Black Gate – Page 988 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Fantasy Out Loud IV

Monday, December 30, 2013 markrigney Comments 6 comments

Back in 2011, I penned the first in this occasional series with an attempt at rating and relating the fantasy titles I’ve read aloud to my boys, then aged seven and eleven. They’re now two years older and two years larger, if not wiser (though they are sometimes that as well).

Sadly, older child Corey no longer cottons to a bedtime story.

Evan, however, is not only game, he’s adamant that he receive his daily dose of out-loud fiction. The question as always is what to read? What’s appropriate? And what does “appropriate” even mean?

Right now, Evan’s big wish is to see Catching Fire in the theaters. He was too young for The Hunger Games, but he’s now read all the books (on his own, like most of his fourth grade classmates), and seems quite keen to revel in the filmic gore of Panem bloodletting. We’ll see.

While that debate simmers, the fare of late has included L. Frank Baum’s The Magic Of Oz, Colin Meloy’s Wildwood, Mollie Hunter’s The Walking Stones, and Avi’s Crispin: The Cross Of Lead. Plus a short, Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon.” Evan chose the Oz title, and I chose the other four.

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Lay Down Your Weary Year

Monday, December 30, 2013 Nick Ozment Comments 13 comments

“It… is… later… than… you… think.” — Arch Oboler, Lights Out radio program

10…

There’s that classic Twilight Zone episode about the bookwormish little gentleman who has a list long as his arm of books he’s always wanted to read, but who is constantly thwarted by the day-to-day demands of society and pressures of life. He happens to be down in the basement library stacks when a nuclear war breaks out. He emerges to find every other human being gone. After this revelation sinks in, he heads back to the library. Cut to hours or days later: he has amassed piles of books in the order he plans to — finally — read them all.

And then…the unexpected happens. The ol’ TZ twist. In this case, his glasses fall off, and he accidentally steps on them. In the closing shot, he stands there, blind as a bat without his reading glasses, with a look of utter despair on his face that dwarfs any emotions he may have felt on realizing that the rest of his fellow creatures were gone. With the books, even authors long dead were still with him. Now even they have been wrested away, leaving him truly alone.

Rod Serling provides his usual wry commentary in the coda of the closing narration, but everyone who’s seen that episode (“Time Enough at Last”, 1959, starring Burgess Meredith) remembers that final scene — within the context of the story’s simple little narrative, that pair of broken glasses is somehow, improbably, more devastating than the destruction of the human race.

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New Treasures: Night of Demons by Tony Richards

Monday, December 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I don’t tend to report much on horror in my New Treasures column. Not that I haven’t anything against horror, but I have enough trouble just keeping up with all the intriguing new fantasy crossing my desk.

But there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in modern horror, and you deserve to know about it. So I try to sneak one in from time to time. Like Tony Richards’s intriguing Night of Demons, his latest novel set in a Massachusetts town that can’t be located on any map… and which people forget as soon as they leave.

Centuries ago, the Salem witches founded the village of Raine’s Landing, then cloaked it in magic to hide it from sight. Many of their descendants still practice the supernatural arts — and no one who lives here can ever leave. Now evil has breached its boundaries once again…

A serial killer with a corrupt and twisted soul, Cornelius Hanlon has freely entered Raine’s Landing, undeterred by the ancient magical safeguards. And when he chooses the town’s oldest adept as his first victim, the maniac inadvertently gains possession of a powerful “gift” more terrible than anything he could have sadistically dreamed.

Ex-town cop Ross Devries and his Harley-riding sometime-partner, Cassandra Mallory, have no supernatural abilities. But they are the last line of defense in this village of secrets and shadows — facing a psychopath who now wields the power to bend the living and the dead to his will.

Night of Demons is the sequel to Dark Rain, published in 2008. A third Raine’s Landing novel, Speak of the Devil, was just released this month. Richards is also the author of Our Lady of The Shadows (2011) and the collection Shadows And Other Tales (2010).

Night of Demons was published by Avon EOS in October, 2009. It is 390 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the print and digital editions. I bought my paperback on Amazon, on sale for just $3.20 — copies are still available at the discount price.

See all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Lord Dunsany, Philip José Farmer, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Monday, December 30, 2013 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

I’m still enjoying the Appendix N surveys by Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode at Tor.com, as they read through every author Gary Gygax cited as an influence on Dungeons and Dragons, even though I’ve found lots to disagree with in their recent columns.

So I’m happy to continue with these re-caps here. Especially since I don’t have a lot emotionally invested in their next two subjects: Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer.

I have a lot of respect for Lord Dunsany, but that chiefly stems from the many fine writers who have cited him as an influence. I’ve read only a handful of his shorter works and, while I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read, he’s mostly an untapped natural resource for me.

It’s much the opposite with Philip José Farmer. I was a huge fan of his Riverworld books when I first read them decades ago. But they didn’t really hold up on re-reading 15 years later, for me.

So Farmer is a writer I largely lost interest in years ago, although I have to admit I haven’t really given fair attention to his many fantasy novels. I know his work is highly regarded, and in fact both Cynthia Ward and Christopher Paul Carey made excellent cases here for why I should pay a lot more attention to his Gods of Opar and Tales of the Wold Newton Universe series, for example.

So let’s say I have more of an open mind with both Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer, and I’m willing to be influenced.

With that out of the way, let’s see what Tim and Mordicai have to say.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in November

Sunday, December 29, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The top article on the Black Gate blog last month was the 13th installment in our ongoing examination of Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction line, a look at the 1977 paperback The Best of Fredric Brown. (Brown also showed up a little further down the list, in our take on the Brown and Weinbaum chapters of the Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D series over at Tor.com).

Second on the list was Alex Bledsoe’s appreciation of one of my favorite films of the summer, Pacific Rim, and his thoughts on where it fit on the sliding scale between rip-off and homage.

Third was our review of a surprisingly effective, 81-year-old pulp tale by Clark Ashton Smith, “The Vaults of Yoh Vombis.” Fourth was M Harold Page’s report on his trip to the Gemmell Award ceremonies at the World Fantasy Convention. Rounding out the Top Five was Keith West’s opening chapter in his ambitious attempt to review the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in November were:

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Announcing the Winner of the Autographed Set of John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper Trilogy

Sunday, December 29, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Two weeks ago we told you about the arrival of Seven Sorcerers, the third and highly-anticipated final volume in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper trilogy. The trilogy opened with Seven Princes (January 2012), and Seven Kings (January 2013). To celebrate the publication of the concluding book, we announced a contest to win a complete autographed set of all three, compliments of Orbit Books and John R. Fultz.

It’s too late to enter the contest now, but it’s not too late to discover Fultz’s unique heroic fiction, which Barnes & Noble calls “flawless epic fantasy.” You can try some of John’s exciting stories right here at Black Gate, including “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” which appeared as part of the Black Gate Online Fiction line, or the three stories that appeared in our print version: “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine”(BG 12); “Return of the Quill” (BG 13); and “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). And you can read more about John’s philosophy of fantasy in his recent article, “One Man’s Trash…”

We received a record number of entries, which just shows the high level of excitement among our readers for everything written by John. All the entries were recorded on a spreadsheet, and the winner selected using the office percentile dice.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the autographed set of John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper trilogy is Massimiliano Izzo. Congratulations, Massimiliano! We’ll be touch to let you know how you can claim your books.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and to John R. Fultz and Orbit Books for sponsoring the contest. Seven Sorcerers was published on December 10th by Orbit Books. It is 448 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Look for it in bookstores everywhere.

Space 1999: The Fantasy in Your Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears

Saturday, December 28, 2013 Derek Kunsken Comments 8 comments

When I was a kid, hurling rocks at dinosaurs and running away, there were not many otherworldly shows on TV. Battlestar Galactica ran for two years and then Buck Rogers for about the same, with some incomprehensible Land of the Lost or Dr. Who thrown in at seeming random. Saturday mornings were a rich source of imagination, with Tarzan, Space Academy, Jason of Star Command and Flash Gordon, but unfortunately, in my day, Saturday mornings were only on Saturdays.

Every so often though, I’d find Space 1999 in the TV Guide; it was pretty cool. The sets and ships were pretty different from the sleek models in every other scifi show, and the space suits and the Moon seemed so alien. Twenty-five years later, armed with a couple of science degrees, I ordered a season for nostalgia’s sake.

O. M. G.

It was awful. Aside from the terrible writing and passive characters, and the apparent scattering of Caucasian British humans throughout the cosmos, I could do nothing but choke on the science and toss this drivel into a corner (actually, I think I left the boxed set in Havana, but that’s a story for another time…).

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New Treasures: Weird Fiction Review 3

Saturday, December 28, 2013 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

Two years ago I reported on the first issue of S. T. Joshi’s new magazine devoted to the study of weird and supernatural fiction, Weird Fiction Review (not to be confused with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s new online journal, also called Weird Fiction Review. Go figure.)

I recently stumbled across a pic of the third issue of Joshi’s WFR (at left), and it made me laugh out loud. I had to order a copy, and it arrived this week.

There’s lots to enjoy with the massive, 232-page issue. The front and back covers (see both here) are tributes to Mad magazine and the timeless artwork of Don Martin. Inside there are seven original stories from Michael Cisco, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr, and others.

There’s also a host of intriguing articles. Darrell Schweitzer looks at Lovecraft’s influence on one of the most important pulp SF stories ever written, “Who Goes There?”, in “John W. Campbell’s Lovecraftian Tale,” and Bradley H. Sinor presents a previously-unpublished interview from 1994, in “Excellence Demanded, Whiners Piss Off: The Last Interview of Karl Edward Wagner” (which picks up several of the themes in Wagner’s letter to editor Robert A. Collins published in Fantasy 55.)

There’s also a 16-page gallery of art by Jason Zerrillo, the latest installment of John Pelan’s column Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale, a survey of the year in horror and gothic novels from Daniel Olson, a look at the classic 1966 kaiju film War of the Gargantuas (which author Stuart Galbraith IV calls “kind of a monster movie Nirvana, a film that delivers on the promise of its ingenious title in an orgy of gargantua vs gargantua action” — pic here), and lots more.

Weird Fiction Review 3 was edited by S.T. Joshi and published by Centipede Press on March 19, 2013. The issue contains fiction, poetry, and reviews on high quality paper with lots of color. It is 232 pages, priced at $25 for the sewn trade paperback. It’s a high quality package throughout. It’s limited to 500 copies, and is currently on sale for $20 from the publisher. Get more detail and order copies at Centipede Press.

Spotlight on Fantasy Webcomics: Lora Innes’s Dreamer Comic Captures 1776

Friday, December 27, 2013 alanajoli Comments 0 Comment

Lora Innes's Alan and Beatrice -- starcrossed lovers? — Lora Innes’s Alan and Beatrice — starcrossed lovers?

It starts with a kiss.

That’s the first thing that modern teen Beatrice really remembers about the strange dreams that start plaguing her life. But the theater student with very little knowledge of history starts getting a crash course in the history of the American Revolution when she finds herself thrust into the middle of the Revolutionary War herself. In her dreams, she is still Beatrice Whaley, but she’s the daughter of a Tory from Boston, in love with an apple farmer patriot who’s given up rank and position in the army all for the chance of rescuing her from the Redcoats.

Portal fantasy — the subgenre where modern people (usually children) travel to a fantasy world — is supposedly not en vogue right now. Dream fantasy seems to me to be a subset of that. But Lora Innes’s comic The Dreamer is one of those stories that makes me wonder why more people don’t love this format. It is in many ways a perfect gateway into history. As a kid, I remember reading The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen, in which a modern teen is transported into the middle of the Holocaust, and feeling that it was the book about the Holocaust (and there were many) that best made me understand what it was like to be in the middle of those horrific events. The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman, which won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in Best Children’s Literature in 2012, transports a girl from 1960 to 1860, and — even as an adult — gave me greater insight into both time periods. Having a Hannah or a Sophie, that modern voice I can identify with, introduce me to history makes it more real. And even though I’ve read a great deal about the American Revolution, watching Bea learn about it, both as she sleeps and — as her friends are threatened by the perils of the war — through the research she begins during her waking hours, brings that period to life in a fresh new way.

The romance angle, of course, doesn’t hurt.

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The Series Series: The Shadow’s Heir by K.J. Taylor

Friday, December 27, 2013 Sarah Avery Comments 3 comments

This book is not the first volume in a new series, no matter what its cover says. It’s marketed as the first volume in a new trilogy, The Risen Sun, that happens to be in the same setting as The Fallen Moon, but with every page I read, I felt the lack of resonances that the author clearly intended and expected for readers who had already read her first three books.

The Shadow’s Heir was good enough that I may someday backtrack to Taylor’s debut, The Dark Griffin. Of course, since this is really the fourth volume in the series, it has enough spoilers about the first three volumes that I’ll need to wait years for my memory of this book to fade. The review quotes about those earlier volumes promise “twisty plots,” and they won’t be twisty for me until I forget nearly everything I just read.

If the book were bad, I’d just shrug and move on. As it is, I’m annoyed on the author’s behalf at the marketing folks at Ace. (This is, of course, an injudicious thing to admit, because I would give my eyeteeth to sell my trunk manuscript to Ace. Not that they’d want my eyeteeth. Imagine the slushpile horror story!) I would love to understand the marketing decision better, because it seems to me that telling people The Shadow’s Heir is a good entry point to Taylor’s fictional world might sell copies in the short run, but would surely turn readers off in the long run.

This book holds the payoff for several plotlines I could have been deeply invested in, had I read them from the beginning. Instead, I was keenly aware at every payoff point of how hollow the big scenes felt to me in comparison to structurally similar scenes in other series.

How on earth am I going to talk in any detail about the virtues and peculiarities of The Shadow’s Heir while avoiding spoilers about three previous volumes I haven’t read? Well, here goes.

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