Black Gate – Page 847 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Will Steven Spielberg Cast Chris Pratt in the Indiana Jones Reboot?

Saturday, February 21, 2015 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

The internet is abuzz with rumors that director Steven Spielberg is considering Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt as his next Indiana Jones.

Deadline broke the news last month that Spielberg was interested in Pratt for the Indiana Jones reboot currently in development at Disney; yesterday Deadline expanded on the story, and it was quickly picked up by Forbes, People, io9, and other media sites.

Officially, there is no comment from the famed director, other than to confirm that there is still no script and the project is still in a very early stage. Based on Pratt’s recent popularity — and that fact that he was reportedly Spielberg’s first choice for the hunter role in Jurassic World, the newest installment in the Jurassic Park franchise from Universal coming in June — he seems a logical enough choice, however.

In addition to Jurassic World, Pratt is also scheduled to appear in the upcoming Image comic adaption Cowboy, Ninja, Viking from Universal. He’s also reportedly in talks to join Denzel Washington in a remake of The Magnificent Seven from MGM.

I wasn’t even aware there was a planned reboot of Indiana Jones (or a The Magnificent Seven remake, while we’re on the topic.) After having seen what Pratt accomplished in The Lego Movie and Guardians though, I’m on board. I think he’d make an excellent choice — particularly if Spielberg directs.

New Treasures: Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder

Saturday, February 21, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Maria V. Snyder’s first short story, “The Wizard’s Daily Horoscope,” appeared in Black Gate 11 in 2007. We published ”Cursing the Weather” in Black Gate 15, and it quickly became one of the most acclaimed stories in what was to be the final issue of the magazine. Here’s what Keith West said about it on his blog Adventures Fantastic:

Nysa… is probably as far from the sterotypical warrior woman as you can get. She’s a young girl working in a tavern, trying to earn enough money to buy the medicine needed to keep her dying mother alive. Then a weather wizard moves in across the street… I wouldn’t have considered this one to really fit the theme of warrior woman. In spite of that, I think I enjoyed it the most. I’m going to be checking out more of Ms. Snyder’s work.

Keith wasn’t the only one to seek out Maria’s work. Her first novel, Poison Study, won the Compton Crook Award in 2006, and the third in the series, Fire Study, hit The New York Times bestseller list in 2008.

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SFWA Announces the 2015 Nebula Award Nominations

Friday, February 20, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Wow, it’s almost the end of February. And that means that the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) finally put an end to all that suspense, and announced the nominees for the 2015 Nebula Awards, one of the most prestigious awards our industry has to offer.

Last year there were no less than eight nominees for best novel; this year that number has dropped back to six. Does this mean there will be less infighting and disagreement over who should win?

You’re kidding, right? (In truth, the debate is half the fun — and it generates a lot of interest in a lot of deserving books.)

This year’s nominees are:

Novel

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)
Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)
Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals)

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Writers as Barbarian Conquerors!

Friday, February 20, 2015 mariebilodeau Comments 10 comments

This is possibly the most brilliant way to think about writing ever. I can’t believe I’m just thinking about it now, and certainly won’t have to beat the metaphor into shape. Well, maybe a bit. But, who the heck cares. You can now view your writing as a freaking barbarian invasion! Like I said: brilliant.

BattlePlan_small — Barbarians don’t post plans on the Internet, so I interviewed one and drew this. You’re welcome.

PLANNING THE BATTLE

Like any good invading army, you must first plan which of your troops are going where. It’s known as “plotting” in the writing world. It doesn’t need to be super detailed, but you should know the attack plan of your knights (aka hero) and archers (aka secondary characters. Sorry, Hawkeye). Plus, you should know a bit about your enemy’s defenses (aka villain).

Build up enthusiasm in your barbarian army with awesome speeches (aka writing down cool scenes).

FIRST WAVE OF ATTACK!

This is where you plunge in and WRITE! KILL! DESTROY! Your armies are in place. Your knights are totally rocking it! Your archers are shooting those little wooden arrows like they can’t run out AND THEY DON’T BECAUSE IT’S YOUR BOOK!

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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.