Black Gate – Page 891 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

September Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, October 7, 2014 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 2 comments

September was a good month for swords & sorcery stories. While the next issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is still several months away, Fantasy & Science Fiction (presently celebrating its sixty-fifth year of publication) has a trio of tales. Swords and Sorcery Magazine, as every month for the past two and a half years, presented two new stories.

I started subscribing to F&SF earlier this year, but until now there haven’t been any S&S stories. Now in the September/October 2014 Issue, they’ve presented three. The first is a novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein. “The Caravan to Nowhere” is a tale in her long-running saga of the minstrel Alaric. It’s actually a reprint, with the story first appearing in the recent anthology Rogues, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. The first story in the series, “Born to Exile,” appeared in the same magazine all the way back in 1971.

Alaric is a far-traveling minstrel with magical powers. He can shift his location from one spot to another instantaneously. In a world where such sorcery is usually feared, he is always on the move, seeking fresh opportunities and material for new songs. At the story’s start, he joins a caravan into the desert hunting not just inspiration, but also legendary hidden treasure and a lost city. While the caravan master, Piros, dismisses the tales as only drunken fancy, Alaric decides it’s still worth joining the party.

Alaric discovers that in addition to its purpose of buying salt, the caravan is journeying into the heart of the desert to acquire a supply of the Powder of Desire. It gives its users visions of great wonders, but it’s ultimately dangerous and debilitating. Piros’s dissolute son is himself addicted to the substance. When they arrive at the source of the powder, things take a dangerous turn.

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Volkswagen Ad Reunites William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy

Tuesday, October 7, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

You’ve probably heard the recent reports about William Shatner’s possible return in the upcoming Star Trek 3, where he and Leonard Nimoy would appear together as Kirk and Spock one more time.

Pretty exciting stuff for an old-time Star Trek fan like me. Although the big event has just been scooped by a German Volkswagen ad released this week, which features both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner (not to mention the Star Trek theme music, which probably wasn’t cheap to license for a car ad) in a charming 45-second spot. Yes, the ad is in German, but you’ll have no trouble following the dialog (Hint: The German phrase for “Captain Kirk” is “Captain Kirk.”)

The complete spot is below. Enjoy.

New Treasures: Shifting Shadows by Patricia Briggs

Monday, October 6, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve recently been interested in sampling some of the better urban fantasy on the market. Patricia Briggs would certainly be one of the best places to start — she’s produced several #1 New York Times bestsellers featuring her shapeshifting heroine Mercy Thompson, and Locus magazine says “In the increasingly crowded field of kick-ass supernatural heroines, Mercy stands out as one of the best.” But frankly, I just don’t have time to read many more novels.

The new book Shifting Shadows may be just what I’ve been looking for. It’s a collection of short stories featuring Mercy, which originally appeared in anthologies like On the Prowl, Naked City, and Home Improvement: Undead Edition. It also includes four brand new standalone Mercy stories, which would serve as an ideal entry point for busy readers like me.

Shapeshifter Mercy Thompson has friends in high places — and in low, dark, scary ones. And in this must-have collection of stories, you’ll meet new faces and catch up with old acquaintances — in all their forms…

In a time of fresh starts, Mercy is asked to use an old talent — ghost hunting — in the all-new story “Hollow.” You’ll learn what happens when an ancient werewolf on his last legs befriends a vulnerable adolescent (“Roses in Winter”) and how Mercy’s friend Samuel Cornick became a werewolf (“Silver”). The werewolf Ben finds “Redemption,” and Moira, a blind witch, assists on a search in “Seeing Eye.”

From Butte, Montana, the copper-mining town that vampire Thomas Hao calls home (“Fairy Gifts”), to Chicago, where the vampire Elyna buys and renovates the apartment she lived in while human (“Gray”), you’ll travel the roads that originated with Mercy Thompson and the fertile imagination of Patricia Briggs. Roads that will lead you to places you’ve never been before…

Shifting Shadows was published by Ace Books on September 2. It is 450 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Daniel Dos Santos.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The First Great Holmes (Gillette)

Monday, October 6, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 6 comments

I recently wrote about John Barrymore’s film, Sherlock Holmes, which was based on William Gillette’s massively popular play about the great detective.

In 1897 or 1898, Arthur Conan Doyle decided to “revive” Sherlock Holmes, who had gone over the ledge at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893. He wrote the first draft of a play starring the detective.

Since he already had scored a hit with his non-Holmes play, A Tale of Waterloo, Doyle must have figured that the public would ring up the cash register in seeing their favorite detective again: this time on the stage.

Doyle lost interest in the project, but his agent sent the five-act play off to noted Broadway producer and agent Charles Frohman. Frohman, who died aboard the ill-fated Lusitania, felt that the play was not commercial enough as it was and told Doyle that popular American actor William Gillette should revise and then star in it.

The uninterested Doyle gave his permission and Gillette transformed Holmes into more of a melodrama star and less of a stodgy British detective.

Gillette read all of Doyle’s original stories, took four weeks off from his current tour for the popular Secret Service and rewrote the play. That November, a fire in San Francisco’s Baldwin Hotel destroyed all of the scenery and sets of Secret Service; and also the only script of Sherlock Holmes!

It’s Elementary – Gillette asked Doyle if he could marry Holmes for the play. Doyle’s reply via telegram has become famous: “You may marry him, murder him or do anything you like to him.”

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Self-Published Book Review: Brush with Darkness by Jamie Maltman

Sunday, October 5, 2014 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here. I’ve run short on books that I’ve received in the past year, so anything new has a good chance of being reviewed.

Anyone who’s been reading my reviews for the past year and a half has gotten a pretty good idea of what I like and don’t like. I prefer my fantasy to be epic rather than urban. I was tired of vampires years ago. And I like dwarves and weird westerns. You might want to add one more “like” to that list: Romans. I’ve had a soft spot for these ancient imperialists ever since I took Latin in high school. My own fiction frequently features them, and I’m likely to read any epic fantasy which includes an homage to ancient Rome. It is, in fact, what my wife and I first bonded over. All of which brings us to this month’s self-published novel, Brush with Darkness.

In Brush with Darkness, the part of the Romans is played by the Pazians. The Pazians control much of the known world, including the analogs for the Greeks (the Izari) and the Jews (the Benjai). And just like the historical Romans, they are frequently at war with the barbarians living beyond their borders. The story opens with the 7th Legion chasing a group of Scentari raiders, who have just destroyed a Pazian town located in territory the Scentari were driven out of a generation ago. The chase does not go as planned, as the Scentari now have access to dark magic.

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Take to the Skies in Iron Battleships in Catalyst Game Labs’ Leviathans

Sunday, October 5, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I’ve had my eye on Catalyst Game Labs’ steampunk miniatures game Leviathans since it was released in 2012.

Leviathans simulates epic battles in the sky between iron juggernauts in an alternate history/steampunk 1910. The huge, nine-pound game box includes eight high-quality plastic ship miniatures for the British and French fleets, a bunch of ship cards, two massive 18″ x 22″ board-game maps, and instructions on how to use the dice and cards within to simulate the thunderous clash of nations in the clouds. Ten minutes after I opened my copy, I was joyfully maneuvering my king leviathan battleship over London and, in my best pseudo-French accent, ordering my loyal gendarmes to smash the limey light cruisers and destroyers out of the sky.

Not that it did any good. I still haven’t read the combat rules yet. But lordy, it felt great.

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Announcing the Winners of Free Copies of Mark Rigney’s Check-Out Time

Sunday, October 5, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last month, we told you that you had a chance to win a free copy of Mark Rigney’s latest Renner & Quist novel, Check-Out Time. All you had to do to enter was send us an e-mail with the title “Check-Out Time.” Two winners were drawn at random this morning from all qualifying entries.

We are pleased to announce the winners are:

Barbara Barrett
Galt, CA

Yusuf S Nasrullah
Boston, MA

Congratulations! You should receive your copies in the next 5 – 10 days. In the meantime, enjoy our feature review by William Patrick Maynard, who called the book “Funny, moving, enlightening, entertaining – Mark Rigney’s Renner & Quist series is in a class of its own.”

Check-Out Time will be published by Samhain Publishing on October 7, 2014. It is 250 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $5.50 for the digital edition. Be sure to read Mark’s article on the series, The Adventure Continues: the Return of Renner and Quist, published right here in February.

Thanks to all those who entered our contest and thanks again to Samhain Publishing and Mark Rigney for making it all possible!

The Monsters of Golarion: Monster Codex for Pathfinder

Sunday, October 5, 2014 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 3 comments

If you’ve played fantasy roleplaying games for any length of time, you’ve no doubt fought your fair share of goblins, orcs, and trolls. They can certainly begin to blend together. If you’ve fought one, you’ve fought them all, right? One of the jobs of the Dungeon Master is to find ways to keep things interesting. As I said in a post last week, “A fantasy roleplaying game is defined as much by the caliber of the villains and monsters as it is by the caliber of the players and heroes.”

One way to mix things up is to introduce more monsters, and certainly fantasy roleplaying games have no shortage of supplements that outline new and varied types of monsters.

But another way to keep things interesting is by varying up the existing pool of common monsters, giving them rich backstories and cultures, motivations and plots. In short, finding ways to really make what should be a common monster into something completely new. If you take a basic goblin template and add on 12 levels of barbarian, you have something decidedly more challenging to face!

Of course, creating all of this variability takes time and planning, which seems to be in ever-shorter supply these days. And this brings us to the Pathfinder RPG‘s newest solution: Monster Codex (Paizo, Amazon)

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New Animated Series About a Teen Aboriginal Superhero from Creator Jay Odjick

Saturday, October 4, 2014 Derek Kunsken Comments 1 comment

In Ottawa, I get to talk to local game designers, local writers, local comic book publishers, local artists and novel publishers. I’m not trying to be a booster of Canada’s capital or anything, but we have some wickedly cool stuff going on around town.

This weekend, at Can-Con, Ottawa’s Literary Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Convention, I set up an interview in front of a live audience to talk to Jay Odjick, an Algonquin graphic novelist, to talk to him about being a writer and artist and about Kagagi (pronounced with two hard Gs).

Jay is a loud, hilarious, talented, self-deprecating, straight-talking comic creator who earlier in the week had been interviewed by CBC radio and afterwards tweeted “…managed to talk for twelve minutes on the radio without swearing.”

His immediate lead story about where and when he started to be a comic creator started when he was five years old and he was part of a two-man con aiming to unmask a celebrity Spider-Man to prove that it wasn’t the real Spider-Man.

Some years ago, like many comic creators, Jay made up his own superhero. But instead of being just another caped creation added to the immense pantheon of comicdom, he created the startlingly original Kagagi, based on the legend systems of the Algonquin tribe.

Central to this is the Wendigo curse (the supervillain) that is inflicting itself upon not only humanity, but those other parts of the Algonquin legend structures.

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Vintage Treasures: The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Saturday, October 4, 2014 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Truth be told, I’ve never been much of a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I think he’s a taste you acquire young or not at all, and I missed the window by not reading any ERB before I turned 25. Talk about a wasted youth.

Of course, it’s entirely possible I simply haven’t read the right book yet. If I were going to be shipwrecked on a desert island tomorrow, and I just happened to get tipped off in advance, I would probably grab a copy of The Outlaw of Torn to bring with me. I’ve wanted to read it ever since I laid eyes on it many years ago, and I’ve had it recommended to me many times by ERB fans since.

At seventeen he was the greatest swordsman in England. At eighteen his reputation as a fearless outlaw had spread throughout the land and there was a tremendous price upon his head. At nineteen he was the leader of a fierce band of more than a thousand men, from nobleman to serf, the only requirements being willingness and ability to fight and an oath to obey the Outlaw of Torn.

Who was this Norman of Torn, the fame of whose daring exploits was ringing throughout the land? Where did he come from? Was he of noble blood or was he of commoner origin?

Through savage combats the Outlaw fights his way in his love for the beautiful daughter of the most powerful baron in England to find the secret of his birth.

On the other hand, our resident ERB expert Ryan Harvey didn’t think too much of The Outlaw of Torn, calling it “stodgy and drearily artificial; it lacks the zest of the best of Burroughs’s work” in his feature review. And Ryan has rarely steered me wrong. I suspect he’d suggest a different book for my ill-fated voyage. (Of course, a true friend might also suggest a different travel agent…)

The Outlaw of Torn was originally serialized in New Story Magazine starting in January 1914, and published in hardcover by McClurg in 1927. The Ace paperback edition above was published in 1965; it is 255 pages, priced at $0.75. The cover is by the great Roy Krenkel, Jr. (Click for bigger version.)