Black Gate – Page 887 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Art of the Genre: Robotech Anime, RPG, Novels, Comics, Toys, Video Games, and Soundtrack, oh my!

Wednesday, October 15, 2014 Scott Taylor Comments 5 comments

I don’t know if I’ve ever really admitted this before, and I actually had to go back to a Black Gate post from two years ago to check, but I’m pretty much a Robotech junkie. Of all the crazy geek culture stuff I’m involved in, there is no licensed universe I care more for than Robotech [sorry Star Wars, it’s true].

It began, as most things did for me, in the 1980s, on VHS. I managed to get the entire series off a weekday comic block from a television station broadcasting out of Terre Haute, Indiana. At the time, it was like a drug, and I personally pored over those scratchy recorded episodes (that I’d captured at 7 AM for a year) so many times that the tapes finally corrupted. I even carried them around with me when I could, and I remember this time I took my collection, complete with commercial breaks, down to my grandparents’ house for Christmas and convinced my two cousins, Jeff a year younger and Greg, two years younger, to watch Macross with me.

Greg, always game for my little geeky desires because he looked up to me, stayed true to the course as the episodes ticked by into the wee hours of the morning, but Jeff, always the mathematical pragmatist (and now very wealthy and successful, go figure), decided he’d had enough by 1 AM. Bowing out, he went off to the rear of the house to sleep and Greg and I trudged on. Ten minutes later, Jeff reappeared, sat down glumly with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and never said a word, but finished out the series with us.

THAT is the power of Robotech! Even for a young man, soon to be actuary, and later high stakes financial guru, he just couldn’t blow off the end of Macross without knowing what happened between Rick, Lisa, and Minmei.

I mean, even my wife, who hates anime, hates fantasy, hates science fiction, hates… well, let’s just say her middle name should be ‘hate’, actually watched every episode of Macross just last year with my son and I! Is that even possible? Sure, she might have rolled her eyes on occasion as she looked up from her Mac while shopping online, but damnit, I’m still counting it!

…

Read More Read More

Collect the Complete Faber & Faber Editions of Robert Aickman’s Classic Ghost Stories

Wednesday, October 15, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

About a month ago, I reported (with some delight) on my acquisition of Robert Aickman’s Dark Entries, a reprint collection of the author’s ghost stories from British publisher Faber and Faber.

I was so pleased to get it — and the book was just so damn gorgeous — that it wasn’t long before I started hunting down Faber and Faber’s other Aickman reprints: The Unsettled Dust, The Wine Dark Sea, and Cold Hand in Mine. All three are collections, gathering the author’s short stories and novellas.

Aickman has long been recognized as one of the finest horror writers in the field. He received the World Fantasy Award in 1975 for his short story, “Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal,” originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and reprinted in Cold Hand in Mine. In 1981, the same year he died, he was awarded the British Fantasy Award for “The Stains,” which originally appeared in New Terrors, and was eventually reprinted in The Unsettled Dust.

The covers of the new Faber and Faber editions are by Tim McDonagh, and they are absolutely stellar (click the images above for bigger versions). I love them all, but perhaps my favorite is The Unsettled Dust, with its subtle portrayal of two children taking a late-night shortcut across a spooky English landscape. McDonagh’s hyper-detailed, almost comic book style fits the subject matter beautifully; he captures the brooding menace of Aickman’s “strange stories” better than any artist I’ve ever seen.

All four books are currently in print in trade paperback, priced at £7.99 – £8.99, or around 8 bucks each for the digital editions. The print editions are not directly available in the US; I ordered them from an overseas book vendor through Amazon for between $8 – $9 each, plus shipping.

Clarkesworld 97 now on Sale

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

You know, we don’t pay enough attention to Clarkesworld.

Clarkesworld, founded by Neil Clarke and edited by Sean Wallace, is one of the genre’s pioneering online magazines — and also one of its most successful. It has been published monthly for over eight years, since October 2006. Each issue is packed with fiction, interviews, and articles, and the cover art — like this month’s gorgeously gonzo piece from Sandeep Karunakaran — is consistently excellent. (Click the image at right for the full-size version.)

Clarkesworld is a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine, and stories from the magazine have been nominated (and won) countless awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Stoker Awards. In 2013, for example, Clarkesworld received more Hugo nominations for short fiction than all the leading print magazines (Asimov’s, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) combined.

If you’re not fond of reading online magazines, Clarkesworld also makes its fiction available in ebook editions, audio podcasts, print issues, and in an annual print and ebook anthology. How convenient can you get?

Issue 97 contains four new stories from E. Catherine Tobler, Maria Dahvana Headley, Helena Bell, and Rahul Kanakia, as well as reprints from K. J. Parker and Alexander C. Irvine. Non-Fiction this issues comes from Brian Francis Slattery and Daniel Abraham, plus an editorial by Neil Clarke and an interview with Robert Reed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Unseaming by Mike Allen

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Mike Allen has made a name for himself with his unique blend of dark fantasy and horror. John R. Fultz called his debut novel, The Black Fire Concerto (which we published an exclusive excerpt from last August), “a post-apocalyptic melody played on strings of Terror and Sorcery. ” This month, Mike releases his long-anticipated debut short story collection, Unseaming, collecting fiction from Weird Tales, Cthulhu’s Reign, and other places. Mike’s short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and in a starred review, Publishers Weekly said the stories within “deliver solid shivering terror tinged with melancholy sorrow over the fragility of humankind.”

Everyone in the world awakens covered in blood-and no one knows where the blood came from. A childhood doll arrives to tear its owner’s reality limb from limb. A portal to the spirit realm stretches wide on the Appalachian Trail, and something more than human crawls through on eight legs. Words of comfort change to terrifying sounds as a force from outside time speaks through them. The buttons in the bin will unseam your flesh to bare your nastiest secrets.

Opening with “The Button Bin,” a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and culminating with its sequel, “The Quiltmaker,” which Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award winner Laird Barron has hailed as Mike Allen’s masterpiece, this debut collection gathers fourteen horror tales that, in the words of Barron’s introduction, “rival anything committed to paper by the likes of contemporary masters such as Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, or Caitlín Kiernan. This is raw, visceral, and sometimes bloody stuff. Primal stuff.”

Unseaming was released on October 1, 2014 by Antimatter Press. It is 222 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $5.99 for the digital edition. The introduction is by Laird Barron. Get more details or order a copy directly from the Antimatter website.

Red Queen, White Queen by Henry Treece

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 3 comments

The setting for Henry Treece’s Red Queen, White Queen (1958) is Britain in 60 AD during the bloody uprising of Queen Boudicca of the Iceni against the Romans. RQWQ is the third book in his Celtic Tetralogy. I reviewed the fourth book, The Great Captains, his down-to-earth vision of King Arthur, last year. The other two volumes are The Golden Strangers, about the Copper Age settlement of Britain, and The Dark Island, set during Caractacus’s war against Rome.

Gemellus Ennius, a young Roman junior officer, has been transferred to Britain after five years’ service in Germany, arriving just after the onset of Boudicca’s revolt. Already she has burned the towns of Camulodunum, Londinium, and Verulamium, killing over seventy thousand Romans and allied Britons.

When her husband died, he left his kingdom to Boudicca as well as to the emperor, in contravention of Roman laws. Not only did Rome refuse to recognize the will, but it sent soldiers to beat her and rape her daughters. Then the moneylenders called in the tremendous debts her husband had incurred and enslaved the Iceni. Boudicca became a ferocious creature forged by the cruel hands of Rome.

… Boudicca strode towards them a couple of paces and stood, her legs wide apart, staring down at them, from the wooden dais by the altar.

A short brown frieze jacket laced with thongs held her heavy breasts. From waist to ankle her legs were encased in tight-fitting trousers of deer hide. Her feet were bare and rather large. Gemellus noted that they were very red and calloused, not like the dainty feet of the Lady Lavinia, for example.

…

Read More Read More

The Man in My Toilet Came From China for a Buck

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Nick Ozment Comments 2 comments

I may have just succeeded in posting the most incongruous title in Black Gate online history, but it does make perfect sense: read on, and I will present a mystery of the Orient, an enigma from eBay, a conundrum on the commode!

As you can see over on the right side of your screen, a tiny man peeps out from under the lid of my toilet’s holding tank asking “Hello?”

In my nine years of eBay hunting, I have come across many strange things: shrunken heads, souls for sale, magic spells (guaranteed to work). I have chronicled some of those finds here at Black Gate. But this one caught my eye, not because of the rather run-of-the-mill object, but the price.

When he arrived in my mailbox, a sticky decal neatly folded into a small, padded manila envelope, I found myself asking very much the same thing: “Hello?” as in “Hello, what have we here?” Even though I had, indeed, ordered him, I was still somewhat baffled that he should arrive at all.

The reason for my bewilderment is that he was shipped from China; he cost 89 cents; shipping was FREE.

I couldn’t tell you what I was searching for when this came up, but there it was. The item was listed as follows:

Toilet Monster Hello Bathroom Decal Funny Creative Vinyl Sticker Wall Art Funny.

And if you know me, you know there are some key trigger words in that there spray of language that would grab my attention.

…

Read More Read More

Danger: Here There Be Dragons (and Clever Children!)

Monday, October 13, 2014 markrigney Comments 2 comments

Possibly the most rambunctious children’s author out there is Robert Munsch, whose characters drive bus loads of pigs to school, vanish beneath layers of permanent markers, and scream in the bath with sufficient volume to summon the police.

All of his (uniformly excellent) picture books employ elements of fantasy, but only once, to my knowledge, did he and his regular collaborator, illustrator Michael Martchenko, depart entirely our real and rational world long enough to include that nemesis of humanity: the green-scaled, fire-breathing dragon.

Yes, it’s The Paper Bag Princess, one of the best kids’ books I know, rife with hilarious prose, ebullient artwork, and the pluckiest heroine this side of Dorothy Gale. Who says girls can’t have adventures?

The plot is a model of efficiency. Princess Elizabeth lives in a castle, and she’s got riches and a boyfriend, Roland, whom she expects to marry. Curly blonde Roland sports a crown and a tennis racket, and just to be sure we get the idea, Martchenko adds a butterfly cloud of hearts around Elizabeth’s smitten head.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: A Play of Shadows by Julie E. Czerneda

Monday, October 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Canadian writer Julie E. Czerneda has published over a dozen acclaimed science fiction novels and has rapidly built an enviable fan base.

She first dipped her toe into fantasy with Scott Taylor’s groundbreaking anthology Tales of the Emerald Serpent (announced right here back in March 2012), and its sequel, A Knight in the Silk Purse. She took the plunge with her first full-length fantasy novel, A Turn of Light, earlier this year.

The upcoming sequel, A Play of Shadows, returns to the pastoral valley of Marrowdell, home to a pioneer settlement of refugees, enigmatic house toads, and Jenn Nalynn, the turn-born who has always dreamed of exploring beyond the valley’s borders… and who finds that increasingly impossible.

What would you risk for family?

In the second installment of Night’s Edge, Bannan Larmensu, the truthseer who won Jenn Nalynn’s heart, learns his brother-in-law was sent as a peace envoy to Channen, capitol of the mysterious domain of Mellynne, and has disappeared. When Bannan’s young nephews arrive in Marrowdell, he fears the worst, that his sister, the fiery Lila, has gone in search of her husband, leaving her sons in his care.

The law forbids Bannan from leaving Marrowdell and travelling to Mellynne to help his sister. In this world. As a turn-born, Jenn Nalynn has the power to cross into the magical realm of the Verge, and take Bannan with her. Once there, they could find a way into Mellynne.

…

Read More Read More

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

Monday, October 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m honestly not sure where September went. It was just here a second ago, and then…. bam. It slipped out the back like a grounded teenager with the car keys.

Well, September may have been brief, but it was action packed. We published 108 blog entries, celebrating neglected fantasy of all kinds — old, new, and in between. We explained why humorous fantasy isn’t popular, examined the iconic beauty of Princess Leia, revealed the lost Sherlock Holmes story, and highlighted a great many new releases and vintage paperbacks. I’m still catching up on all the great stuff we covered, and it’s halfway through October already.

Our most popular article last month was Scott Taylor’s list of the Top 10 TSR Cover Paintings of All Time, a nostalgic look at the finest artwork from the Golden Age of roleplaying. If you played RPGs at all last century, Scott’s piece will bring back some great memories.

Second on the list was Part I of Patty Templeton’s Self-Publishing Checklist, an item-by-item catalog of the essential steps to getting your self-published novel into the hands of readers. Patty’s own book, There is no Lovely End, exploded onto the scene in July and has already become one of the hottest self-published horror titles of the year.

…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Michael Stone’s Streeter

Monday, October 13, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

Just after I moved to Colorado Springs, a Denver private investigator named Michael Stone released his first book about Streeter, a bounty hunter in the Mile High City. The Low End of Nowhere had a very cool cover by Owen Smith, who would provide three more for A Long Reach, Token of Remorse, and Totally Dead.

Then, nothing: After four very good novels, Stone simply quit writing. It was as if he’d suddenly passed away. Over the years, I tried to find some news of him on the web but came up empty. He just seemed to lose interest in being a writer in 1999.

That’s a shame, because the Streeter books are quite good. They are very much in the style of the old pulpsters, but with a light touch. Stone clearly appreciated those who had gone before him, like Hammett and Nebel. But his character was no Mike Hammer or Race Williams. There’s finesse in the writing that reminds me of Joe Gores and his DKA novels.

Steeter (we never learn any other name) is physically imposing, having played football at a small division one school for two years before a fight with tragic consequences derailed that life plan. He was working as a bouncer and an accountant (how many of those have you read about?) when he ended up getting a job as a bounty hunter.

He lifts weights daily, fighting a slowly losing battle against the aging process. He even buys some hair-restorer but promptly puts it in a bathroom drawer, afraid to use it. Streeter isn’t a superhero: he’s a guy who works hard at working hard.

…

Read More Read More