Firefly, A Retrospective Part 8 — A Look at Serenity

Firefly, A Retrospective Part 8 — A Look at Serenity

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Serenity poster-smallAs some of you know, I just finished a seven-part blog on this site about the Firefly television series. We laughed, we cried, we stared at Jayne’s hat… and now it’s time to move on to the movie.

I consider Serenity to be part of the television show. Like the second season we never got, but compressed into a feature film.

It begins with a little voice-over narration telling us about this fictional world, centering on the war between the Alliance and the Independents. Then we see River as a child in school, but it’s a dream. She is back in the Alliance lab that messed with her brain. Simon is there, posing as a VIP on an inspection tour. He breaks her out of the facility.

I’m glad the movie starts with this scene, because although we’d heard about how Simon freed River in the TV series, we never got to see it. And this makes a terrific set-up for the rest of the movie.

And then the movie does something clever. The scene of Simon and River’s escape is paused in mid-action, and shown to be just a recording. It’s being viewed by the Operative (he’s so cool he doesn’t even need a real name) at the lab where the escape happened. The Operative wants River back because she may have learned the secrets of the Alliance leaders and that cannot be allowed. So the chase is on.

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The Waterloo Panorama: An Epic Example of Military Art

The Waterloo Panorama: An Epic Example of Military Art

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Marshal Ney leading his troops.
Marshal Ney leading his troops.

The Napoleonic era has always fascinated me for its visuals — the massive armies, the colorful costumes, and the sweeping scope of some of the battles. These terrible conflicts produced some of the finest military art in European history and I discovered a remarkable example of it when I visited Waterloo, Belgium, last week.

Preserved on the battlefield is a rare example of a panorama. A popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these large paintings are now rare. They were usually of epic scenes such as battles or Biblical stories or famous cities, and would be placed on the inside of round buildings to provide a 360 degree viewing experience. Others were set up on stage and unrolled like a scroll in front of the audience, each part relating a sequence of the story.

The Waterloo panorama is set in a round building and is 110 meters long and 14 meters high. It was painted by Louis Dumoulin and his assistants in 1912, just as those newfangled moving pictures were beginning to make panoramas obsolete.

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Star Trek Continues with “Lolani” and Soars to Warp Eight

Star Trek Continues with “Lolani” and Soars to Warp Eight

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lolani 3Last year I gushed about a lovingly crafted fan-made original Star Trek episode, “Pilgrim of Eternity,” and concluded by writing that I hoped the same team would make more.

And lo, it has come to pass. As a matter of fact, I somehow missed news of a Kickstarter (or Kirkstarter) in October AND the release of a second episode, “Lolani,” in February. According to the Star Trek Continues web site, a third episode has been filmed and is already being edited. The Kickstarter raised enough money for three additional episodes (of which the “in edit” episode is the first) and — if I’m not mistaken — gained the funds to construct a replica of the Enterprise engine room to add to their existing sets.

If you’re a fan of the original Star Trek series, you MUST watch “Lolani.” Even moreso than “Pilgrim of Eternity,” it feels like a lost episode. It’s not just the sets and the effects, which are truly astonishing in their faithfulness, it’s the pacing, and the music cues, and the fadeouts, and the story beats, and the writing — and the actors. These people understand who the original characters were and inhabit them — and I swear that this script could stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest entries in the original run.

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Future Treasures: The Leopard by K.V. Johansen

Future Treasures: The Leopard by K.V. Johansen

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The Leopard K V Johansen-smallLou Anders, editorial director of Pyr Books, may be the closest we have to Lin Carter in the field today: an editor with impeccable taste and boundless energy, who has also been a tireless champion for sword & sorcery. The latest he’s offering us is the opening volume in a new series from K.V. Johansen, the Canadian author of Blackdog (2011). Black Gate’s own James Enge blurbs The Leopard with a stylish tip of the hat to the great Harold Lamb: “I’m hooked. This mix of magic, Tibetan-style religion, and Harold Lamb-style adventure is pretty addicting.” Sounds pretty darn good to me.

Ahjvar, the assassin known as the Leopard, wants only to die, to end the curse that binds him to a life of horror. Although he has no reason to trust the goddess Catairanach or her messenger Deyandara, fugitive heir to a murdered tribal queen, desperation leads him to accept her bargain: if he kills the mad prophet known as the Voice of Marakand, Catairanach will free him of his curse. Accompanying him on his mission is the one person he has let close to him in a lifetime of death, a runaway slave named Ghu. Ahj knows Ghu is far from the half-wit others think him, but in Marakand, the great city where the caravan roads of east and west meet, both will need to face the deepest secrets of their souls, if either is to survive the undying enemies who hunt them and find a way through the darkness that damns the Leopard.

To Marakand, too, come a Northron wanderer and her demon verrbjarn lover, carrying the obsidian sword Lakkariss, a weapon forged by the Old Great Gods to bring their justice to the seven devils who escaped the cold hells so long before.

The Leopard is Volume One of Marakand. It will be published on June 10 by Pyr Books. It is 370 pages, to be priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital version. The second volume, The Lady, is scheduled to arrive in December (see the cover here).

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One, edited by Laird Barron

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One, edited by Laird Barron

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Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume One-smallYEAR’S BEST WEIRD FICTION, Vol. 1, edited by the great Laird Barron for Undertow Press, is scheduled for an August release. You can pre-order it right here. This will be a brilliant inauguration for the series. Each volume will be edited by a different “guest editor” and Undertow could not have made a better choice for their first book: Barron is one of the best weird/horror writers in the field. Here is the complete Table of Contents:

“Success” by Michael Blumlein, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov./Dec.
“Like Feather, Like Bone” by Kristi DeMeester, Shimmer #17
“A Terror” by Jeffrey Ford, Tor.com, July.
“The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass” by John R. Fultz, Fungi #21
“A Cavern of Redbrick” by Richard Gavin, Shadows & Tall Trees #5
“The Krakatoan” by Maria Dahvana Headley, Nightmare Magazine/The Lowest Heaven, July.
“Bor Urus” by John Langan, Shadow’s Edge
“Furnace” by Livia Llewellyn, The Grimscribe’s Puppets
“Eyes Exchange Bank” by Scott Nicolay, The Grimscribe’s Puppets
“A Quest of Dream” by W.H. Pugmire, Bohemians of Sesqua Valley
“(he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror” by Joseph S. Pulver Sr., Lovecraft eZine #28
“Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron” by A.C. Wise, Ideomancer Vol. 12 #2
“The Year of the Rat” by Chen Quifan, The Mag. of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August.
“Fox into Lady” by Anne-Sylvie Salzman, Darkscapes
“Olimpia’s Ghost” by Sofia Samatar, Phantom Drift #3
“The Nineteenth Step” by Simon Strantzas, Shadows Edge
“The Girl in the Blue Coat” by Anna Taborska, Exotic Gothic 5 Vol. 1
“In Limbo” by Jeffrey Thomas, Worship the Night
“Moonstruck” by Karin Tidbeck, Shadows & Tall Trees #5
“Swim Wants to Know If It’s as Bad as Swim Thinks” by Paul Tremblay, Bourbon Penn #8
“No Breather in the World But Thee” by Jeff VanderMeer, Nightmare Magazine, March.
“Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us?” by Damien Angelica Walters, Shock Totem #7.

The Kick That Did Not Start

The Kick That Did Not Start

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Not all Kickstarters will fund. Farewell, Something Lovely didn’t.

That was unfortunate, but it was not a complete loss. Some of the backers hadn’t backed Centurion: Legionaries of Rome, my successful Kickstarter, so I had increased my network. I also learned some lessons which helped me prepare for my ongoing Kickstarter for Nefertiti Overdrive: Ancient Egytian Wuxia. Since I’m a generous guy, let me share my lessons learned with you.

1) Expect failure and you can expect failure.

I went into Farewell, Something Lovely with a strong suspicion that I would fail. I’m not saying that I created my own failure… actually, I am saying that, but not that I gave up on the Kickstarter.

I kept pushing until the end. I wonder, though, if that expectation of failure curtailed my efforts in some way. Perhaps I could have done more if I believed the Kickstarter would succeed.

It’s similar to an explanation of backer psychology I heard: backers will only pledge to a Kickstarter they expect to fund. Just as a backer will create a failure by expecting a Kickstarter to fail, I have a feeling that if you go in with your parachute on, maybe you’ll bail out of the plane before absolutely necessary. Maybe if I had put more effort into the Kickstarter, I could have saved it.

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Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds is Punch-You-in-the-Face Good

Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds is Punch-You-in-the-Face Good

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Blackbirds Chuck Wendig-smallFate wants what fate wants. No one knows this better then Miriam Black.

Miriam sees death every time she touches someone. A few seconds of skin-on-skin contact is all she needs to learn the exact date, time, and method of someone’s death. Over the past several years, she’s seen thousands of suicides and car crashes, violent deaths and peaceful ones. Miriam has long since stopped trying to save people, because it never works. Fate wants what fate wants; and when fate wants someone dead, it happens.

That is, until Miriam meets Louis and learns he will die saying her name, three weeks after they meet. Miriam knows she is present when Louis dies and that she must do everything she can to stop it.

Blackbirds is punch-you-in-the-face, miss-your-stop-on-the-train good. If it were a TV show, it would have an “MA LVS” warning — for mature audiences, language, violence, and sexual content. As such, this book isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s important to note, though, that all of this graphic content doesn’t feel gratuitous in any way. Wendig is masterful at characterization and he didn’t pull any punches when he wrote Miriam Black. She is foul-mouthed (once or twice I re-read a few sentences because I was simultaneously shocked, awed, and jealous), self-protective, and quite capable of holding her own in a bar fight. She might rub some readers the wrong way — especially after the visceral opening scene when she appears uncaring — but if you stick with her a bit, you’ll see her coarse, abrasive nature is nothing more than an armor that Miriam has had to acquire in order to keep her sanity intact.

The plot is fairly straight-forward and tightly constructed. There are no extraneous scenes or chapters. The “Interlude” segments serve to tell us Miriam’s backstory in an untraditional way. If I had one quibble with this book, it would be the ending. While it’s satisfying, completes the story, and is the expected ending, I felt Miriam could have been a little more proactive in carrying out the task fate had in mind for her. Still, that’s a minor complaint; I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the next in the series.

From the Celluloid Cellar: Star Wars

From the Celluloid Cellar: Star Wars

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Star Wars poster Long-time science fiction fans will likely be familiar with Star Wars, if only by its reputation. Initially a flop at the box office, it survives today mostly as a midnight movie curiosity. Indeed, it took studios over a decade to invest in another big-budget science fiction film after the massive failure of George Lucas’s love letter to the movie serials of the 1930s. But an objective review shows that it’s not nearly as bad as word-of-mouth makes and, once the plot finally gets moving, is actually a lot of fun, despite (maybe a little because of) its many flaws.

So, the plot? In a distant galaxy, an evil empire rules the many inhabited worlds with an iron fist. Cue the ragtag rebellion trying to free the galaxy from the Empire’s control. First problem with the plot? The Galaxy, Empire, and Rebellion are unnamed in this film, each going simply by a definitive article.

The leader of the Rebellion is Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher), dressed all in white like a virgin sacrifice, but carrying a bad-ass ray gun. The main bad guy? There is an Emperor (mentioned, but never seen) and General Tarkin (played by Peter Cushing as a delightfully over-the-top space nazi); but the clear face of evil is Tarkin’s chief lieutenant, Darth Vader. A seven-foot tall wizard dressed in head-to-toe black armor, face covered by a black Shogun skull mask and voiced as pure hate incarnate by James Earl Jones, it’s hard to imagine this film was ever marketed to children with this walking nightmare engine chewing the scenery. The scenes between eighteen year-old wisp Fisher and this creepy heavy-breathing monster are especially disturbing.

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Doctor Who and the Daemons – the Novel!

Doctor Who and the Daemons – the Novel!

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Daemons002 More than once on Black Gate, I’ve heard that the seventies were a dead zone for science fiction and fantasy. For teens in search of readily available genre “gateway drugs,” I suppose this might have been true for many, but my particular experience of growing up managed, against all odds, to be different. Ohio was my home base, a vanilla environment for “culture” of the fantastical sort, but luckily I had a smorgasbord of British relatives. One especially perceptive and sibylline aunt started sending me Doctor Who novelizations.

Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion, that was the first I tried. Next, one of the best offerings in the canon, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.  I was in third grade and after facing down those blank-eyed Autons and their Nestene masters, I was hooked.

Note that I wasn’t in any way watching the TV show. In Columbus, Ohio, it simply wasn’t available, not until the early eighties, and then, when PBS did pick up a few random episodes, it was Tom Baker’s roost to rule. The Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, and William Hartnell adventures I first encountered were absent entire.

What Tom Baker’s run taught me is that talented actors can be mired forever in substandard scripts and even worse special effects. This was a total and unpleasant surprise, because the novelizations were fast-paced genre gems, especially those penned by Terrance Dicks.  (Malcolm Hulke was the other regular adapter for the Doctor Who franchise, with a rotating cast of fellow contributors including Gerry Davis, Ian Marter, and David Whitaker.) How could such pacey, adrenaline-filled books arise from such hokey, hamstrung screen material?

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New Treasures: Once Upon a Time in Hell by Guy Adams

New Treasures: Once Upon a Time in Hell by Guy Adams

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Once Upon a Time in Hell Guy Adams-smallYou know, I try not to play favorites with these New Treasures posts. The whole point is to present a diverse sampling of the most intriguing fantasy crossing my desk every week. It defeats the purpose if I keep talking about the same writers week after week, so I don’t do it.

Unless your name is Guy Adams, apparently. I wrote up his novel of hidden laboratories, genetic engineering, and Sherlock Holmes, The Army of Dr. Moreau, back in August 2012, and his noir jazz club mystery Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger last October. But it was his gonzo fantasy-western, The Good The Bad and the Infernal, released last March, that really grabbed my attention and I’ve anxiously been awaiting the sequel. Now that it’s arrived, here I am talking about Guy Adams again. It’s not my fault, I swear.

A weird western, a gun-toting, cigarrillo-chewing fantasy built from hangman’s rope and spent bullets. The west has never been wilder.

Wormwood has appeared, and with it a doorway to the afterlife. But what use is a door if you can’t step through it?

Hundreds have battled unimaginable odds to reach this place, including the blind shooter Henry Jones; the drunk and liar Roderick Quartershaft; that most holy, yet enigmatic of orders, the Brotherhood of Ruth; the inventor Lord Forset and his daughter Elisabeth; the fragile messiah Soldier Joe and his nurse Hope Lane. Of them all, Elwyn Wallace, a young man who only wanted to travel west for a job, would have happily forgone the experience. But he finds himself abroad in Hell, a nameless, aged gunslinger by his side. He had thought nothing could match the terror of his journey thus far, but time will prove him wrong.

On the road to Hell, good intentions don’t mean a damn.

Once Upon a Time in Hell is Book two of The Heaven’s Gate Trilogy. It was published on December 31, 2013 by Solaris. It is 283 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.