 2013 delivered the Numenera Corebook, a gorgeous 416-page full color rule book and campaign guide. I finally bought a copy at the Games Plus auction in March, and I’ve spent the last few weeks pouring over it.

What’s so special about Numenera? Monte had an enviable reputation in the gaming industry — he was an editor at Iron Crown Enterprises and, with Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams, co-authored the famous third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Some of his more notable creations are the D&D modules Labyrinth of Madness and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, as well as many Planescape adventures and the mammoth Ptolus campaign setting, based on the home game used to playtest third edition.

But it’s far more than just Monte’s reputation that’s fueled the success of his latest endeavor. Numenera has a great premise. The setting is Earth, a billion years in the future. The inhabitants of our planet live amidst the ruins of eight unimaginably powerful civilizations, each of which mastered arts and technologies they cannot even begin to understand. Artifacts from those civilizations lie in the earth — or walk the land. Some of them are incredibly powerful; some are unspeakably dangerous. And some of them are alive.

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Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes by Raphael Ordoñez

Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes by Raphael Ordoñez

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oie_113524h6c8tSPCMuch of my reading is for sheer entertainment. It’s like a carnival ride: you pay your money, get whipped around a little, then deposited back on the ground. The next day a fond memory of the overall experience lingers on but the details have faded away. And that’s cool. I have never regretted the time or money spent on an Agatha Christie or Stephen King novel. I’ve passed many an enjoyable hour reading (or watching) a decent bit of fiction for a transient thrill. But sometimes, there’s something so compelling about about a book that I’m drawn to it again and again over the years.

There are certain books on my shelf that have an aura around them. Three that leap to mind are The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Last Coin by James Blaylock, and Faces in the Crowd by William Marshall. In each, the combination of prose, plot, and character drew me in so deeply that I feel the desire, for various reasons, to revisit them from time to time.

With the first, I’m looking each time to absorb and understand a bit more of Bulgakov’s dense work. It’s a great story, rich with ideas on art, politics, love, and religion. With the second two I recapture a bit of the sheer joy I felt the first time I encountered the vivid characters and utterly bonkers plots. When it comes to books in this class, I can remember when I first read them, under what circumstances, and where I got them (Science Fiction Book Club, The Forbidden Planet (NYC), and borrowed from the St. George Public Library, Staten Island). I suspect Raphael Ordoñez’ Dragonfly will get added to this list.

Dragonfly is the first of a planned tetralogy. In this day of calculated, mass-marketed, trend-following books, here is a self-published adventure, practically handcrafted, with cover, map, and interior art all done by Ordoñez himself. It tells of a young prince let loose in a world of steam engines, complacent aristocrats, and tunnel-dwelling workers, and a social order on the verge of being overthrown. Ordoñez’ style hearkens back to the likes of A. E. van Vogt and Jack Vance, as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs. Heck, as you can see from the cover, Dragonfly would look right at home on a shelf full of volumes from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

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Adventures in RPGs: Long Arc or Short Arc?

Adventures in RPGs: Long Arc or Short Arc?

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Scan 11AD&D carried me from middle school right through college, and about seventy-five percent of the time, I wound up as the referee. The core group with whom I played continued right on getting together for another fifteen years or so after graduation, engaging in annual reunions all over the country.

And I kept right on refereeing. After all, I had unfinished stories to “tell.” These story arcs played out over weeks, months, semesters, and then years. Many remain unfinished to this day. In the main, the rest of the group enjoyed my epic, often convoluted approach. For better or for worse, we weren’t much for hack-and-slash, in-and-out heroism.

Or were we? I’ll never forget Eric S. musing, as one reunion year wound down, that it sure would be nice if for once we could storm the castle, rescue the maiden, and be done.

His wistful comment stemmed in part from my having that very year posed a variant on that longed-for maiden-in-the-tower paternalistic standby: Orcus hired the party to rescue a damsel in distress, but this particular blushing violet turned out to be a truly enormous, deformed frog that had to be kissed in order to… well. Let’s just say there aren’t enough kisses in creation to make the wife of Orcus any more desirable.

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The Dark Issue 8 now on Sale

The Dark Issue 8 now on Sale

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The Dark Issue 8-smallThe Dark continues its tradition of great covers, with a marvelous contribution this month from gaming artist Angus Yi. Check out his website here.

The Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace. The eighth issue features four all-original short stories:

“The Ghost of You Lingers” by Kevin McNeil
“An Ocean of Eyes” by Cassandra Khaw
“A Shot of Salt Water” by Lisa L Hannett
“Momentary Sage” by Eric Schwitzgebel

You can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by subscribing to the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 50 pages, and priced at $2.99 through Amazon, B&N.com, Apple, Kobo, and other fine outlets. A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15 – subscribe today.

If you enjoy the magazine you can also support it by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments. Read issue 8 here, and see their complete back issue catalog here.

We last covered The Dark with Issue 7.

See our Late April Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.