Black Gate – Page 906 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Vintage Treasures: The Gods Hate Kansas by Joseph Millard

Saturday, October 11, 2014 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

With my Vintage Treasures posts, I like to showcase the best overlooked fantasy of the past half century or so. American fantasy is an enormously rich genre, but it also has a notoriously short memory, and there are countless buried treasures to rescue from undeserved obscurity.

Of course, sometimes I like to forget all that and just showcase the weird.

Joseph Millard was an American pulp science fiction writer who published nearly a dozen short stories between 1941 and 1943, and then apparently gave up writing for good. Most of his stories appeared in magazines like Thrilling Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and other pulps. He died in 1989.

In November 1941, he published his only novel, The Gods Hate Kansas, in Startling Stories magazine. It was reprinted a decade later in the November 1952 issue of Fantastic Story Magazine, and then appeared in paperback in February 1964 from Monarch Books, with a brilliantly gonzo cover by Jack Thurston, featuring a raygun-wielding hero riding bareback on a little red number and giving the business to an earnest-looking bug-eye monster. I love this cover with a fierce passion, and I thank Joseph Millard for making it all possible. (Click the image at left for a mondo-sized version.)

The cover isn’t the only brilliant thing about this novel. There’s also the title. Why do the gods hate Kansas? What the hell did Kansas do, anyway? It’s one of those questions that brings you back to the paperback rack next to the checkout lane for a second look. Just 40 cents and the answer could be yours.

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Fantasy Scroll Magazine 3 Now Available

Saturday, October 11, 2014 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

The third issue of the new Fantasy Scroll Magazine is now available, and I’m very happy to see it.

Fantasy Scroll is edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski. It’s a quality publication and issues appear online every three months. The contents include all kinds of fantastic literature — science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal short-fiction — and run the gamut from short stories to flash fiction to micro-fiction.

This issue looks very solid, with original fiction from Piers Anthony, Alex Shvartsman, and many others. The cover art is by Suebsin Pulsiri.

Here’s the complete fiction Table of Contents:

“Descant” by Piers Anthony
“The Peacemaker” by Rachel A. Brune
“My Favorite Photos of Anne” by Aaron Polson
“Verisimilitude” by Alan Murdock
“Orc Legal” by James Beamon
“Kindle My Heart” by Rebecca Birch
“Burn in Me” by Carrie Martin

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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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