Black Gate – Page 933 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Vintage Treasures: Weird Tales #290

Monday, June 9, 2014 John ONeill Comments 17 comments

I’m still unpacking all the treasures I brought home from the 2014 Windy City Pulp & Paper show in April. Although, as my wife Alice points out, things would go a little faster if I didn’t fondle everything for 20 minutes.

I found the artifact at right buried in a box of magazines and fanzines from the 70s and 80s I acquired at the show. It’s the 290th issue of Weird Tales, covered dated Spring 1988 — the Sixty-Fifth Anniversary issue, a landmark, and one of my favorite issues of perhaps the most famous fantasy magazine of all time.

Issue 290 was the first issue of Weird Tales from Terminus Publishing, under editors George H. Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt, and Darrell Schweitzer. It’s special to me because the Terminus era was my favorite incarnation of Weird Tales.

I suppose some folks will find that odd. Certainly the early pulp era of the Grand Old Lady of fantasy was its most fertile and famous period — the late 20s to mid-thirties, when it routinely published groundbreaking work by Robert E, Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Edmond Hamilton, and many, many others. Those issue are highly prized by collectors and key copies in good condition from that era routinely command hundreds of dollars.

But the Terminus years, which began in my mid-20s, marked the resurgence of Weird Tales as a vibrant, important and thoroughly modern fantasy magazine, publishing short fiction by the top fantasy writers of the time. It was also the first time I was able to enjoy it as a contemporary publication, rather than a highly collectible relic of a distant era, and I appreciated that very much. I had a subscription, and looked forward to each issue eagerly.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: When Elric of Melnibone Came to 221B Baker Street

Monday, June 9, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 8 comments

Well, not quite. That title was just to grab your attention. But Elric’s creator did set a tale at London’s most famous address, 221B Baker Street. And it’s a pretty ‘normal’ Holmes tale; which you might not expect from the guy who created Stormbringer.

I enjoyed Fletcher Vrendenburgh’s post last week on Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. I devoured the tales of Corum, Hawkmoon, Erekose, and of course Elric in my middle-school years.

Being a Dungeons and Dragons player, these books were awesome. I think I even used Rackhir the Red Archer in a game. If you’ve not read significant parts of that saga, your fantasy education is lacking.

Moorcock’s work encompasses much more than just the Eternal Champion tales. I’m a Christian and I was fascinated by the premise of The War Hound and all the World’s Pain (an excellent read: the sequel, not so much).

I even wrote a paper on the idea for a high school religion class. That got me an invite to see the teacher, a priest, after class.

Back in 1995, Moorcock wrote “The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger” as a privately printed chapbook which he let friends of his, who were opening a hotel on Dorset Street, give away to their first guests.

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Self-Published Book Review: Pyre by R. B. Kannon

Sunday, June 8, 2014 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

While the cover is beautiful, I’m pretty sure Ember never wore anything remotely like that outfit anywhere in the novel.

This month’s self-published book is Pyre by R.B. Kannon. Set in a desert land reminiscent of ancient Egypt, it tells the life story of Ember, scion of a ruined people.

When Ember was a small child, her mother locked her inside an ancient, abandoned temple to die. She did this because Ember is cursed. Her people have no dreams or visions, no hope or desire or love. They sacrificed those things to a long forgotten demigod. But Ember is different—she not only has those ordinary traits of humanity, her mere presence disturbs the dreamless sleep of her people, bringing them unwanted dreams and nightmares. So she was locked away in the temple, but she was not alone. The Voice was there, a demonic presence who bonds with her and frees them both.

At first, Ember is taken in by Azarus, the eunuch satrap of the province, who teaches her to read and write not only the common language, but also the ancient glyphs that cover the ruins littering the countryside. Years later, when Azarus is killed by the Emperor’s unfavored son, she flees, returning first to her own people, then falling in with prostitutes and bandits, before finally coming back to the temple, where she challenges the Voice to seek redemption not just for herself, but for her fallen people.

The strongest part of Pyre was the prose. The first person narration has a lyrical quality, filled with descriptions rich with dream-like imagery, slipping effortlessly between reality and Ember’s own dreams. Ember herself is strong and determined, qualities which initially drew the Voice to her. The Voice, on the other hand, is cynical and mocking. He accompanies Ember more out of curiosity and boredom, and his own chance at freedom and survival, than because he has any interest in her welfare.

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Want to sell SF and Fantasy? The Only Book You Need is Bud Webster’s The Joy of Booking

Sunday, June 8, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve written here a few times about my adventures as a bookseller. Like that time a buyer found a rare Harry Dresden first edition in our $1 box at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. Or when I sold Jo Walton an Eric Frank Russell paperback she never knew existed. Or the weekend Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, Donald Crankshaw, Peadar Ó Guilín, Rich Horton, and I sold books together at the World Science Fiction convention

Or what happened when an attractive young woman picked up a copy of a Philip K. Dick paperback at Dragon*Con, and I stupidly said “Hey there — are you a fan of Dick?”

But despite all those years selling vintage SF paperbacks, I’m still very much a newbie. Especially compared to the legendary Bud Webster, who has made a vocation of buying and selling SF and fantasy books for decades, at conventions all over the country.

He’s collected anecdotes from a lifetime of selling SF, and packaged them up with excellent advice to aspiring booksellers on things like Managing Your Stock, Obtaining Stock, and When to Sell, in a single extremely useful and highly entertaining volume: The Joy of Booking, published in 2011.

Full exposure: Bud was the poetry editor for Black Gate, back when we had a print edition, and he’s also written a few articles for us on (what else?) bookselling and vintage books, such as “Selling Your Books Ain’t as Easy as it Looks,” “What I Do and Why I Do It,” “What I Do It With,” “Holding History,” and “Talk to Any Squids Lately? In Space, I Mean?.”

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A Shadow Falls Over Faerûn: Anauroch: The Empire of Shade

Sunday, June 8, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Back in April, I wrote a brief article on the Third Edition D&D supplement Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, which I purchased for $7 at the Spring Games Plus Auction. While I was delighted with it, I soon discovered it was the first installment in an epic three-part mega-adventure known informally as The Forgotten Realms Trilogy. Bummer!

Fortunately, I also discovered the second installment buried in the second box of auction loot, apparently purchased during an episode of auction fever for just $6. I examined Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land in a blog post last month.

That just left chapter three: Anauroch: The Empire of Shade, published in November 2007. While copies of Cormyr and Shadowdale are both still available online at relatively reasonable prices, not so for Anauroch — new copies start at around $60 at Amazon and eBay, and there wasn’t one in the boxes I brought home from the auction (I checked). The first two volumes cost me just $13, but it looked like I was going to spend five times that to get the third one.

Luckily, my house rests on top of a Cave of Wonders, a labyrinthine game repository containing thousands of D&D artifacts dating back to antiquity. I mounted an expedition — with a flashlight, a map, and water for several days — and before too long I unearthed a brand new copy of Anauroch: The Empire of Shade, which I apparently purchased some time in 2009. (Alongside it, covered in a light layer of dust, were brand new copies of both Cormyr and Shadowdale, which I hastily replaced and pretended I hadn’t seen. The fewer duplicate purchases I have to confess to my wife, the better.)

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New Treasures: New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran

Saturday, June 7, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

My birthday was last month, and one of the gifts my children bought for me (my children! That’s sweet. And a little disturbing) was Paula Guran’s 2011 anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird. Yes, I do realize the book is very nearly three years old and a bit long in the tooth to be a “New Treasure,” but I’m still so touched that my kids got me a Cthulhu anthology that I’m going to overlook it.

Anyway, it’s a fine addition to any Cthulhu library. It reprints 27 Cthulhu Mythos tales from the 21st Century, including contributions from Neil Gaiman, Kim Neuman, Charles Stross, Marc Laidlaw, Laird Barron, Paul McAuley, William Browning Spencer, Holly Phillips — and even Michael Shea’s chilling novelette “Tsathoggua,” published online here at Black Gate. Here’s the book description.

For more than 80 years H.P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gaming. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history — written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread — remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction — bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters – eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

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Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Draws Pearls Before Swine

Saturday, June 7, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Bill Watterson, the legendary creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is one of the most famous cartoonists in the world. He’s also one of the most private. After he retired from comics in 1995, he vanished from public life. He made Time Magazine‘s list of Top 10 Most Reclusive Celebrities (at #7) a few years ago (and Time accompanied the piece with one of the only known photographs of him.) For years, fans have been wondering what his next project would be.

It turns out that it’s already been published — and, typical for Watterson, in a surprisingly understated fashion. Stephan Pastis, creator of the bestselling Pearls Before Swine comic, revealed on his blog this morning that Watterson has been co-writing and co-drawing the strip with him for much of the past week:

I emailed him the strip and thanked him for all his great work and the influence he’d had on me. And never expected to get a reply. And what do you know, he wrote back. Let me tell you. Just getting an email from Bill Watterson is one of the most mind-blowing, surreal experiences I have ever had. Bill Watterson really exists? And he sends email? And he’s communicating with me?

But he was. And he had a great sense of humor about the strip I had done, and was very funny, and oh yeah… He had a comic strip idea he wanted to run by me…

What followed was a series of back-and-forth emails where we discussed what the strips would be about, and how we would do them. He was confident. I was frightened. Frightened because it’s one thing to write a strip read by millions of people. But it’s another thing to propose an idea to Bill Watterson.

You can see the entire sequence drawn by Watterson here, and this morning’s article by Michael Cavna’s at The Washington Post that broke the story here.

Review: Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan’s Column to Icelandic Sagas

Saturday, June 7, 2014 Comments 1 comment

Sometimes it’s worth being a historical novelist just for the joy of the research:

The shieldwall halted just out of arrow range. A tall Viking—a chieftain, judging by his red cloak and the eyepieces on his helmet—took his place in the middle of the Raven Sisters. Whirling a spear in each hand, he stamped and stepped to the rhythm of the war chant.

“That would be Ivar the Boneless, king of Dublin,” said Jarl Vithserk.

“I see him,” said Hardacanut, marking every detail. Slaying such a great chieftain would make it worthwhile coming to this muddy, rain-blighted island.

Viking warriors stepped out of the front line, shook out their long hair and, bobbing their heads, flicked and whirled their manes in time to the chant.

Jarl Vithserk chuckled. “I have not seen that for a long time.”

(From my War of the Vikings: Berserker King.)

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Blogging Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond, Part Two

Friday, June 6, 2014 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

The strongest scenes in Bulldog Drummond (1920) are the ones that show off Sapper’s strengths as a humorist. While it has since become commonplace to see Bondian heroes tossing off quips while being menaced by an unfailingly polite villain, it hardly compares to the way Hugh Drummond handled himself in similar scenarios. Drummond regularly displays a self-deprecating humor when it comes to his features and his intellect, yet his ability to needle villains by refusing to treat them as a serious threat displays an intelligence and understanding of the criminal mind that provides a constant source of amusement to the reader.

Drummond may start off as an independently wealthy and very bored veteran of the First World War seeking adventure, but the character soon transforms into the head of a gang of vigilantes determined to right wrongs as they see fit. He and his gang view meting out justice without resorting to the law as their right as recently demobilized soldiers. The wartime ability to kill without fear of criminal punishment continues into their clandestine civilian activities, although they take the precaution of hiding behind masks and hoods to protect their identities when doing so.

Drummond’s gang includes his fellow World War I veterans Algy Longworth, Peter Darrell, Ted Jerningham, Toby Sinclair, and Jerry Seymour, as well as New York police detective Jerome Green. Later dubbed The Black Gang, the vigilante squad was clearly inspired by Edgar Wallace’s bestselling Four Just Men series. The secret war they wage is aimed squarely against the forces of socialism and communism to an extent that was matched only by Harold Gray’s original version of Little Orphan Annie. The anti-foreign sentiments in the first book are rooted in the perceived threat of foreigners altering the course of England’s political identity and economic status.

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Future Treasures: The Return of the Discontinued Man by Mark Hodder

Friday, June 6, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I hear good things about these Burton & Swinburne adventure novels by Mark Hodder.

The series opened with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Sept. 2010) and The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man (March 2011). Come on, you have to love them just for the titles. Book #3, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, arrived in January, 2012, and #4, The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, in July of last year. In regards to that last book, Steampunk godfather KW Jeter noted, “Mark Hodder vaults to the front of the new steampunk writer’s pack.” Time for me to jump on board now, I think.

SPRING HEELED JACK IS JUMPING BACK!

It’s 9 p.m. on February 15, 1860, and Charles Babbage, the British Empire’s most brilliant scientist, performs an experiment. Within moments, blood red snow falls from the sky and Spring Heeled Jack pops out of thin air in London’s Leicester Square. Though utterly disoriented and apparently insane, the strange creature is intent on one thing: hunting Sir Richard Francis Burton!

Spring Heeled Jack isn’t alone in his mental confusion. Burton can hardly function; he’s experiencing one hallucination after another-visions of parallel realities and future history. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him about… what?

When the revelation comes, it sends Burton and his companions on an expedition even the great explorer could never have imagined-a voyage through time itself into a twisted future where steam technology has made a resurgence and a despotic intelligence rules over the British Empire!

The Return of the Discontinued Man will be published on July 8, 2014 by Pyr Books. It is 339 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.