Black Gate – Page 819 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Sex and Violence in Poul Anderson’s Rogue Sword

Wednesday, April 8, 2015 Gabe Dybing Comments 4 comments

Zebra Heroic Fantasy. Another ghastly cover. I guess that’s some Byzantium-esque architecture in the background. But who’s ever seen “armor” or a sword like that?

As in The Golden Slave (and to lesser degrees in Three Hearts and Three Lions and in Virgin Planet) the major textures of Poul Anderson’s Rogue Sword sketch a love triangle. But at first our hero Lucas Greco’s love is not confined to only two women. No, he is a philanderer, a gallant, and the prologue establishes this as Lucas escapes the rage of Gasparo Reni, a jealous husband. This also shows Anderson’s impressive ability to construct symmetrical plots, for Gasparo and another in the prologue, Ser Jaime, shall be around for the duration of the novel.

The first chapter jumps ahead fourteen years. Lucas, with his friend Brother Hugh de Tourneville, surprise encounters Gasparo again, this time in the streets of Constantinople. Exhibiting rage apparently beyond all reason, Gasparo orders his men to fall on Lucas and to slay him on the spot. But, assisted by Brother Hugh, Lucas defends himself and escapes. During his escape, however, Gasparo’s slave woman, a woman who had been destined for a lord’s harem, joins herself to Lucas.

This slave, Djansha, becomes Lucas’s first love. It is notable that Lucas is not aware of this at first. He takes for granted Djansha’s complete faithfulness and service to Lucas. Lucas perhaps thinks that she is so into him because he is kind and supportive of her needs. Perhaps he believes that she would behave the same for any man who treated her in this manner. He also probably takes her for granted because she is a slave. Lucas cannot be blind to the strict social classes of 1306 A.D. (using Anderson’s signifier for era). And, naturally, he aspires for the heights. He actively pursues this state when he meets the lady Violante, a sensual and cunning member of the aristocracy married to the savage warrior Asberto.

Before briefing the reader on this third part of the triangle, however, we should pause a moment to focus on Anderson’s initial description of Djansha. I am struck now how, in a number of novels, Anderson has presented the reader with two female body “types.” What we read about Djansha also could describe Alionara from Three Hearts and Three Lions and perhaps Barbara from Virgin Planet and of course Phryne from The Golden Slave. Generally, this type is slim, childlike, and “boyish.” Here’s a description of Djansha.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Sturgeon is Alive and Well… by Theodore Sturgeon

Wednesday, April 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Sturgeon is Alive and Well… was Theodore Sturgeon’s fourteenth short story collection. It was first published in 1971, and came following a five-year gap after Starshine (1966). As I mentioned in my write-up on that book, Starshine went through nearly a dozen printings in as many years. But Sturgeon is Alive and Well… had only three: a hardcover in 1971, a paperback reprint the same year from Berkley Medallion (above left, cover by the great Paul Lehr), and a Pocket reprint in 1978 (above right, artist unknown.)

It’s now been out of print for 37 years, and there is no digital edition.

The title is… unusual. It probably made more sense in 1971, when Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was an unexpected smash hit off-Broadway. Sturgeon touches on what a five-year gap between collections meant for a writer who made a living on short stories in his introduction.

…

Read More Read More

Sad Puppies and Super Puppies: The 2015 Hugo Train Wreck

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 76 comments

Tony C. Smith and his 2010 Hugo for StarShipSofa

As both Matthew David Surridge and I wrote about earlier this week, there’s been considerable controversy swirling around the just-announced ballot for the 2015 Hugo Awards, the most prestigious fan-based award in science fiction and fantasy. Matthew and I are involved in this controversy because we were both included, without our knowledge or consent, in a slate of bloc votes (the “Sad Puppies 3” and “Rabid Puppies”) that resulted in us being put on the ballot.

Matthew declined his nomination. Since Black Gate‘s nomination was for the entire site, a fan-based effort that involves over 40 participants, I decided not to decline on behalf of those individuals. But (no surprise) I had plenty to say about it, in my article “Black Gate Nominated for a Hugo Award in a Terrible Ballot.”

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this topic has riveted the entire industry. The two BG articles I link to above have been read over 32,000 times in less than three days… and Matthew and Black Gate were nominated for fan awards, the part of the ballot that, to be blunt, most people really don’t give a damn about.

There are just shy of 200 comments on those two posts, so the conversation is already getting a little unwieldy (and I find I have to keep repeating myself, because let’s face it, who can be bothered to read 200 comments before asking a simple question?) So I figured it made sense to do a quick re-cap, especially for those readers who surfed over here on their lunch hour, and have roughly the time it takes to eat a tuna fish sandwich to get caught up.

The crux of the matter is this.

…

Read More Read More

April/May 2015 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I’m delighted to be talking about Asimov’s SF as part of Black Gate‘s new initiative to expand our coverage of fantasy and SF magazines. Asimov’s has been a favorite of mine since the first year it was published, in 1977. (If you’re interested in learning what’s so special about the magazine, I wrote a lengthy 3-part history, looking at it decade by decade, back when I was editing SF Site in 1998).

It took us this long to start covering it because Asimov’s is primarily a science fiction magazine. But the current editor, Sheila Williams — like her predecessor, Gardner Dozois — has shown an appreciation for good fantasy, and there’s plenty of evidence of that in the current issue. The big April/May double issue weighs in at a generous 192 pages, and contains fiction from Allen M. Steele, Tom Purdom, Michael Swanwick & Gregory Frost, Liz Williams, Robert Reed, and many others.

A fine example of that openness to fantasy is Michael Swanwick & Gregory Frost’s “Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters — H’ard and Andy Are Come to Town!” Here’s Bob Blough’s review at Tangent Online:

This is a light-hearted romp about two slightly magical con-men who go to great lengths to prove that a dust giant is causing the drought in some alternate version of the American Dust Bowl during the 1930s. Unfortunately they wake up something much more real than the con they plan to pull. As a lagniappe, if you know your short fiction you can tell who these two men are by what they talk about. It’s a fun if innocuous ride.

Read Bob’s complete review here, and the first half of Swanwick & Gregory Frost’s tale online here.

…

Read More Read More

Return of the Master Cheeser: The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 0 Comment

Published in 1983, The Disappearing Dwarf is James P. Blaylock’s second novel, the sequel to his first, The Elfin Ship. Along with The Stone Giant (1989) they form the Balumnia Trilogy. If you have any love for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, or mouth watering descriptions of all sorts of food and drink, then these books are for you.

The Elfin Ship (reviewed here last year) is filled with constant comical digressions and expends pages on delightful, superfluous details. It’s filled with oddball characters and deliriously silly escapades. The plot is wonderfully complicated. The Disappearing Dwarf has all of those things — save the plot. It’s not that it doesn’t have a plot, it’s just not much of one.

Bored with his new life as man of leisure (allowed by the success of his travels in the previous volume), Jonathan Bing, master cheesemaker, agrees to take a trip down the Oriel River with Professor Wurzle to explore the abandoned castle of their foe, Selznak the dwarf. The castle, they quickly learn, is not empty — and definitely not safe.

From there they meet Miles (pronounce Meelays), the Magician who is hunting Selznak. He tells them that their old nemesis has reappeared, and is certainly up to no good. The magician suspects the dwarf is looking to steal a great magical orb from their friend, Squire Myrkle. Upon reaching the squire’s estate, they discover that he has vanished through a magical door that appeared in his library. The next thing we know, Jonathan, the Professor, and Miles (along with Ahab the dog), are back on board the elfin airship and headed for a doorway to the parallel world, Balumnia.

Narrative drive is nearly absent in The Disappearing Dwarf. Jonathan’s goals switch from one thing to another several times throughout the book. The adventurers spend much of the book traveling from one place to another without ever really knowing what they’re trying to achieve, other than their rather vague plan to find the squire before he falls into Selznak’s clutches. Balumnia has its own villain, a mysterious figure called Sikorsky, but as with the rest of the characters, we never get a clear sight of him or what he’s actually up to. Several characters fade away. One vanishes only to suddenly reappear with little explanation. The book moves haphazardly from one incident to another. Fortunately, most of those incidents are terrific fun.

…

Read More Read More

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in March

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I keep hunting for themes when I tabulate the most popular articles on this website every month. But you Black Gate readers, you’re inscrutable. One month you want all the secrets of writing fantasy trilogies, the next it’s all about the origins of Dungeons and Dragons. Seriously, I’d love to know what articles I should be planning for this blog… but after seven years like this, I give up.

Well, I suppose it’s good that you have diverse interests, anyway. And you sure have great taste in writers and books.

Take last month for example. The number one article for the month was a guest post from author Harry Connolly, author of “The Whoremaster of Pald” and Game of Cages, examining Attack Novels — those story ideas that a writer can’t stop thinking about.

Number two on the list was M Harold Page’s review of Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, a terrific new fantasy cartography tool for creating your own magical kingdom.

And the number three article at BG last month was M Harold Page’s look at history as the bedrock of fantasy: “The History Manifesto and Sweeping Histories.”

Fourth on the list was our report on a recent attempt to reboot SSI’s famed Gold Box games using Kickstarter, followed by Thomas Parker’s heartfelt remembrance of a great American actor, “Leonard Nimoy Saved My Life.” And sixth was Elizabeth Cady’s detailed look at the new film Jupiter Ascending, “Capitalism Ascending.”

…

Read More Read More

Thrift Shop Adventures 1: Wherein I Find Fantasy Treasures in Secondhand Stores (Greyhawk Classics and More!)

Monday, April 6, 2015 Nick Ozment Comments 18 comments

“I’m gonna pop some tags / Only got twenty dollars in my pocket / I — I — I’m hunting, looking for a come-up / This is ******* awesome”
— Sir Macklemore of the Order of Thrift

When I go into town — to the nearest keep on the borderlands, say — I find it hard to pass up a quick pop-in to a thrift store. Last Friday I did my rounds in the city, hitting the trifecta: Salvation Army, Savers, and Goodwill. As with any type of hunting excursion — for instance, my single days hunting for a date at the college bars — there are highs and lows, ups and downs, mind-blowing flights of rapture and soul-crushing disappointments.

First up was Salvation Army. I always make a beeline for toys first, then books. I’ve never had much luck with toys in this particular outlet, although I did come close to a good score once: an elderly lady came up behind me at the check-out line carrying a vintage SIX FOOT LONG rubber jiggler snake! It had just been stocked on the shelf somewhere in between the time when I had looked and when I was checking out, so I’d missed it by mere minutes. It was tagged $1.99, and I immediately offered the lady ten bucks for it. She shook her head. “No, I want this. I’m thinking of putting it in my garden to keep kids out.” She actually said that.

The thought flashed through my mind “Are you crazy? That thing will be a kid magnet!” But I did not persist, just politely demurred, mentally accepting defeat. Some consolation was the fact that I had one already (they do come up on eBay occasionally, typically fetching about $20-$30).

Strike up the old Army Marching Band, though, because today was going to be a thriftastic day. Mostly thanks to a coloring book (which I’ll get to in a bit), but that wasn’t all: I was also about to unearth a tomb-full of Greyhawk.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Master of Plagues by E.L. Tettensor

Monday, April 6, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

About a year ago I reported on the first novel in a promising new series: Darkwalker by E.L. Tettensor. Now the second novel featuring Police Inspector Nicolas Lenoi has arrived, Master of Plagues, and it looks as intriguing.

The Nicolas Lenoi novels are set in Kennian, part of the backwater Five Villages, which seems a lot like 19th-century England if you squint. Lenoir is tasked with investigating dark mysteries in a place where folks scoff at the supernatural. These books look like a fine mix of fantasy and mystery in a fog-shrouded Victorian(ish) landscape, with plenty of original touches to keep things interesting.

Unraveling a deadly mystery takes time — and his is running out…

Having barely escaped the clutches of the Darkwalker, Inspector Nicolas Lenoir throws himself into his work with a determination he hasn’t known in years. But his legendary skills are about to be put to the test. A horrific disease is ravaging the city — and all signs point to it having been deliberately unleashed.

With a mass murderer on the loose, a rising body count, and every hound in the city on quarantine duty, the streets of Kennian are descending into mayhem, while Lenoir and his partner, Sergeant Bran Kody, are running out of time to catch a killer and find a cure.

Only one ray of hope exists: the nomadic Adali, famed for their arcane healing skills, claim to have a cure. But dark magic comes at a price, one even the dying may be unwilling to pay. All that’s left to Lenoir is a desperate gamble. And when the ashes settle, the city of Kennian will be changed forever…

E.L. Tettensor also writes under the name Erin Lindsey. We recently covered her fantasy novel The Bloodbound. Master of Plagues was published on February 3, 2015 by Roc. It is 368 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

David Drake on E. Hoffmann Price

Monday, April 6, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

David Drake, author of The Tank Lords, The Sea Without a Shore, and dozens of other fantasy and SF novels, was also the man behind Carcosa, a small press he co-founded with Karl Edward Wagner in 1973. Carcosa published only four volumes — including Far Lands Other Days, a 590-page illustrated collection of the classic pulp fantasy of E. Hoffmann Price — but ah, what volumes they were!

Andy Duncan has started a new blog, Past and Present Futures, and he invited David to share his memories of Price. Yesterday he shared the results. Here’s a slice.

In fact [Price] spent only 30 days in the Philippines before the 15th Cav was recalled to the Mexican Border where Pancho Villa was raiding. Shortly after that they were shipped to France where they acted as mule skinners unloading freighters in Bayonne, France. He had stories about the prostitutes in all three continents.

When WW I was over, Ed was on garrison duty on the German border. The army created a service-wide scheme by which enlisted men could take an entrance exam for admission to West Point. Ed was one of the extremely few who gained admission through that test. He graduated in 1922 and was briefly a 2nd Lieutenant assigned to a Coast Artillery unit in NJ. He resigned ahead of a court martial because he had gotten to know the battalion commander’s wife rather better than the major was pleased to learn.

I’ve told the story this way to make it clear that though Ed was very smart, he was also an iconoclast who was not even slightly interested in polite society or its norms. He was acting out in the introduction [to Far Lands Other Days], but I don’t doubt he meant what he said.

Read David’s complete comments here, and visit Andy’s excellent new blog here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What Story Should You Read First?

Monday, April 6, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 7 comments

FirstStory_LionsMane — One of my favorites: Frederic Dorr Steele for The Lion’s Mane

Recently a post in a Holmes Facebook group caught my eye. A woman was a fan of one of the current TV shows (I don’t recall if it was Elementary or BBC’s Sherlock), but she loved it and wanted to read the stories. She wondered where to start.

First, I think it’s a bit interesting that there are Holmes fans that have never read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. They only know the detective through television shows set in the modern day. I suppose this also happened a bit with the first Robert Downey Jr. movie, but that had a shorter shelf life. Anyhoo…

There’s a bit of a divide in the Holmes community these days between the ‘old school’ and the newer generation. One characterization is between those who study the stories and those who write speculative fan fiction that has little to no relationship with Doyle’s actual writings. To some extent, there’s always been an old guard/new fans distinction, but social media has exploded it.

While I’ve long been a fan of Holmes pastiches and enjoy most movies and films, I do look askance at all the doey-eyed swooning over Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes. And they’ll pry my calabash pipe from my cold, dead hands before I recognize merit in this Sherlock Meta stuff.

But moving off the grumpy old man ruminations, the question the woman asked was a good one. The initial responses seemed to go with the standard ‘read them in the order they were written.’ That’s logical. But I don’t think it’s the best way to go.

…

Read More Read More