Tag: Black Gate

The SF classics and the human condition

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I am a fervent believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And let us further suppose that I am utterly convinced that the tenets of the Pastafarian Church not only represent the present pinnacle of human progress, but are guaranteed to remain valid and morally definitive for so long as our species shall fail to evolve. And finally, let us also suppose that many of the classics of the science fiction and fantasy genre are deemed to infringe in a variety of ways upon the tenets of Pastafarianism. Am I then justified in claiming that these works are not classics, indeed, cannot be considered classics because they violate the Pastafarian sensibilities that every right-thinking human being knows are true? Am I perhaps even justified in claiming that no one should be permitted to read, much less enjoy, works that offend fundamental human decency as defined by the true interpretations of the various blots and sigils left to humanity by the Flying Spaghetti Monster as he passes overhead in all his noodly goodness?

Even if we cannot justify these things, surely I, as a fine, upstanding human, Pastafarian, and scholar, cannot be expected to slog my way through any literary work that is insufficiently respectful of the societal mores that, if not necessarily dominant today, are assured to one day be accepted by all of humanity in the fullness of time!

Read the rest at The Black Gate

On polemic and prosaic license

I have long felt that Terry Pratchett is badly underrated as an author. Despite his massive success, the manner in which his book are marketed – a fabulous romp – tend to significantly underplay both the intelligence and the sensitivity of his Discworld novels. His books are simultaneously less superficially funny than they are supposed to be and more intellectually entertaining. Whereas the humor in the earlier novels tended to revolve around slapstick gags, obvious subversions of genre tropes, and puns, it gradually gravitated towards an amusing form of social commentary wherein he addressed everything from Hollywood film-making, women in the military, and the theory of fiat currency to the precarious nature of technology investment. While his conventional and fundamentally decent form of humanism has always been the foundation of his commentary, (usually shown from the perspective of his most fully developed character, Sam Vimes), he has seldom permitted it to override either the plot of the story or the ojbective of entertaining the reader.

Read the rest at The Black Gate.

Soporific plasmaphages and the guide to genre

After reading the entire Southern Vampire series and watching an episode of The Vampire Diaries, I have reached the conclusion that John O’Neill is entirely correct to cast a deeply skeptical eye upon the entire genre of the vampire story. As strange as it may seem to assert this, it appears that vampires simply aren’t very interesting in and of themselves. They appear to exist primarily as a means of expanding the appeal of the traditional romance novel to audiences that would find themselves embarrassed to be reading a traditional bodice-ripper or watching a soap opera. For example, if one considers the structure of the Charlaine Harris novels and compares them to other urban fantasies, it becomes readily apparent that this genre is little more than a hybrid of the traditional romance novel with the mystery novel, colored by a dash of fantasy that is exotic only to young readers and older readers coming from the romance and mystery markets. This also explains why the novels hold relatively little appeal to traditional SF/F readers and their irritation at the otherwise reasonable classification of urban fantasy in the fantasy genre.

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Review: The Desert of Souls by Howard A. Jones

One of the legitimate complaints about SF/F literature these days is that in the authors’ fervent, self-conscious attempts to Make A Point, Preach To The Choir, or Demonstrate Literary Talent, basic story-telling elements such as plot, characters, and sheer enjoyment tend to be swept out the window. Long gone are the days of the little novel of 65k words, which didn’t attempt to Lecture, Educate, Browbeat, or even Impress us, but was content to merely provide the reader with a pleasurable few hours visiting faraway places and magical lands. The magic of Howard A. Jones’s The Desert of Souls is its admirable lack of literary ambition and its unfashionable focus on simply telling an entertaining tale of two remarkable and very different heroes who refuse to shirk their duty in the face of either evil or danger.

Read the rest of the review at The Black Gate

Review: Kobo eReader Touch

This may be going a bit far afield, but since most Black GateVox Popoli readers are, well, readers, I suspect it will be of interest to many here. While I am a big advocate of eReaders and digital books, I have avoided eReading devices in the past because they haven’t offered any significant upgrade over reading on my smartphone, at least not without imposing significant costs. I started with reading .pdb books on various Palm Treos, then enjoyed a significant graphical upgrade to reading .epub books on an Android phone. This works quite well and I still do the vast majority of my reading that way since whether I am out and about or at home, my phone is always handy. And, since it emits light, it permits reading in the dark, which is an advantage for anyone who customarily goes to sleep later than the bed’s other occupant.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

An alternative market

Since the estimable editors at Black Gate have managed to attract such a crowd of high-quality submissions that the soonest a newly submitted story can reasonably expect to be published is sometime around Issue 47 in the year 2026, I thought it might be of interest to the various writers who follow this blog to know about an alternative that pays less and is presently less prestigious, but has a more pressing need for publishable material.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

Review of Anathem by Neal Stephenson

It is really not correct to describe Anathem as science fiction. It is actually science fantasy in its purest form, a fantasy about science that blatantly panders to almost every cherished assumption, heartfelt belief, and wishful desire possessed by those who make a literal fetish of science. In Anathem, Stephenson presents a world in which Science and Philosophy dwell apart from the rest of the world, secure in elite monkish conclaves and protected, for the most part, from the vile and vulgar mysteries of the common herd who occupy themselves with such distasteful pastimes such as sports, television, politics, and religion. The scientific elite and the rest of the world have essentially realized that their relationship is no longer symbiotic, but have managed to arrange for a reasonably amicable breakup in which the science-monks get the nuclear power plants and the unwanted smart kids in return for leaving the rest of the world free to go its own way and life life without finger-waving lectures from the science monks about how illogical their behavior is, or more importantly, living with the risk of the science monks blowing up the entire world at the behest of the Saecular Power.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

The boring Borgias

I have to admit, I am a little disappointed with the mini-series about the Borgias. It is strange, at a time when Batman has grown darker, The Sopranos and The Wire were popular and critically acclaimed cable television series, and epic fantasy has increasingly devolved into nihilist torture porn, that a producer should feel the need to present the most notorious crime family in European history as weak, sensitive, and misunderstood people.

Read the rest at the Black Gate

Conan the Torturer

The intrepid Leo Grin isn’t what one would call delighted with the new Conan movie:

Saw Conan the Barbarian last night. Revoltingly stupid, incomprehensibly plotted and edited, and overflowing with the kind of quasi-erotic torture porn (seemingly pulled wholesale out of a serial killer’s wet dreams) that’s become a staple of both fantasy literature and Hollywood films this century. Easily one of the worst films I’ve seen during decades of painfully slumming through mediocre genre fare — I daresay even Uwe Boll (the ham-fisted director commonly seen as the modern era’s answer to Ed Wood) has never made anything this irredeemably rotten.

I daresay we can soon expect to hear from the admirers of the New Epic Nihilism informing us that Leo has once again managed to miss the point, that the new Conan the Barbarian film is, in fact, a brilliant reinvention of a genre that had grown tired and stale, that it is admirably adult in its moral ambiguity and creative depravity, and may be the greatest film since Citizen Kane. Which leads me to contemplate two things. First, since when did “adult” come to imply torture, incest, and rape? I mean, I enjoy spending a quiet Saturday night creeping about the bushes at the local university armed with chloroform and a knife in search of a new friend to bring back to my soundproofed playroom as much as anyone, but sometimes one would like a little escapism in one’s fantasy entertainment. You know, just a simple quest to find the Macguffin, defeat the Foozle, and save the world or something would be nice.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

I also thought Sean Stiennon’s recent post on Elf Opera in Tang China was worth reading. He highlights the same problem with current fantasy fiction, albeit from a different perspective, that I first addressed in my essay published in BenBella’s Reinventing Narnia.