Mark Lawrence and the Prince of Fools

Mark Lawrence and the Prince of Fools

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Mark Lawrence-smallI’d been wanting to talk with the talented Mark Lawrence about his writing process for a long time and the occasion of his release of Prince of Fools (not to mention the wining of a certain prestigious award) seemed like as good a justification as any. Mark kindly answered all of my questions in detail. I hope you’ll find them as interesting as I did.

Howard Andrew Jones: Congratulations on winning the David Gemmell Legend Award. What was the ceremony like?

Mark Lawrence: Thanks, it was the only award I’ve ever been interested in winning, so it was very gratifying to do so!

I couldn’t tell you what the ceremony was like. I’ve only been further than ten miles from my hometown once in the last ten years. My youngest daughter (10) is very disabled and I’m needed to look after her. Even when we have carers in I still need to be around to lift her. So getting away is very difficult indeed. Add to that the fact that I was sure I had zero chance of winning!

I do know the event was held at the headquarters of the Magic Circle in London which is a very nice venue and it was well attended. My agent received the award on my behalf. I would loved to have been there.

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A Fantasist Not On the Fantasy Shelf: Italo Calvino

A Fantasist Not On the Fantasy Shelf: Italo Calvino

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Italo Calvino-smallItalo Calvino, who died in 1985, was one of Italy’s foremost writers. A “literary” rather than a genre writer (though that distinction has come to mean less and less in the thirty years since his death), he nevertheless flirted with the fantastic for much of his career. A prime example of Calvino’s humorous and highly idosyncratic bent for fantasy is Our Ancestors, a volume containing three of his works from the 1950’s — two novellas, The Cloven Viscount and The Non-Existent Knight, and a novel, The Baron In the Trees.

The two novellas are light confections that amusingly juggle history, satire, and philosophical concepts. In The Cloven Viscount, a seventeenth century Sardinian nobleman, the Viscount Medaro, goes off to battle the Turks; in his first encounter with them, he is split down the middle by a cannon ball.

Both halves are stitched up and resume life as usual. Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that one half is now irredeemably evil, while the other half is insufferably good. (The “unmixed” goodness of the virtuous half alienates just as many people as the nastiness of the bad half does, in fact.)

The two halves become rivals for the same woman, a young lady named Pamela, and wind up fighting a duel over her, in which they are both wounded. A doctor stitches them back together and the restored and again properly “mixed” Medaro marries Pamela. They live happily ever after, highlighting the fairy tale qualities of the story. (Calvino had a great regard for the Brothers Grimm and in 1956 edited his own collection of Italian folktales.)

The Non-Existent Knight tells the story of one Agilulf, a knight of Charlemagne. Agilulf is a proper soldier in every way but one — he doesn’t exist. The only thing in his impeccably maintained armor is a voice.

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Vintage Treasures: The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Aidan Chambers

Vintage Treasures: The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Aidan Chambers

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The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories-smallBelieve it or not, I’m still looking through the last of the loot from the 2014 Windy City Pulp & Paper show here in Chicago from April.

Now, I’m pretty good at tracking down hard-to-find paperbacks and vintage curiosities — as long as I know about them. It’s a little harder to locate fabulous objects of desire if you’ve unaware of them. And that’s one of the great pleasures of Windy City: even a casual walk through the great Dealer’s Room is a marvelous exercise in serendipity. I found gorgeous art books, rare fanzines, beautiful pulps, and much more.

And I also stumbled across a copy of a delightful vintage paperback: The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Aidan Chambers, a Pan paperback published in the UK in 1976. It’s an omnibus collection of The Tenth Ghost Book and The Eleventh Ghost Book, with an original cover price of £0.75. I paid $4 for a copy in very good condition. A quick Internet search reveals that there were at least three more, also from Pan: The Second Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Polly Parkin and James Hale (1978, cover here), the Third, and the Fourth, both edited by Hale. More treasures for me to track down!

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The Magic Gets Measured

The Magic Gets Measured

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Wolfe KnightIn a recent Facebook posting, horror writer Jason S. Ridler had this to say about the kind of magic he prefers in fantasy novels:

If it’s not attached to emotions and mythical forces, I don’t care. Complex magic systems that are just science by another name, with lots of rules, and comparable to other magic systems with more rules, and don’t have elements of mystery , or the bizarre or the sublime… don’t interest me… I like my magic attached to the  unknown and the mysterious, not the quantifiable.

For me, this reopened the discussion we often see here in Black Gate on magic as it’s used in Fantasy.

I haven’t had a chance to have this discussion with Ridler himself – since he’s in California now, and I’m still in Ontario, we no longer meet regularly for afternoons in the pub – so I don’t know which works in particular make which of his lists, but I’d have to say that the type of magic system he dislikes is the more prevalent one. Which probably explains why he’s not a mad-keen fantasy reader.

Not that there aren’t plenty of examples of the kind he does like. LOTR immediately comes to mind; as does Roger Zelazny’s early Amber novels, though I think his Dilvish the Damned stories might come closer. Slightly more up-to-date examples might include Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series or Gene Wolfe’s Wizard/Knight.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer… in the Beginning, Part One

Blogging Sax Rohmer… in the Beginning, Part One

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illo-Sax Rohmerrohmer2“The Mysterious Mummy” marked Sax Rohmer’s first appearance in print. Only 20 years old at the time, Rohmer was then writing under the byline of A. Sarsfield Ward. Born Arthur Henry Ward, Sarsfield was a surname of historical repute from his mother’s side of the family, which he adopted at the start of his writing career.

A preview of the story was featured in the November 19, 1903 issue of Pearson’s Weekly, with the full story printed in the November 24 issue. “The Mysterious Mummy” languished in obscurity until it was reprinted by Peter Haining in the 1986 anthology, Ray Bradbury Introduces Tales of Dungeons and Dragons. Haining also included the story in the 1988 anthology, The Mummy: Stories of the Living Corpse. Rohmer scholar Gene Christie selected the story for inclusion in the first volume of Black Dog Books’ Sax Rohmer Library, The Green Spider and Other Forgotten Tales of Mystery and Suspense, published in 2011.

The most interesting feature about this first foray into fiction is that it is not at all a living mummy story, but rather a straight heist caper. Rohmer later disingenuously claimed that a copycat theft was attempted in France and the thief was arrested with a copy of Pearson’s Weekly on his person, featuring the story which he claimed was so good he had to risk trying it in real life. Rohmer, of course, was a terribly unreliable interview subject. While it is possible the press were more gullible a century ago, it is more likely they viewed his tall tales as good copy.

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Goth Chick News: Dracula Meets Game of Thrones

Goth Chick News: Dracula Meets Game of Thrones

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image004There is no denying the juggernaut that is the HBO series Game of Thrones.

As the BBC pointed out in a recent article, GoT has whipped its 18.4 million viewers into a lather about an entertainment category we hadn’t seen to this magnitude in some time.

In appealing to its audience’s need for escapism, Game of Thrones revitalized a genre that few knew needed revitalizing: the sword-and-sandals saga, a once-hardy movie sub-species that gave us serious-minded epics like Ben-Hur, as well as primitively-animated Ray Harryhausen monster movies.

So with that many eyeballs pointed toward the screen for GoT’s season four, and with seasons five and six already green-lighted, it was inevitable that other filmmakers would be inspired to break out the leather strapping and chainmail.

But I did not see this one coming…

This week Universal Studios posted the first trailer for their upcoming release Dracula Untold, led by freshman director Gary Shore (and I do mean freshman: his only other directing credit, since graduating from film school in 2006, is a short film). So either Short is a film school prodigy or someone has some naughty pictures of someone at Universal.

Dracula Untold stars Luke Evans (Fast & Furious 6) as “Vlad Tepes” and Sarah Gordon (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) as Vlad’s first wife “Mirena.” It also stars Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter hottie Dominic Cooper as Vlad’s Turk nemesis, “Mahmed.”

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New Treasures: The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill

New Treasures: The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill

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The House of Small Shadows-smallI have a real fondness for horror novels, but sadly I haven’t paid much attention to the horror market recently. Adam Nevill’s latest novel The House of Small Shadows just arrived and it looks like just the thing to entice me back in.

Catherine’s last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top antiques publication saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and a few therapists later, things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself — to catalogue the late M. H. Mason’s wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she’ll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting bloody scenes from World War II. Catherine can’t believe her luck when Mason’s elderly niece invites her to stay at Red House itself, where she maintains the collection until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle’s “Art.” Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but Mason’s damaged visions begin to raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she’d hoped therapy had finally erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge and some truths seem too terrible to be real… in The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill.

Nevill’s first three novels were Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, and The Ritual; he also contributed to the recent anthologies End of the Road and The Best British Fantasy 2013. We discussed him last on the occasion of his fourth novel Last Days, a Blair Witch style creep-fest in which a documentary film-maker investigates an apocalyptic cult, discovering some nasty secrets in the process.

The House of Small Shadows will be published by St. Martin’s Press on July 15, 2014. It is 384 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Support The Collectors Book of Virgil Finlay Kickstarter

Support The Collectors Book of Virgil Finlay Kickstarter

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Space Police Virgil Finlay-smallI don’t often report on Kickstarter projects. But in this case, I’m making an exception — both due to the quality of the book and the people involved.

Bob Garcia’s American Fantasy Press is publishing The Collectors Book of Virgil Finlay, the first new Virgil Finlay art book in twenty years, featuring art from the extensive collections of Robert Weinberg, Doug Ellis, Glynn Crain, and Robert K. Wiener. The publishers have launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help defray some of the considerable costs in preparing and publishing the book. Here’s Donato Giancola, cover artist for Black Gate 15, on the artist:

Finlay’s dizzying compositions and incredible draftsmanship recall the dense compositions of Renaissance artists Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Durer, while at the same time embracing the modern aesthetics of abstraction. His black and white images are ground breaking, unforgettable, and reflective of a genius at play in the world of art.

From 1936-1971, Virgil Finlay illustrated an astounding amount of pulp fiction, including 19 Weird Tales covers and fabulous interior work for Amazing, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Novels, Fantastic Universe, Galaxy, IF, and many others. See samples of his work in Bob’s last article for us here, and a few of his covers here, here, and here.

The Collectors Book of Virgil Finlay is scheduled for release at this year’s World Fantasy Convention. It will contain 35 full color paintings, the largest collection of his color work ever assembled in print, plus another 13 pages of additional color work, over 150 pages of black and white artwork, and commentary on the artist by two of the field’s foremost pulp art collectors: Robert Weinberg and Doug Ellis. It is an oversized 9″ x 12″ hardcover, 208 pages.

The Kickstarter campaign is scheduled to end on Virgil Finlay’s Centenary Birthday: July 23, 2014; after just 10 days, the project is already fully funded. Get more information or contribute at the Kickstarter page here.

Fantasy and Roleplaying Games

Fantasy and Roleplaying Games

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Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set-smallMy loves for fantasy stories and RPGs (roleplaying games, not rocket-propelled grenades…) have been intertwined since I was a young child. I discovered them both at about the same time and have pursued both throughout my life.

I still remember the day I was in a hobby store with my family. I was eight years old and I saw this game in a blue box with a dragon on the front. It was called Dungeons and Dragons, which sounded pretty damned cool to me. I begged my father to buy it and he resisted, saying it was a game for college-age people, but I refused to relent. And so we went home with that box.

My father ran the game for my brother and I, and my memories of those initial adventures into goblin-infested dungeons still remain vivid and precious more than thirty years later. Soon, I was running D&D games for my friends, leading them into insidious dens of evil where they slew monsters and collected epic treasures.

At the same time, I was tearing through anything fantasy-related I could get my hands on. My father’s library didn’t have much fantasy, but his copy of Kothar and the Wizard-Slayer was the gateway to Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and so many others. I was, admittedly, insatiable.

And it continues to this day. I still get together with a few friends every month or so to sit around the table and slay imaginary beasts. I’m quite fortunate that my wife is a gamer, too. (The family that slays orcs together, stays together.) We’re currently running a campaign in the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire system, and I’ve already pre-ordered the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons in anticipation of the many hours of enjoyment it will bring.

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Reading the Entrails

Reading the Entrails

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The Lord of the RingsBrowsing about the Internet recently, I stumbled on something that interested me. Several things, actually. Specifically, the results at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database of various Locus audience polls; more specifically, the results of the all-time polls in the fantasy field. I was struck by how some things stayed constant across the years, and how some other things have changed.

Now, it’s important to be wary of making overly-sweeping statements about the fantasy field based on these polls. These are things that can be compared with one another; I don’t know if they can be said to have weight beyond that. But, given that, what can one take away from them?

Let me be precise about what I’m looking at. The polls that interest me are the 1987 poll for best all-time fantasy novel, the 1987 poll for best all-time fantasy novelist, the 1998 poll for best fantasy novel before 1990, the 1998 poll for best all-time fantasy novelist, the 1999 poll for best all-time fantasy author, and the 2012 poll for best fantasy novel of the 20th century (John O’Neill wrote about that last poll for Black Gate). There are also all-time polls for science fiction, and some older polls that just asked the Locus readership for best all-time author or novel without specifying genre; I’m interested in fantasy, though, so that’s what I’m focusing on.

You can see some constants in the rankings of the books, but also movement. Some books and authors fell out of favour, some maintained their positions, and a few new titles emerged over time. So together the lists are potentially a glimpse of how attitudes to the genre developed over the course of twenty-five years among fans.

But even assuming that the poll respondents represent a group relatively knowledgeable about fantasy, do the polls say more about fantasy or more about the Locus readership?

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