Black Gate – Page 901 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Future Treasures: The Madness of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi

Sunday, September 21, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

With all the recent discussion we’ve had on collecting H.P. Lovecraft, I thought S.T. Joshi’s latest Mythos-inspired anthology The Madness of Cthulhu, due to be released next month, might be of interest. It’s certainly got my attention.

The Madness of Cthulhu collects fourteen new tales — and two reprints — inspired by Lovecraft’s masterpiece At the Mountains of Madness. Authors include Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Caitlin R. Kiernan, John Shirley, and Harry Turtledove.

According to Joshi’s blog, this is the first of two volumes, with the second to be released Summer 2015. This volume is introduced by Jonathan Maberry. Here’s the book description:

Sixteen stories inspired by the 20th century’s great master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft, and his acknowledged masterpiece, At the Mountains of Madness, in which an expedition to the desolation of Antarctica discovers evidence of an ancient ruin built by horrific creatures at first thought long-dead, until death strikes the group. All but two of the stories are original to this edition, and those reprints are long-lost works by science fiction masters Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Silverberg.

The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume One will be published by Titan Books on October 7, 2014. It is 304 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. I can’t find a cover credit, but it sure looks like John Jude Palencar (click for bigger version).

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Horror of the Highest Kind: A Review of The Weird

Sunday, September 21, 2014 James McGlothlin Comments 2 comments

I’ve just finished the largest book I’ve ever read: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

This massive tome comes in at a whopping 1126 double-columned pages. The weight, length, and scope of this massive paperback give you the sense that you’re reading some old Bible! This being the case, I think The Weird should probably be referenced in the coming years as the Bible of twentieth (and early twenty first) century weird stories.

But what exactly is the weird? What sort of stories fit in this genre? As the foreweird contributor Michael Moorcock and the afterweird contributor China Miéville seem to agree, it’s a bit hard to categorize. Surprise, surprise.

For myself, I’ve often associated the genre term “weird” with a certain kind of horror, a horror of the highest kind that leaves you with a feeling of unease. (This is actually fairly close to what Moorcock and Miéville both seem to gesture at.)

The VanderMeers’ anthology seeks to make a case that the weird is more than just one slice of horror: it covers a vast array of examples, from the typical horror and ghost stories all the way to the absurd and dark fantasy. Thus the spread of stories within The Weird are quite sundry.

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Book Pairings: Ancillary Justice and Cordelia’s Honor

Sunday, September 21, 2014 C.S.E. Cooney Comments 2 comments

I’ve creaked into reading again, dipping hesitant toes into the fathomless waters of What’s Out There.

One of the hardest things is trying to balance the books I discover for myself–for love of discovery–with the books I should read because everyone should read them, and has already read them, and I’m the only one in the world who hasn’t.

I come to the latter kind of reading quite reluctantly, and am rewarded by not only the virtue of what I felt to be a tricky chore completed, but also by becoming (in my own estimation) a shave more professional and an ingot less ignorant. “Yes, now I have read this book. I too can geek out about it on the Interwebs!”

Lately, after finishing a book I’ve determinedly set out to read, I’ve been struck with a keen sensation of, “Ah! Now, this would be a good book to read near or about the same time as this book.”

I don’t think of it as the whole Amazon/Kindle/Library E-Zone suggestion thing of, “If you like X book, you’ll probably like Y book too! Because it’s pretty much exactly the same book formulaically, only the names are different, and instead of a werewolf and a vampire, it’s an ANDROID and ALIEN, but the protagonist is plucky and first person present tense and a real CIPHER, with no distinguishing personality traits to distract you, you’ll get right in her head right away, and come away thinking you were she the whole time!”

No, I think of it more like a perfect wine pairing with a certain sort of dinner.

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Self-Publishing Checklist: The Random No One Tells You, Part III

Sunday, September 21, 2014 Patty Templeton Comments 1 comment

In Part One of this series, we looked at Firming Out Your Expectations, Picking Your Publisher, and how to do a Reality Check on Your Book Format.

In Part Two, we unraveled the mysteries of Finding or Commissioning Art, Merchandise, and Hiring a Proofreader.

Still with me? Then take a deep breath, ’cause we’re going to take your book in for a three-point landing in Part III, starting with how to Upload your book.

7. Upload Your Book

Do you want to buy a block of ISBNs? Do you want to have a custom ISBN? Do you want a free ISBN?
Do you want your POD publisher listed as your publisher or do you want to create your own imprint?
Is your back of jacket summary ready?
Is your author bio and photo ready?

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Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Six – The Female of the Species

Saturday, September 20, 2014 William Patrick Maynard Comments 7 comments

Sapper’s The Female of the Species (1928) is quite likely the best book in the long-running Bulldog Drummond thriller series. Its one failing comes late in the narrative and spoils it as assuredly as Mickey Rooney’s bucktoothed yellow-face performance as Mr. Yunioshi sours Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) for modern audiences. As a devoted fan of both Blake Edwards and Sapper, I do my best to make exceptions for both artists’ failings, particularly when they were acceptable in the times they lived in.

In the case of the former, the suggestion of pornographic photos in Truman Capote’s novella could never have been transferred to the screen with an Asian actor in the role of Audrey Hepburn’s frustrated landlord. Edwards soft-pedaled the material and defused a scene that never would have slipped by the Production Code if handled dramatically by offering Mickey Rooney in a broad caricature of an Asian. It was a star cameo in a comic stereotype still common in television sitcoms of the 1960s and Jerry Lewis films. Audiences at the time laughed at the fact that it was Mickey Rooney making a fool of himself and nothing more. Today, the classic status of the film makes the sequence stick out as an unfortunate example of racial insensitivity in a fashion that does not taint comedies of the day which are now viewed as an example of what then passed for juvenile humor.

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What Would it Look Like to Pull a Watchmen on Planetary Romance? Part IV – The Conclusion

Saturday, September 20, 2014 Derek Kunsken Comments 2 comments

carson of venus When we last left our intrepid blogger (me) two weeks ago, he had blogged (see Parts I, II, and III) about the superhero genre, pre- and post-Watchmen, the kind of light that Alan Moore’s Watchmen shone onto superhero comics, as well as the core conventions of the planetary romance form. He had set up a planetary romance situation that was ripe for a Watchmen-like treatment, both the pretty parts and the ugly ones.

And now, Part IV, What a Watchmen Treatment of Planetary Romance Might Look Like….

So our classic, morally unambiguous pulp hero has overthrown the dictator. This is where the classic planetary romance ends, with the hero riding off into the sunset or basking in his successes. But in an Alan Moore universe, this is only the set up.

We have two other heroes, Radulovic and al’Barri, connected to other parts of the alien world’s society in less overtly heroic ways, and they see things that Smith does not. True, the dictator is gone, and ostensibly, some new, more benevolent power is on the throne, or perhaps it is even a presidency or prime ministership if we want to be more modern.

Without moral judgment of any kind, I will point out that dictators can have the effect of imposing an unwilling peace. Tito in Yugoslavia, backed by Soviet help, kept ethnic tensions between Serb and Croat and Bosnian from flaring.

And under Saddam in Iraq and Assad in Syria, the large-scale ethnic violence we’re seeing now was not occurring. To be clear, I am not advocating dictatorships. I note only that one of the major foreign policy risks of the modern world is touching a situation that could get even worse than it was before.

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Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1966: A Retro Review

Saturday, September 20, 2014 Rich Horton Comments 2 comments

I called the last magazine I covered (Fantastic for April 1960) “determinedly minor.” This issue of F&SF seems much more significant to me.

The cover is by Jack Gaughan, illustrating Jack Vance’s Cugel the Clever novelet “The Sorcerer Pharesm.” The features include a Gahan Wilson cartoon, a poem by Doris Pitkin Buck, a very short science snippet by Theodore L. Thomas, Judith Merril’s Books column and Isaac Asimov’s Science column.

Asimov’s column is one of his lesser ones: little but a list of the Nobel Prize winners in the Science fields by nationality. That’s a long list, so it takes up most of his page count. He does a tiny amount of analysis of the numbers, but not much.

Merril begins by reviewing two very ’60s-ish popular science books: LSD: The Consciousness Inducing Drug (edited by David Solomon, with contributions from those you’d expect, like Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Timothy Leary), and Games People Play by Eric Berne. She recommends the LSD book, but is quite negative about Games People Play.

In the way of SF, she begins by looking at two John Brunner books, The Day of the Star Cities and The Squares of the City. She identifies the first as “up there with the best of his earlier work” and the second as a step beyond, building on his growth that started with The Whole Man. I think that jibes with the consensus view of Brunner’s career. She ends up saying, “[I]t leaves me very eager to see Brunner’s next.”

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Win a Copy of Mark Rigney’s Check-Out Time

Friday, September 19, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’ve been watching this Mark Rigney fellow with a lot of interest.

He first came to my attention through the submissions queue at Black Gate, where he wowed me with his three-part Tales of Gemen, an old-school sword and sorcery story with a very modern spin — and some delightful twists. Readers responded well, too. The tales have consistently hovered near the top of our Fiction charts since we first published them in 2012. Tangent Online called them “Reminiscent of the old sword & sorcery classics,” which I found very gratifying.

Mark has had even more success with a new series of thrillers starring the occult investigators Reverend Renner and Dale Quist. Bill Maynard raved about the first, The Skates, in his review for us last year, saying “Rigney can write circles around most of us… Simply put, I love this book.” The second, “Sleeping Bear,” arrived in February, and anticipation has been building for their first novel-length adventure, Check-Out Time, due October 7th.

But there’s no reason for Black Gate readers to have to wait that long to get their hands on a copy. We know people who know people. To celebrate Mark’s recent success — and because we can’t stop bragging about it — we’re giving away two copies of Check-Out Time, compliments of Mark Rigney and Samhain Publishing.

How do you enter? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “Check-Out Time” and your return address. Two winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries. 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.

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.

The Swordfolk Among Us

Friday, September 19, 2014 Comments 7 comments

The New York Times has done a short documentary on modern longsword fighting and everybody’s reacting like the media suddenly started covering quidditch; all the muggles are looking around and seeing the wizards for the first time…. except we’re swordsfolk, not wizards. However, like the wizards, we’ve been around a long long time.

Rewind a couple of weeks. I’m in a slightly tatty but sterile NHS consulting room speaking to a specialist doctor…

“I see you are a writer, Mr Page.” My consultant, as we call them in the UK, is an avuncular German, perhaps in his 50s.

I admit to my profession. I write “anything with swords in it.”

“Ah! You like swords?”

I tell him about my hobby, show him my sword scar.

“Tell, me,” asks this decidedly grown up, highly-qualified professional, whose eyes now have a twinkle. “Have you heard of Academic Fencing?”

Academic Fencing is a primarily German tradition. Young men with special face masks to protect eyes, ears, and mouth slash each other with whippy dueling blades in a highly ritualised environment. It’s why Prussian officers have scars in all the old movies.

And he’s done it.

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New Treasures: Dark Entries by Robert Aickman

Friday, September 19, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Robert Aickman was an English ghost story writer who died in 1981. I bought his famous collection The Wine-Dark Sea over 10 years ago and was very impressed.

But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a contemporary printing of his most famous books — especially in an affordable paperback format. So I was thrilled to see Faber & Faber recently reprint three collections in both digital editions and handsome trade paperbacks: The Unsettled Dust (September 4), The Wine-Dark Sea (August 7), and his very first collection, Dark Entries. All are well worth your time, especially if you’re a fan of British horror.

‘Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I’m not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.’ — Neil Gaiman

Aickman’s ‘strange stories’ (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream.

Dark Entries was first published in 1964 and contains six curious and macabre stories of love, death and the supernatural, including the classic story ‘Ringing the Changes.’

‘Robert Aickman was the best, the subtlest, and creepiest author of ghost stories of his time… still enormously readable, offering mysteries which get deeper and scarier with each return.’ — Kim Newman

Dark Entries was published June 5, 2014 by Faber & Faber. It is 256 pages, priced at £7.99 in trade paperback and $5.82 for the digital edition. The gorgeous cover is by Tim McDonagh; click for a bigger version.