Black Gate – Page 838 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar in Development as a TV series

Friday, February 20, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Jim Starlin, who has seen several of his most famous comic creations transition to the big screen, has reportedly signed a deal to bring his long-running space opera Dreadstar to television.

Jim Starlin is famous in comic circles as the creator of Thanos, the villain of the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War films, as well as Drax the Destroyer and Gamora, two members of the Guardians of the Galaxy. His run on Captain Marvel, which introduced Thanos and his quest to end all life to prove his love for Death, was a high-water mark for superhero comics of the 1970s, and elements from his Infinity Gauntlet storyline have become the unifying storyline for Phase II of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In 1980 Stalin introduced a new character, Vanth Dreadstar, in Epic Illustrated #3. Dreadstar’s early adventures were eventually collected in Metamorphosis Odyssey, a grim far future tale of a desperate battle against the Zygoteans, who conquer and enslave virtually all life in the Milky Way. Metamorphosis Odyssey ended with Dreadstar and his companions destroying the entire galaxy, rather than have it fall into the hands of the Zygoteans (I told you it was grim).

No one really dies in comics though, and Dreadstar eventually returned in Dreadstar #1, one of the flagship titles of Marvel’s new Epic comic line, in 1982. Epic published 26 issues before Dreadstar switched publishers to First Comics. Starlin wrote and drew all the issues until he left with issue 41 (March 1989), and Peter David took over writing chores. Dreadstar lasted a total of 64 issues.

Dreadstar had a very different feel to Metamorphosis Odyssey. Whereas the latter is considered an allegory, Dreadstar is straight-up space opera. Set a million years after the destruction of the Milky Way, and halfway across the universe, it follows the adventures of Vanth Dreadstar and his crew of gifted oddballs, including the powerful sorcerer Syzygy Darklock and the wise-cracking Skeevo, as they get caught up in a galaxy-spanning conflict between the Monarchy and the tyrannical Church of the Instrumentality. Dreadstar was closer in spirit to Star Wars than anything else, with desperate battles, betrayals, robots, and ancient and mystical powers influencing events at critical moments.

Variety reports that Universal Cable Productions and Benderspink will develop the series, with Starlin serving as executive producer and writer. No word on a release date yet. See the complete article here.

Goth Chick News: The New Poltergeist Clown – Oh Hell No

Thursday, February 19, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 6 comments

Poltergeist then and now — *Poltergeis*t then and now

Poltergeist might have been the first time I was ever truly scared by a movie.

Of course I grew up on a solid diet of Universal Studios movie monsters along with an array of black and white horrors from Hammer shown on late-night TV. But in all of those, no matter how high the creep factor, it was fairly clear that these stories depicted reel reality, not real reality.

But then along came little Carol Anne Freeling and her off-air television.

Suddenly, all “real” scary stuff was up there on the screen; the craggy dead tree knocking against your bedroom window, lightning storms looming ever closer, the half-open closet door…

And the clown… under the bed.

I mean come on, Vincent Price as The Fly was enough to make you watch at least part of it through splayed fingers, but deep down you knew a fly with a human head was pretty darn unlikely.

But an evil clown under your bed? Entirely plausible.

To this day, even as low-tech as it now appears, Poltergeist still gives me a shudder. It knew what scared us alright.

So it is with some trepidation that I remind you that a reboot of Tobe Hopper’s original fright fest is due to hit theaters on July 24th, in 3D no less.

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The Omnibus Volumes of Jack Vance, Part I: Planet of Adventure

Thursday, February 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

I’ve been exploring the work of Jack Vance recently, inspired by the beautiful volumes from Subterranean Press collecting his earliest short stories, The Early Jack Vance. Four have been released so far, and we covered the upcoming fifth volume, Grand Crusade, here.

I don’t think I really understood just how prolific Jack Vance was until I set out to collect his paperbacks. I began that undertaking decades ago, and it’s still underway. At last count, I had well over 50. He published over 20 through DAW alone (Amazon has listed many of them here).

Still, one of the great things about Vance is that you don’t have to work hard to find his most popular fiction. Over the years much of it — including his Dying Earth, Demon Princes, Durdane, Alastor, and Ports of Call books — has been collected in handsome and affordable omnibus editions from Orb/Tor, Gollancz, and the Science Fiction Book Club. And most of them are still in print.

Earlier this week I published the third and final installment of my survey of The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh. That started out as a modest attempt to catalog the omnibus editions of Cherryh’s early paperback SF and fantasy from DAW Books, and eventually became an excuse to showcase the covers of all 22 of her original novels. It was a lot of fun, especially if you have an obsessive interest in vintage paperbacks like I do.

Coincidentally, I ordered a set of Jack Vance omnibus editions earlier this month, and when they arrived I realized I could do the same thing with Vance. I’ve never really explored Vance’s back catalog with any thoroughness here at Black Gate, and it seemed like the right time.

So here we are. We’re kicking things off today with Planet of Adventure, an omnibus collection of four linked space opera novels: City of the Chasch (1968), Servants of the Wankh (1969), The Dirdir (1969), and The Pnume (1970). Next to The Dying Earth this is perhaps Vance’s most popular series, so it’s as good a place to start as any.

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New Treasures: California Bones and Pacific Fire by Greg van Eekhout

Thursday, February 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

What we have here is a pair of novels in an intriguing new dark fantasy series which were both released last month — California Bones in paperback, and Pacific Fire in hardcover.

California Bones is the first; it was published in hardcover by Tor last year. It’s an epic adventure set in a world similar to our own, in the Kingdom of Southern California, in a city of canals and secrets and casual brutality.

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Unbound: Flipping the Pages of Reality

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 0 Comment

For those of us who love books, they are often like windows into their own vibrant, living worlds. The idea that these stories contain a magical power to transport the reader to a new world, not merely figuratively but also literally, has shown up before, perhaps most prominently in The Neverending Story. In recent years, the idea of storybook worlds being tied to our own have become the driving force behind the popular television series Once Upon a Time. And, of course, many magical systems throughout fantasy literature have involved words of power.

Jim C. Hines has contributed one of the most intriguing interpretations on this theme in his Magic Ex Libris series. The first two books, Libriomancer and Codex Born, have been previously reviewed by our very own Alana Joli Abbott, but here’s the quick recap:

Isaac Vainio is a libriomancer, a magician with the ability to tap into the magic of books, drawing objects from them into the real world. His particular interest is science fiction and fantasy, allowing him to manifest anything from a lightsaber to a laser assault rifle to healing potions.

Magic has its limits, though. Isaac, with more skill and tenacity than common sense, has pushed beyond those limits more than most other libriomancers. So much so that he has come directly into contact with a dark presence that exists within books, a consciousness called the devourers, which has existed on the periphery of magic for centuries.

The third book, Unbound (Amazon), brings this conflict between the libriomancers and the devourers to a head. Isaac begins the book at about the lowest point imaginable. Not to give away too many spoilers from the end of Codex Born, but Isaac has no access to his magic and has been ostracized from the Porters, the magical society founded and led by the near-immortal sorcerer Johannes Gutenberg. (Yes, that Johannes Gutenberg. Like John O’Neill, reading keeps him young.) But this doesn’t prevent him from trying to hunt down more information about the devourers.

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Is This Where John Norman Got His Inspiration?

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Sean McLachlan Comments 4 comments

I spotted this in the classifieds at the back of the March 1962 issue of Amazing. Too bad I didn’t know about this when I met John Norman!

Sean McLachlan is a freelance travel and history writer. He is the author of the historical fantasy novel A Fine Likeness, set in Civil War Missouri, and the post-apocalyptic thriller Radio Hope. His historical fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence, was published by Black Gate. Find out more about him on his blog and Amazon author’s page.

Future Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year has been at new publisher Solaris for two years now, and things seem to be tickety boo. Which is great, since I really look forward to this volume every year, and I don’t need any additional stress and uncertainty in my life. I get enough of that worrying about whether Community is going to get canceled again.

Strahan has crammed 28 stories into his latest anthology, which may be a record, I dunno. How am I gonna find time to read them all? Man, I desperately need a day planner. And a couple of personal assistants who don’t complain when I send them for coffee.

In any case, authors this year include Garth Nix, Kelly Link, Ellen Klages (twice!), James Patrick Kelly, Joe Abercrombie, Paolo Bacigalupi, Eleanor Arnason, Genevieve Valentine, Michael Swanwick, Ken Liu, Amal El-Mohtar, Greg Egan, and over a dozen others. Strahan released the complete table of contents on his blog last month, and it looks fantastic:

1. “Tough Times All Over” Joe Abercrombie
2. “The Scrivener” Eleanor Arnason
3. “Moriabe’s Children” Paolo Bacigalupi
4. “Covenant” Elizabeth Bear
5. “Slipping” Lauren Beukes
6. “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)” Holly Black
7. “Shadow Flock” Greg Egan
8. “The Truth About Owls” Amal El-Mohtar

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From Poul Anderson’s Vault of the Ages to the End of All Things

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Gabe Dybing Comments 5 comments

Even though this survey seeks to showcase, specifically, Anderson’s fantasy works, I want to begin with what may be argued to be his first novel: Vault of the Ages. It moreover wouldn’t be all that hard to argue that this work is fantasy, anyway. Perhaps it’s historical fantasy – a kind that anachronistically depicts a medieval northern tribal culture in the future. It’s undeniably post-apocalyptic, and many of these works are not only fantasy but escapist fantasy at that. Who hasn’t been locked into a frustrating, mind-numbing job – a stereotypical office job, for instance – and thought, “If only I had some real problems with which to deal with right now, like zombies, or road warriors, or radioactive mutants”? Who hasn’t secretly yearned for the chance to see what they truly are capable of, to pit their meager store of talents against all that the dangerous world might offer, and who hasn’t secretly concluded that they would do just fine – they would just have to get a gun, of course, and stockpile some food – and take out that weirdo next door, first thing!

Not only would I classify Anderson’s first novel as belonging to the species of post-apocalyptic literature, but I’d also call it mundane science fiction, because none of the science in here is extrapolative. In fact, it can be argued that there is no “science” here at all, because the gist of the science is the salvage of iron, to be hammered into common swords and shields, out of radioactive cities. And gunpowder which is hidden in the – you guessed it – Vault of the Ages.

I also might classify this as a boy’s novel, because it begins with an overly informational account of actual time capsules in Atlanta, Georgia and in New York City. It’s hard to see what purpose this introduction might serve other than didacticism, and this consequently suggests an audience that often is perceived to be in need of didacticism. Moreover, the main characters are routinely called “boys,” which, intentionally or not, because of the way in which these characters gleefully and energetically hurl themselves into very scary, very potentially fatal situations, lends this work the character of an adventure novel aimed at Boy Scouts. In other words, for me, this book is short in emotional realism. We shall have to talk about Viking age perspectives in time, but even taking this into account, the boys’ worldviews and actions seem wantonly cavalier.

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A Neglected Classic from the Golden Age of Sword & Sorcery: H. Warner Munn’s Merlin Cycle

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Tony Den Comments 7 comments

I first encountered H. Warner Munn by chance. Or maybe he encountered me, and it was more than pure chance.

I started reading fantasy and science fiction in high school, when a friend recommended Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight books. I dutifully took the first one out of the public library and soldiered through it. I was impressed enough to decide to start broadening my narrow literary horizons. The problem was that, in South Africa in the 1980’s, the big book sellers stocked a pretty limited selection of genre titles, and the more specialized sellers were few and far between.

The solution was for my friend Graham and I to take a bus to the city center after school, and explore some of the independent and more specialized shops. One in particular has a vast array of genre books, and to this day I lament its eventual closure.

I encountered a myriad of unknown authors and works on that shop’s shelves. One that particularly intrigued me – although not enough to part with my pitifully small amount of cash – was The Misplaced Legion, by Harry Turtledove. I never saw that book on the shelves again.

Fast forward a decade and a bit and, lo and behold, the internet was here and much exploring was done. I dredged my memory — while whittling away at my employer’s internet bandwidth — looking for bits and pieces to fill out my book and RPG collections. Memory failed me somewhat, however, and when I attempted to recall that vague, impressive book from the ‘80s, I remembered it as… The Lost Legion. I no longer had a clue to the author’s name, either.

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The Dark Issue 7 now on Sale

Tuesday, February 17, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

I’m jealous of the fabulous covers that grace The Dark magazine.

Selecting cover art for a magazine is no simple task. I know, I did it for over a decade — sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. A great cover has to be a great piece of art, both eye catching and unique, but that’s not enough. It also has to clearly communicate the tone and content within. It won’t help you, for example, to have vibrant sword and sorcery heroes on your cover month after month, if you never actually publish sword & sorcery (as Realms of Fantasy was notorious for.)

The Dark has great covers. And they faithfully convey the macabre tone of the stories within… and, occasionally, the magazine’s playful side as well, as Lane Brown’s cover for the February issue, featuring a young girl feeding a bat, does marvelously (at right, click to embiggen.)

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

“Bearskin” by Angela Slatter
“In the Dreams Full of Sleep, Beakless Birds Can Fly” by Patricia Russo
“Welcome to Argentia” by Sandra McDonald
“A Spoke in Fortune’s Wheel” by Brooke Wonders

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. If you enjoy the magazine you can also support it by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments. Read issue 7 here, and see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered The Dark with Issue 6. A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15 – subscribe today.