Black Gate – Page 979 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Paul O. Williams and The Pelbar Cycle

Friday, January 31, 2014 Violette Malan Comments 9 comments

If you read my posts with any kind of regularity, you’ve seen me refer fairly frequently to the same Fantasy and SF classics, whether I’m talking about my own reading habits, or just looking for examples of the topics I’m discussing. So you know that LOTR, Chronicles of Narnia, Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stores, etc., keep turning up.

In part this is because I really love these books and in part it’s because in many instances (as with Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Princess Bride) these works are community property, as it were, and I can be pretty sure that in referring to them, I’m going to a common source that most of you will recognize.

Recently, however, John O’Neill’s post on Emma Bull’s novels reminded me that sometimes you need to talk about books people might not know. It’s in that spirit that I’d like bring to your attention the seven books that form Paul O. Williams’s The Pelbar Cycle, originally published between 1981 and 1985.

Each book is a self-contained adventure (I didn’t read them in order until I had them all and didn’t have a problem with it), but the overall story arc tells of the re-uniting of human groups which became isolated after “the time of fire” and evolved separately into distinct (though recognizable to us) societal types.

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“Blah Blah Blah” by Thingy Whatsisname: A Review of a Pre-YA SciFi Adventure Novel

Thursday, January 30, 2014 Comments 5 comments

Pulp-O-Mizer_Cover_Image — I don’t want to roast anybody I may subsequently meet in a professional capacity (who may then take a swing at me, metaphorical or otherwise).

I don’t tend to post negative reviews because, mostly, I can’t be bothered.

You can’t learn much about how to survive the melee from inspecting a corpse.

I’m also aware that my tastes may be special to me. For example, the entire world loved the wonderful Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion series, except for me. I simply don’t like the spiraling-disaster-with-redemption-at-the end sub genre. Finally, I’ll also admit I don’t want to roast anybody I may subsequently meet in a professional capacity (who may then take a swing at me, metaphorical or otherwise).

…promised good rip-roaring adventure along the lines of the truly excellent Luke Challenger Adventures.

So, let me tell you about, um, Blah Blah Blah by, call him/her, Thingy Whatsisname. (Cover by Pulp-O-Mizer.)

It’s in that not-quite-YA category of 9-14, so I read it to my son “Kurtzhau” a couple of years back when he was 8.

It came complete with a cover quote by Philip “My God, that City is on Caterpillar tracks” Reeve and promised Pulp Tropes and good rip-roaring adventure along the lines of the truly excellent Luke Challenger Adventures.

What it delivered… well it did deliver the Pulp Tropes, but only grudgingly.

It followed the boilerplate children’s fiction structure Kurtzhau once described as “It’s all blah blah blah here’s his uncle and now we’re travelling, and FINALLY you get to the space station.”

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Goth Chick News: Take A Break From the Cold and Enjoy a Spin Through Joyland

Thursday, January 30, 2014 Sue Granquist Comments 5 comments

Admittedly, until Doctor Sleep, I had been over Stephen King for some time.

I caught up with him in college, falling hard for Salam’s Lot and The Shining, and proceeded to devour anything King I could get my hands on.

That is until I slammed head-first into The Stand.

That experience, much like a really bad bender, left me swearing I’d never, ever, do that again. And just like the days or weeks or even months after that horrible hangover, here I am once again ready to slug down a really strong glass of King – neat.

But this isn’t the Wild Turkey King of my youth – no siree.

This is an aged and far smoother vintage of King; free of what we now know was a fairly serious struggle with substance abuse.

Which totally explains The Stand, if you ask me.

And so having consumed Doctor Sleep, finding it a wonderful and satisfying with no nasty after taste, I now carry the experience a bit further with Joyland.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

Thursday, January 30, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The top article on the Black Gate blog last month was Elwin Cotman’s detailed look back at the Space Opera of famed Anime creator Leiji Matsumoto.

Second on the list was Jon Sprunk’s survey of the Worst Fantasy Films of All Time, followed by our tribute to the 80s science fiction & fantasy of Bluejay Books.

Fourth was the 12th installment in our ongoing series tracking the latest in Appendix N scholarship: “H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D. Closing out the list is M. Harold Page’s thoughtful response to the question, “So What’s Wrong With (Some) Modern Fantasy?”

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in December were:

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New Treasures: Season of Wonder, edited by Paula Guran

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I think a Christmas fantasy anthology is a great idea. For one thing, there’s a long history of magical Christmas tales, including some of the most famous in the fantasy genre (especially if you’re willing to include Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Jimmy Stewart’s It’s a Wonderful Life, which of course we are).

Connie Willis used to write a semi-regular Christmas fantasy for Asimov’s, and I always thought that was cool. Going by the stellar line-up of authors in Paula Guran’s Season of Wonder, she’s not the only one seduced into writing a yuletide fantasy: Charles de Lint, Gene Wolfe, Harlan Ellison, Ellen Kushner, Robert Reed, James Patrick Kelly, Robert Charles Wilson — and of course, Connie Willis — plus many others are all included. Here’s the back cover copy:

Wonders abound with the winter holidays. Yuletide brings marvels and miracles both fantastic and scientific. Christmas spirits can bring haunting holidays, seasonal songs might be sung by unearthly choirs, and magical celebrations are the norm during this very special time of the year. The best stories from many realms of fantasy and a multitude of future universes, gift-wrapped in one spectacular treasury of wintertime wonder.

Paula’s previous anthologies include a wide range of nifty titles, including the altogether splendid Weird Detectives, and Vampires: The Recent Undead, New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, Ghosts: Recent Hauntings, After the End: Recent Apocalypses, and the ongoing The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, which she’s been editing since 2010. She’s practically a one-woman renaissance in fantasy anthologies and we’re having trouble keeping up with her.

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The Weapons of Fantasy

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 Jon Sprunk Comments 18 comments

I love weapons. No, not guns and rockets (although they can be cool, too). I prefer the weapons of ages past. Swords, axes, spears, arrows, and maces. Just like Napoleon Dynamite, I remember drawing them in my notebooks when I was in school.

When I was younger, the weapons were part of what drew me to fantasy. Science fiction has its laser guns and starships. Horror has axe murderers and vampires. But fantasy takes me back to earlier epochs in human history when people (and nations) settled their differences with bronze and iron.

Fantasy also adds an element of the mystical to these trappings, and one of my favorite literary devices are weapons so famous or powerful they have their own names. There’s just something… well, magical… about these weapons. Just saying their names evokes a world of pageantry and adventure.

I have some that are my favorites, which I’d like to share with you today.

Stormbringer/Mournblade

If you’ve been reading my blogs here for a while, you already know how much I love the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock. So it should be no surprise that this fell blade ranks among my top fantasy weapons of all-time.

A huge, black, rune-covered vampiric sword that sucks the souls from those it kills and transfers a portion of that energy to its wielder, it is the perfect (albeit evil) companion for our tragic hero Elric. Sure, in the end it devoured all life in the universe, but hey, you can’t blame a demonic sword for following its heart.

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A Contemporary Eye on the Pulps: Fantasy Review, April-May 1949

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Recently I’ve found myself thoroughly captivated by early fanzines. I’m not doing a study by any means… I’m just surfing eBay, picking up bargains here and there. And I have to say I’ve been lucky enough to stumble on some marvelous finds.

Each of the fanzines I’ve found has its own unique identity, but there are things they all seem to have in common. For one thing, they are suffused with a marvelous optimism. Science fiction of the 1930s and 40s wasn’t dominated by grim dystopias like The Hunger Games and The Matrix; often it idealized the future, as in Things To Come (1936), or gave us heroes like Buck Rogers. It’s hard to be gloomy when the future is whispering promises of ray guns and a personal jet pack.

But it was more than just that. Immerse yourself in early fandom long enough, and you’ll come to see that interest in science fiction was viewed unquestionably as a virtue, like temperance and personal hygiene. Never mind that society viewed SF as perhaps the lowest form of literature, low-grade children’s entertainment at best; early fans were convinced otherwise, and by the late 40s there was actually evidence to support that line of thinking. SF prepared you for the future, and in a world still startled and horrified by the rapid advances of World War II — and thrown headlong into the Atomic Age by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — preparation of any kind offered a psychological edge, even if just an illusory one, and fans relished the vindication.

Now, I have no doubt that readers of the day were drawn to the pulp magazines by the same things that drew me, decades later: bright covers featuring monsters, dinosaurs, space ships and beautiful women. But the pages of early fanzines are filled with earnest young fans patting each other on the back for their enlightened choice in literature, as if reading science fiction was the vocation of a select elite who took on the task as a social imperative, like early socialists. All while simultaneously expressing giddy excitement at the latest installment of their favorite space opera. It’s funny, and oddly charming, and it doesn’t hurt that many of the fans filling the pages of these slender proto-magazines are fine writers in their own right — and many of them are insightful critics, as well.

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The Medieval Treasures of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

Automaton of a cittern player, possibly made in Spain in the second half of the 16th century. A mechanism inside it makes her play the cittern and turn her head.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is one of Europe’s great art museums. With its origins in the personal collections of the Hapsburgs, it has extensive collections of French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Dutch art. There are also large galleries dedicated to Classical and Ancient Egyptian art. Of the most interest to Black Gate readers is the medieval collection, which is the best I’ve seen in ten years of exploring Europe’s artistic treasures.

The emphasis here is on luxury items that once graced the homes of nobility. Of especial interest are the numerous automatons, such as the 16th century cittern player above. There’s also a 16th century gold ship that rolls along a table and fires its cannon, a 17th century moving chariot that doubles as a clock, and a 17th century gilded Diana and centaur that wheel around in circles while moving their heads and eyes. These rare items were the wonders of their time and acted both as forms of conspicuous consumption and a way to celebrate the latest in technology.

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Ancient Worlds: Jason and the Original MacGuffin

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 Elizabeth Cady Comments 2 comments

It's a clock. A really, really spooky clock. Did we ever learn what it was for? It was a J. J. Abrams show, so PROBABLY NOT. — It’s a clock. A really, really spooky clock. Did we ever learn what it was for? It was a J. J. Abrams show, so PROBABLY NOT.

Question: What do the Maltese Falcon, a suitcase full of money, a crystal skull, and a cow shaped silver creamer all have in common?

Answer: They’re MacGuffins.

MacGuffins are ubiquitous to storytelling, especially in genre fiction. They’re That Thing that Our Guys need to get before Their Guys do. The Rambaldi device / relic of George Washington / critical data file… it doesn’t matter what it is, it’s entire purpose is to give the story, well, purpose. We don’t care why the jewel thief is after this particular necklace, we just care that he is. The chase itself is the story.

While the term was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock (and may have been coined by one of his writers), the MacGuffin is an ancient plot device. And its earliest example in Western Literature is, to my knowledge, the Golden Fleece.

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40 Years of Adventure

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 James Maliszewski Comments 6 comments

ONCE UPON A TIME, long, long ago, there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society. Their fantasy rules were published, and to this writer’s knowledge, brought about much of the current interest in fantasy wargaming. For a time the group grew and prospered, and Dave Arneson decided to begin a medieval fantasy campaign game for his active Twin Cities club. From the map of the “land” of the “Great Kingdom” and environs — the territory of the C & C Society — Dave located a nice bog wherein to nest the weird enclave of “Blackmoor”, a spot between the “Great Kingdom” and the fearsome “Egg of Coot”. From the CHAINMAIL fantasy rules he drew ideas for a far more complex and exciting game, and thus began a campaign which still thrives as of this writing! In due course the news reached my ears, and the result is what you have in your hands at this moment. While the C & C Society is no longer, its spirit lives on, and we believe that all wargamers who are interested in the medieval period, not just fantasy buffs, will enjoy playing DUNGEONS and DRAGONS. Its possibilities go far beyond any previous offerings anywhere!

So began Gary Gygax’s foreword (charmingly misspelled as “forward”) to the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons. That foreword is dated November 1, 1973, but it would still be a couple of months before D&D was “formally” released. I put the adverb in scare quotes, because, at the time, Tactical Studies Rules was a tiny shoestring operation, consisting of only three people: Gary Gygax (editor), Don Kaye (president), and Brian Blume (vice-president). It was more like a game club than a business; it was certainly a much more modest venture than what it would later become.

Initially, the three-book boxed set was sold through the mail, the first advertisements for which appeared sometime in the Spring of 1974. Of course, copies of D&D had undoubtedly been released “into the wild” of the miniatures wargaming scene before that. Just how soon before that is anyone’s guess, which makes determining a precise “birthday” for the world’s first published fantasy roleplaying game hard to establish. Nevertheless, gaming historian Jon Peterson, who’s done more research on this and related topics than anyone, advocates January 26, 1974 as a likely candidate. Barring further evidence to the contrary, it’s as good a day as any other, meaning that D&D celebrated the Big 4-0 just two days before I penned this entry.

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