Black Gate – Page 876 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Epic Pets

Monday, November 17, 2014 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 5 comments

Today I’m turning over the Black Gate rostrum to the talented Kenny Soward! Take it away, Kenny!

We all have our favorite pets, those whose personalities outshined the others. Or maybe they were all awesome. Ever think about making them into one of your characters? I did – albeit unawares – magically turning an old Persian kitty into a gnomish wizard.

You see, when I was younger and just getting into epic fantasy, my pets weren’t just friends to me. They were my battle companions, my protectors, and my fondest allies as I dreamed of becoming an epic, sword-wielding warrior, probably at the same time comic book nerds were dreaming of being Superman, Wonder Woman, or Batman. I used to dream about my pets growing to magnificent sizes where I could saddle them up and ride off to battle. My first epic mount was a German Shepherd named Rommel. While I never actually climbed aboard him – I wasn’t dumb enough to risk an annoyed nip from my beast – I thought about it all the time.

Some of the first stories I ever wrote featured me riding Rommel into a bloody fray, his teeth gnashing and crunching through enemy armor while I wagged my sword above my head and shouted a battle cry. And then, I’d sweep down with my sword and … wait … I’m writing an article here, not a story!

…

Read More Read More

Meet a Dominatrix Who Solves Murders in Mistress Bunny and the Cancelled Client by Michael Penkas

Monday, November 17, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

When I discussed his short story collection Dead Boys last year, I said the following about Michael Penkas:

Michael has an uncanny ability to pry open your heart with sparkling prose, humor, and warm and genuine characters… and then drive a cold spike through it with relentless and diabolical twists. All with some of the most compact and economical prose I have ever encountered.

Now that I’ve read his first novel, Mistress Bunny and the Cancelled Client, I can confirm that he is just as impressive at longer lengths. Mistress Bunny, a cozy mystery featuring a Chicago dominatrix who’s very good at her job, is, in the words of C.S.E. Cooney, “Too weird to dismiss as quirky, too warm and funny to keep you at a distance, but so kinky and clear-sighted and compassionate.” I predict that it will launch Michael on a very successful career.

Life’s hard enough for a working class dominatrix without the occasional murder.

After getting dumped by her boyfriend, Mistress Bunny cancels her six o’clock session so that she can cry and drink herself to sleep. When she learns the next day that her client was found dead in his office, shot in the head at the same time she should have been tying him up, she can’t help but feel a little responsible.

But when she attends his funeral, Bunny begins to suspect that the gunshot wound wasn’t nearly as self-inflicted as the police believe. Her investigation uncovers a string of “suicides” that don’t begin (or end) with her client … a string where the next mysterious death might be her own. Hounded by a drunk ex-boyfriend, a pissed-off widow, and an office assistant with a hidden agenda, Mistress Bunny finds herself at the center of a mystery and discovers that there are some secrets a man won’t even share with his dominatrix.

If you’d like a taste of the twisted sense of humor on display in his novel, try Michael’s chilling and hilarious biblical fantasy ”The Worst Was Yet to Come,” published right here at Black Gate. Mistress Bunny and the Cancelled Client was published on November 6, 2014. It is 208 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $5 for the digital edition. The cover is by Viola Estrella.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Meet Solar Pons

Monday, November 17, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 8 comments

There have been a few posts here recently about fan fiction. That concept has been taken to its furthest extreme with the character of Sherlock Holmes. Amateur and professional writers have been penning tales about Holmes for about a century.

Parodies are stories that poke fun at Holmes. Many, such as this one I wrote (page 10), utilize Holmes himself and are clearly tongue in cheek. Others use “new” characters, such as Robert Fish’s Schlock Holmes and his Bagel Street Saga.

But the more serious Holmes tales, those that attempt to portray Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective to varying levels, are called pastiches. Just about the earliest ‘serious’ attempt at a Holmes copy was by Vincent Starrett, who wrote “The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet” in 1920.

The Doyle sons (whom I wrote about here) didn’t like pastiches and they’re relatively uncommon during the first half of the twentieth century as they protected their copyright. The Doyle Estate has been fighting over the copyright right up to this month!

Richard Lancelyn Green’s The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collects many of the early pastiches, including several from the nineteen forties. There are thousands of pastiches out there now. Search “Sherlock Holmes” or “Sherlock Holmes anthologies” at Amazon and you’ll get a list too big to go through. A future post will talk about some of my favorite pastiches, such as Frank Thomas’s Sherlock Holmes & the Sacred Sword and Michael Hardwick’s Prisoner of the Devil.

But this post is about the detective that Starrett called “The best substitute for Sherlock Holmes known”: Solar Pons. In 1928, August Derleth, a college freshman at the University Wisconsin, wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking if there were to be any more Holmes tales. Receiving an emphatic reply of “no” scrawled on his own letter, Derleth made a note on his calendar: “In re: Sherlock Holmes.”

…

Read More Read More

Sofia Samatar Confronts the Elephant in the Room

Sunday, November 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 14 comments

Sofia Samatar with the World Fantasy Award. Photo by Nathan Ballingrud. — Sofia Samatar with the World Fantasy Award. Photo by Nathan Ballingrud

As I was pleased to report last week, Sofia Samatar won the 2014 World Fantasy Award for her acclaimed first novel A Stranger in Olondria. And as I also mentioned, Sofia addressed “the elephant in the room” in her remarks to the audience, saying a few words about the fact that she was being honored with a bust of Lovecraft, a man who expressed profoundly racist views in his fiction and poetry. Nonetheless, she was articulate and extremely gracious, and accepted the award with humility and gratitude.

In the days since, she has expanded slightly on her remarks, saying on her blog:

I said it was awkward to accept the award as a writer of color. (See this post by Nnedi Okorafor, the 2011 winner, if you are confused about why.) I also thanked the board for taking the issue seriously…

I am not telling anybody not to read Lovecraft. I teach Lovecraft! I actually insist that people read him and write about him! For grades! This is not about reading an author but about using that person’s image to represent an international award honoring the work of the imagination.

While the issue of replacing Lovecraft’s image on the award continues to be hotly debated, I was pleased to see that Sofia’s remarks in large part have not been. She is a class act, and if there’s anyone who can gently nudge the calcified old guard of fantasy into accepting that the field’s highest honor remains (at best) a dubious honor for people of color as long as it bears Lovecraft’s image, it’s Sofia Samatar. In the meantime, she reminds us that, if she can maintain a sense of humor in all this, so can the rest of us. On her Facebook page she posted the image at right, captured moments after accepting the award (snapped at her table by fellow Small Beer author Nathan Ballingrud), along with this comment:

And also, to be real, we’re practically identical. Race is a construct! TWINSIES!

This is how you win arguments. By being simultaneously more articulate and dignified — and funnier — than everyone else in the room. I know who gets my vote to replace Lovecraft’s visage on the statue. Perhaps they won’t even have to modify it all that much. But trust me, when they’re done, it’ll be a lot more beautiful.

New Treasures: The Elementals by Michael McDowell

Sunday, November 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I spent only four days at the World Fantasy Convention in Washington D.C. last weekend, but I picked up enough new books to fuel a few months of New Treasures. It was extremely rewarding just to spend a few minutes at each booth in the Dealers Room, perusing the handsome titles on display. I was familiar with many of the various publishers, of course, but more than a few — like the amazing Hippocampus Press, whom I talked about on Friday — were new to me, and discovering all of their titles at once, I felt like a kid in a candy store.

That was the case with the impressive Valancourt Books, who describe themselves as “an independent small press specializing in the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction.” The team behind the table was very friendly and enthusiastic, but I remember almost nothing of our conversation because I was so taken with their wide range of horror titles. I’ll have a lot more to say about their catalog in a future post, but for now I want to highlight the first book I picked up, a gorgeous reprint of Michael McDowell’s 1981 mass market paperback The Elementals.

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they were boys and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may be responsible for several terrible and unexplained deaths years earlier — and is now ready to kill again…

…

Read More Read More

Weird Fiction Review #4 Now on Sale

Sunday, November 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

While I was wandering around the Dealer’s Room at the World Fantasy Convention, I spotted this little gem on Greg Ketter’s table. It’s the fourth issue of Weird Fiction Review, S.T. Joshi’s annual magazine devoted to the study of weird and supernatural fiction. And yeah, that’s our boy Godzilla on the cover.

Joshi has a rep as a serious scholar of weird fiction and he’s edited numerous collections and anthologies, including the brand new The Madness of Cthulhu, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith, and the long-running magazine Lovecraft Studies. But the thing that’s surprised me about Weird Fiction Review is the delightful sense of whimsy it exhibits, especially with cover art. The cover of the previous issue, for example, featured Mad magazine poster child Alfred E. Neuman with Cthulhu tentacles. That’s some serious satiric genius right there.

The massive fourth issue contains fiction from J.C. Hemphill, Lynne Jamneck, Donald Tyson, Mark Fuller Dillon, Michael Kelly, Clint Smith, Michael Washburn, and a classic reprint by Nigel Dennis. The cover is by Bob Eggleton (click the image at left for the glorious wrap-around version.)

There’s also some terrific articles — John Butler contributes a lengthy (30-page) review of The New Monster Magazines and a retrospective of E.C. artist Jack Davis, Jason V. Brock looks at “Forrest J. Ackerman: Fan Zero,” there’s a lengthy interview with Patrick McGrath, there’s an 8-page full-color gallery of art by Bob Eggleton, plus regular columns by Danel Olson and John Pelan, and much more, including poetry, and reviews.

The only serious drawback, in fact, is the price: $35. Like almost everything Centipede publishes, it has a limited print run (500 copies.) However, it is available through Amazon at a 45% discount (for $19.17).

…

Read More Read More

Step into a Dark Alternative London in Unhallowed Metropolis Revised

Saturday, November 15, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

The dark fantasy role-playing game Unhallowed Metropolis was published by Eos Press in December 2007. I never got a copy, but I sure heard about it.

Set in an alternative London of 2105, two hundred years after a zombie apocalypse very nearly destroyed civilization, the game included ghosts, psychic powers, failed supersoldier experiments, zeppelins, ghoul colonies, vampires, and darker things. The futuristic dark-age London was made real with a well-conceived historical timeline, fascinating detail, and some terrific art.

The game was updated in 2011 with Unhallowed Metropolis Revised, which features new art, a foreword by Kenneth Hite (Trail of Cthulhu), streamlined rules, complete rules for volatile psychics and spectral entities, details on the wonders of aether technology, and much more. I bought a copy last month at the Fall Games Plus auction, and settled in for a read through today.

So far, I’ve been very impressed. The world building is strong indeed, and the setting splendidly realized. The art is a mix of pen and ink work and black & white photos of some very talented cosplay (the credits list 37 models, two make-up artists, and four photo manipulation artists… a pretty major production, no matter how you look at it).

All that effort has paid off. Unhallowed Metropolis Revised sucks you into the game world in a way I haven’t experienced since Ashen Stars. This is a game that makes you ache to play it.

…

Read More Read More

Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Seven: Temple Tower

Saturday, November 15, 2014 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

Temple Tower (1929) was the sixth Bulldog Drummond novel and marked a departure from the series formula. Having killed Carl Peterson off at the conclusion of the fourth book and dealt with his embittered mistress Irma’s revenge scheme as the plot of the fifth book, Sapper took the series in an unexpected direction by turning to French pulp fiction for inspiration.

Sapper also placed Hugh Drummond in a supporting role and elevated his loyal friend Peter Darrell to the role of narrator. The subsequent success of the venerable movie series and the future controversies generated by Sapper’s reactionary politics and bigotry obscured the versatility of his narratives and led to his being under-appreciated when considered with his peers.

…

Read More Read More

Selling Short Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Fiction, Part III: Reprints

Saturday, November 15, 2014 Derek Kunsken Comments 2 comments

Ottawa-20141115-00458 — The Polish magazine *Nowa Fantastyka*

This is the third of three posts about selling short fiction. We’ve talked about how to know how to fit your story into the ecosystem of short fiction markets and what the business side (contracts, rights, etc) look like. This one is about reprints.

Other than the rule of never selling your copyright or paying to have your short fiction published, the big strategic rule to keep in mind when selling fiction is: reprint rights are usually far less valuable than first English rights.

So why consider reprints? (1) It’s more money, for no extra work, and (2) it may expose your work to other audiences.

So where can you sell reprints?

In the olden days, some magazines would accept reprints. Not the top line magazines, but some. And they would have been paying penny for the word or less. You can still find those markets on www.ralan.com. But when I sell a story now, there are three places I actively try to resell after the story has finished its run.

One: Audio markets

Podcastle for fantasy, Escapepod for scifi, and Pseudopod for horror. Each episode of these podcasts gets downloaded 5,000+ times, so that’s a big market expansion, which often doesn’t cross over into wherever my story was initially published.

…

Read More Read More

What Old Futures Can Tell Us About Worldbuilding

Saturday, November 15, 2014 Comments 3 comments

I was taking a look at Stand by for Mars!, the first of the classic 1950s Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventures, and this passage stood out like a sore thumb:

Speaking into an audioscriber, a machine that transmitted his spoken words into typescript, he repeated the names of the candidates as they passed.

And later

…he picked up the audioscriber microphone and recorded a brief message. Removing the threadlike tape from the machine, he returned to the house and left it on the spool

Bit of background. It’s the year AD whatever. In the first excerpt, somebody is recording the arrival of candidates for the Space Academy. In the second excerpt… actually I have no idea what’s happening. I bounced halfway through the first chapter, not because of the retro future, but because I didn’t much care for standard issue school stories where the personality clashes weren’t tied to wider issues and themes — JKR did it better. However, it’s the retro future I’m interested in here.

Let’s think about the audioscriber.

…

Read More Read More