Black Gate – Page 885 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: Jani and the Greater Game by Eric Brown

Friday, October 10, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

This Eric Brown fellow is one of the most prolific of the new generation of SF and fantasy authors. He’s published a dozen novels in just the last five years, almost all of them with Solaris Books, including the Bengal Station trilogy, The Kings of Eternity (2011), Weird Space: The Devil’s Nebula (2012), Serene Invasion (2013), and Weird Space: Satan’s Reach (2013).

His latest is the opening book in a new steampunk action adventure series set in India in 1910, where the British rule with an iron fist thanks to a strange technology fueled by a mysterious power source… and their enemies covertly maneuver to discover its secrets in a political dance known as the Greater Game.

Eighteen-year-old Janisha Chatterjee, the Cambridge-educated daughter of an Indian government minister, is coming home to visit her father on his death-bed, when her airship is attacked and wrecked. Amid the debris, a stranger — monstrous but kind — saves her life and entrusts her with a mysterious device, which pitches her head-first into the “Greater Game,” the ongoing stand-off between British, Chinese and Russian powers in the Indian subcontinent.

Dodging British officers, Russian spies, and the dangerous priest Durga Das, Jani must bring the device to the foothills of the Himalayas; to the home of Annapurnite, the secret power source on which British domination was built. There she will learn the truth about Annapurnite — a truth that will change the world forever…

Jani and the Greater Game was published on July 29, 2014 by Solaris Books. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Dominic Harman.

Why Did I Say That? Or, The Perils of Writing a Series

Friday, October 10, 2014 Violette Malan Comments 9 comments

A frequently heard complaint about a series, whether in book or TV form, is that the characters never change, and that they keep doing the same things over and over. Another frequently heard complaint is that the characters have changed out of all recognition from the ones we first knew and loved, and why do we never see them doing some of the things they used to do?

Why does this happen, you ask? Because writing a series is more complicated than it looks.

For one thing, you don’t actually know you’re writing a series until you’re on your third, or even your fourth, book. Sure, you may be planning to write a series long before that, but you’re not actually writing one until then. It probably isn’t until your third or fourth book that you have to consider one of the all important factors: will my characters age?

Agatha Christie famously regretted making Hercules Poirot a retiree when she wrote her first book about him, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but she didn’t realize then that she’d be writing those novels for another 50 years. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, along with their recurring secondary characters, simply don’t age. Even though the world goes on around them, with very few exceptions each of their stories is told as if it was a single, stand alone novel.

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Frayling Tackles his own Yellow Peril

Friday, October 10, 2014 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

The centennial of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu character is a topic I have covered both for the anniversary of the Devil Doctor’s first appearance in the story, “The Zayat Kiss,” in 1912 and the publication of the first novel (really a fix-up of stories), The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, in 1913.

While Rohmer and the character are largely forgotten outside of pulp circles today, the legacy of the criminal mastermind is alive and well in film and comics. The concept of the Yellow Peril from an era when the broad term Oriental grouped together people from parts of Eastern Europe with all of Asia and the Middle East may sound anachronistic, but given the continued delicate relations between the Middle East and the West, those same fears personified are still the stuff of fiction and paranoia well over a century on.

Sax Rohmer did not invent the criminal mastermind, nor was he the first to capitalize on the Yellow Peril for works of fiction. What he did do was create an archetype that managed to embody and transcend the fears of a “foreign other” to instead personify the fear of Western society falling to a superior intellect operating under a completely different set of values. Rohmer did this better than anyone before and while Fu Manchu as a name may seem ridiculous, the concept of the character is still with us from James Bond films to the media’s portrayal of terrorist leaders in the 21st Century.

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Goth Chick News: Vlad Tepes Does Time

Thursday, October 9, 2014 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

As if in response to the modern day bastardization of the vampire image (flannel shirts, shunning blood-drinking, etc., etc.), Dracula himself has started popping up everywhere.

Pardon the phraseology.

First, in June come the report from the University of Tallin that Vlad Dracula’s final resting place was likely not in the ruins of a Romanian monastery, but was instead in a Neapolitan chapel.

And now, just in time for Halloween, the UK’s Daily Mail reports more archaeological history about the real man Vlad Dracula.

A winding maze of secret dungeons and tunnels has been discovered beneath Tokat Castle in Turkey during restoration work on the site. The ruins of the castle are located in the northern town of Tokat and these hidden cells may have been where Vlad Tepes himself was held hostage during the 15th century.

“The castle is completely surrounded by secret tunnels. It is very mysterious,” says restoration archaeologist İbrahim Çetin, who is working at the site. He went on to tell the Daily News that one tunnel found is believed to have been used to reach nearby Roman baths. The dungeons, Çetin told the paper, were “built like a prison.”

“It is hard to estimate in which room Dracula was kept,” he said, “But he was around here.”

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

Thursday, October 9, 2014 Matthew Wuertz Comments 5 comments

The March, 1952 issue of Galaxy opens with a word from the editor, H. L. Gold. Gold introduces Willy Ley, who’s beginning his monthly department, “For Your Information,” that will vary from complete articles to brief reports on “significant developments in science.”

Along with the introduction, Gold states that a number of readers have asked what he’s like, so shares some details. Of his name, he writes, “Named H(orace) L(eonard) after a prompt casualty in the Princess Pat Regiment. I can’t pretend to be fond of my name, but I don’t use initials to escape it; that was decided upon by an editor, though other editors have used the whole thing. Having had 32 pen names, I find the problem shrug-worthy.” 32 pen names? Was he going for a world record?

About Galaxy, Gold writes, “Galaxy, of course, is my own dream come true. I know I sometimes push too hard, but that’s because everyone wants his dream to be perfect.” I’m glad he did. It was a good dream.

“The Year of the Jackpot” by Robert A. Heinlein — Potiphar Breen is a numbers guy — statistician, analyst, or any role where he can use his skills in numbers and patterns. The latest pattern is an increasing number of odd behaviors, such as women publicly disrobing for no apparent reason. He interviews one of the women, Meade Barstow, and the two of them begin meeting routinely. When the statistics show the approach of an unknown climactic event, Potiphar and Meade flee the city, hoping to avoid becoming a statistic of their own.

I couldn’t quite buy in to the premise of the story, but I let that go. It does move along pretty quickly, and when things start to go bad, they go really bad. And by that point, the predictability of it all isn’t as important as pure survival.

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Win a Copy of The Madness of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi

Thursday, October 9, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Last month, we reported on the upcoming release of a major new horror anthology, The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume One, edited by the tireless S.T. Joshi.

That brief article generated a lot of reader interest. No surprise there — this looks like a great book. The Madness of Cthulhu collects fourteen original tales, and two reprints, inspired by Lovecraft’s horror masterpiece At the Mountains of Madness. Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Caitlin R. Kiernan, John Shirley, Harry Turtledove, and others contribute their own takes on the master’s classic tale of a doomed Antarctic expedition that discovers an ancient metropolis built by mysterious alien creatures. This is the first of two volumes, with the second to be released Summer 2015.

We are very pleased to announce that we have two copies to give away to readers of Black Gate, compliments of Titan Books.

How do you enter? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “The Madness of Cthulhu,” and a one-sentence review of your favorite H.P. Lovecraft story (don’t forget to identify the story). That’s it — what could possibly be easier?

Two winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries. All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty trade paperback is more than, like, 10 bucks.

The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume One was published on Tuesday by Titan Books. It is 304 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. Learn more at the Titan Books website.

One Shot, One Story: Clark Ashton Smith

Wednesday, October 8, 2014 Thomas Parker Comments 13 comments

The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a pastor, and I took the opportunity to ask him a deep theological question: “If you had to choose one player to take one shot, with eight tenths of a second on the clock and the game on the line — to save your life — who would you choose?” (My friend, in addition to being an ordained minister, is also, like me, a devoted acolyte in the Church of the NBA.)

This is of course the sort of dangerous question that led to the Reformation and the Thirty Year’s War. Happily in this case no violence ensued, though his pick was Larry Bird and mine was Michael Jordan. Hey, if he wants to die while I live, that’s his business. (It helps a little that the first choice of each was the second choice of the other.)

What does this have to do with “Adventures in Fantasy Literature,” the avowed purview of Black Gate, you ask? Just this — it got me thinking about one of my favorite fantasists, one whom not enough lovers of the fantastic are acquainted with: Clark Ashton Smith. There are one hundred and fourteen stories in the five volumes of The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith. If I had a reader, willing but uninitiated, and had to pick one of those stories to introduce Smith with, (to save my life!) which one would it be?

Smith is a writer who can benefit from such an introduction; though he was one of the “Three Musketeers” of Weird Tales in its 1930’s heyday, he remains much less known than the other two-thirds of the trio. You could fill a phone book with the names of imitators of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, but, as Ray Bradbury said, Smith is “a special writer for special tastes; his fame was lonely.”

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Medieval Arms and Armor in World War One

Wednesday, October 8, 2014 Sean McLachlan Comments 2 comments

German steel helmet and armor, 1916. I have no idea why the armorer included little steel nipples. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

After the initial couple of months of World War One, the front stagnated and both sides began to dig in. The war settled in for four years of trench warfare. While trench warfare was nothing new — the American Civil War, Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkan Wars all saw the use of trenches — this was on an unprecedented scale.

The new situation called for new measures. None of the participating armies had an adequate number of grenades and it took a year for supply to catch up with demand. Some countries never managed to produce enough. Artillery commanders discovered that shrapnel, deadly in the open battles of the past, did little against entrenched enemies unless the gunners were lucky enough to score a direct hit. There was a long lag before enough high explosive shells made it to the front.

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Vintage Treasures: Down to a Sunless Sea by Lin Carter

Wednesday, October 8, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

We’re big fans of Lin Carter here at Black Gate. He was one of the most influential figures in 20th Century fantasy, chiefly as the editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy (BAF) line of paperback reprints, the six volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, and the groundbreaking Flashing Swords! sword & sorcery anthologies. He was also one of the hardest working professionals in the genre. Carter edited a BAF volume every single month between May 1969 and April 1974 (65 total), and in the same time period produced over a dozen novels and numerous short stories.

Although his own fiction output was prodigious, Carter is remembered today chiefly as an editor rather than a writer. In his fond review of Carter’s 1984 novel Kellory the Warlock back in March, Fletcher Vredenburgh gave us a blunt assessment of his skill as a writer:

Poor Lin Carter: perhaps the greatest champion heroic fantasy ever had, an editor with few equals, one of the most knowledgeable fan boys in the world, but a poor writer. I think he would have liked his stories and novels to be remembered more fondly than they are. I believe Kellory the Warlock proves he had the potential to have been a better writer…

Most of his fiction, rarely more than pastiches of his favorite authors (Howard, Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Dent), never garnered enough attention to be republished… Carter was no master stylist and it can get a little irritating. Most of the time, he was trying to create fun, quick reads that were recreations of his favorite writers. In a way, he was writing fan fiction; it’s just that he got his published.

Personally, I’ve always been curious about Carter’s Mars novels, since they seem to be more fondly remembered today than much of his other fiction. I’ve always assumed they were Burroughs pastiches, but the Author’s Note to the final volume, Down to a Sunless Sea, makes it clear that they were actually inspired by the Queen of sword-and-planet fiction, the great Leigh Brackett herself.

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Art of the Genre: Photographs from a Long Lost Lake Geneva

Wednesday, October 8, 2014 Scott Taylor Comments 4 comments

Cartographer Dennis Kauth wants a piece of Larry Elmore's beautiful mind! — Cartographer Dennis Kauth wants a piece of Larry Elmore’s beautiful mind!

Over the past four years, I’ve struck up a friendship with Nick Parkinson, son of the late fantasy and D&D artist Keith Parkinson. We both live in San Diego and it is always nice to share thoughts on the sweeping industry of games as a whole.

One thing very few people understand who look into fantasy art is that the bulk of all artists DO NOT play RPGs. Of the ‘Big Four’ for TSR (Elmore, Easley, Parkinson, and Caldwell), only Keith actually played Dungeons & Dragons.

Todd Lockwood was a D&D player until he started working at TSR in the late 1990s and he often speaks about how the ‘magic was gone’ once he started actually designing the game. That is a subject I’ll look at another day, however, although it is intriguing.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit off target here, so let me refocus. Nick and I had a conversation where I was looking to acquire a few old character sheets from ‘famous’ players for an io9 article a friend was writing and he said he’d just seen some of his father’s old sheets when he’d moved a few months before.

A week later, I didn’t get the character sheets, but he did send over a nice grouping of old TSR photographs and I was very interested to see the ‘process’ of how these great creators worked together to make some of the famous images we all know and love.

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