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| Posted By : Gabe Dybing - 6/21/2006 10:58 AM | | So I was in the children's section of my library with my kids (they were mostly grabbing up smudged and scratched DVDs that would skip and freeze on our player and I was perusing the new children's releases) and I saw this interesting little hardbound volume called MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO.
Sometimes I think that if the library knew my habits they would be quite annoyed with me. Frequently I check out books that I don't read. I'm mildly interested in them; I bring them home and look them over. I might read the first chapter. Then I bring it back and the poor library has to reenter the book into the system and reshelve it. I make unnecessary work and trouble for the library.
Well, this time I checked out MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO (Book One: Foundling) and so far I've read more than one chapter. It has promise.
The author of this book, D.M. Cornish seems to have inherited the vision of Mervyn Peake (rather than Tolkien's), only Cornish's work promises to have more adventure action and outright magic and fantasy than Peake's work did. It again is like Peake in that Cornish also is a graphic artist; the book is "illustrated by the author." Like Peake, Cornish has detailed his own lush world with both words and illustrations.
Could be the Next Big Thing - that's why I often bring books home and don't read them. I quickly conclude that they won't be the Next Big Thing (which I'm always on the lookout for). But this might be different.
I'm also reading ASIMOV'S July 2006 issue (this mag consistently delivers, and I have been really taken with Paul Melko's earlier stories in this mag - anyone read him?) and I'm in volume 2 of the Library of America 3-volume collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. I have just finished the June issue of WEIRD TALES, which contains at least three really good fantasy stories. And I know that any moment now I'll pick up the Del Rey BRAN MAK MORN by Robert E. Howard.
The bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
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| Posted By : VeeJay - 6/22/2006 11:16 PM | I have only a passing familiarity with Mervyn Peake myself...read a few chapters of something (I forget the title now) while whiling away some time in a Barnes & Noblesse Oblige while I was in Florida a few years ago.
I was also told that Analog has 'harder' SF stories that IAsfm...is this true? I only have limited access to these mags at present...for example, on Penn State's online system, they grant access to Analog's through NetLibrary, but not IAsfm. And so far, I admittedly didn't find the stories I've been coming across in recent issues of Analog all that mightily impressive, and again this could be due to my overall jadedness and parochial tastes when it comes to SF...for instance, stories calling themselves SF that are set in the present day I'm hesitant to call SF in my interpretation of the word, if they involve no other outstanding tropes...visitors from elsewhere/elsewhen, odd astrophysical happenstances, etc. |
| Posted By : Gabe Dybing - 6/22/2006 11:32 PM | Hey, VeeJay, thanks for responding to my post!
Yes, ANALOG does make a determined effort to publish "harder sf," and I'm quite a fan (I didn't buy this months double issue, for the first time in months, simply because I'm on a tight budget and LOCUS gave it a bad review). The fun thing about ANALOG however is it used to publish pulpy stories when it was ASTOUNDING Magazine, and they still publish one now and then (right now I think back to one a few months ago with fondness, but I can't think of the title right now). As ANALOG, however, the magazine tries to publish sf that very well might verifiably HAPPEN. As such, the stories can be quite overwhelming - I mean, a few months ago I was reading about people farming the asteroids in space and it struck me - oh my god! This writer has all his math worked out! I think this can happen! I was blown away, filled with wonder, had a glimpse of what very well might be a probable future for humanity. Here's what ANALOG says for itself, from its webpage:
When editor John W. Campbell took over in 1938, he brought to Astounding an unprecedented insistence on placing equal emphasis on both words of "science fiction." No longer satisfied with gadgetry and action per se, Campbell demanded that his writers try to think out how science and technology might really develop in the future-and, most importantly, how those changes would affect the lives of human beings.
Overall, however, I consistently prefer ASIMOV'S to ANALOG because I like a little fantasy and profound strangeness with my sci fi, which ASIMOV'S seems to offer. About your preference for future stories - I have read some ANALOG stories set in contemporaneous times, but it seems to me that the majority of them are near or far future. You can almost get the impression that that's all this mag wants from perusing its writer's guidelines.
The bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
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| Posted By : erazmus - 6/26/2006 10:27 AM | Gabe,
You are probably not doing any favors for D.M. Cornish comparing him to Mervyn Peake. While those of us old enough to remember when Peake was a big thing might appreciate the comparison, most just wont get it. Even people who loved Peake when they read him, (way back in the sixties and early seventies, more than thirty years now, unless you read him before that) end up appolagizing for his precieved weaknesses when ever they mention him now.
However, the comparson worked for me, and I'll be keeping my eye out for his work.
And you kind of flashed over your impression of the issue of Weird Tales you mentioned. If that's June, that will have been the newest, #340, which I recall that I reported had not only fantasy mixed in with the horror but honest to gods S&S, not written by one of the editors or Tanith Lee! What did you think of the stories and the issue in general?
I buy and read an occasional digest but have been disappointed enough in the three remaining newstand digests that I don't subscribe anymore. I have been told recently to try some of my humorous stuff at Analog as "Stan Schmidt has a hell of a sense of humor!". Of course one must consider the source, in this case local SF writers Dan Hoyt and Will McCarthy, both of whom are mathmaticians as well as writers and both of whom sell to him all the time. I must admit I seem to enjoy Asimov's more than Analog or F&SF. I find most of my short fiction fix and less well distributed pubs, but this is a hard thing to do on a whim! I have hopes that Wildside press will get thier entire line decently distributed, so that people can "pick up a copy" of Strange Tales or Fantasy Magazine on a whim. Right now Weird Tales is the only title from them that gets into my local B&N, and that gets shelved in two or three different places, making it hard to find consistently. But I thnk my favorite SF mag, for SF content, is probably Absolute Magnitude.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises |
| Posted By : Gabe Dybing - 6/26/2006 11:17 AM | I'm probably wrong about this - yes, I'm wrong - but, however erroneously, I tend to divide all literature into two "schools" - the school of Tolkien and the school of Peake. I should stop doing this.
By the way, I think I've lost interest in MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO (not that it's bad - I just feel like I've gotten the "jist" of it already). I'll probably return it today. Now I'm reading THE GOBLIN RESERVATION by Simak, which I'm enjoying so much (the first time I read him) that I think I'll hunt up some more of his volumes at the library, including CEMETERY WORLD. I want to read more Poul Anderson - especially his "Viking writing." I loved WAR OF THE GODS and think I need to read HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA and THE BROKEN SWORD and some other ones. I think, pretty soon here, I'm going to write some "Viking fantasy" myself. Because my great grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant, I'm naturally interested in Norse mythology and Viking sagas and have been studying them for some time.
I'm also reading, of course, some real sagas - just finished THORSTEIN'S SAGA and THE SAGA OF FRIDTHJOF THE BOLD.
I really enjoyed this current issue of WEIRD TALES - a WHOLE lot more than the last - oh - three issues (and I think I skipped one in there) but not as much as I would wish. You're right, Mike, in that the fantasy tends to be written by Schweitzer and Lee - and these usually are some of the better stories. Unfortunately, I was very underwhelmed by Lee's offering this ish. My favorite story was "Small Magic," and "The Persecution of Artifice the Quill" came in a close second. I find it easiest to give my impression of this issue by sharing the letter I wrote to WEIRD TALES:
Dear Mr. Schweitzer,
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Despite “The Weird Case of the Missing Poetry” in issue 340 of WEIRD TALES, June 2006, I’m quite pleased.
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The Eyrie, as always, is interesting and informative. You provide a very apt discussion of how Eddison’s themes contrast with Tolkien’s. It seems that Eddison brought to his fantasy novels a sentiment borrowed (and perhaps, as he might have believed, shared) wholesale from the Sagas. The Demons and Witches might be seen as living in some kind of Norse afterlife, where Odin’s heroes get to eat and drink and then kill one another without consequence: the Demons simply turn back time (or however they accomplish it – it’s been a while since I’ve read the book), and the Witches once again are there to kill. It’s heaven indeed.
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I would add that the case of Eddison’s enthusiasm for the “Viking code” is strengthened by the observance that he wrote a Viking novel that (I read somewhere) C.S. Lewis considered one of the best Viking novels ever written, STYRBJORN THE STRONG. In my day, I consider Poul Anderson’s WAR OF THE GODS the best Viking novel ever written.
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This issue of WEIRD TALES might be seen as a special “theology issue,” specifically because of three of the best tales, “Small Magic,” “A Taste Sweet & Salty,” and “The Persecution of Artifice the Quill.” All might be read as partial allegories for religious concepts (I’m not privileging “Western religion” here). “Small Magic” boldly claims that the resurrection of one life is more powerful than the deaths of many. It also shows that one man adhering to one small vow is unconquerable. This is a powerful story. “A Taste Sweet & Salty” shows one man giving over, however unjustly, his life for another, and how this leads to the man’s ultimate redemption from the purgative cycle he’s been in. In “The Persecution of Artifice the Quill,” “magic” may be read to stand in for “belief in religious structures,” and the protagonist in this story learns that, although the use of “magic” may be much abused, it does provide – even for our protagonist – some ultimate value (I hesitate to say it’s “true” – too loaded a word). I especially enjoyed this tale because of the giant spider mounts. This is a rich and enchanting story.
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Having heard so much about her, I was excited to read Holly Phillips’s “No Such Thing as an Ex-Con.” This is a good read, saved from mediocrity because the protagonist has been convicted of being an accessory to murder. I was thrilled by “Chinese Whispers” until the end; it’s unclear why all the dead figures should come for George, other than to appear as an attempt by the author to provide that obligatory “shiver.”
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“Small Magic” gets my vote for best story this issue."
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I just finished the July ASIMOV'S. As much as I want to love WT surpassingly, ASIMOV'S still is better. The best stories were "Nano Comes to Clifford Falls" by Nancy Kress, "Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt, and "The Djinn's Wife" by Ian McDonald. I have been absolutely gaga over the last two contributions Paul Melko has given the mag, so perhaps I was expecting too much. Melko's "Snail Stones" was a great story but not one of my favorites.
I really, really want to like F&SF, I really, really do, but it seems like I just don't really "get" the magazine. (I'm sitting here trying to think of a single story that stands out, fills me with wonder, over the past so many years, and I can't, I'm stumped, it seems that most of its content is tepid.) But I keep trying now and then; I keep hope alive.
So, Mike, which mags would you recommend for traditional fantasy/sword and sorcery content (besides BLACK GATE, of course), or are there any?
The bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
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| Posted By : erazmus - 6/26/2006 12:21 PM | Gabe,
I rather liked F&SF's lead offering this last issue (July 06)-- _Kansas, She Says, Is the Name of the Star_ by R. Garcia y Robertson. It was just quirked in my dirction, being a huge Baum fan.
But as to your question, tradition heroic fantasy/S&S is pretty thin on the ground these days, Black Gate, as you mention, and of course Flashing Swords on the net. If you want to find it on the news stands your going to need a time machine. Not that it isn't being published at all, its just not coming out where a casual buyer is going to find it.
Paul Jessup has some coming out in his _Grendlesong_ and the new british monthly _Forgotten Worlds_ isn't totally hostile to publishing it. Lots of other small press operations have some, Carnifex press has plenty and there are anthologies from them and Pitch-Black, Fantasist Enterprises, Hole in the Wall Press and maybe others, either out now or coming soon. But you have to hunt for them and usually you will have to spend money before you get to see the product.
But we're going to change that. "We" being the membership of SASA, an org that doesn't yet exist but is being put together right here on the SFReader boards, a group of writers, editors, publishers and fans of S&S who want to see more of it.
I'll admit I'm a hard copy print snob who doesn't think much of any magazine you have to subscribe too to find. Not that I dislike such magazines, its just that I prefer magazines that are put out where new fans, fans who don't even realize they are fans, can find them. Right now the only magazines I know of with a news stand distribution I've actually seen evidence of that publish any S&S are Black Gate and Weird Tales, with Weird Tales just getting back to it with John Betancourt rejoining the editorial team. There are lots of other pubs that offer it, but the news stand is a tough place to crack these days.
S&S has always been in a odd niche, kind of squooshed in between Fantasy and Horror. It claims Fantasy but has almost always been featured most prominently, from its beginnings, along side horror stories, starting in the original Weird Tales and its short lived competitor Strange Tales. Strange Tales is also being revived by Wildside, but I haven't seen a copy yet. Lots of Horror magazines reference Weird Tales (the original) or its more famous authors in their guidelines but few, including the current version until recently, actually offer the bredth and scope of the original magazine or go so far as to mix heroic (if dark) fantasy in with their horror stories. I think a goodly number of the editors of such magazines are familar with the original Weird Tales only by reputation and through reprints of selected stories, which lean heavily towards the horror rather than the fantasy offerings that gave the magazine such a unique flavor. Its content was mostly horror and, as with most pulp magazines of the day, mostly bad. But it usually avoided the malaise that haunts todays genre mags. It usually had something different.
You don't see that too often today. Its the missing factor. The idea that Fantasy was this and goes over here, horror is that and goes over there, Science Fction is this and goes over there, wasn't as set in stone as we have today. And the magazines were all the better for it, in my opnion.
I've high hopes for Jim Baen's Universe, which buys a lot of fiction in a wide variety but again, you need to be able to down load it to read it, so far.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises |
| Posted By : Gabe Dybing - 6/26/2006 2:13 PM | Mike, I have high hopes for GRENDELSONG - it looks quite lovely!
I wonder how we can get more trad. fantasy/s&s on newsstands. I really hope SASA comes through. Are you and the other members planning on launching a largely distributed magazine? That would absolutely rock! Do you think it would matter to organize a campaign of letter-writing to ASIMOV'S, ANALOG, and F&SF (I know writing letters to REALMS doesn't help - years ago I wrote about three bitter letters; then, when I joined this gang, I noticed that other people had done the same and wondered why we weren't paid more attention to)?
ASIMOV'S is funny. The GLs say that the editor doesn't really want to get very specific about what she wants or doesn't want, because inevitably the story will come along that will force her to change her mind. But she knows there is ONE thing she doesn't want - sword and sorcery! I was so nettled after reading that, that I wanted to boycott the mag (but, as scifi, it's so good and I can't resist it). Actually, I'm having difficulty deciding whether the stories I'm writing are heroic fantasy or sword and sorcery. Judging by some of the articles on swordandsorcery.org, I think I'm writing heroic fantasy, so maybe I have a chance in submitting them to ASIMOV'S.
The bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
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| Posted By : erazmus - 6/26/2006 3:42 PM | Gabe,
If Shelia Williams ever even considered an S&S story Asimov would spin in his grave badly enough to cause tetonic disruption around manhatten island. I want to see S&S in major markets again, but I recognise that some markets are inappropriate.
However, I am tired of my favorite type of fantasy stories shut out of the major fantasy markets. Thats heroic fantasy, Sword and Sorcery or what ever you call it. The stuff that made the careers of writers like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Lieber, Lin Carter, L. Sprague DeCamp, Robert Jordan, Andrew Offutt, Karl Edward Wagner, Poul Anderson, and Kevin J. Anderson should have a place on the news rack. I don't care if that place is in a magazine all ready there or others once again joining the fabulous (ancient) four. (Well, okay, Realms isn't ancient.)
Right now as we speak (type?) the best chance of that is to boost the recognition factor, circulation and desirability of Black Gate. I buy Black Gate when ever I see a copy on the racks (twice in four years). Weird Tales is currently boosting its rack-presence, a few (hundred) letters telling them how much we like the fantasy content and can we please have more S&S would probably be a good idea. I want to encourage people to buy whatever S&S gets put out, where ever. Increasing circulation of minor-league magazines that feature it can not but help sway the majors, complaining as they do of dwindling circulation. But I do not realisticly think we can boost any of the truely small press pubs into significant circulation. By that I mean rivalling F&SF in its headay. Most couldn't handle the sheer volume of work. Thats okay, I love them for what they are.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises |
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