My first movie on July 30 was the first feature by two French directors of independent short films, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. Jessica Forever, which the duo wrote as well as directed, is set in a near future in which disaffected and violent youth, mostly male, roam empty suburbs. The law hunts them down with killer drones, and the movie opens with a cloud of drones after one man, Kevin (Eddy Suiveng), who has squatted in an empty house. He’s saved from the law by a mysterious woman named Jessica (Aomi Muyock) and her squad of young men, who welcome Kevin into the fold.

Various bonding scenes follow, but the emotions of the group are odd: muted, to the extent they exist at all. The young men, each in their late teens or twenties, sleep in one room. All worship Jessica. Kevin makes a smooth transition to becoming one of them, training with them in the use of weapons and force. Then another flock of drones approaches, and there’s a surprising death, and the survivors have to flee. They end up on an island, where history risks repeating itself: some members of the group get too close to the locals. Will they find new allies? Or pull the attention of the authorities down on their heads?

The first thing to say about the movie is that it looks lovely. Images are nicely composed, the camera mostly still (it struck me at one point that it seemed to move more when Jessica was in frame, but I wouldn’t swear to that). There’s a kind of sterile perfection in the images of rich estates and partly-green suburbs, emphasised by the lack of people — we see cars and trucks in the distance, see a mall with passersby in it, meet a community on the island where Jessica’s group ends up, but mostly the world is empty of outsiders, of passersby or neighbours. There is a solitude here; a silence and a stillness.

Along with that there’s an affectlessness to both the characters and actors. There’s a blankness to them that’s maybe less an absence of emotion than an absence of a certain kind of social convention. You don’t know how to read them. This all fits perfectly well with the film’s set-up: these are young men gone wild, grown up outside of family or community, learning how to interact with each other. Their only guide, their teacher and parent, is Jessica. Who she is, and why she is gathering these men, is not explained; this is not the sort of film that explains these things. The important thing is that her relationship to her followers comes through, and for the most part it does.

I would go so far as to say that one of the most intriguing aspects of the film is the way it depicts its characters. These youths are convincingly violent, and many of them have done terrible things. But they don’t act the way this sort of character acts in virtually every other movie set in the contemporary world. These aren’t tough-guy hard men trying to assert dominance by busting each others’ balls. They’re quiet, if not reflective, and give each other space and respect. There’s a kind of alternative masculinity to these men, strong and capable of violence but not brutal.

That’s a good idea that’s mostly played well, showing their limits as well their strengths, showing how they deal with loss and how the group deals with arguments among itself. And yet there’s a sense of something lacking. How these men got to be how they are is unclear, and how successful they are at building a new society is ultimately debateable. Jessica herself is an enigma, underplayed and underwritten to the point where virtually any meaning can be projected onto her. Is she Christ? Is she Peter Pan’s Wendy, or Pan himself? A Pied Piper? The ambiguity’s simply too overwhelming.

Also: I don’t think the film quite nails its attempt to fuse bits of action-movie plotting with a more symbolic approach. It’s difficult to take the group’s plans for finding bases or setting up their home seriously. Practical and tactical considerations (where does the electricity come from? Who’s watching out for drones?) are ignored. But the establishment of a home is a large enough part of the film — which, after all, opens with a man crashing into a house — that it demands a bit more realism than it gets in order for character and theme to cohere. At any rate, in the end the action scenes are minimal, and the film doesn’t quite become the slow burn that it might have been. The build-up isn’t there. In some ways that’s because the movie’s more interested in giving us moments of humanity among Jessica’s youths. But I’m not sure there are enough of those, either.

Poggi and Vinel are part of a movement that has produced a document called the Incoherence Manifesto. Jessica Forever doesn’t always adhere to the rules of the manifesto, which may be appropriately incoherent. But I note Incoherent auteur Bertrand Mandico has said that “To be incoherent means to have faith in cinema, it means to have a romantic approach, unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration. Incoherence that’s an absence of cynicism but not irony.” And it’s quite possible to see a lot of this in Jessica Forever. Romantic, yes, dreamlike, certainly, cinegenic in the sense of attractive to viewers, yes. Arguably the story has moments of striving for epic. What may be most significant, though, is that there is a distinct absence of cynicism. There’s irony in the unfolding of the plot, but not a cynic’s sense of pointless or of the inherent corruption of humanity.

But then if there is a sense of heroism at work in this film, it emerges only fitfully, and there’s not enough else going on to take up the slack. The movie is on a practical and thematic level simply too incoherent. Its ideas do not cohere into a meaningful story, and it remains less than the sum of its parts. There are lovely elements, as in the group’s expression of grief set against the music of Jesu. But not enough of them, and not really tightly building on each other. The ambitions of the film are intriguing, and it does some fine things. I appreciated it well enough while watching it. But it’s not one I feel I can easily recommend.

Find the rest of my Fantasia coverage from this and previous years here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

Two weeks ago, I blogged about my reread of Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Looking back on it, I’ve been consuming comic book history for about the last year.

After having my appetite whetted by Chabon for a bit more of the Golden Age of comic books, I pulled Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books off my shelf and really enjoyed my evening reading. It’s a history book published in 1986, so while it has the disadvantage of being out of print (unless you buy second-hand books on Abebooks.com — I saw copies for $7), it has the advantage that Goulart himself started collecting in the early Golden Age in 1938 and spoke directly with many of the early creators to source this book.

[Click the images for comic-book sized versions.]

But Goulart doesn’t start in 1933, when the publication of the first thing that modern readers would recognize as a comic book. He goes into the ur-history of comics, which are the newspaper strips of the 1890s. These were the Little Orphan Annie, Mutt & Jeff and such funny strips. Publishers saw comics thriving in newspapers and started to try to monetize that popularity with reprints. And they did so, successfully, launching the world first real comic book in 1933, which seems to have been Famous Funnies, an entirely reprint book.

Soon, however, people saw that making original content would be cheaper than licensing syndicated newspaper strips, so the Golden Age of Comics started to be born. And, taking as its influences silent adventure movies, crime and science fiction pulps, newspaper adventure and science fiction strips, superheroes were born.

Goulart’s book goes into some of the personalities and the business risks they took, from those that panned out to those that didn’t. Major Nicholson, who founded Detective Comics and a few other titles never hit the jackpot. His comics were losing money and he sold his stake to the ones that would launch Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman only months later.

It’s neat to see some pre-Superman work by Siegel and Shuster. They worked on Slam Bradley and Doctor Occult, which did respectably well. I had forgotten that they were not inexperienced creators in 1938.

Goulart covers the early exploits of what would become DC Comics, from the inspired to the ridiculous. So many half-baked ideas were coming out that it makes you wonder if they were scrambling for the market or shooting in the dark or still grasping what it was that they were creating. It’s a fascinating few chapters and a wonderful dive into what would later become Earth-2 (in the pre-Crisis DC universe).

Equally fascinating are the competitors. Comic book imprints were springing up all over the place and creators moved to wherever the money was.

Marvel had its birth too, as Timely and then Atlas, and what surprised me in these chapters is how much of the early comic book superhero creation was essentially outsourced to studios who were selling to whoever would pay them. They would come up with a few heroes, do the adventures and then look for a publisher, and therefore a job if things sold well. The Depression still weighing on people, any job was better than no job, so creators worked insane hours for low wages because they had jobs.

Superheroes were obviously not the only genre of story in comic books, and in those days, weren’t even the majority. Goulart walks the reader through all the genres, their ebbs and flows, replete with copies of art and explanations of the creators who invented all the worlds, whether crime, war, horror, romance, or other. I enjoyed that he traced back, as much as possible, the creative influences, especially the pulps.

Goulart does such a good job on the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, that most of the book’s 300 pages are done by the time we get to the silver, bronze and modern ages of comics, but I didn’t feel the lack. There are chapters on the major creative changes and the popularities of the characters, and their their creators.

I didn’t feel the lack because the 1930s-1950s is so rich that another few books would barely have done the early years justice. Also, I have a history of the silver age of comics on my shelf and may talk about it another time.

Goulart’s book was a fun dive into the origin story of a medium itself, and I highly recommend it. It is out of print, but online second hand stores keep books in a kind of perpetual “in-printness” if you don’t mind a few nicks in the cover.

Derek Künsken writes science fiction and fantasy in Gatineau, Quebec. His second novel (The Quantum Garden) will be in bookstores in October and is available for pre-order now. It’s a dark space opera Back to the Future with the characters who appeared in The Quantum Magician. 

Galaxy and IF magazines serializing Asimov’s The Gods Themselves in 1972. Covers by Jack Gaughan

In 1973 the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel were each won by The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov. The Gods Themselves also won Australia’s Ditmar Award for Best International Novel.

Isaac Asimov had won two previous Hugos, but neither was a “Regular” Hugo – he won a Special Award for his F&SF Science articles in 1963, and in 1966 the Foundation Series was named Best All-Time Series, a one-time category, beating out (to his expressed great surprise) Robert A. Heinlein’s Future History, Doc Smith’s Lensmen novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Asimov had largely stopped writing fiction in the late 1950s, slowing down to roughly a short story a year through the 1960s. Beginning in the early ‘70s, however, he began to produce more fiction, including the Black Widower mysteries, and some more SF. Robert Silverberg coaxed a story out of him for his new original anthology series, New Dimensions, and Asimov wrote “Plutonium-186,” but soon realized it should be a full novel. (He gave Silverberg another story, “Take a Match.”) “Plutonium-186” became The Gods Themselves, his first novel in 15 years (not counting the novelization of the movie Fantastic Voyage.)

The novel was first serialized in a strange way. Galaxy and If were sister magazines, each published bi-monthly. So the three (fairly separate) parts of The Gods Themselves appeared in Galaxy for March-April 1972, If for March-April 1972, and then Galaxy for May-June. The hardcover appeared from Doubleday in May.

[Click the images for gods-sized versions.]

Doubleday, May 1972. Cover by David November

I read The Gods Themselves not too long after it won the Hugo, and I quite enjoyed it. Its three parts are set on Earth, in a parallel universe, and on the Moon. In the first part scientists discover a way to “Pump” essentially free energy from a parallel universe, making use of the fact that Plutonium-186 is a possible isotope in that universe. All seems good for a while, but then they discover how to communicate with the aliens in the parallel universe, and they also discover that the “Pump” process is destabilizing the Sun. It is also dangerous to the other universe.

In part 2, we follow the viewpoint of a mated “triad” of the three-gendered aliens of the parallel universe. These aliens are those who set up communication with humans, and they are willing to stop the Pump (which has reinvigorate their own, dying, sun) – but the rulers of their society don’t care about the danger to Earth.

The Gods Themselves paperback editions: Fawcett (1973, cover by Charles Moll), Panther (1973, Chris Foss), Bantam Spectra (1990, Don Dixon)

Part 3, then, is back in our universe, but on the Moon. A third parallel universe is discovered, offering a solution to the problems of the “Pump,” but also allowing some Lunar political elements free reign for their own interests. The novel ends somewhat ambiguously, with some of the scientific problems solved, but the political issues by no means as well handled.

It’s really a pretty good novel, with some intriguing SFnal ideas, and with some fairly interesting political conflicts too. Asimov had a lot of fun claiming that he finally found a way to write about sex – alien sex – but he actually also considered some human sexual issues as well, with a love affair in part 3 between an Earth man and a Lunar woman, in a situation where the two groups of humans are drifting apart genetically.

Covers by Murray Tinkelman (1976, Ballantine Books), Fernando Fernandes (1973, Signet), and Murray Tinkelman (1976, Ballantine)

So, it’s an enjoyable novel, and a lot of people must have liked it, for it to have won not just the Hugo, but the Nebula, Locus, and Ditmar awards. Surely that means it deserved its awards? Maybe – but I don’t think that’s been the verdict of history. The other Hugo nominees were David Gerrold’s When Harlie Was One, Poul Anderson’s There Will Be Time, Clifford D. Simak’s A Choice of Gods, and two Robert Silverberg novels, Dying Inside and The Book of Skulls.

The Nebula nominations included the Gerrold and Silverberg novels, as well as John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, George Alec Effinger’s What Entropy Means to Me, and Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream. Of that list, I’d suggest that both Silverberg novels, and Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, have better reputations at this remove than The Gods Themselves. Lots of people these days plump for Dying Inside as the best novel of 1972.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Ace Books, 1976, artist uncredited)

But which one would I choose? Another novel entirely – The Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe. Wolfe was still a fairly new writer, and some people might not have considered The Fifth Head of Cerberus a novel (the first edition was subtitled “Three Novellas”), so perhaps it’s not a surprise that it wasn’t a Hugo or Nebula nominee. (The opening novella, also called “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” was on the shortlist for both the Hugo and Nebula Best Novella.) Be that as it may, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is completely remarkable, and it clearly should have won one of these awards.

Rich Horton’s last article for us was The 1973 Hugo Award for Best Amateur Magazine: Energumen. His website is Strange at Ecbatan. See all of Rich’s articles here.

I approached my second and last film of July 30 with real uncertainty. I’d never seen many tokusatsu films or TV shows, and what I had seen I hadn’t cared for. (‘Tokusatsu’ literally means something like ‘special effects,’ but in the West it’s come especially to refer to shows like Power Rangers or Kamen Rider.) Still, playing in the De Sève Cinema was Garo — Under the Moonbow (Garo: gekkô no tabibito, 牙狼 — 月虹ノ旅人, also translated Garo: Moonbow Traveler), written and directed by Keita Amemiya. It’s the latest installment of a franchise, created by Amemiya, which began with a 2005 TV series and has continued through more TV shows, live-action movies, and anime series. as well as video games, manga, and various other tie-ins. A veteran creator of tokusatsu dramas, Amemiya is particularly known for his powerful design sense, and the images and description of the film promised a stylish fantasy adventure. Although it’d be my first experience with a series that had dozens of hours of continuity behind it, I decided it was worth passing up a chance to see The Crow on the big screen in order to watch Under the Moonbow.

The movie’s about Reiga Saezima (Masei Nakayama), one of an order of warriors, the Makai Knights, who protect humanity from monsters called Horrors. Superhumanly powerful, he becomes even stronger when wearing his suit of special golden armour — which is unfortunately corrupted by evil not long after the movie opens. Saezima has to purify it, but also must save his true love (Natsumi Ishibashi), who has been abducted by Horrors. Yet as he fights his way through a bizarre train, even more plots boil away, leading ultimately to a fantastic battle involving secrets of his lineage.

The first thing to say is that the film’s easily understood without any prior knowledge of the franchise. I suspect that the climax will have more weight for people familiar with the world and with certain characters who appear there, but everything’s set up well enough in the film itself. Exposition’s delivered cleanly, and does not overbalance the plot. The complexities of the world are dramatised well, and if in an absolute sense evil still remains to be fought, at least the main antagonist of this particular story is dealt with.

Beyond that, the plot’s nicely-worked. The tale keeps expanding as the film goes on, sprouting subplots. A range of characters get moments of their own in which to shine; everyone does something important in bringing matters to a happy ending. Rules of this fantasy are established, and followed logically in ways that bring out unexpected wrinkles. Importantly, new ideas and images are always emerging,

It is not flawless. The lighting in particular feels like a TV show, and not a particularly ambitious one (though in fairness this movie is a direct sequel to one TV series in particular, so it may simply be following a pre-existing look). The acting’s very flat, which fits with the characters — Moonbow has the surface quality of a pulp potboiler or a fairy tale, both of which the story vaguely recalls at different times. There is certainly a highly stylised presentation of character, to an extent in the writing but definitely in the performances; the way poses are struck, the way reactions are exaggerated. It’s clear, and not overdone to the point of self-parody, but is self-consciously theatrical if not broad.

One may note that this is not all bad. For many people, and I am one of them, a story that begins as a pulp action-adventure story and builds to become a fairy tale about knights battling in a castle in the sky is really quite a fine thing. Under the Moonbow is certainly a movie that understands what it is, and what it has to do. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else than what it is, or aspire for more. I can imagine some viewers finding it too simple; soundtrack music is obvious, emotional beats are hammered home, and there is no irony to the film at all.

What makes it work, in the end, are Amemiya’s designs. Armour, monsters, architecture — everything’s wonderful to look at, everything more detailed than everything else, everything conveying an air of magic that’s sometimes tinged with steampunk and sometimes tinged with the gothic and sometimes simply itself. It’s immersive due to the sheer density of the design. By that I mean both the level of detail in the individual costumes and props, and also the range and number of them. There are always new things appearing on the screen, and those things are always engaging to the eye.

This is important because the movie doesn’t try much in terms of filmic technique otherwise. It concentrates on telling a clear story, not in finding clever camera angles (except perhaps occasionally during the fight scenes). It is not a big-budget spectacular, and doesn’t really aim at that. It doesn’t try to build a realistic world with its CGI so much as try to build a consistent world, and it succeeds at that. This is a film where swordfights are frequent and quickly-paced, with explosions when sword meets sword.

There’s a definite YA feel to the movie, which I think would be best appreciated by tweens and younger teens. There’s not much blood that I noticed, and effectively no sexuality; some of the Horrors might be too intense for young children, but otherwise this is a family-friendly adventure story. I would say that there’s enough imagination in it to appeal to adults. Certainly I came to the film knowing nothing about the franchise it’s a part of, and not especially caring for the kind of thing it is, and yet came away from it highly entertained. I think the movie takes itself just seriously enough: it follows its story without worrying about trying to make things emotionally obvious to everyone at all times, and therefore succeeds in creating an immersive story that brings the audience on a journey through strange images and wild special effects to watch good defeating evil. Hard to ask for more.

Find the rest of my Fantasia coverage from this and previous years here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

Betty Ballantine

Betty and Ian Ballantine

Ian Ballantine

The Balrog Award, often referred to as the coveted Balrog Award*, was created by Jonathan Bacon and first conceived in issue 10/11 of his Fantasy Crossroads fanzine in 1977 and actually announced in the final issue, where he also proposed the Smitty Awards for fantasy poetry. The awards were presented for the first time at Fool-Con II at the Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas on April 1, 1979. The awards were never taken particularly seriously, even by those who won the award. The final awards were presented in 1985. The first Balrog Special Awards were presented in 1980 to Ian and Betty Ballantine. Special Awards were also presented in 1981, 1983, and 1985.

I wrote the following about Betty Ballantine in 2005 in my fanzine, Argentus, with the aim of having a Worldcon present a Special Committee Award to Ballantine. In 2006, L.A.con IV presented her with such an award.

Betty Ballantine (1919-2019) introduced paperbacks to the United States and founded, along with her husband, Ian, Bantam Books in 1945. Seven years later, they founded Ballantine Books which eventually launched the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line and later started Del Rey for science fiction and fantasy in 1977. In the 1960s, she bought the rights to publish an authorized edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the US, helping to introduce Tolkien’s writings to the masses and pay Professor Tolkien for his work.

For all that she has done, Betty Ballantine’s name does not necessarily come to mind when one thinks of the pioneers of science fiction. Nevertheless, she has done as much for the field as John W. Campbell, Jr., Hugo Gernsback, or Robert A. Heinlein. While Judith Merril’s name comes to mind among pioneering women in science fiction, it was Betty Ballantine who published Merril’s 1950 anthology Shot in the Dark.

Ballantine also wrote the young adult novel The Secret Oceans, published in 1994. Over the years, she has been a guest of honor at World Fantasy Con and at Noreascon 3 and has been awarded the World Fantasy Award three times, the Balrog Award, the Milford Award, a special President’s Award for SFWA, and in 2008 was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Ian Ballantine’s (1916-1995) career closely matched Betty’s. In 1939, he began the US distribution of Penguin Books and, with Betty, formed Bantam Books in 1945, of which Ian was the President from 1945-1952, when Ian and Betty formed Ballantine Books. They ran the company until 1973, when it was acquired by Random House, after which both Ballantines served as consulting editors and publishers. Ian shared Betty’s guest of honorships and awards up until his death and when Betty was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008, Ian was inducted posthumously as well.

*Rich Horton has taken me to task for consistently referring to this as “the coveted Balrog Award,” so I quote from Fancyclopedia, which states: “The award never was taken very seriously — probably because they gave out so many awards with a limited set of non-mainstream voters (and let’s not mention that naming an award after an evil demon is a bit odd) — and by tradition it is referred to as the ‘Coveted Balrog Award’.”

Steven H Silver is a sixteen-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for 8 years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. He began publishing short fiction in 2008 and his most recently published story is “Webinar: Web Sites” in The Tangled Web. His most recent anthology, Alternate Peace was published in June. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference 6 times, as well as serving as the Event Coordinator for SFWA. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.

You might have noticed that my column – heck, my byline – was absent last week. Having recovered from hernia surgery, I promptly decided to have a kidney stone. It ‘hit’ last Saturday night and for about twenty hours, it was the most pain I’ve had in my life (no wife joke here…). It seems to be comfortable and hasn’t passed yet, though it’s not so bad at the moment. But between missing three days at work, peeing nonstop, and trying to catch up at work while still feeling some pain, this week’s column was pretty far down the list.

So, I decided to re-run one of my hardboiled posts from well before I ever thought of doing an entire column on that topic. I LOVE The Maltese Falcon: book and movie. Not a lot of folks know Hammett wrote a few short stories about Sam Spade: though he seemed to have done so just for some quick cash; and his heart wasn’t really in it. Read on to learn a bit about it all.

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

In last week’s column, I mentioned The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart. (Did you follow instructions and watch it for the first time?) Over eighty years after its publication, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon stands supreme today as the finest private eye novel ever written. Bogie’s 1941 film proved that the third time is a charm, prior attempts in 1931 and 1936 having failed.

Sam Spade, the quintessential tough guy shamus, appeared in a five-part serial of The Maltese Falcon in Black Mask in 1929. Hammett carefully reworked the pieces into novel form for publication by Alfred E. Knopf in 1930 and detective fiction would have a benchmark that has yet to be surpassed.

Hammett, who wrote over two dozen stories featuring a detective known as The Continental Op (well worth reading), never intended to write more about Samuel Spade, saying he was “done with him” after completing the book-length tale.

But the public wanted more and his agent cajoled him into cranking out three more short stories featuring Spade. The first two appeared in American Magazine and the third in Collier’s in 1932 and they were collected into book form later that year as The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories. In 1999, Vintage Crime published Nightmare Town, a compilation of twenty Hammett stories, including all three Spade short stories.

“A Man Called Spade” is far and away the longest of the three short stories. Spade arrives at a prospective client’s apartment to find Falcon stalwarts Tom Polhous and Lieutenant Dundy there and the no-longer-prospective client murdered, a five-pointed star with a ‘T’ in the middle outlined in black ink above his heart.

Dundy’s antagonism towards Spade in The Maltese Falcon is noticeably absent in this story. The two men work together, with Spade having carte blanche in questioning people.

Except for the opening and closing scenes, which take place between Spade and his secretary, Effie Perrine, the entire story takes place in Max Bliss’s apartment and feels like it is more of a play than a story. It is, quite simply, dull and pales in comparison to The Maltese Falcon.

Dundy is completely adrift in this case and while the police help with the hard evidence, Spade’s mind alone identifies the murderer. A red herring in the case is lifted directly from a Continental Op story from a few years before. Of the three stories, this one most feels like it was hurriedly written to generate some cash.

“Too Many Have Lived” opens with Gene Colyer hiring Spade to find out what happened to the missing Eli Haven. Colyer is fond of Haven’s wife and would be happy if the man had disappeared forever. Compared to the previous story, Spade does a great deal more detecting and there are multiple locations, making this tale much stronger.

Dashiell Hammett – The writer that Raymond Chandler wished he could be

In fact, whereas “A Man Called Spade” feels like a poor imitation, “Too Many Have Lived” seems much more like authentic Hammett, though the latter is barely half the length of the former.

Finally, “They Can Only Hang You Once” opens with a bang. Spade, using a false name, is waiting to see an ill, elderly man in what seems to be a large house, when a woman’s scream is followed by a gunshot. He rushes in to find a dead woman and two bystanders.

The reader’s interest is fully engaged in this, the fourth and last Samuel Spade story. Once again, Sergeant Tom Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy enter the case and we’re off on a wild ride, Spade solving the case with the police contributing essentially nothing.

Only half as long as “Too Many Have Lived,” this is the most enjoyable of the short stories and the most action-oriented. It has the elements that would have produced a good novella.

Spade is referred to as a ‘blonde Satan’ (which was utilized in the title of the Bette Davis Maltese Falcon adaptation, Satan Met a Lady). His face is frequently described as consisting of the ’V’s of his chin, mouth and brows. His eyes often turn yellow and are ’dreamy,’ presumably indicating they take on a faraway look. He does not come across as a handsome man: certainly not dapper, like Hammett’s Nick Charles.

The 1936 version starring Bette Davis. Not Hammett’s Maltese Falcon!

We only see the intrepid Effie Perine (who was a miserable judge of character in The Maltese Falcon) in “A Man Called Spade.” The interplay with the boss, hinting at intimacy, is totally absent from the three stories. We don’t build on what we know, or suspect about the two, from The Maltese Falcon.

This is mildly disappointing, though perhaps the shortened format precludes a significant role for her. The romantic Spade is absent, with not even a flicker of female interest in any of the stories.

Spade does not hold out on the police in the three stories, which is certainly not the case in The Maltese Falcon. He doesn’t even have a client in “A Man Called Spade,” yet still solves the crime. Sergeant Polhaus serves as an errand boy and Spade and Dundy are on equal terms in the stories.

Spade, never afraid to get physical in The Maltese Falcon, roughs up the criminal in “A Man Called Spade,” though he gets the worst of it in “They Can Only Hang You Once.”

What’s missing in the short stories is the code of honor that permeates The Maltese Falcon. The impassioned speech that Spade gives to Brigid O’Shaunessey before the police arrive defined Spade’s character as a private eye. In the short stories, he’s just a detective trying to earn a living. There’s no particular reason to root for him: it’s hard to identify with him as a likable protagonist.

Sam Spade, as portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, is the image of a private eye to many people. That character is largely the same one that Hammett wrote about in The Maltese Falcon. Perhaps because Hammett didn’t really want to write more tales about him, the Spade of the short stories doesn’t measure up to the novel’s hero.

He comes across as less than fully fleshed out. One would expect these short stories to have come before the novel; that Hammett was developing the character, which fully bloomed in The Maltese Falcon.

But even though “Too Many Have Lived” and “They Can Only Hang You Once” are interesting stories, Spade is not all that interesting as a character. Hammett wrote the short stories to make money (which he spent as fast as he earned) and they come across as such. Nearly any tough private eye of the day could have been used instead of Spade and there would be little difference.

Of Spade, Hammett stated: “Spade had no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and what quite a few of them, in their cockier moments, thought they approached. For your private detective does not…want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent bystander, or client.”

The thing that dreams are made of

In The Maltese Falcon, we see Spade matching wits with Gutman, Cairo and Wilmer, the police, the district attorney, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy. It is this adversarial drive that is missing from the three short stories in Nightmare Town.

Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson played Sam Spade in radio adaptations of The Maltese Falcon in the forties.

Howard Duff, and then Steve Dunne, voiced Spade in a very popular radio series in the forties and fifties. The Adventures of Sam Spade lasted for over 240 episodes. Duff’s 1948 The Khandi Tooth Caper was actually a direct sequel to The Maltese Falcon, with Spade once again meeting Caspar Gutman and Joel Cairo (as well as Wilmer’s replacement).

Irrespective of the popular film and radio adaptations, The Maltese Falcon is a must read for any mystery fan. Though the three Sam Spade short stories don’t do much to enhance his reputation, they do complete his body of work.

Prior posts in A (Black) Gat in the Hand – 2019 Series

Back Deck Pulp Returns
A (Black) Gat in the Hand Returns
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Doc Savage
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hugh B. Cave’s Peter Kane
Paul Bishop on Lance Spearman

A (Black) Gat in the Hand – 2018 Series

With a (Black) Gat: George Harmon Coxe
With a (Black) Gat: Raoul Whitfield
With a (Black) Gat: Some Hard Boiled Anthologies
With a (Black) Gat: Frederick Nebel’s Donahue
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thomas Walsh
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – January, 1935
A (Black) Gat in the hand: Norbert Davis’ Ben Shaley
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: D.L. Champion’s Rex Sackler
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Dime Detective – August, 1939
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Deck Pulp #1
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: W.T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Day Keene
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – October, 1933
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Deck Pulp #2
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Black Mask – Spring, 2017
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Frank Schildiner’s ‘Max Allen Collins & The Hard Boiled Hero’
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: William Campbell Gault
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: More Cool & Lam From Hard Case Crime
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: MORE Cool & Lam!!!!
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thomas Parker’s ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part One)
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe Bonadonna’s ‘Hardboiled Film Noir’ (Part Two)
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: William Patrick Maynard’s ‘The Yellow Peril’
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Andrew P Salmon’s ‘Frederick C. Davis’
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rory Gallagher’s ‘Continental Op’
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Deck Pulp #3
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Deck Pulp #4
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Deck Pulp #5
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Joe ‘Cap’ Shaw on Writing
A (Black) Gat in Hand: Back Deck Pulp #6
A (Black) Gat in the Hand: The Black Mask Dinner

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ was a regular Monday morning hardboiled pulp column from May through December, 2018 and was brought back in the summer of 2019.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate  from March, 2014 through March, 2017 (still making an occasional return appearance!).

He organized ‘Hither Came Conan,’ as well as Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series.

He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’) and blogs about Holmes and other mystery matters at Almost Holmes.

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories – Parts III, IV,  V and VI.

And he contributed to The New Adventures of Solar Pons.

After taking a day to attend to various non-cinema matters, I came early to the last day of the Fantasia Film Festival. I had two movies I wanted to see in theatres, but first I wanted to catch up on something I’d missed when played on the big screen: the 2019 International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase. Luckily, I was able to watch it at the Fantasia screening room. Uncharacteristically, American shorts dominated this year; in an appropriately science-fictional statistic, 7 of 9 movies were from the US, with one from Australia that ended the showcase (at least in the order described in the Fantasia program) and one from Ukraine that began it.

“Eternity,” directed by Anna Sobolevska from a script by Sobolevska and Alina Semeryakova, is an effective 23-minute tale about a future year 2058 in which dying people can upload themselves into digital worlds designed by a massive corporation. These worlds have been tested by living humans, but for some even the best are pallid copies of the real world. One way or another, nobody wants the simple afterlives provided by the state. Ian (Oleg Moskalenko) is a man who doesn’t buy into the illusions provided by the Charon Corporation. But his wife Marie (Daria Plakhtiy) is thrilled by the cyber-estate they’re offering. Then tragedy strikes, and Ian has to make a series of terrible choices, balancing the desires of both of them with his idea of integrity.

This is an extremely strong film. It looks sharp, to start with; both the grim, shadowy real world and the lushly-hued cyber-fantasies come across well. The acting’s strong, especially from Moskalenko. The story structure’s solid, getting across a complicated science-fictional idea, exploring it with both plot twists and background ideas (Charon is everywhere, it seems), and above all telling a character-centred tale.

What may be most impressive is how many themes are on display here. I read it as a story about a man struggling to hold on to his beliefs in the face of corporate pressure, trying to set aside sterile romanticism but forced into being complicit with the powers that run the world. But then there’s also a lot here about the power of capitalism, especially in opposition to what used to be viewed as transcendental values — Charon sells a simulacrum of heaven, almost but not quite the real thing. So the film’s about life, death, and what’s beyond, and how to meet all these things. And, on top everything else, it’s built around a relationship of man and wife sketched both convincingly and briefly. This is Sobolevska’s first film as both writer and director, and it’s impressive; one hopes to see more from her in future.

Next came “Here & Beyond,” a 17-minute piece directed by Colin West from a script he wrote with Corey Aumiller. Mac (Greg Lucey) used to be a kids’ tv-show personality, presenting science facts as part of a duo with his dead wife Ruth (Christine Kellogg-Darrin). Now his brain is degenerating. As he forges a strange friendship with cynical teen neighbour Tess (Laurel Porter), he must strip away everything from his home that reminds him of his wife, in order to minimise confusion; but does he have a way to change the flow of time?

This is a stunningly effective film. Lucey’s excellent as a man quietly facing an inevitable end with what dignity he can, losing even the memory of the love of his life. Porter’s sullen Tess is convincing in what could have been a flat part. The movie has strong visual ideas, fusing Christmas and July 4 in a charming blend of iconography, and capturing the feel of old PBS-like science TV shows in a knowing yet unironic way. Those shows in turn comment on Mac’s situation in cheerful yet resonant dialogue. The movie ends with an effective ambiguity but (as I read it) a necessary note of hope, and it captures some of the thrill of scientific discovery along the way. Above all, it’s emotionally powerful, dealing successfully with some powerful themes. West is apparently looking to make a feature-length version, and it should be worth watching for.

“The Slows” is a 22-minute adaptation of Gail Hareven’s short story written and directed by Nicole Perlman, her debut as director after writing the first Guardians of the Galaxy film and Captain Marvel. In a future where people do not bear children as we are used to, a special wilderness reserve holds a community who birth and rear young in the traditional biological fashion. We follow a woman (Annet Mahendru) from the outside world trying to understand them; but she herself may be stranger than we know.

This is not a bad movie, but plot-wise I found nothing unexpected about it. Given the basic premise above, all the beats I’d expect to be present were, and the lead’s development follows a fairly standard path. The ending has an interesting twist, if only for what it says about the main character. It’s shot well, but the (quite fine) original story is more convincing in its presentation of the basic science-fictional idea, in its sense of the researcher’s character, and especially in its depiction of power dynamics and the researcher’s sense of cultural superiority.

“Ava In the End” was directed by Ursula Ellis from a script by Addison Heimann. As the ten-minute film opens, Ava (Elsa Gay) has just died, and has woken up inside a computer’s hard drive waiting for her mind to be downloaded into a new body. But the computer responsible for the download (Allie Gallerani) seems to have other ideas.

It’s hard not to think of The Good Place given the way this film begins. Luckily the dialogue between Ava and the computer is witty enough to sustain the impression, though the ending’s downbeat, and so produces a different tone. The film takes place in one location, with one visible actor, and makes the idea work.

Although the nine-minute “Five Minutes” is an American film, it plays out in Mandarin. Directed by Shange Zhang from a script by Nichole Delaura based on Zhang’s story, it’s about a grieving businessman (Zhan Wang) who gets a chance to call his recently-dead wife in the past, and talk to her for five minutes so long as he doesn’t speak about her future. It’s a solid enough piece, and it’s funny to see the futuristic telephone to the past as an old black rotary-dial phone. On the other hand, there’s a strong echo of a suspect under arrest given one phone call. I think the story’s mainly about communication and the lack of same in a relationship, though, and it is unyielding in the right places about the impossibility of change. Strong acting by Wang emphasises the caller’s emotional journey, and helps sell the tale.

Next came one of the most frightening movies of the festival, for reasons that had nothing to do with plot. “Face Swap” was written and directed by the duo of David Gidali and Einat Tubi. In the near future, a man (Troy Caylak) has convinced his wife (Megan Gray) to go to a futuristic love hotel where holographic projectors will allow two guests to take on the images of chosen celebrities through real-time animation. He becomes George Clooney, she becomes Rachel McAdams. But there’s a twist he doesn’t expect. It’s solidly-made, with a kind of modern update on a very old low-comedy trick.

What is frightening about this movie is the technology with which it’s made. It uses deepfakes to make Caylak and Gray look like Clooney and McAdams. The filmmakers are responsible in their use of the technology. You know what you’re seeing, you know you’re not actually watching big stars in the short, and in fact the images are allowed to slip and lag as the in-story holographic projectors struggle to keep up. And for all that, there are moments when the illusion’s perfect; it’s not that you could swear that you’re watching Clooney onscreen, so much as it wouldn’t occur to you to think otherwise. The technology’s passed right through the uncanny valley and come out the other side. It works here in context because in part the film’s about the hidden pitfalls of this kind of technology, and the bad ends to which it can be put. And on a social scale it is really quite terrifying. (See for yourself.)

Kit Zauhar wrote and directed the 15-minute “The Terrestrials.” In the future, there is a device that allows two people to have sex without bodies, in a kind of cyberspace; it’s Tinder without matter. Lucy (Arabella Oz), a reserved scientist with an interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, has sex with a stranger named Will (Henry Fulton Winship). Then there are technical issues, and Lucy has to reach out in ways she didn’t expect. The characters have some thought behind them and the ending’s very strong, while the theme of a search for connection is echoed by the science-fictional idea of the movie.

Brock Heasley wrote and directed “The Two Hundred Fifth,” a 19-minute film about a young girl, Maxine (Ema Horvath), who brings her friend Cat (Audrey Neal) to meet a boy, Jason (Wyatt Daniels). And then explains that Jason’s the boy she’s going to grow up to marry. She knows this because she’s a repeater, someone who lives her life over and over and over again. In shock, Cat follows her through an abruptly-escalating series of strange occurrences, as the looping nature of Maxine’s life comes to the fore.

This is a clever film, with an intricate yet character-oriented reason behind its initial scene. There are some developments that threaten to send the story spinning off in weird directions; there may be too many ideas here for a single short. But Maxine’s an engaging lead, and her offhand discussions about the various people she’s met and things she’s done are lovely. (As when she mentions meeting Steven Spielberg in multiple incarnations: “Nice guy. Keeps trying to make 1941 happen.”) It moves sharply, and shifts registers smoothly to incorporate a surprising amount of violence.

Finally came “Lavender,” written and directed by Henry Boffin. In the future, food shortages mean human flesh has become part of people’s diet — specifically, the flesh of those suffering from the “Hebedus virus,” a brain-eating disease. When one woman (Ellen Bailey) finds her father (John McNeill) suffering from the incurable ailment, she must resign herself to letting him go to become meat.

It’s a well-acted piece, but I found the two ideas (cannibalism from food shortage, and a new kind of dementia) seemed excessive in one story. The world feels like it hasn’t changed enough for widespread cannibalism to be believable — if there are food shortages so intense cannibalism becomes a logical solution there must be profound changes in society, but the movie looks much like the present day. Meanwhile, the Hebedus virus feels like a convenient way to tell a story about dementia without actually writing about a specific condition. There are a couple of good ideas here (for example, the human meat is given a code, so consumers can avoid a specific code of meat and be sure they’re not eating a member of their family) and the film’s extremely well-acted, particularly on the part of McNeill, who gets a lot across by merely staring vacantly in front of him. It’s not a bad movie, but I found it unengaging.

Overall, though, I thought the showcase had gathered a strong collection of films. I note the movies seemed a little longer on average than in past years, and I think that bit of extra time helped go to establishing character, the prime concern of most of these pieces. The tonal variety was appreciated, as well. In a year I feel Fantasia was marked by particularly strong short films, this block of shorts shone.

Find the rest of my Fantasia coverage from this and previous years here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

Panther edition paperbacks (1976). Covers by Anthony Roberts.

The Opener of the Way was Robert Bloch’s very first collection, published by Arkham House way back in 1945, when he was all of 28 years old. It contained 21 stories, all but two of which originally appeared in Weird Tales, including classics such as “Waxworks,” “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” and the Cthulhu Mythos tale “The Shambler from the Stars,” which inspired Lovecraft to write “The Haunter of the Dark,” his last work.

The Opener of the Way was to be Bloch’s only fantasy collection until Pleasant Dreams—Nightmares was published by Arkham fifteen long years later. Like most early Arkham House collections, it is a very expensive book these days. It has never been reprinted in the US, which hasn’t hurt its collectability any. Fortunately Panther reprinted it in the UK in 1976, splitting it into two paperback volumes: The Opener of the Way and House of the Hatchet.

Of course, those two paperbacks are now highly sought after as well (the set pictured above sold on eBay this summer for $72.51). Which figures. I only learned about the Panther reprints recently, and after a brief search tracked down a copy of The Opener of the Way paperback for $9.95, which made me happy. Here’s a look at the contents.

[Click the images for Way-bigger versions.]

The Opener of the Way (Panther, 1976). Cover by Anthony Roberts

The editors at Panther clearly had fun writing the back-cover text.

Here’s the Table of Contents for the Panther The Opener of the Way, which contains 10 of the 21 stories from the Arkham edition.

By Way of Introduction by Robert Bloch
“The Opener of the Way” (1936)
“The Cloak” (1939)
“Beetles” (1938)
“The Fiddler’s Fee” (1940)
“The Mannikin” (1937)
“The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton” (1939)
“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1943)
“The Seal of the Satyr” (1939)
“The Dark Demon” (1936)
“The Faceless God” (1936)

The Arkham House hardcover is a fine option, if you can find a copy.

The copyright page of the Arkham edition is like an advertisement for Weird Tales. Nineteen of the stories within appeared in the grand old lady of the fantasy pulps; the other two were published in Amazing Stories and Strange Stories.

Here’s the jacket flap copy for the Arkham edition, which makes a big deal out of “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” and “The Shambler from the Stars.”

I have not yet managed to find a copy of the second volume, House of the Hatchett, though copies in good condition are generally available for around $20. I guess I just love a bargain. I’ll find one eventually.

House of the Hatchet (Panther, 1976). Cover by Anthony Roberts

The Panther paperback reprints Bloch’s original intro (again), and contains the remaining 11 stories from the Arkham edition of The Opener of the Way.

By Way of Introduction by Robert Bloch
“House of the Hatchet” (1941)
“Return to the Sabbath” (1938)
“The Mandarin’s Canaries” (1938)
“Waxworks” (1939)
“The Feast in the Abbey” (1935)
“Slave of the Flames” (1938)
“The Shambler from the Stars” (1935)
“Mother of Serpents” (1936)
“The Secret of Sebek” (1937)
“The Eyes of the Mummy” (1938)
“One Way to Mars” (1945)

Here’s the complete publishing details for all three volumes.

The Opener of the Way (Arham House, 320 pages, $3 in hardcover, 1945) — cover by Ronald Clyne
The Opener of the Way (Panther, 172 pages, £0.60 in paperback, May 1976) — cover by Anthony Roberts
House of the Hatchet (Panther, 174 pages, £0.60 in paperback, October 1976) — cover by Anthony Roberts

The Opener of the Way has been out of print in all formats since 1976. There is no digital edition.

See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

This is… Steampunk Assassin’s Creed? It’s pretty cool whatever it is.

Good morning, Readers!

I have a wee problem. I’m absolute rubbish at categorizing works of fiction. Sure, some things fit quite nicely into easy designations. The Lord of the Rings? Fantasy, duh! Dragon’s Egg? Science fiction, duh! Battlefield Earth? Nonsensical drivel, duh! Sorry. I genuinely dislike that book. It’s alright if you like it. I just don’t. Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes. Genre.

Things, however, very rarely fit ever so neatly into a single genre, though, especially now when so many diverse voices are bringing fresh takes, pushing boundaries and deliberately blurring the lines between genre. This experimentation, this refusal to be bound by boring rules that are no longer relevant, has created some of the most interesting, immersive stories I have read in a long time (which is to say, I don’t get bored rereading all the same tropes over and over to the point where I can accurate predict the trajectory of a story from the first chapter). I love that I don’t get bored reading now. I was starting to, if I’m honest.

It’s all a lovely, fascinating, confusing mess.

In a world obsessed with categorizing everything neatly, however, it’s creating a little bit of friction.

Vampires: Horror. Yes. Fantasy. Well, yes-ish? Romance? Sort of. Erotica? Absolutely.

Of particular bother to me is the distinction between young adult and adult books. To me, there is very little distinction; little enough so as to be utterly arbitrary and meaningless. Part of the problem, I suspect, was that I had free pickings from my parent’s rather extensive library from the moment I could read. As a direct result, I skipped over the children’s and young adult genres (though I will contend that ‘young adult’ is a newer genre and did not exist when I was reading… though my ignorance of it may be a direct result of what I’m revealing this moment). I was reading The Lord of the Rings when I was eight, as well as simpler reads like Eddings, King and others.

The closest thing to young adult I read was, perhaps and briefly, Animorphs. These protagonists were really young, and though faced with terrible things, weren’t really behaving like adults. Schooling was involved, or perhaps summer camps? I honestly don’t remember, except that the one who changed into an eagle was called Tobias. I think. That’s all I remember. Anyway, that was a distinctly child-focussed series. It made sense to me that it would be headed under young adult.

Modern takes on that genre make much less sense to me. Suddenly, young adult fiction includes young folks with jobs, those who have graduated high school and other distinctly not-young traits. I have a title in which the main protagonist is past thirty years of age, and it was once rejected for publication because it was deemed too young adult.

Mate, what?

It seems to me that it is largely drawn across gendered lines. Is your young protagonist of the feminine variety? Well, that makes it young adult. Adult books, you see, feature young men, not young women as their protagonist… or so it seems to me. Or, rather, for a book to be considered adult and still feature a young protagonist, that character must be male, else it’s young adult instead. Think The Hunger Games and Battlefield Earth. No one has accused Battlefield Earth of being a young adult novel, despite the protagonist being a teenager when we first meet him (or if he’s not, he’s written as if he ought to be; the whiny, selfish twat). This may not be true, but it certainly is a trend I’ve noticed.

Horror or fantasy? Both? Neither? Grimdark? What even is grimdark?

Grimdark is another one I struggle with. What even is grimdark? How does it differ from dark fantasy? Are they the same? To the best of my knowledge, grimdark blurs lines of traditional fantasy, including elements of horror, and cynical ‘realism.’ So… knights and zombies? I’m being facetious, of course. Grimdark is some of my favorite reading and writing, if I’m honest. Even so, there isn’t really a definition for it. Wikipedia’s got, like, five, and notes that there’s plenty of discourse around the term. Is it a genre in it’s own right? An unhelpful label? A way of dismissing fantasy fiction that aims to dismantle tired traditional tropes?

No one knows.

Often, it feels like a new genre is invented every time a writer comes at a well-known, comfortable trope from a new angle. There are a dizzying number of genres now. Despite this, it can be absolutely impossible to find a place where one’s writing might comfortably sit. What do we in do in that case? Proclaim it to be yet another new genre with confidence and hope that people just nod and ask no further questions?

I have a book that’s Celtic-myth-punk. Shut up. That’s a genre. Now.

Of course, I bring this up only because I’m headed to a convention in three-ish weeks where I’m hoping to sell a couple of series to publishers or agents, and I’m having a devil of a time trying to place them so I can easily sell them. One is, I think, a grimdark. Or a dark fantasy. It’s fantasy. It’s dark. There are zombies (of a kind). I’ve had bad dreams because of it. Dark.

I have heard tell that grimdark/dark fantasy is on the out, but, um, oh well! I’ll try all the same.

The other is without a genre. It could definitely be young adult, since on of the protagonist’s is a college student… until the accident. The rest are definitely adults. It’s based heavily in Celtic myth, but there are airships powered by crystals, and laser-gun fights and whatnot. Where does this book fit? I don’t know. I’m panicking about the ‘what genre’ question when it comes to this series.

I’ve come by this anxiety around the issue of being able to categorize this series honestly. I have received many a rejection letter praising my submissions, but rejected all the same because it can’t be easily classified into a particular genre and this is, and I quote, “too difficult to market.” Which… fair. If I knew how to market it, I wouldn’t be asking someone else to do it. I totally understand how helpful these categories can be. I just find myself entirely frustrated reading the same old, same old (which happens much less now, thank heavens), and trying to sell stuff that doesn’t quite fit anywhere.

Anywho, these are some of the things I’ve been mulling over of late. How do you feel about genre and books that completely obliterate those constraints? Leave you thoughts in the comments.

The nice thing about my last day of Fantasia was that rather than sit in one place, I would watch something on my own in the screening room, then something at the small De Sève Cinema, and finally something at the big Hall Theatre. It had the well-rounded feeling of a good summing-up.

The film I had at the De Sève Cinema was The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea. Directed by Syllas Tzoumerkas from a script he wrote with star Youla Boudali, it follows two characters in the Greek town of Messolonghi. The first is police chief Elisabeth (Angeliki Papoulia), who we see in the opening scenes be exiled from her law-enforcement career in Athens; years later she’s still a square peg in the round hole of Messolonghi. The second is a quiet girl named Rita (Youla Boudali) who works in an eel processing facility; her brother, Manolis (Christos Passalis), is a local pop star. We see Elisabeth and Rita negotiating their lives in Messolonghi, with its various social complexities and patriarchal attitudes. And then a crime unites them, and various secrets of the town come to light.

This is a well-shot film, pleasant to look at with a kind of off-centred low-key energy — there aren’t many mannered symmetrically-composed shots here, but there’s a closeness to the characters that’s engaging. The actors shine, and Papoulia in particular comes off well, a weary dismissive cop with an anger that’s less smouldering than it is in a state of steady magnesium-like incandescence. Multilayered dinner parties are shot with an interesting sense of the social complexities and relationships of the speakers. Contrasting with this are brief scenes of dreams and visions.

And yet much of the film has the feel of a TV cop show — not an American network drama set in the big-city, but something like Inspector Montalbano or Broadchurch. Shows about cops in a small town, solving small-town crimes. Shows that lack the distinctive weirdness of Twin Peaks but that still dwell on the character of the investigators and suspects. Miracle of the Sargasso Sea is different in that the crime doesn’t happen at or before the beginning of the story, but instead relatively late in the film. At which point the paths of the two main characters, until then having nothing to do with each other, begin to converge.

This is an unusual structure which sounds worth trying, but to my mind it comes off as dramatically inert. Early on the different strands are interesting on their own but don’t inform each other, meaning neither really builds up any momentum. Then when the crime does happen, there’s no twist to it. We find out about a death, and the killer and motive are exactly what we imagine they are. The investigation goes about as one might expect. What could have been a subversion of genre ends up merely a dramatic structure that misfires.

I will note that I have seen other reviews that have a different assessment. Generally writers who saw more strangeness in the film had more of an appreciation for it. To me, the dream sequences and religious visions felt peripheral in terms of story structure and, to a large extent, character. They’re part of a symbolic picture, and the movie is at least engaged in trying to present a complexity of theme and image — the title, for example, is a reference to the life-cycle of eels, who migrate to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. I felt these ideas were interesting, but did not add to the drama of the picture, while the drama itself did not add to their depth. In other words, the film remained basically realistic to me. If you as a viewer find more strangeness in it, you’ll probably have a higher opinion of it.

I say all this because the film’s been associated with the Greek Weird Wave Cinema (Papoulia has been in three movies directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, one of the Weird Wave’s key figures), about which I must admit I know little. My uninformed opinion is that the movie’s more realistic in its approach to character and cinematography than I would expect from the Weird Wave. The symbolism’s a bit unusual in how it’s introduced, but is essentially straightforward.

The movie’s more interesting as a depiction of small-town life. It has a lot to say about patriarchal attitudes and about xenophbia, and the way these things are normalised — are in fact a part of the atmosphere. Messolonghi is shown as a place to get out of, a place the main characters desperately want to leave but can’t. It’s an unsparing portrait, but feels real; as a setting, the place is convincing.

The problem is that the film never finds a strong enough dramatic spark. For too long the movie’s a slice-of-life drama that splits its focus. Interesting ideas about character never quite develop. A situation’s established, and then is not explored so much as reiterated. Even the symbolic dimension, although extremely well-machined, doesn’t give the action the resonance it should. By the end, the lack of drama undercuts that symbol-structure and the film’s themes: the implication of society in the crimes of some of its most prominent members is attenuated. Oddly, because the characters are set up so well as individuals, they do not speak to structural societal issues. They seem to do what they do because of who they are, as opposed to being who they are because of the way the world made them.

Which is to say that there’s a disconnect between theme and character. I suspect this is the key point, for me. The characters are well-wrought, individually, and well-acted. Thematic ideas speak to both everyday human interactions and broader spiritual issues, by way of nature imagery. The story structure, to me most obviously flawed, still has some interesting ideas in its dual-lead approach and attempt to subvert genre expectations. All the ingredients for an excellent film are here. But they don’t work well together. Story and theme don’t inform each other in any complex way. Theme and character drift by each other. Drama and tragedy remain muted. This is the textbook example of a film less than the sum of its parts.

Find the rest of my Fantasia coverage from this and previous years here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

Those of us on the inside, the fans steeped in the history of science fiction and fantasy, mark the beginning of modern science fiction with Hugo Gernsback’s launching of Amazing Stories in August 1926. A thousand historians, critics, and commentators use that date as a dividing line between the proto-fictions of Verne and Wells and the lesser-known William Wallace Cook and George England and the Frank Reade Jr. series of boy’s adventures and Gernsback’s own favorite, Clement Fezandié.

The outside world didn’t see it that way. They didn’t see Amazing Stories at all or its first competitor, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, or the various Wonder magazines Gernsback started in 1929 when he lost control of Amazing. They were invisible, no matter how we today look back at Doc Smith or Murray Leinster or Edmond Hamilton. Or a first story by Philip Francis Nowlan, “Armageddon—2419 A.D.,” a fairly silly and racist Yellow Peril yarn starring one Anthony Rogers, or a sequel, “The Airlords of Han,” in which Nowlan tries to excuse the racism by postulating that the evil Han were not Chinese but alien interlopers who “mated forcibly with the Tibetans.” Disintegrator rays and anti-gravity flying belts and an “electrono plant operating from atomic energy” impinged not a bit on the public consciousness.

Yet by 1935, that “Buck Rogers stuff” was a national catchphrase, in high culture and low. Malcolm W. Bingay criticized Sir Arthur Eddington’s book, New Pathways in Science, as “Buck Rogers stuff panoplied in jargon that passes for scientific terminology.” And talking about new children’s toys, an article reported that “the Buck Rogers stuff backs ‘em all off the sales map, nearly tying Mickey Mouse, who had a head start.”

What happened? Not science fiction pulp mags, still stuck on those same three titles that had been around since the twenties, but a daily newspaper comic strip, Buck Rogers—In the Year 2429, that started on January 9, 1929. John Flint Dille, who happened to own a comics syndicate, had an idea for a futuristic strip. He chanced upon that August Amazing and for impossible-to-guess reasons saw something in Nowlan’s story. (How would history have been changed if he chose Doc Smith’s first Skylark of Space story, running in that same issue, instead?) Dille paired Nowlan’s writing with art from Richard “Dick” Calkins, overcoming his protestations that he really wanted to draw a strip about cavemen. Changing the title date to an exact 500 years in the future proved to be magic. Newspapers took notice. In February, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a contest asking readers for thoughts on “What Do You See 500 Years Ahead?” Entrants were obviously adults, and the winners included such inspired guesses as “The English Channel tunnels are not being used and will be abandoned”; “Sahara produces half of the world’s food. Artificial rain has made a productive country out of a desert”; and “Stored light has eliminated darkness in most places.”

Robots quickly joined the marvels of the world of the future. The last week in July saw a sequence in which arch-enemy Killer Kane steals the remote control device for a new super-robot and, with his typical wiliness, uses the controller to have the robot break into the safe containing its own plans. “Electro magnetic push- pull muscles” gave its arms all the strength a villain could hope for.

Oh yeah, cats and kitties, how can you resist dialog like, “Fella, you ain’t gonna pinch a robot??? Toot-Toot!” Yowsah! (All emphasis and punctuation in quotes as in original.)

Another sequence later that year showed that Nowlan paid attention to robots in the news. The Westinghouse corporation was a pioneer in remotely controlling devices by sending sound signals down telephone wires. They sent inventor Roy Wensley and his creation out on a publicity tour in 1927, after Wensley got the bright idea to use cardboard to surround the control boxes into an outline of a cartoon robot he called Televox.

Televox was briefly the national name and image of a robot. Nowlan referenced Televox as a generic name for robot on December 7, 1929.

Note that Buck is still fighting the evil Han. A month later, Buck’s girlfriend, the future girl-warrior Wilma, gets kidnapped by The Tiger Men of Mars, and the strip zooms off into space, seldom looking back, and forever associating spaceships and alien planets with science fiction and zap guns, robots, and the rest of Buck’s paraphernalia. Far more importantly, 1930 brought the first Sunday strip. Daily newspaper strips were a solid base, basically cash cows that could run more or less unchanged for decades. The big money, prestige, and attention devolved from the full-page Sunday color strips, housed in a separate section of the newspaper. Only one paper in a city could run a strip, so a popular strip was crucial to circulation and the subject of enormous advertising and the occasional print war.

Buck Rogers 2430 A.D. debuted in March, still signed Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins, but the changes were many. Calkins felt that a seven-day schedule was too much so Dille brought in Russell “Buster” Keaton as a ghost. Far more oddly, Buck Rogers no longer appeared in his own strip. Dille thought that having two separate adventure continuities, one Monday-Saturday, the other Sunday to Sunday, would be confusing to readers. Instead of Buck and Wilma, therefore, the Sunday strip starred Buddy and Alura. Buddy was Wilma’s brother; Alura was a princess of Mars who happened to look like exactly a human – specifically, exactly like Wilma. I’d think that calling doppelgängers by different names would be far more confusing than separate continuities, hardly a new idea in 1930, but I don’t have a merchandising empire and Dille did.

Robots suddenly appear in the middle of a sequence called The Mysterious Saturnian on November 11, 1930. In the Saturnian storyline, Buddy and his gang have been battling an evildoer from Saturn when a Hindu lass named Lalla is kidnapped and stashed in the Saturnians’ secret Himalayan lair. Buddy snaps into action, pulling out of nowhere a “flying robot. Radiocontrolled with attractor-beam propulsion.” Buddy explains that “with this control box I can make it do anything and talk through it.” “Oh! I think it’s just too clicky,” slangs Mary, the president’s daughter. The robot flies in and grabs Lalla, who believes that she’s merely being kidnapped again by a different alien.

Keaton’s anatomical ineptitude is embarrassingly proven by the image of the robot lifting Lalla by her breasts. He got dumped for Rick Yager, whose astronomical scenes were far superior.

Robots reappeared in “Mekkanos of Planet Vulcan,” which started on October 24, 1934. Breaking out of the fourth dimension that fall Sunday, Buddy and Alura find themselves about to crash into Vulcan, a once- theorized planet even closer to the Sun than Mercury. Fortuitously, their ship gets pulled into a gigantic abyss at Vulcan’s north pole and lands safely at the planet’s center, which is improbably but necessarily cool, well lit, and a source of breathable air. (Shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ recently published Pellucidar series.) The adventurers are greeted by a radio-controlled robot with “television eyes” and “microphone ears” (much like those of the super-robot), which leads them up, down, and across a buried city. The few remaining Vulcanians hide inside their luxurious homes in fear of their fellows, doing all business and communication through their robots’ eyes and ears.

Does this sound familiar? I mentioned William Wallace Cook earlier, whose first foray into science fiction, A Round Trip to the Year 2000; Or, A Flight Through Time, depicts a future society who battle for supremacy with thought-controlled robots. The agoraphobic and sybaritic Vulcanians anticipate the Solarians in Isaac Asimov’s 1957 novel, The Naked Sun, who have retreated from active life in favor of a world run by robots. Both Nowlan and Asimov were young men fascinated by science fiction yarns, making the connection provokingly plausible.

The sequence ends with one of the most prescient extrapolations in science fictional history. Lost in the gigantic city, pursued by an army of Mekkanos, Buddy and Alura enter a “fact room,” “a kind of reference library” with “automatic talking and thinking machines,” that gives them directions back to their ship.

If confusion between sequences meant anything, then 1938 must have blown minds. Nowlan ran two simultaneous sequences featuring robots, “The Fiend of Space” in the daily papers and “Secret City of Mechanical Men” on Sundays.

The unspeakable, ineffable, and undrawable Fiend of Space – a alien villain so horrible that the mere sight of its visage drove people insane – powered a Buck Rogers Better Little Book (the fatter version of the Big Little Book series).

So powerful was the Fiend that it did the impossible: broke through the invisible barriers between continuities and showed up in the Secret City sequence, where it teamed up with Killer Kane. First came giant automatons big enough to crack a spaceship over their knees:

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But plucky Buck has a few brains of his own:

Meanwhile, Killer Kane and his moll Ardala are plucked out of space by the fiend and sent to Earth to a city of mechanical men.

A squadron of robot bombs would soon move out of the comic pages and onto front pages, when the German Vergeltungswaffen weapons were in fact called robot bombs.

Science fiction suddenly entered a phase of respectability after rockets and atomic weapons became all-too-real death dealers. Buck Rogers never regained his status as the premiere exemplar of future imagery. The term camp hadn’t yet been invented, but poor Buck – and his many imitators – were now camp. Literally so. Susan Sontag’s canonical list in her 1964 essay “Notes on Camp” includes Flash Gordon comic strips. That Buck Rogers stuff no longer symbolically epitomized the future, but the past future, a hopelessly banal and jejune vision of progress made instantly obsolete by the slightest touch of reality. Science fiction was now for adults.

Yeah, I know. Irony is more impregnable than giant robots.

Steve Carper writes for The Digest Enthusiast; his story “Pity the Poor Dybbuk” appeared in Black Gate 2. His website is flyingcarsandfoodpills.com. His last article for us was Superworld Comics His epic history of robots, Robots in American Popular Culture, is finally available wherever books can be ordered over the internet. Visit his companion site RobotsinAmericanPopularCulture.com for much more on robots.

All good things must come to an end, they say, and for me Fantasia 2019 ended at the Hall Theatre with the Korean action-horror movie The Divine Fury (사자, romanised as Saja, literally Emissary). Directed by Kim Joo-hwan, it follows Yong-hu (Park Seo-jun), a champion MMA fighter who lost his father under mysterious circumstances at a young age. In the present, when mysterious wounds appear on his hands and he is attacked by a demonic force, a blind shaman guides him to exorcist Father Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki), who tells him the wounds are stigmata and give him great power in fighting demons. The two team up, reluctantly on the part of Yong-hu, who holds a grudge against Christianity after the death of his father. But there are dark forces at work in Seoul, and Yong-hu must use all his skills to defeat the forces of hell on earth.

There are a lot of good ideas in this movie. And a lot of the time it looks very nice, with lovely shots of Seoul by night, and glossy, richly-coloured cinematography. Unfortunately the action and horror elements are not blended well, and character beats don’t come off as powerfully as they should.

Let’s start with the action bits. After a long introductory sequence showing Yong-hu as a boy and the death of his father at the hands of demons, we get our first fight. Note that the intro’s failed to build any real narrative momentum, and even the appearance of the demon is only brief. The actual fight we see with the adult Yong-hu looks like it’ll be more exciting; but then it too ends quickly. There is a plot reason for this, but the scene sets a pattern for the rest of the film. Yong-hu finds himself battling demons, and his power ends each exorcism before any real sense of dread can emerge. The set-pieces are thus brief and don’t develop into anything significant, even when plot’s being advanced.

The climax is easily the most kinetic and visually interesting sequence of the movie, a well-shot brawl that does have its own internal structure: Yong-hu defeats some flunkies to make his way to the boss, and then both hero and villain level up as the fight goes on. The problem is that the combatants don’t have anything to say to each other, literally and figuratively. The spectacular visuals feel empty, as Yong-hu doesn’t seem to be dealing with any particular character issue in the fight. The staging’s fine, but there’s no particular sense that there’s an internal logic that dictates when Yong-hu’s done enough to end the conflict. Basically, there comes a point when he hits the bad guy enough that the bad guy goes down and stays down.

So much for the action. As a horror movie The Divine Fury has a little bit more to say. The imagery recalls some of the classic American horror films; two exorcists struggling against a demon that’s possessed a young woman in her mother’s home can’t help but be a little familiar, and there is a sense that the movie’s not only conscious of its homage, but is in fact drawing some energy from being in dialogue with its predecessors. The mechanism of possession and the struggle of Father Ahn against demons is well drawn; Ahn seems to live in a series of hotel rooms, wandering the world at the behest of the Vatican, battling Satanic agents. The movie does a good job of showing us just enough of his life, and just enough of the struggle he’s engaged in. We know enough to be horrified, but not enough for the horror to turn into mere plot mechanics.

At least in theory. The problem is the action-movie elements undercut any real sense of horror. Yong-hu can defeat any demon easily enough, so the battles come to feel hollow. Exorcisms are unthreatening. Suspense never builds. I note that the climax drops any attempt at building a horror atmosphere in favour of a straight super-hero punch-up, and that may have been for the best.

Watching the movie, I was oddly reminded of the basic problem with the original Ravenloft module for Dungeons & Dragons and to an extent some of the Ravenloft supplements which followed. I loved reading the module (in case anyone doesn’t know, it’s a massive castle and dungeon complex which players must explore to destroy a master vampire — er, spoilers for 1983’s module I6 Raveloft, I suppose). But I could never figure out how to run it as effectively as I imagined the story of it in my head. The point of Dungeons & Dragons is that the player characters are powerful warriors, master wizards, and so forth. They have considerable agency, resources, and power. They’re not going to be scared by a few zombies or animated skeletons. Something like Dracula was terrifying because the vampire was mysterious, with powers far beyond the heroes. But in a typical D&D story the heroes have powers to match the villain; the sense of horror greatly recedes. Dracula’s not frightening to Conan and Gandalf.

So it is here. Yong-hu’s a solid enough character, but doesn’t grow much through the film; on his own, he’s not really engaging enough to hold one’s attention for two hours and change. Ahn is more interesting, with a certain gravitas and world-weariness. It may not be surprising that his part of the story is more dramatically engaging. And there is a certain energy that comes when the two characters interact, as the life of a down-at-heels exorcist runs into the glitzy world of a martial-arts champion.

There are fine things in The Divine Fury. The soundtrack’s quite solid. And as I said before, there is a rich look to the movie, capturing the slickness of an upscale if demon-haunted nightclub as well as the contrast of light and dark in a cityscape at twilight, while the production design brings out the shadowy feel of an old convent, the mundane sense of a middle-class apartment, and the anonymous place-between-places feel of a room in a hotel chain. But the drama doesn’t work. The central conflict’s underwhelming, and the set-pieces that should be major elements of the film don’t land. There’s an excellent idea for a movie here. But it doesn’t come together. A post-credits sequence reveals that this is an attempt to start a cinematic universe, spinning off characters into other films; perhaps the creators will learn from this one.

Find the rest of my Fantasia coverage from this and previous years here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

After leaving The Verve, Andrew Liptak has landed at Polygon. Or at least his monthly New Science Fiction and Fantasy column did, anyway. He’s in top form in September as he looks at 13 New science fiction and fantasy books to check out this September, including new books by Becky Chambers, Margaret Atwood, Tamsyn Muir, and Stan Lee and Kat Rosenfield.

I was going to feature some of Andrew’s suggestions, but then I checked out Jeff Somer’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of September 2019 list at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, which features a whopping 32 titles, and it won me over. Sorry Andrew, we’ll get you next time. Here’s a few of the highlights from Jeff’s list.

The Harp of Kings, by Juliet Marillier (Ace, 464 pages, $16 trade paperback/$7.99 digital, September 3)

Liobhan and her brother Brocc are talented musicians and singers training as warriors on Swan Island in the kingdom of Breifne. When the sacred Harp of Kings — vital to the successful coronation of a new king — goes missing just weeks before the Midsummer Day ceremony, they are drafted to pose as traveling musicians on a quest to retrieve the harp before disaster strikes. Soaked in gorgeous Celtic imagery and mythology, this standalone fantasy from the author of the Sevenwaters novels offers a perfect entry point for readers of Naomi Novik and Anne Bishop eager for a book that offers similar pleasures.

The Harp of Kings is Book 1 of Warrior Bards. Our previous coverage of Juliet Marillier includes The Blackthorn & Grim Trilogy.

[Click the images for September-sized versions.]

The Bone Ships, by R.J. Barker (Orbit, 512 pages, $15.99 paperback/$9.99 digital, September 24)

In this first book of a new trilogy, R.J. Barker (Age of Assassins) paints a world where island kingdoms wage a war via ships built from dragon bones, the only material strong enough to withstand the ocean’s fury. But dragons have been extinct for a long time, and as the old ships wear out, an end to the war is in sight. But then, a living dragon is sighted, prompting a scramble to capture it in order to build new ships — or destroy it before someone else can. Meas Gilbryn — once a powerful noble, now a pacifist — takes control of the ship Tide Child, crewed by the condemned, and sets off to find the dragon before anyone else, and maybe stop a war in the process.

The Bone Ships is Book 1 of The Tide Child Trilogy. Not sure we’ve covered anything by R.J. Barker before? Don’t think so.

The Monster of Elendhaven, by Jennifer Giesbrecht (Tor.com, 160 pages, $16.99 in hardcover/$9.99 digital, September 24)

Jennifer Giesbrecht’s grimdark debut is set in Elendhaven, a sooty, grimy place still reeling from a devastating plague. Florian Leickenbloom’s family lost everything, and so the sorcerer summons a supernatural being, Johann, to assist him in a horrifying plan to bring on another plague in a twisted attempt at revenge against those who profited from the original disaster. Unluckily for Johann and Florian, the Mage Hunter has been charged with stopping Florian by any means necessary, even as Johann is twisted into a monstrous form and sent forth to strangle and terrify. This dark fantasy novella brings horror to the fore, and signals the appearance of a fearsome new talent.

Don’t know much about Jennifer Giesbrecht, but her first novel is getting a lot of advance buzz.

A Song for a New Day, by Sarah Pinsker (Ace, 384 pages, $16 trade paperback/$9.99 digital, September 10)

Sarah Pinsker’s debut novel is a lovely ode to the power of emotion and music, set in a near future where a desire for security and safety has led almost everyone to live isolated lives, and where connections to others are mostly virtual. Luce Cannon is a rock musician who defies the law against public gatherings to perform live for tiny audiences. Her music awakens something in Rosemary Laws, who has been raised in emotionless solitude and works for the StageHolo corporation recruiting musicians like Luce to be reality stars — a gig that requires her to actually go out into the world, and possibly connect with someone on a dangerously personal level. This is an unusual, heartfelt take on dystopian themes from a celebrated author of short fiction.

Now Sarah Pinsker — her, we know. She’s incredible. Her novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road” (Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2015) won the 2016 Nebula Award; she’s been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula (four times) and World Fantasy Awards. Her first novel has been much anticipated (and it has a main character named “Luce Cannon” — how awesome is that?)

The Imaginary Corpse, by Tyler Hayes (Angry Robot, 312 pages, $12.99 paperback/$9.99 digital, September 10)

We all have cherished ideas that we eventually must let go. In his delightfully odd debut, Hayes asks a simple question: what happens to ideas that are too real to truly die? For an idea like imaginary friend Tippy the triceratops, who once helped a little girl make sense of her world, what awaits is the Stillreal, a place where once deeply held, now abandoned ideas continue to exist. Tippy makes a living in the Stillreal by solving crimes for his fellow ideas until one day he encounters the impossible — the Man in the Coat, who can somehow kill an idea permanently. It’s up to Tippy to confront his loss and save his fellow ideas from oblivion in the most unusual SFF-mystery mashup you’ll read this year.

Every new book list has to feature at least one title by Angry Robot. Check out Jeff’s complete list at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog here.

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog is a great resource for folks who can’t read every book every month. Here’s a few of our selections from their recent articles.

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of August 2019 by Jeff Somers
The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of July 2019 by Jeff Somers
The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of May 2019 by Jeff Somers
The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of September 2018 by Jeff Somers
The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of July 2018 by Jeff Somers
The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of June 2018 by Jeff Somers

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Alexandra Rowland’s first novel with Saga Press, A Conspiracy of Truths, was published just last year (and we covered it here). Publishers Weekly called it “An impressive and thoroughly entertaining fantasy,” and editor Navah Wolfe offered up this intriguing synopsis: “In a bleak, far-northern land, a wandering storyteller is arrested on charges of witchcraft… His only chance to save himself rests with the skills he has honed for decades — tell a good story, catch and hold their attention, or die.” The sequel A Choir of Lies was published earlier this month, and Paul Weimer at Tor.com gave it an enthusiastic review, saying:

In A Conspiracy of Truths, we are introduced to Chants, a self-selected group of people who travel the world, collecting and telling stories. Our main characters, Chant… and Ylfing, wind up in the country of Nuryevet, where Chant runs afoul of the law, winds up in prison, and — with the power of stories, and the help of a few people outside the prison — manages to overthrow a society…

In A Choir of Lies, the focus is on the former Ylfing, several years later… In Heyrland (a setting reminiscent of the heights of Early Modern Holland) he takes a job as a translator, helping to create a booming market for an odious but beautiful plant. And as the prices and money spent on these blooms increases and increases to the benefit of his employer, the dangers of a tulip-mania start to become painfully clear… But there is more going on than just that. The book, such as we have, is annotated, by someone who knows about Chants and who and what they are… Throughout the book, “Mistress Chant” extensively comments on what is written down, giving her own perspective, and criticism, and it is sometimes sharp indeed. And it challenges everything we think we know about Chants… My decision on whether I enjoy the metafictional, metatextual, cosmopolitan, erudite and engaging fantasy that Alex Rowland creates is clear – I most certainly do.

A Choir of Lies is a far cry from a typical fantasy, and that’s a huge part of its appeal (and a fantasy retelling of Holland’s infamous Tulip Mania of 1637 sounds fascinating). It was published by Saga Press on September 10, 2019. It is 464 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover, and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Nick Sciacca (I think).

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Yesterday I posted my last full review of a film from the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival. Today, then, a post looking back at this year’s Fantasia. First, as always, my profound thanks to everyone who puts the festival together. And thanks as well to the audiences, who give the festival a reason for being. Special thanks to everyone I watched movies with, everyone I waited in line with, and everyone who I talked with and hung out with during Fantasia 2019.

This year was a bit odd for me, in that for the first week or even two I felt that while I was watching a lot of very solid feature films I was nevertheless missing a certain sense of surprise; a feeling I normally have at Fantasia of being blindsided by a movie, or a set of movies one after another. This may have simply been a function of what films I happened to see, or a subjective impression caused by some minor health issue (chronic fatigue takes many forms). Certainly that sense of mild shock did set in before too long. But it came from an unexpected place. What struck me as most impressive about the festival this year were not features but the short films.

It has been observed that the relation of short film to long film is more-or-less that of the short prose story to the novel. The short format is capable of powerful work, condensing narrative into terse, elliptical, allusive flashes. Artists often work at that length before embarking on longer stories, sometimes to hone their craft, sometimes to build a name, sometimes because they love the form. But audiences tend to prefer immersion in a longer story. In any case, while there are a number of outlets for prose short stories, short film rarely gets the same kind of exposure.

There are exceptions. It’s perfectly fair to talk about TV episodes as short film, for example. But one of the strengths of a good short is the way it can build a world very quickly, establishing as much as we need to know about character and telling a story with them in just a few minutes. So I want to write for a moment about a film I saw this year that I haven’t yet covered: “Balloon,” by Shin Hyun-woo.

Every year Fantasia has several blocks of animated shorts for children that play at the McCord Museum of Canadian History, not far from the main Fantasia theatres. I have two young nieces, and saw two blocks of those films this year. Plans for coverage here from age-appropriate reviewers fell through, but I have to say as an adult viewer that I was generally impressed by the craft I saw in these shorts.

In particular: Vladislav Bairamgulov’s folklore-like “A Little Light,” about a boy seeking fire in a deep wood, is atmospheric and funny. Park Sae-mi’s “Mira” is a wildly inventive expressionistic fable. Fillip Diviak and Zuzana Cupová’s “Cloudy” marries a sharp sense of humour with a strong design sense. Nicolas Deveaux’s “Athleticus” series of shorts is a uses straight-faced CGI to hilarious effect in showing animals competing in Olympic events. Thanh-Long Vo’s “Morpho Bleu” used a beautiful visual symbol to tell a fable about a young girl daring to learn new things, and did so without dialogue and in only one minute; it’s a splendid example of the power of visual storytelling.

But in particular I was moved by “Balloon.” It’s the story of a young girl who finds a red balloon, which lifts her out of her usual life into a worldwide journey, and then out of this world entirely. A post-credits sting provides the perfect coda to a tale about a young person having their imagination fired. It is a beautiful film with a lovely colour sense, and without words it tells a powerful story about the wonders awaiting the explorer of the final frontier.

I saw “Balloon” not too long after seeing the disappointing Astronaut, and the contrast brought home to me how powerful the short form can be. “Balloon” is literally 5 minutes long, but I was more involved with its lead character than with anything in Astronaut, and saw more powerful images in the short than the feature. Crucially, and this is the reason for the comparison, “Balloon” was far, far more eloquent about the idealism of exploration and the wonder of space travel than Astronaut.

And “Balloon” was only one of the excellent shorts I saw this year. “Girl in the Hallway” may still be the strongest film I saw at the whole festival. “Here & Beyond” had a powerful emotional heft. “A Japanese Boy Who Draws” used experimental visual approaches with incredible success.

You never know what you’re going to get at Fantasia. For me, this year was the year of short films. I do not claim to be a particular fan of the format, but I like to think I can appreciate good moviemaking of whatever length. And in 2019, that’s where an awful lot of very strong work happened to be found.

It’s one of the virtues of the film festival format: the chance to see some of the best shorts of the year. Whether in showcases, or placed before a feature film, attending Fantasia means getting to see short works I would not get to see otherwise. Would not even have heard of, in fact.

This brings me around to what I try to articulate every year: the Fantasia festival lets me see visions I would not otherwise see. For a viewer that is the power of a festival, and of this festival in particular. The gathering of art and of different artistic sensibilities, the effect that comes from having one work followed by another. I think this is especially so for a genre festival where the fantastic can come out, where the world of a film cannot be taken for granted.

This year it took a while for me to wake up to the richness of the filmic worlds I was seeing, perhaps. But it was inevitable that I would wake, sooner or later. Fantasia represents too much creativity gathered in one place for three weeks in July for that not to happen. This year as every year Fantasia was a great success and a profound experience. Once again I am indebted to the organisers and the filmmakers who contributed to it. And once again I am left drained, yet still looking forward to next year.

Find the rest of my Fantasia coverage from this and previous years here!

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. You can buy collections of his essays on fantasy novels here and here. His Patreon, hosting a short fiction project based around the lore within a Victorian Book of Days, is here. You can find him on Facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

I chose to finally write about The Walking Dead after nine seasons because of the departure of a major character, which changed the whole dynamic of the series, turning it into a different direction (Season 10 broadcasts Oct 6, 2019). For fans of the show, much of what is in this article is me stating the obvious. I know many people who have stopped watching the show after various seasons, for one reason or another. I also know people who have never watched TWD and never will, and some who have just started watching. There may be some hints and clues about certain things, but there are no real spoilers here. This article is about how the show affects me, personally.

Someone on Facebook commented that they stopped watching simply because the show is so sad, even depressing. True. This is not a comedy. There’s a lot of sorrow and sadness in almost every episode, a veritable trail of tears. Sometimes the grief on an actor’s face is enough to get to me. There are powerful emotions here: both love and hate, as well as fear and horror in the eyes of the characters; there’s also plenty of heart and soul poured into these scenes, which the cast so effectively conveys. As a relative told me when we were discussing the series over the Labor Day weekend, “My heart has been ripped out over and over again by what happens to these characters. I feel their pain, I feel their grief and I mourn with them.” I agree with her. I’ve gotten caught up in the lives and deaths of these characters. So please, bear with me.

Although I’ve read only a handful of Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels, I’ve been a fan of the television series since episode one, and still remain a fan. I’m not a mad puppy because the show’s producers and writers made some changes which aren’t part of Kirkman’s mythos. Certain characters that had been killed in the graphic novels became so popular on the TV show that the producers decided to keep them around. Other popular characters were killed off on the show and, as most writers know, characters and plot twists often demand to be heard and made.

All in all, I think Frank Darabont, Gale Anne Hurd, Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger, and a truly outstanding ensemble cast all brings Kirkman’s vision to life. Yes, I get frustrated with the show over some plot twists, when the good guys fail to kill the bad guys when they had the chance, or when a likeable character is killed off. Yet such decisions often lead to more plot twists and turns. All that being said, the reality of TWD’s world reflects the true nature of Life: Death happens, tragically, senselessly, unexpectedly. Good people die. Bad people go on living. Even good decisions can lead to tragic and fatal results. Every decision, whether wise or foolish, has some sort of consequence. Sometimes the results are small blessings. Sometimes things go horribly wrong. Murphy’s Law rules in this world. Either you’re alive and fighting desperately to stay that way, or you’re dead — permanently or not. Everything means something. Everything ties into something else. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions and mortared with bad ones, and this is the world of The Walking Dead. This is Hell.

“When there’s no more room in Hell, the Dead shall walk the Earth.” — George A. Romero, Dawn of the Dead (original 1978)

TWD’s Ancestry

The Walking Dead is a direct and legitimate descendant of George Romero’s Living Dead films, and it often pays homage to him. For me, TWD is the penultimate “zombie apocalypse” epic, and like Romero’s films, the series is not about the zombies. Yes, the show is bloody and graphically violent, as it should be. But I see nothing gratuitous here; that’s the nature of this vicious world, and only part of the horror that has befallen it. The show is all about the people who fight for their lives, fighting to survive in a dark and hopeless world. You can replace the walking dead with more realistic threats like nuclear holocaust, a pandemic, world-wide drought and famine — whatever. It would still be much the same: a nightmare.

In a way, the series reminds me of the post-apocalyptic novels of J.G. Ballard: The Crystal Word, The Drought, The Wind from Nowhere, and The Drowning World. Ballard used ecological global disasters to examine the human condition, to tell stories about the survivors and how these catastrophes affect them, how they change them. This is what The Walking Dead is doing in the context of a zombie apocalypse, and why it still works for me. Although the show is played out in a scenario filled with terror and horror, it is not just another tale of zombies eating the flesh of the living: this is pure human drama, filled with tension and suspense, and yet not without subtle touches of humor that come from the dialog between characters who are not there just for comedic relief, nor does the humor play out through moments of slapstick involving comical zombies. The resurrected Dead in TWD, while slow-moving, are savage, dangerous and deadly, and there are a lot of them — hordes and herds of them all over the place. But the Dead are innocents, like any jungle or forest animal. No longer human, they do what they do, driven by mindless instinct: they eat anything that lives, although their main prey is people: we’re no longer at the top of the food chain. Ah, but people can be much worse: they terrorize other people and commit atrocities that far surpass what any zombie can do. Everything in life is about people, and everything about this show revolves around people, many of whom are just as dangerous as the living Dead. Sure, the Dead pose a threat because they outnumber us, they can multiply faster than we can, they’re relentless and they never get tired. As for the Living . . . they can think and plan, organize and shoot us from a distance. The Dead aren’t the monsters here: no . . . human beings are the monsters.

In essence, The Walking Dead is about human endurance and human frailty. The show is a celebration of the human spirit, and runs the entire spectrum of the human condition: finding and losing love; family, friendship and loyalty; trust and betrayal; heroism and cowardice; salvation, redemption, forgiveness; justice versus revenge; subjugation and slavery; kindness, depravity and barbarism. It’s about the capricious malevolence of greedy and power-hungry men and women: the strong prey on the weak. Through the characters that inhabit this world, the good, the bad and the ugly sides of human nature are revealed. We’re shown how an apocalypse of any kind will affect and change us. These characters have all lost someone they love and hold near and dear in their hearts. Many have lost everything they knew and had in life. The people in this world of the Dead are orphans of an apocalyptic storm, yet they hang on to what little hope they have. The Walking Dead is an End of the World scenario: dark and grim, brutal and cruel. To put a religious spin on it all, as George Romero often did . . . this could very well be the End Times, the Tribulation. This is Armageddon. But there’s no Rapture here, only the resurrection of the dead, and in the context of this show it’s the greatest cosmic joke of all.

The television series, like the graphic novels, is also about people who would never have met, if not for this apocalyptic nightmare. These people are fighting to survive, to protect each other from the Dead as well as from other people. Against all odds, they’re establishing communities and trying to rebuild civilization. They’re trying to save what’s left of the world. What this series does so well is to bring people together. Love blossoms, although lovers change, grow and move on — or are literally torn apart. There are gay, lesbian and interracial romances, and race, creed, color, religion and sexual orientation no longer matter to most of these characters. They’re just trying to rebuild their lives and find some happiness in a dying world inhabited by the Walking Dead. The world also has its share of human predators in the form of various gangs of killers, thieves and marauders: the butchers of Terminus, the Grady Memorial Hospital enclave and the murderous scavengers called the Wolves, for example.

Unlike the Resident Evil series, for instance, (which also owes much to George Romero), The Walking Dead is not wall-to-wall action, although it can hold its own when those moments burst upon the scene. Action scenes are expertly choreographed, filmed and edited. The special effects by KNB EFX are excellent. Make-up, practical effects, animatronic zombies, CGI, real locations, cinematography, set design and set decoration . . . these are all done with loving care and are as good as and often better than anything done in theatrical films. Everything about TWD is epic in scope, vision, characters and plot. However, all this would be mere window dressing if not for solid, three-dimensional characters, their motives and alliances, conflicts, suspicions and betrayals. The characters, their relationships, what they do, how they react, what they choose — these drive the plot and make the show interesting to me. Yeah, producers are making a big-budget zombie epic, and they pull none of their gory punches. They do it all. What they don’t do is neglect the human element, they don’t forget character development, which is always front and center, and a well-cast ensemble of fine actors bring to vivid life the characters they portray.

“They’re us. We’re them and they’re us.” — George Romero, Night of the Living Dead (1990 remake)

No “Red Shirts” Here

What I like are the quiet moments between the characters, revealing moments of reflection and discussion, when we learn more about them and come to understand them. Almost every major character has a back story, often told through flashback or dialog. Good guys or bad guys, we come to see this grave new world through their eyes. Each character is unique, although there are characters that serve as nothing more than “red shirts” — zombie fodder. The cast is superb, creating deep and complex characters: there are few clichés or stereotypes here. Characters have story arcs, and those with the most interesting and surprising arcs are my favorites. For instance: Morgan (Lennie James) — deeply troubled and conflicted, but heroic and honorable; he is the first character to save the life of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), the star of the series. Glenn (Steven Yuen) — likeable, young, brave, and who grows into a true leader: he is truly the one who sets the ball into play when he saves Rick from a herd of Walking Dead. That simple act of kindness takes them on a journey of friendship and a quest to build a safe haven for their group of survivors. I have many favorites: Herschel (the late Scott Wilson), Carol (Melissa McBride), Darryl (Norman Reedus), Michone (Danai Gurira), Eugene (Josh McDermitt), Tyrese (Chad Coleman), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Rosita ‎(Christian Serratos), Tara (Alanna Masterson), Maggie ‎(Lauren Cohan), and Father Gabriel ‎(Seth Gilliam.) It’s a huge cast, and the actors always get some memorable screen time in which their talent and acting skills allow them to shine. The cast is run through the mill and put through the whole gamut of human emotions and conflicts. Now I must mention the three villains who often steal the show, each one interesting, complicated, unique, and each quite different from the others.

First, we have the Governor of Woodbury, played with charming, disarming, creepy and ultimately deadly perfection by David Morrissey. A charismatic leader with a nasty agenda and a violent way of dealing with his enemies and traitors, for him there was no redemption. Then there’s Negan, leader of the self-styled Saviors of Sanctuary, expertly portrayed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. He’s a likeable badass, but truly cruel; he commits acts of murder and mayhem that would make Satan cry out in horror. He’s my favorite, and his arc has taken an unexpected turn. Negan has to pay for his crimes, but I hope he dies saving the lives of others, thus winning some redemption for himself. MINOR SPOILER ALERT: he’s already risked his life to save someone, and that act of unselfish heroism could be a new beginning for him. (As I stated above, I’ve read only a handful of the graphic novels, so I have no idea what becomes of Negan and, of course, what the show’s producers and writers might do with him.) Now we have an eerie, sinister and disturbing villainess: Alpha — played to wicked perfection by Samantha Morton. She’s the leader of the Whisperers, a community of people who prefer to live in the wild and have come up with a clever but grisly way to survive and walk among the Dead. They are, in my opinion, the most dangerous threat to the communities of Alexandria, the Kingdom, Hilltop and Oceanside because not only are there a lot of them, and they just come out of nowhere, they’re using the Dead, whom they call their Guardians, as their own private army.

What I also like about the show is that there are few pop-culture references. No one yells out, “Shoot ‘em in the head, like in the movies!” There’s no mention of other cinematic genres, either. In episode one, policeman Rick Grimes tells his partner Shane that his brother was once stuck in a blizzard with only cake or snacks, and the audiotapes of The Lord of the Rings, and later someone calls him Clint Eastwood. Another character mentions the arrival of Maggie during a crucial scene, “like Zorro on a horse,” and one little girl is told to read Tom Sawyer. That’s pretty much it. These are timeless references, not references to current artists, films, musicians, actors, politicians and celebrities. The excellent soundtrack by Bear McCreary, while using an original score, also includes a few known and popular songs, which works for me because it adds an element of realism to the series.

I finished writing this article on September 8, 2019, and The Walking Dead won’t be entering its tenth season until October. I have avoided all fan pages, websites and even the official Facebook page because I don’t want to know what may or may not happen next. I have, however, heard that Robert Kirkman’s final novel in the series is on its way. I have not seen even one episode of Fear the Walking Dead, and I don’t know if I ever will. I’ve also heard that another spin-off is in the works, as well as a theatrical film starring one of the actors who left TWD, but not because he or she was killed off. Perhaps this is now getting out of hand and too much is a little too much. But I suppose as long as people keep watching and the cash cow can still be milked, the Dead will continue to walk. I’d like to see TWD end before it grows stale for me, as it already has for so many others. I can see the show taking two or three more seasons at most to reach a satisfactory conclusion, although it may take longer, depending on how closely the producers stick to Kirkman’s novels, how he ends his series, and how well the ratings hold up. As much as I love the characters, the plot twists and turns, I hope The Walking Dead doesn’t end up with worn-out feet and finish with an “and they all lived happily ever after” finale.

What, No “Zombies”?

A side note here: I have yet to hear the word zombie used in The Walking Dead. According to what I heard, the “Bible” the writers use states that the word not be used. I can’t remember if Kirkman ever used zombie in his graphic novels, but it seems to me that the series’ producers and writers don’t want to use a term that has been incorrectly used and overused in films and TV. It’s almost as if zombie is a word unknown to the characters of TWD’s world, and they have no zombie myths and legends, no zombie films. Thus, the Dead are commonly referred to as Walkers, although different communities have their own words for them: Biters and Skineaters, for example. I applaud that decision by all involved.

In Part II of this blog series (coming soon), I’ll give my thoughts on how a new definition of zombie crept into the lexicon and vocabulary of pop culture.

Joe Bonadonna is the author of the heroic fantasies Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser (winner of the 2017 Golden Book Readers’ Choice Award for Fantasy); Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent; the space opera Three Against The Stars; the sword and planet space adventure, The MechMen of Canis-9; and the sword & sorcery adventure, Waters of Darkness, in collaboration with David C. Smith. With co-writer Erika M Szabo, he wrote Three Ghosts in a Black Pumpkin (winner of the 2017 Golden Books Judge’s Choice Award for Children’s Fantasy), and The Power of the Sapphire Wand. He also has stories appearing in: Azieran—Artifacts and Relics, GRIOTS 2: Sisters of the Spear, Heroika: Dragon Eaters, Poets in Hell, Doctors in Hell, Pirates in Hell, Lovers in Hell, and the upcoming Mystics in Hell; Sinbad: The New Voyages, Volume 4; and most recently, in collaboration with author Shebat Legion, he wrote Samuel Meant Well and the Little Black Cloud of the Apocalypse. In addition to his fiction, he has written a number of articles and book reviews for Black Gate online magazine.

Visit his Amazon Author or his Facebook Author’s page: Bonadonna’s Bookshelf

Joe Bonadonna has been a contributor to Black Gate since 2011, most recently posting his view on Dystopian Fiction:
IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part One and  IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part Two: J.G. Ballard

Cover by Paul Lehr

Cover by Lucinda Cowell

Analog Award was launched in 1979 for works published in the magazine in the preceding year. The award for Best Novelette has been given every year. The first award, presented in 1979, was presented to “Fireship” by Joan D. Vinge, although Orson Scott Card’s “Mikal’s Songbird” was also up for the award. In 1980, Card won the award for the sequel to “Mikal’s Songbird,” “Songhouse,” which appeared in the September, 1979 issue.

“Songhouse” related the story of a young boy over several years, although the passage of time is vague, as he is being trained in the Songhouse on Tew. Ansset Originally came to the Songhouse as an orphan, although the story does mention that he was a kidnap victim, a background feature which is mostly ignored within the confines of this specific novella. The Songhouse trains singers, who use songs, melodies, and harmonies to communicate on a variety of levels. Ansset is early on pegged to be trained for the highest honor of the house, the position of Songbird, and then to be given over to Mikal, the benevolent dictator of the galaxy.

The story focuses on Ansset’s education, both from the other students and from his assigned teacher, Esste, who in a prologue to the story promised to find someone to serve as a Songbird to Mikal. While a lot of his education takes place within the Songhouse, and Ansset learns, although the lessons remain obscure to the reader, eventually Esste takes him outside the Songhouse to learn the songs of other people. Ansset’s understanding of song is well beyond anything the members of the Songhouse can comprehend and eventually leads to a lengthy standoff between Ansset and Esste as they both try to understand each other.

Card switches between viewpoint characters, occasionally focusing on Ansset, although the character remains somewhat enigmatic. Esste is a more revealed character than the putative protagonist. Other characters who have parts of the story focused on them are Rruk, the student who first greeted Ansset upon his arrival and initiated him into the ways of the Songhouse, and Kya-Kya, a student at the house without the necessary musical talent, but who nevertheless has a major role to play in the story.

“Songhouse” has similarities to Card’s first published story, the 1977 story “Ender’s Game.” Both stories focus on a young boy who has been pulled away from his family and is being trained in a secluded school to be one of the elite, Ender and elite warrior against the buggers, Ansset and elite singer for Mikal. In both cases the messianic aspects of Ender’s primary characters preclude them from having any close relationships with the other students in their respective schools. Ansset interacts with a couple of students, who all gain in social stature from their interactions, but he primarily spends time with, Esste.

Card published “Mikal’s Songbird” in the May, 1978 issue of Analog and followed it up with the prequel, “Songhouse” in the September, 1979 issue of the same magazine. Eventually, Card expanded the story further and published the novel Songmaster in 1980.

The other novelettes considered for the Anlab Award included Larry Niven and Steven Barnes’s collaboration “The Locusts,” Donald Kingsbury’s “The Moon Goddess and the Son,” Michael McCollum’s “Beer Run,” and McCollum’s “Duty, Honor, Planet.”

Steven H Silver is a sixteen-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for 8 years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. He began publishing short fiction in 2008 and his most recently published story is “Webinar: Web Sites” in The Tangled Web. His most recent anthology, Alternate Peace was published in June. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference 6 times, as well as serving as the Event Coordinator for SFWA. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.

The continuing success of Warren Publishing’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella led Marvel to relaunch its black & white magazine division in 1973. While the best of these Marvel Magazine titles supplemented the color comic line with material that could not easily be published in a monthly Code-approved title (Dracula Lives and Savage Sword of Conan, for instance) or offered unique material not spun-off as a companion title to a monthly (Planet of the Apes and Tales of the Zombie, among others), The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu sought a middle ground as a response to the martial arts craze that had taken America by storm on the silver screen, the small screen, comic books, and even the radio (Enter the Dragon, TV’s Kung Fu, Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu, and Carl Douglas’ novelty hit single “Kung Fu Fighting”).

Master of Kung Fu may have been the lead feature at the start of the magazine’s run, but the title was never built solely around the continuing adventures of Shang-Chi alone. Articles, interviews, reviews, back-up strips, and reprints were just as important for a magazine that wanted not only to exploit the martial arts fad but also be taken seriously by martial arts students. For the purpose of our continuing series on Shang-Chi, we shall only be considering the black & white Master of Kung Fu strip that featured in most issues with passing reference to other material only where appropriate.

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #1 launched in April 1974 with Master of Kung Fu as the lead feature written and illustrated by Shang-Chi’s creators Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin. Following just a few months after the character’s color comics debut in Special Marvel Edition #15, the story returned us to Shang-Chi’s early years in Honan, China when he trained as an assassin in service of his father. We see that as early as age fourteen, the seeds of doubt were sown in Shang-Chi as he questions the deadly violence of his martial arts training after learning from his mentor, Cho Lin that the assassins he dispatched who infiltrated the temple for the sole purpose of murdering the son of Fu Manchu were actually hired by his father as a lethal training exercise. The largest flaw here is that Starlin clearly drew Shang-Chi without knowledge that Englehart wanted him depicted as a fourteen year old. It is a nice touch to see that the deliberate manipulation of Shang-Chi by Cho Lin is intended as a slow fuse rebellion on his part. The monk recognizes that Shang-Chi will eventually reject his father’s doctrine and the deadly force that is Shang-Chi will be turned upon his maker.

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #2 sees Jim Starlin replaced by Alan Weiss for Steve Englehart’s bizarre story combining  elements of Tod Browning’s disturbing and controversial 1932 film Freaks with H. G. Wells’ 1896 novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau. At first glance, one notices the monstrous Asian and African-American characters Weiss depicts are an unpleasant throwback to Golden Age comic art where rendering non-Caucasian characters as subhuman was an acceptable practice in the name of colonialism and wartime propaganda. While the influence of early Will Eisner and Jack Kirby is clearly deliberate, the grotesque characters are supposed to be literal monster-men as they are living results of Fu Manchu’s experimentation with human and animal life. These renegades have banded together and live in a backroom of a New York martial arts studio where they plot revenge against Fu Manchu. Unfortunately, they are unaware Shang-Chi has turned against his father and are determined to destroy the man who should be their greatest ally. Englehart’s script does a nice job of making the reader appreciate that their physical deformities pale compared to the psychological scarring they have received which points inevitably toward a tragic finish. The story was to mark Englehart’s last for the black & white magazine and his successor was the man who did so much to make Master of Kung Fu such a success as a color monthly for Marvel.

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #3 sees Doug Moench’s debut as Master of Kung Fu is relegated to the support feature rather than the lead. This marks an inauspicious debut for Moench and Paul Gulacy in the pages of the black & white title. It is likely Moench was unaware that Jim Starlin’s last script likewise began with Shang-Chi coming to the aid of a beautiful young woman being menaced by thugs in a dark alley. Happily, the stories divert from there as Shang-Chi stumbles into the Chinatown lair of The Adder, a colorfully named heroin pusher in the pay of Fu Manchu who is determined to eliminate the one person who could expose his true identity to the authorities, his own daughter. The parallels between the unfortunate young woman and her heinous father with Shang-Chi and Fu Manchu are nicely handled and leave the reader wishing for an expanded page count. Paul Gulacy’s more familiar art is a welcome sight for someone who has already worked their way through the first couple years of the monthly title.

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Special Album Edition #1 was the hastily assembled Annual pulled together after only three issues had seen print. The Annual offered a loosely-connected story arc threading three strips: Iron Fist, Sons of the Tiger, and Master of Kung Fu with Fu Manchu’s plot to abduct Chinese and American U.N. delegates during a peace conference in order to pit both nations against the other. The three stories are basically self-contained and no crossover occurs to allow the heroes to meet one another. Shang-Chi’s concluding chapter is mainly notable for marking the first pairing of Doug Moench with artist Mike Vosburg who will become the regular artist on the magazine. Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Black Jack Tarr are brought in for the finale. The storyline of all three chapters in this Annual is the first in the black & white magazine to approach the scope (if not the quality) of the monthly title. The Annual is perhaps most notable for David Anthony Kraft’s text piece on Sax Rohmer and the history of Fu Manchu in print and film.

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #4 returned Master of Kung Fu to the lead feature for a decidedly offbeat Doug Moench-Mike Vosburg tale involving Chow Loo, an unsuccessful Si-Fan assassin whose life is spared by Shang-Chi only to suffer a cruel fate when he attempts to deceive Fu Manchu to buy himself more time to complete his assignment. Mike Vosburg’s penchant for drawing stunningly beautiful women is on display here with his rendering of Ducharme, the mistress of Fu Manchu created by Marvel for the monthly comic. Ducharme’s opium addiction is portrayed much more graphically here freed of Code restraints than Gulacy could ever have done in the monthly book. There is also a noteworthy interlude where Shang-Chi travels across country by hitchhiking a ride with a hippie couple. Their pot smoking is featured heavily in another sign of the magazine taking advantage of its freedom from Code restrictions. This is actually anything but a filler story for Shang-Chi will remain in California for the next several issues of the magazine which was now beginning to establish its own continuity outside of the monthly color title. An unpleasant encounter with bikers who nearly rape and murder the hippie couple is the beginning of a recurring theme for the series as Moench allows Shang-Chi to do what countless bullied victims have wanted to do forever. This would also become a recurring theme in the pages of The Incredible Hulk and, even more explicitly, in its own companion magazine title. The story’s grotesque finale revealing Chow Loo’s fate is further proof that Doug Moench had begun reading Rohmer and working to incorporate more of his concepts into the series.

Issue #5 sees Keith Pollard substituting for Mike Vosburg for an interesting filler which sees a disappointed Shang-Chi squirming in his seat in an L.A. theater while watching an unrealistic martial arts film called “Fists of Hate” when he recognizes the film’s star, Kwai Loo as a fellow student at Fu Manchu’s Honan retreat. A flashback shows how Shang-Chi’s defeat of Kwai Loo during a martial arts contest put him on the path that led him away from the Si-Fan to the shallow facade of Hollywood. Shang-Chi pays a visit to the studio where Kwai Loo is filming his latest martial arts exploitation quickie for a Caucasian director who cares little for authenticity and even less for his actors’ safety. Of course, the past always catches up with people and Kwai Loo is no exception for Shang-Chi was not the only one to recognize him on the silver screen. Moench’s script mixes Hollywood lore from George Raft to John Bindon to Bruce Lee in the story’s portrayal of organized crime and the film world making for a deadly combination. Moench is also explicitly commenting about Robert Clouse in his character of the movie director who sees nothing wrong with exploiting unused footage of his star after his tragic death on the set of their latest film.

Issue #6 brings back Mike Vosburg to illustrate another of Doug Moench’s biker revenge fantasies. This time, Shang-Chi stops by a burger joint to sample a cheeseburger for the first time in his life (he opts just for french fries upon learning a burger is made from cow meat) when he has an unfortunate encounter with bikers that is exacerbated by their leader’s flirtatious girlfriend. Moench was building towards bigger statements on violence and the sanctity of life from a Buddhist perspective. As it is, this issue is simply a step towards this larger goal and, from that perspective, may justify it being relegated to the support feature for the second time in the magazine’s first year of existence.

Issue #7 sees Doug Moench experimenting with narrative construction in a tale that brings back the vengeful mutations from Issue #5 and mixes them in with a story seeing Shang-Chi run afoul of the Mafia. Mike Vosburg’s art gives him a chance to finally render Fu Manchu and Peko with the same ornate care of his illustrations in the recent Rohmer biography, Master of Villainy or in the contemporaneous fanzine, The Rohmer Review. As always, his rendering of Ducharme was nothing short of lovely.

Issue #8 offers one of Doug Moench’s best scripts for the magazine and also a highly sophisticated opening sequence from Mike Vosburg that cuts quite literally between two characters delineating the differences in life from opposite sides of the track. This sort of story became quite typical of Batman under Denny O’Neil’s run on the series, but the evident influence does nothing to undermine the strength of Moench’s writing. The focus is the social understanding of the psychopath as victim of unrelenting abuse who perpetuates the cycle as they mature by inheriting the role of abuser. Just as Neal Adams would do for Denny O’Neil in similar Dark Knight tales, Vosburg depicts the psychopath as a monstrous overgrown child with Vosburg emphasizing the influence of the Boris Karloff interpretation of the Monster of Frankenstein.

Shang-Chi’s inability to resolve violence with reason is in keeping with Moench’s recurring theme for the series. The unending cycle of violence has been present nearly since the book’s inception and points toward an inevitable rejection of Western storytelling tradition once Shang-Chi has suffered enough tragedy to reject combat as a viable solution to conflict. Despite milking the market for a new character with not only a monthly title, but a quarterly title and a bi-monthly non-Code magazine; in Shang-Chi, Marvel had created a character who was fated to abandon his efforts to conform to Western concepts of strength. The loyal reader’s enjoyment becomes less about the series’ adherence to formula than it is about seeing how long the series can postpone the inevitability of fate.

William Patrick Maynard is a writer and film historian. His commentaries have appeared on releases from MGM, Shout Factory, and Kino-Lorber. He is the authorized continuation writer for the Sax Rohmer Literary Estate and is the author of new Fu Manchu thrillers for Black Coat Press.

Cover art by Tiffany Dae

The Nebula Awards Showcase is one of the most prestigious and honored anthologies in Science Fiction. It has appeared every year since 1966, and been published by Pyr since 2012. Pyr’s once considerable output has slowed in the last year, and I was very pleased to see the 2019 Showcase volume picked up by one of the best of the new small press publishers, Parvus Press. It’s a significant coup for them, and I hope it’s a sign of even greater things to come.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s introduction is one of the most powerful non-fiction pieces I’ve read in a Nebula anthology in a long time, both a celebration of the increasing diversity in our field, and a bald statement about why it’s so vitally important.

When I first harnessed the courage to start sending my stories out in 2006, it truly was a frightening prospect. I had never seen a Latina writer in any of the fantasy and science fiction magazines I read, nor at a bookstore… The science fiction and fantasy section was virtually devoid of people like me…

It’s easy to declare that diversity is a done deal, or even worse, that diversity is a trend, a fad, which has run its course. It is easy to churn lists that purport to contain the 10 Best Science Fiction Novels of all time and find out that the only woman who made the list was Mary Shelley. Or to find threads with people saying that women can’t write Lovecraftian fiction because women are able to give birth and therefore cannot understand cosmic horror (I am not making this comment up)…

What is hard is to build a better, more inclusive publishing community. It’s hard to read widely, to read beyond the things that you are used to, to organize events which feature a broad variety of guests, to write lists which go beyond the usual suspects. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible… We call speculative fiction the literature of the imagination, so why not imagine a future in which a young writer can find plenty of authors to emulate? A future in which that author is not silent and scared and feeling like she has no stories to tell, as I was 13 years ago when I began my writing journey.

This year’s volume contains some magnificent material, including “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience(TM)” by Rebecca Roanhorse, “A Human Stain” by Kelly Robson, and the complete text of Martha Wells’ Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella, All Systems Red, the first Murderbot tale. Here’s the complete tale of contents.

Introduction by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The 2018 Nebula Award Finalists
“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience(TM)” by Rebecca Roanhorse
“A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
“Weaponized Math” by Jonathan P. Brazee
“Utopia, Lol?” by Jamie Wahls
“Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
“Wind Will Rove” by Sarah Pinsker
“Dirty Old Town” by Richard Bowes
“The Last Novelist (or a Dead Lizard in the Yard)” by Matthew Kressel
“Carnival Nine” by Caroline M. Yoachim
“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time” by K.M. Szpara
“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” by Fran Wilde
“A Human Stain” by Kelly Robson

Our previous coverage of Nebula anthologies includes:

Nebula Awards One and Two
Nebula Award Stories 3, edited by Roger Zelazny, reviewed by William I. Lengeman III
Nebula Winners Fourteen, edited by Frederik Pohl
Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson
Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear
Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, edited by Mercedes Lackey
Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda
Nebula Awards Showcase 2018, edited by Jane Yolen

We’re closing out the 2019 Years Best volumes, but there are a couple more in the pipeline, including books from Paula Guran, and Ellen Datlow. The ones that have appeared so far include:

The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume Thirteen, edited by Jonathan Strahan
The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois
The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Four, edited by Neil Clarke
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019, edited by Rich Horton
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019, edited by Carmen Maria Machado and John Joseph Adams

Nebula Awards Showcase 2019 will be published by Parvus Press on October 1, 2019. It is 414 pages, priced at $19.99 in trade paperback. The cover is by Tiffany Dae. Learn more at Parvus Press.

See all our recent coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy and SF here.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Day of the Dead (1985)

“Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”  — George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead (original 1968)

Oh, How Those Zombies Have Evolved, Devolved and Decayed!

This ends a two-post series (Part One here) on The Walking Dead. The first post concluded with the observation that TWD has a mysterious lack of “zombie” vocabulary.

To my knowledge, George A Romero invented the flesh-eating zombie genre. Before him there were films like White Zombie, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Zombies of Mora Tau — films I saw as a kid in the 1950s and 1960s, and all of them deal with more traditional, Haitian-voodoo zombies. After the original Night of the Living Dead, filmmakers such as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci jumped into the zombie arena. Then came a host of spin-offs, take-offs, remakes, reboots and rip-offs.

I always thought George Romero never used the word zombie in his Living Dead films. But after binge-watching all six of his living dead films, I learned a few things. In Night of the Living Dead, the Dead are referred to as cannibals and ghouls. In Dawn of the Dead, the character of Peter (Ken Foree) calls them zombies; the end credits list four actors under the heading, LEAD ZOMBIES. The characters in Day of the Dead call the Dead everything but zombies. By the time Romero got around to filming Land of the Dead, the zombie genre had exploded like a Walker’s head after being hit by a shotgun blast. In this film, the Dead are called Stenches, although one character refers to them as Walkers. Dennis Hopper calls them zombies in one scene. In Diary of the Dead, which I consider Romero’s best, and was basically a reboot of the series, no one knows what’s going on, and the Living Dead are referred to as “the Dead.” In his final film, Survival of the Dead, the word zombie is used a couple of times. Tom Savini’s fairly decent 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, with a new screenplay by George Romero, went back to the basics and did not use zombie as a term for the Living Dead.

It’s interesting to note the changes in the appearance and behavior of the Living Dead throughout the six films, how they started to evolve while physically turning more and more “rotten.” In Night of the Living Dead, the Dead look fresh, almost alive. The first one we see in the cemetery remembered how to open a car door when he attacked Barbra, and even picked up a rick to smash the car’s window. The living-dead girl in the farmhouse basement used a garden tool to kill her mother. While the Dead in Dawn of the Dead showed more signs of rot and decay, there was one that picked up a tire iron to use as a weapon; another remembered how to play hockey. There was a lot of humor and comical zombies in this film, and they displayed some sort of memory of visiting a shopping mall. By Day of the Dead, when the tone of the series grew darker and more hopeless, the Dead have decayed even more, and they became “dumb fucks,” as one character called them. But then there was Bub (wonderfully played by Sherman Howard), who had become Doctor Matthew “Frankenstein” Logan’s (Richard Liberty) pet project. Bub had pretty much been tamed and domesticated, and displayed not only memory but some feelings of kindness and even friendship for the doctor. Bub also listened to cassette tapes, tried to shave, remembered what a telephone is, saluted Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and later aimed an empty .45 at him. In the film’s climax, Bub found a loaded gun and shot the Captain.

Land of the Dead (2005)

Diary of the Dead (2007)

Survival of the Dead (2009)

The fourth film, Land of the Dead, showed the Stenches to be still rotting away as they begin to evolve: the Dead musicians trying to play their instruments, for instance, and of course Big Daddy (interestingly played by Eugene Clarke), the gas station zombie who appears to be almost human, is filled with anger and rage — and remembers the job he had in life; he also learns how to use a machine gun and a jackhammer, and eventually organizes, teaches and becomes the leader of the Stenches. However, as I mentioned above, Diary of the Dead was basically a series reboot, and the living dead had reverted back to being mindless animals. But then, in the final film, Survival of the Dead, our world has pretty much ended and the Dead now rule. This is a film based on the Gregory Peck western, The Big Country, which Romero admitted was an influence. Only here, the rivalry and feud is between one Irish clan leader who believes the Dead can be taught to eat something other than people, and another clan leader who thinks they should all be put down like rabid dogs. It’s interesting to note that for the first time Romero used the same actor in both films: Alan van Sprang as Sergeant “Nicotine” Crockett, who had one scene in Diary, went on to star in Survival. Here again, we see the zombies evolving, especially in the character of the horse-riding Janet O’Flynn, twin sister to Jane; both roles played by Kathleen Munroe. In the end, the Dead do learn to eat something other than people.

The Walking Dead has pretty much returned to basics with their mindless and much more decayed Walkers, although they’re no less dangerous and savage. I’ve yet to see any signs that they’re evolving, becoming something else, as in the Resident Evil series. Again, I don’t know if “zombie evolution” is part of the graphic novels, and I have no idea if it will play a role in the television version. However, where Romero’s Living Dead were more often than not afraid of fire, the TV show’s Walkers are drawn to it like moths to a flame. In Land of the Dead, the Stenches are fascinated by “sky flowers” — fireworks used to distract them, until they lose interest and just keep shambling along. While I don’t find any “scares” in the Walking or Living Dead resurrected corpses, when I stop to think about it, they’re frightening because being dead, they have no fear; they’re relentless and cannot be stopped until their brains are turned to mush, sliced in half or filled with bullet holes.

Lastly, I’d like to briefly touch on the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. While I like this film, like the changes it made in an attempt to do something different, and think it’s a well-made film, I find it empty of theme, devoid of meaning. Sure, survival is the heart of it all, but this is basically an action film. I saw no social commentary, no message or statement being made.

Now, in 1968 there were few black actors starring in major motion pictures, and I can’t think of one horror film that featured a black hero. So Romero broke new ground when he cast Duane Jones to star as Ben, the hero. I don’t know if this was his vision all along or if he revised his script at some point because of the assassination of Martin Luther King. King was murdered on April 4, 1968, and Night of the Living Dead premiered on October 1, 1968. Thus, to me, an underlying theme or social commentary of the first film is racism. (Romero flipped things around in his script for the 1990 remake. In this one Ben (Tony Todd), still a hero, comes to a much different but just as tragic of an end, while the character arc for Barbra (Patricia Tallman) takes her from a frightened and screaming girl to a warrior woman who takes no shit. This film, for me, is a commentary on feminism, equal rights for women, and puts their strength and resilience in the forefront.)

As so many film critics and fans have remarked, the original Dawn of the Dead was all about the influence of consumerism in our lives. I see Day of the Dead as a return to the old “military versus the scientists” theme so often portrayed in 1950s’ science fiction films; it may even be a commentary on the military-industrial complex. Land of the Dead, in my opinion, is a commentary on capitalism and a two-class system: the rich and powerful live in the Fiddler’s Green Tower, while the poor and the destitute basically live on the streets. Mainstream media, the internet, bloggers, fake and altered news is at the heart of Diary of the Dead. Over the course of these six films the actual cause of the Dead being resurrected is never explained, and sometimes not even discussed. In Night of the Living Dead, there was mention of possible “radiation from the Venus probe” being the cause. In the next two films, characters discussed a religious explanation — like a plague sent by God to punish Mankind. In The Walking Dead, we know it’s some sort of virus that we’re all infected with, and even if we die in our sleep, we’ll rise again. But what’s the cause of this virus? Is it natural, extraterrestrial in origin or manmade — some scientific or medical experiment gone horribly wrong? Is there or will there be a cure? Perhaps we’ll find out, perhaps we’ll never know.

I hope you enjoyed this article, whether you are or are not a fan of The Walking Dead and George Romero’s Living Dead films.

Thank you for reading this!

Joe Bonadonna is the author of the heroic fantasies Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser (winner of the 2017 Golden Book Readers’ Choice Award for Fantasy); Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and the Order of the Serpent; the space opera Three Against The Stars; the sword and planet space adventure, The MechMen of Canis-9; and the sword & sorcery adventure, Waters of Darkness, in collaboration with David C. Smith. With co-writer Erika M Szabo, he wrote Three Ghosts in a Black Pumpkin (winner of the 2017 Golden Books Judge’s Choice Award for Children’s Fantasy), and The Power of the Sapphire Wand. He also has stories appearing in: Azieran—Artifacts and Relics, GRIOTS 2: Sisters of the Spear, Heroika: Dragon Eaters, Poets in Hell, Doctors in Hell, Pirates in Hell, Lovers in Hell, and the upcoming Mystics in Hell; Sinbad: The New Voyages, Volume 4; and most recently, in collaboration with author Shebat Legion, he wrote Samuel Meant Well and the Little Black Cloud of the Apocalypse. In addition to his fiction, he has written a number of articles and book reviews for Black Gate online magazine.

Visit his Amazon Author or his Facebook Author’s page: Bonadonna’s Bookshelf

Joe Bonadonna has been a contributor to Black Gate since 2011, most recently posting his view on Dystopian Fiction:
IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part One and  IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part Two: J.G. Ballard