Black Gate – Page 912 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Lord Dunsany and the Billiards Club

Friday, August 8, 2014 Violette Malan Comments 6 comments

I’ve always thought that “Lord Dunsany” has to be one of the more perfect names for a fantasy author. You might argue that this isn’t his name, merely his title, and that Edward Plunkett might not sound quite so perfect, fantasy-wise. But on the other hand, it’s really Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, and growing up I always believed that the “Drax” must somehow derive from “draco.” While I’ve never been able to confirm that, I still feel that it should be so, and that in a perfect world, someone in his lordship’s family was named for a dragon – which really would make it the perfect name for a fantasy author.

All of which would work out quite well, not just for his lordship, but for us, since Dunsany is one of the leading figures in 20^th-century fantasy, whose work predates that of Lewis and Tolkien. The quality that I’ve always associated with Dunsany’s writing is an air of sublimity. There’s always the feeling in his work of great immensity, of something just outside of our reach, that we’re only being shown a part of a much greater whole. A couple of posts ago, I was talking about types of magic, and in those terms, Dunsany’s falls into the category of the mysterious, rather than the quantifiable.

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My Fantasia Festival — Tales From the Screening Room: Real, Black Butler, and The One I Love

Friday, August 8, 2014 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Real As I said in my last post, I went out of town for the first weekend of August, and thus missed a couple days’ worth of movies playing at the Fantasia film festival. I was able to catch up with some on Monday, though. Fantasia maintains a screening room, with workstations where journalists, industry people, and other accredited folks can watch movies on computer. It’s not the optimal way to experience a film — they’ve usually been burned onto a DVD or accessed through a private Vimeo account — but it’s serviceable if you can’t catch the movie any other way. The screening room usually loses rights to the movies shortly after they play at the festival, but when I went by on Monday, there were still quite a few available.

So from about 11 in the morning until I left to get a quick meal before Thermae Romae II, I sat and watched films. These are the tales I saw in the screening room: two movies I missed over the weekend and one that various misfortunes had kept me from seeing earlier. The first of the three was a Japanese near-future science-fiction movie called Real. The second was another Japanese movie, the live-action manga adaptation Black Butler, which mixed action, comedy, sf, horror, bits of steampunk, and probably some other things I didn’t catch. The last movie I saw was an American film called The One I Love, a slightly horrific low-key relationship comedy. As per usual, it was a fascinating and oddly mixed day of movies at Fantasia.

I’ll begin with Real (originally titled Riaru), but I have to admit I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa from a script by him and Sachiko Tanaka, and based on a novel by Rokuro Inui called A Perfect Day for Plesiosaur, it seemed to reinvent itself periodically throughout. The closest I can get to a sense of it is to use that overworked adjective Hitchcockian — in this case not to indicate technique but atmosphere, the way tension builds in the first part and then twists and dissolves and becomes something quite different by the third act.

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A Must for Sax Rohmer Fans – A Rohmer Miscellany

Friday, August 8, 2014 William Patrick Maynard Comments 2 comments

John Robert Colombo is a Canadian author and poet with over 200 titles to his credit. Apart from the acclaim his creative work has brought him, he is also a lifelong Sax Rohmer fan and collector, who has distinguished himself in this rarefied circle. A charter member of the now-defunct Sax Rohmer Society and early contributor to the society’s official publication, The Rohmer Review, Colombo never lost his passion for the weird fiction of this former bestselling thriller author. Rather late in his prestigious literary career, Colombo decided to contribute to Rohmerania by expanding the author’s catalogue in conjunction with Dr. George Vanderburgh’s Battered Silicon Dispatch Box imprint.

Colombo edited the definitive collection of Rohmer’s female variation on Fu Manchu with The Sumuru Omnibus, a massive tome which brought together all five Sumuru novels, penned during the author’s last decade, and preserved them in their original unexpurgated text. Colombo also compiled a monograph of Sumuru’s aphorisms direct from Rohmer’s original text with Tears of Our Lady. The unique feature of the monograph being that this same title exists within the fictional universe of the books and is referred to and quoted from frequently. Now, thanks to Colombo’s efforts, Sumuru’s fictional monograph exists as a real world collectible. Colombo and Vanderburgh also competed (unknowingly at first) with Will Murray and Altus Press in publishing the first book to collect all of Rohmer’s tales of The Crime Magnet. Still later, they teamed to produce the first anthology of Rohmer’s non-fiction articles and autobiographical essays, Pipe Dreams, spanning the author’s entire career.

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Goth Chick News: Adam Nevill Knows What Scares Us: The House of Small Shadows

Thursday, August 7, 2014 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

Some years ago, when Anne Rice was still in residence in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to tour one of her Garden District properties. St. Elizabeth’s was a 47,000 square foot Catholic orphanage built in the 1860’s and after it was purchased by Rice in 1993, one of its many uses was to house Rice’s extensive doll collection. A devotee for nearly twenty years, Rice had dolls from all over the world, including one-of-a-kind antiques and commissioned works, numbering over 2,000 individual pieces.

Now, I have been to some decidedly creepy places in my travels. I’ve spent an embarrassing number of hours hunkered down in dilapidated buildings or picking my way through damp, dark places clutching one ectoplasmic sensing device or another.

But in the rooms of Rice’s 19^th century New Orleans monolith, crowded wall-to-wall with black-eyed, porcelain-faced dolls, was by far the most skeeved out I have ever felt.

Dolls rank right up there with clowns, which is probably why the movie Poltergeist featured a clown doll.

It knew what scared us, all right.

And so apparently does UK bestselling horror novelist, Adam Nevill.

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My Fantasia Festival, Days 15 Through 19: The Fake and Thermae Romae II

Thursday, August 7, 2014 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

Thermae Romae II A week ago, on Thursday, July 31, I saw yet another movie at the Fantasia Festival. Then I left town for the weekend to attend to some business of my own. I got back in on Sunday, and went to see another movie Monday evening. By that time, I’d also been able to catch up on a couple of films that I’d missed over the weekend — but I’ll be talking about them later. For the moment, I’ll discuss the films I saw in the Fantasia theatres.

The movie I saw on Thursday was called The Fake (Saibi). It was an animated film from Korea, directed by Yeon Sang-ho from his own script. It’s a harsh, downbeat drama. The movie I saw Monday was almost completely different, a comedy from Japan called Thermae Romae II (Terumae romae II), about a Roman architect who unwittingly travels in time to modern Japan and learns new ways to think about bathhouses. Hideki Takeuchi, who directed the first Thermae Romae, handled direction here as well, though with a change of writers: Hiroshi Hashimoto stepped in for Shogo Muto. Both movies adapt Tokyo-born Chicago resident Mari Yamazaki’s original manga, and as the first screened at last year’s Fantasia festival, I’ll actually talk about both Thermae Romae films in this review.

First, though, I’ll discuss The Fake. It’s set in a small town in Korea about to be flooded by a new dam. A new evangelical pastor has come to town and is raising money for the construction of a new chapel — while also selling a ‘holy water’ that supposedly can work miraculous cures. Min-chul, the town ne’er-do-well, who hits his wife and steals his daughter’s college money, returns to town. After a scrape with Elder Choi, the pastor’s business manager, Min-chul sees a wanted poster and recognises Choi as a con-man. But nobody wants to listen to Min-chul when he tries to tell the truth.

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz

Thursday, August 7, 2014 westkeith Comments 16 comments

Deryni Rising
Katherine Kurtz
August 1970
271 p., $0.95
Cover art by Bob Pepper

When Lin Carter started the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, he began by reprinting works that were obscure and/or considered classic in the field at that time, but as he wrote in the introduction to Deryni Rising, he had hoped from the very beginning to be able to publish high quality new works as well. The first original fiction he published was Deryni Rising, the first novel by Katherine Kurtz.

I think he hit the ball out of the park when he selected this one.

The story takes place in a pseudo-Welsh land called Gwynedd,. The book opens with the murder of King Brion Haldane by the sorceress Charissa. Brion and his closest friend Alaric Morgan defeated and killed her father some years ago. Brion’s murder is part of her plan for revenge.

Brion has, or rather had, the ability to practice Deryni magic. The Deryni are a long-lived race with inherent magical abilities. A few generations ago, humans and Deryni lived together in peace until a group of Deryni rose to power and severely oppressed the humans in Gwynedd. They were overthrown by a Deryni priest named Camber, who discovered a way to impart the Deryni’s magical powers to ordinary humans. At first, Camber was considered a saint, but later the Church declared him a heretic. Now some humans tolerate the Deryni, while others seek to exterminate them. Most Deryni keep a low profile. Morgan is part Deryni and doesn’t hide that fact.

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My Fantasia Festival, Days 12 through 14: Cybernatural, The House at the End of Time, and Time Lapse

Thursday, August 7, 2014 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

I didn’t see any films at Fantasia on Monday, July 28, and then on the 29th I saw two. One was Guardians of the Galaxy, which I’ve already written about. The next was a distinctive but disappointing horror film called Cybernatural. Disappointment here is perhaps relative; Cybernatural’s been one of the most talked-about films at the festival, so far as I can judge, and as a result my expectations were high. And honesty compels me to note that I’m not a big fan of horror movies as such, though I’d like to think I enjoy good horror when there’s a good story.

Certainly, the first film I’d see on Wednesday the 30th was a horror movie that erased the disappointment of the night before. The film that did the trick was Venezuela’s first-ever commercial genre film, The House at the End of Time (La casa del fin de los tiempos), which I followed with an American thriller called Time Lapse. It all made for an interesting mix of films.

Cybernatural was directed by Leo Gabriadze from a script by Nelson Greaves. Like Open Windows, it’s a movie that takes place entirely on a computer screen. In this case, the screen belongs to a teenaged girl named Blaire (Shelley Hennig), who at the start of the film is involved in a Skype chat with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm). Things are about to get heated when suddenly more friends join, other kids at their school. But there’s somebody else with them, an anonymous presence on their group video chat. And their computers have started to act strange. It seems that exactly a year ago one of their former classmates committed suicide, after someone in the group posted a humiliating video of her online. Now she’s back for revenge.

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Writing a Fantasy Series

Wednesday, August 6, 2014 Jon Sprunk Comments 3 comments

The fantasy genre loves series (especially trilogies.) As a fantasy reader, I love them, too.

However, my first published novel, Shadow’s Son, was originally written as a stand-alone. I suppose I had an idea that publishers would be more inclined to take a chance on a single book from an unknown writer, so I was shocked when my agent came back with a deal for a three-book series that would become the Shadow Saga. I’m not ashamed to admit I was also a wee bit terrified.

How in the seven hells was I going to write a trilogy? I had never written anything longer than a single book before.

And each of the sequels has a contractually-agreed deadline? AND they want outlines for books two and three right away? Gulp.

Despite my trepidations, the adventure of reaching out into unknown territory was also thrilling, so I dove in head-first. What was the big deal, right? Writing a series is probably just like writing three separate books, isn’t it?

Well, yes and no.

My personal philosophy is that every novel must contain a complete story. That means my books each have their own plot that begins and ends within those pages. However, with a series there is also a series arc in play, another plot (super plot?) that starts in the first book and continues to develop through each subsequent novel to the very end.

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My Fantasia Festival, Day 11 (part 2): To Be Takei and The Creeping Garden

Wednesday, August 6, 2014 Matthew David Surridge Comments 2 comments

I saw two movies in the late afternoon and evening of the Sunday before last (the 27th). Both were documentaries. You’d think that the first one would have had the more obvious science-fiction content, being a biography of an actor who rose to fame playing a character on perhaps the best-known science-fiction TV show of all time — while the second film was an in-depth examination of what sounds like the most mundane substance in the world. This did not turn out to be the case. The old saying about truth, fiction, and strangeness applies.

At 5:20 I saw To Be Takei in a packed, and fairly raucous, De Sève Theatre. It’s much as it sounds: the story of George Takei, the original Star Trek’s Mister Sulu. But Trek is only a part of his life and of the movie, which ranges from Takei’s childhood in a World War Two internment camp to his experience as a gay man growing up and forming a career to his later political experiences to his current status as a social media celebrity.

Then at 9:45, I saw the world premiere of The Creeping Garden, a documentary about slime mould. Which, it turns out, is a deeply strange thing, not plant nor animal nor fungi, a creature that occasionally demonstrates something a lot like intelligence. There’s an almost Lovecraftian air to the movie, which ends up exploring odd byways of cinema history, art projects, and ‘alternative computing.’ There’s cutting-edge science in this documentary, if not actual mad scientists.

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Norman and Pagan Traces near Oxford

Wednesday, August 6, 2014 Sean McLachlan Comments 4 comments

Iffley Church from the southwest, showing hte main west entrance. The yew is to the right. — Iffley Church from the southwest, showing the main west entrance. The yew is to the right.

Oxford is a popular destination in England thanks to its famous university and fine architecture, which includes a rare Saxon tower. What’s less well-known is the pleasant stroll along the River Isis two miles down to Iffley village. The walk will take you past the university boathouses, a pasture, an excellent pub, and some fine river views. Just past the pub, you’ll come across a lock and bridge taking you to a small village that contains one of the best-preserved Norman churches anywhere.

St. Mary’s Iffley Church was built c.1170-80 in the High Romanesque style. Early in its history, ownership passed from the local lord to an absentee lord. This distant owner continued to maintain the church, but did little to “improve” it, thus leaving it in much its original state.

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