Black Gate – Page 920 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A Bomb on the Highway: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Eight: Boomerang

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 Thomas Parker Comments 0 Comment

Ease back in your seat and take a deep breath. That’s the way. Now a handful of buttered popcorn… wash it down with a swallow of soda pop. Your week of unbearable suspense is almost over, and now you can finally find out how Billy and Betty got out of last week’s impossible situation; the answer will be revealed in today’s chapter of The Adventures of Captain Marvel, “Boomerang.” (Notice I didn’t say “if they got out.” I respect your intelligence too much for that.)

This week’s catch-up title cards on last week’s episode are brief and to the point: “The Scorpion: Plans an elaborate trap to catch Captain Marvel.” “Barnett — Holds Betty and Billy Batson in a shack at the bombing range.” Now, as the magic name of Shazam passes your lips, prepare yourself for ten cents’ worth of suspense and superheroic thrills! (No refunds.)

Last week, we left Billy and Betty tied up in the shack at the bombing range, waiting for the other shoe… er, bomb, to drop. (What? Your town doesn’t have a bombing range? Mine either. The decline in social services these days is just shameful — libraries closed every other weekend, public parks run down and neglected, no bombing ranges… ) Betty calls for Captain Marvel on the radio, but is knocked out by a falling beam when the first bomb hits. Billy, meanwhile, struggles with his bonds — and his gag.

At the last moment, using the powerful jaw muscles he’s built up over years of broadcasting, Billy works the gag loose and shouts “Shazam!” Billy Batson vanishes, to be replaced by Captain Marvel, who quickly scoops up Betty (and the chair she’s tied to — Tom Tyler’s line readings are only fair, but he’s better at heavy lifting than any actor I’ve ever seen) and exits the shack, just an instant before it’s blown to pieces by a bomb.

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Witch Doctor: Under the Knife

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

What if Dr. Gregory House had become Sorceror Supreme instead of Dr. Stephen Strange? If you’re familiar with both those names, chances are you’ve just clicked off this page to order your own copy of Witch Doctor: Under the Knife. If you never watched House and never read Doctor Strange, don’t worry … this isn’t one of those parody books that requires preliminary reading.

Dr. Vincent Morrow is a practicing physician whose specialty is supernatural medicine. Demonic possession, vampiric infection, pregnant faerie folk … Vincent Morrow’s the guy you call. What the doctor lacks in bedside manner, he makes up with a knowledge of the occult so vast that it sounds like he’s making it up as he goes along (which hardly ever turns out to be the case). How exactly is interspecies breeding possible with the Deep Ones? What is the medical definition of a soul and how do you treat someone who’s born without one? What kind of scalpel does one use to remove a demonic parasite? (Hint: It’s the kind you have to pull out of a stone.) The answers combine traditional folklore with modern medical terminology.

The strength of this series is in the sheer overload of fresh ideas and new perspectives on old storylines. Of course, we all know the key features of a vampire (big teeth, aversion to holy symbols, allergy to sunlight), but there’s just something fascinating about watching a doctor run through each characteristic and reason out how it evolved in what is essentially a supernatural parasite. An old-school paranormal investigator would use some sort magic sphere to track down a faerie trading changelings for human babies, but Dr. Morrow opts instead for a CDC-style database that pinpoints each incident, then traces it back to an origin point as if it were an influenza outbreak rather than a supernatural phenomenon. And it’s fun, after all the other crazy stuff that happens in chapters one and two, to see him get genuinely bothered by the interordinal hybridization of Deep Ones mating with humans, not because it’s disgusting, but because it’s medically impossible.

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Roman Mosaics at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

The main mosaic room contains some large examples found in Iberian villas.

Last week, I shared some of the Celtiberian artifacts at the newly remodeled Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. The museum also has a strong collection of Roman artifacts, reflecting Spain’s longtime importance in the Roman Empire. Most gripping are the mosaics. Spain had numerous wealthy villas both in the cities and countryside, and thankfully many of these have been discovered and preserved.

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The Godzilla Blu-ray Flood: Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster)

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Ryan Harvey Comments 6 comments

This Godzilla film benefits from historical context, so here it be:

In the early 1970s, Japan faced a crisis from increasing pollution due to a massive, unregulated boom in industry across the nation during the previous decade. Poisoning from sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide created a spike in cases of asthma and bronchitis, and respiratory problems in general took a steep rise. The sulfur dioxide poisoning in the city of Yoakkaichi, from refineries built during the 1960s, was so pronounced that it coined a new disease name, Yokkaichi asthma. This caused a ten- to twenty-fold increase in mortality rates among asthma sufferers and led to a 1970 class action lawsuit. Children went to school wearing cotton facemasks, and in the larger cities oxygen tanks were available on the streets for emergency use. In the seas, poor waste management led to a drop in the fishing industry, one of the backbones of the Japanese economy—and fishing rates have continued to drop ever since. A country that once had nuclear power at the forefront of its fears was overwhelmed with a new horror of toxic waste contaminating the air and sea.

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New Editions Past

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 James Maliszewski Comments 7 comments

A new edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been released, as Andrew Zimmerman Jones discussed the other day.

This is the third new edition released since Wizards of the Coast took over publication of the world’s first fantasy roleplaying game in 1997. If you’re the sort of roleplayer who spends any time online, visiting forums, blogs, and social media, you’ll know that this latest edition has already generated a lot of discussion, both pro and con, much of it enthusiastic and some of it, quite frankly, deranged. In that respect, it’s not much different than the last several new editions, whose advents were simultaneously hailed as the dawn of a new age of gaming and decried as the twilight of the gods.

I played the new edition a couple of times last year when it was being playtested and found it something I’d be willing to play again if someone else were refereeing it, which is the only standard by which any game (RPG or otherwise) should be judged. That said, I’m not planning on buying a copy for myself, since I’ve already got my own heavily housed-ruled and Holmesified version of Labyrinth Lord and need nothing more. That’s not a knock against WotC’s latest effort – or any roleplaying game – just a statement of fact. I’ve been at this RPG thing for thirty-five years now and, in that time, have pretty well determined what games I like to use at my table. It’s rare that I buy new RPGs anymore, let alone play them, which is why a scan of my shelves would reveal very few games first published after 1984, but then I’m a notoriously unimaginative stick in the mud, so that’s to be expected.

What truly fascinates me about the arrival of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is its seeming importance, for good or for ill, among its legions of fans. This is in stark contrast to my own early days in the hobby, when talk of “editions” was well nigh non-existent, never mind a subject of import. Granted, I entered the hobby in late 1979, several months after the release of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, the third and final volume of Gary Gygax’s magnum opus. AD&D was, in many ways, the first “new edition” in that it was marketed as an “improvement” over its predecessor and, for that reason alone, worthy of purchase and use. I thus never witnessed any of the tumult that no doubt occurred in the lead up to its release. For me and my friends, AD&D was simply a fact of life.
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Harry Potter Returns in New Short Story by J.K. Rowling

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Earlier today, J.K. Rowling posted a brand new 1,500-word story featuring Harry Potter at her Pottermore website. Titled “Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quidditch World Cup Final” and written as a July 8th Daily Prophet article by gossip correspondent Rita Skeeter, the story highlights the media circus surrounding the reunion of Potter and those who fought beside him to bring down Lord Voldemort, at the 2014 Quidditch World Cup Final in the Patagonian Desert in Argentina. Here’s a snippet:

The Potter family and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army have been given accommodation in the VIP section of the campsite, which is protected by heavy charms and patrolled by Security Warlocks. Their presence has ensured large crowds along the cordoned area, all hoping for a glimpse of their heroes. At 3pm today they got their wish when, to the accompaniment of loud screams, Potter took his young sons James and Albus to visit the players’ compound, where he introduced them to Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum.

About to turn 34, there are a couple of threads of silver in the famous Auror’s black hair… The famous lightning scar has company: Potter is sporting a nasty cut over his right cheekbone. Requests for information as to its provenance merely produced the usual response from the Ministry of Magic… So what are they hiding? Is the Chosen One embroiled in fresh mysteries that will one day explode upon us all, plunging us into a new age of terror and mayhem?

While there’s little dialogue in the “news piece,” the story is surprisingly satisfying, briefly featuring Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, most of the Weasley clan, and a handful of others, including Harry’s sixteen-year-old godson, the half-werewolf Teddy Lupin. In her catty tabloid style, Rita Skeeter skillfully highlights major events in the lives of our favorite characters since the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sixteen years ago — there’s even a nice twist at the end.

Read the complete story at Pottermore (free registration required).

The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 1 comment

I have loved the work of two-time World Fantasy Award-winning and two-time Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Tim Powers ever since I read The Anubis Gates (one of the foundational works of steampunk) back in 1984. Since then, I’ve been equally thrilled by a number of his other books, including The Stress of Her Regard, his tale of artists and vampiric monsters; Last Call, about the search for the Fisher King in Las Vegas; and Three Days to Never, involving time-travel, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin.

Every few years I feel the pull to revisit his third novel, The Drawing of the Dark (1979). It’s a swords & sorcery adventure set in 1529 and climaxing during Suleiman the Magnificent’s siege of Vienna.

Briefly, The Drawing of the Dark is about the adventures of Brian Duffy, an aging soldier of fortune who encounters a stranger with an offer of employment at just the time circumstances require him to flee Venice.

The old man who’d hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.

“Sit down, please,” he said, waving at the chair.

“I don’t mind standing,” Duffy told him.

“Whatever you prefer.” He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. “My name is Aurelianus.” Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off. “And what is yours?”

Duffy blinked. “What?”

“Oh! I’m Brian Duffy.”

Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. It began popping and smoldering, and Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.

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New Treasures: Flight of the Golden Harpy by Susan Klaus

Monday, July 7, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I picked up a copy of Susan Klaus’s debut novel over the weekend, and so far have been intrigued. It’s romantic fantasy dressed up as science fiction, in which a young woman returns to the jungle planet of Dora, where long ago she was saved by a male harpy with beautiful golden coloring. But the human colonists of Dora treat harpies like dangerous animals and hunt them like wild game.

This morning, I read a guest post by Klaus at SF Signal, where she reveals that Flight of the Golden Harpy was inspired by an encounter with Brad Pitt while she was an extra on Oceans Eleven:

The guy wasn’t a disappointment… Brad is even more gorgeous in person. After 12 hours of gawking and drooling, I learned he was also a nice, down-to-earth guy. But his looks and personality had nothing to do with my book dedication or why he’s my main man and character in my books. It came from how Brad was treated when he first walked on the set. The extras immediately mobbed him. He smiled, signed their autographs, and [posed] for their little cameras, desperately trying to appease the crushing crowd. It was sad. Even on a closed set, he was smothered and harassed. Going out in public must be a nightmare for him. Sure he’s handsome and has fame, and fortune, but is it worth a hectic stressful life with the press and fans constantly stalking and pursuing him like wild game…

I drove home and realized that good-looks can have drawbacks, especially in his case. That night I started writing my fantasy about a jungle planet with the point of view of the beautiful winged harpies, half-bird, half-human creatures that can’t understand mankind or why humans hunt and kill them for their wings that become mounted trophies on a wall. I gave Brad Pitt credit because he inspired the story, and the novel is also dedicated to our vanishing wildlife.

Flight of the Golden Harpy was published by Tor Books on June 17, 2014. It is 400 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Murder By Decree

Monday, July 7, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 7 comments

Thanks in large part to Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Per Cent Solution (book and film), Sherlock Holmes had a revival of popularity in the mid seventies. This resulted in an under-appreciated British-Canadian big-screen effort, Murder By Decree.

The most famous detective had tackled the most famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in 1965’s A Study in Terror. Originally conceived as a sequel to Christopher Lee’s under-achieving Sherlock Holmes & The Deadly Necklace, John Neville played a solid Holmes, though saddled with Donald Houston’s doofus of a Watson.

A bit lurid, it’s a good Holmes film, though promoted to appeal to Adam West’s very popular ‘Batman’ TV show crowd (“Here comes the original caped crusader”).

The Ripper File was a book based on Jack the Ripper, a BBC miniseries in which two popular TV detectives investigated the Jack the Ripper case. That miniseries introduced Joseph Sickert and his royal conspiracy theory (later turned into Stephen Knight’s book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution) to the world.

Director and producer Bob Clark (whose next film, improbably, would be Porky’s) built his story around The Ripper File. There are several variations of the royal conspiracy theory and Murder by Decree changes some (but not all) of the names and follows one of them.

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Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: A Forensic Analysis

Sunday, July 6, 2014 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 7 comments

For the last two years, Wizards of the Coast has been getting feedback on their new “5th edition” set of rules from playtesters all across the world. July 15 marks the official release of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, giving the world the first glimpse of the final version of these rules. Unfortunately, the D&D Starter Set provides only pregenerated characters with some advancement rules through level 5, and some basic mechanics, so it doesn’t consist of a full set of game mechanics or character creation rules.

In other words, it’s not enough to give us a full idea of what the final rules for 5th edition will look like … but it does provide enough information to get some hints about how the upcoming edition of the game will be structured. In general, the goal seems to be to streamline the system, making it very accessible to new gamers, but still providing enough substance and versatility that more experienced gamers will find the system desirable. It’s a tough balancing act, but looking over the D&D Starter Set, I feel a growing sense of confidence that the new system will achieve these objectives.

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