Fanciful Tales of Time and Space: Fan Fire [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Reading a scanned copy of the original Fanciful Tales #1 (Fall 1936) fills me with so many conflicting emotions. Most of them good. On the one hand, just looking at the contents pages delights me with names of authors I love. We have HP Lovecraft, Donald A Wolheim, Robert E Howard, David H Keller and August Derleth. All we need is Clark Ashton Smith and it would be perfect. With the exception of some like William S Sykora, Duane W Rimel and Kenneth B Pritchard, these names are weird fiction royalty. More importantly, I can glean the fannish zeal with which the project was done. I know that "fan fire," that desire to place words and images in a new way that will thrill (hopefully thousands of) readers (more likely less than a dozen). Fanciful Tales' single issue is a perfect example of a "fanzine," created in a flash of inspiration (that doesn't necessarily include a lot of proofing). I have created not a few similar works of my own.

Looking at the contents of Fanciful Tales #1, I see DAW (as Don Wolheim was known) had some great connections with published writers and active fans, filling his zine accordingly. All are quite short, little longer than flash fiction. Let's take a look at each one and consider them individually:

"The Nameless City" by HP Lovecraft is a fan reprint from 1921. HPL was a professional, but this story appeared before his rise in Weird Tales, in the amateur press magazine The Wolverine, November 1921. The story was later rejected twice by Farnsworth Wright but appeared in November 1938 after HPL's death. The story is considered the first of the Cthulhu Mythos tales.

Wolheim

"Umbriel" by Donald A Wolheim is a short science fiction tale that DAW never reprinted. It's not surprising why. The story is a supposed report on why space travelers don't go to the moon Umbriel. Short on plot, the idea is good - a moon as worm-riddled corpse - but undeveloped. It's the kind of idea Clark Ashton Smith wrote to 11,000 words for Gernsback's Amazing Stories.

"The Forbidden Room" by Duane W Rimel is a traditional ghost story about a pirate and his treasure that haunt a room in his house after his death. A typical Weird Tales-style filler, it is a little too thin for the pulps. The author also contributed his art to the issue. Rimel was largely forgotten until ST Joshi uncovered his work with HP Lovecraft in this century.

"Solomon Kane's Homecoming" by Robert E Howard is a poem that recaps Kane's career outside of England, his sea battles along with Richard Grenville, his combats against sorcery in Africa. This was the first appearance of the poem that would be included in all Solomon Kane collections in the future, even adapted by Marvel Comics. It is likely Howard sent in the piece before his suicide or it was submitted by his executor, Robert H Barlow.

"The Typewriter" by David H Keller MD is about a writer who mysteriously buys a typewriter and uses it to pen a bestseller. His wife becomes jealous of the imaginary woman in the novel and destroys the machine in an attempt to get her husband back. This tale is similar to many he wrote for Weird Tales, based on the psychosis he saw in his day job as psychiatrist.

Derleth

"The Man From Dark Valley" by August W Derleth is a typical Derleth ghost story. He wrote literally dozens of these for Farnsworth Wright (this one using astral projection), but he would resell this one to Wright's competition, Strange Stories, four year later. The American setting is a little different as many of his ghost stories are set in England.

"The Globe" by William S Sykora is the only story this active fan ever published. It's referred to as a "midgetale," 1936-speak for flash fiction. The brief plot involves a globe that sucks people's souls out and feeds them to the globe's owner. Sykora was one of the charter subscribers to Amazing Stories in 1926, a member of the Greater New York Science Fiction League along with Wolheim and Sam Moskowitz, and was involved with SF in many ways, including publishing and filmmaking.

"The Electric World" by Kenneth B Pritchard is the longest story in the issue and is described as "scientific words as long as your arm plus humor..." Accurate, a tale within a tale, but the electrical version of reality is confusing and really not funny, so I guess we shouldn't be sad it was Pritchard's last. He had published a few pieces in another famous fanzine, The Fantasy Fan in 1934-5. After Fanciful Tales he disappeared into the mists of fandom.

The fact that no Fanciful Tales of Time and Space #2 (featuring "Judgement of Netheris" by J Harvey Haggard, "The Psycho Traveler" by Ralph Milne Farley, and "The Escape" by Robert Bloch) appeared is not a surprise. In the world of fan publishing, a run of six issues is a grand achievement. Published on a shoe-string, with no distribution, little advertising, and a proscriptive price (twenty cents was a lot in 1936), the story is the same to this day. It's hard to compete.

Howard

Looking at this attempt at becoming (I have little doubt) another Weird Tales - a painfully disappointing task many of us have tried to accomplish and failed - I am not filled with smugness or derision. I tip my hat at the attempt. Of course, in 2015 we know that the names of Lovecraft, Howard, and Derleth live on. Back in 1936, there was no reason to assume any of these writers would endure. Howard was dead by suicide, Lovecraft had less than a year left, while Derleth's Arkham House was still seven years in the future. In fact, all that possesses me when I read these old bleary pages is the desire to start another magazine, another (not my first) try to create a meeting place for future Lovecrafts and Howards, Bok and Finlays, a place that is made of well-printed text matched with intriguing artwork, a solid, beautiful gem locked in time.

But I resist. Not because the chances of success are so narrow. They were in 1936. They still are in 2015. But because the days of print are gone. I could do the same in a digital format but... it's not the same. Not for me. I need to see those pages printed and saddle-stapled. I need to smell the photocopy ink, the envelopes, that list of buyers (always too few). The agonizing process of collation, folding, stapling, etc. is life's blood to the editor of a fanzine. It is the wellspring from which Donald A Wolheim began, before he became the editor of the Avon Fantasy Reader, the Ace paperback series, and eventually CEO and head editor of DAW paperbacks, a line that continues to this day run by his children. I can imagine the "fan fire" that burned for DAW as he held each of these projects in their final form. Robert Silverberg has said DAW was the most important individual in 20th Century science fiction publishing. It started with Fanciful Tales #1, Fall 1936, a tiny spark of "fan fire".

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Solomon Kane (2009)

Who's In It: James Purefoy (Resident Evil, John Carter), Rachel Hurd-Wood (2003's Peter Pan, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects, Inception), Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact, Thor: The Dark World), Max Von Sydow (Conan the Barbarian, Never Say Never Again), and Jason Flemyng (Primeval, X-Men: First Class)

What It's About: A ruthless pirate (Purefoy) tries to walk the path of peace when he learns that the devil's after his soul, but you know how these things go.

How It Is: I don't know what took me so long to finally check this movie out. I've been interested in the character for decades and though I've never read a single story featuring him, he seems totally in my wheelhouse. Two things I've loved since childhood: Conan (and by association, Robert E Howard) and holy warriors. I couldn't have told you how much the holy warrior angle is focused on in Howard's Solomon Kane stories, but the guy dresses like a pilgrim and fights monsters. I'm guaranteed to like that.

I feel like I should talk a little about my fascination with the holy warrior trope, because it's a deep part of who I am. I'm repulsed by real life people who claim to kill on God's behalf, but enthralled with fictional explorations of that theme. Sort of how Prince always struggled with the juxtaposition of sex and spirituality in his music, I've searched for a way to reconcile brutality and belief. I haven't been successful in that search, but it hasn't stopped me from looking. I've never been a violent person - in fact, I'm quite the pacifist - but in my college freshman drawing class, we were asked to create self-portraits. My buddy drew himself completely naked with full frontal; I drew myself as the Terminator. The instructor was more shocked by mine.

I've been in exactly one fight my entire life. I was eight or nine and it was over quickly. It was probably a draw, since neither of us knew what we were doing. But though I've never thrown a punch in anger, I drew a lot of violent stuff as a kid and I loved and identified with dark, bloodthirsty characters like Conan and Blackbeard and the literary James Bond. That carried over into my faith too, and it was helpful that my Biblical namesake is the archangel who battles and defeats Satan in Revelation. I completely understood that the real Crusades were horrible and unjustifiable, but I was still intensely drawn to the paradox of being a knight for God. One of my favorite superhero characters of the '90s was Azrael, in part because of that awesome Joe Quesada costume, but also because of his struggle to remain sane and find some peace in his role as holy assassin for a secret, heretical sect of Christianity. So of course I've always been attracted to images of Solomon Kane.

One of the things I like most about the movie version is the amount of attention it gives to this contradiction between soldier and saint. Kane begins the movie as a pirate so bloodthirsty that he'd give Blackbeard a hard time. An encounter with a demon puts the fear of God into him though and he tries to reform. As he wanders, he meets a family of Puritans (led by Postlethwaite and Krige) and travels with them for a while, getting to know their two sons and daughter (Hurd-Wood). But when they enter territory controlled by an evil sorcerer (Flemyng) and his masked, psychotic general, Kane has to figure out how dedicated to peace he really is. Can he stand by and let horrible things happen when he has the skill to stop it? He knows beyond any doubt that picking up a sword will cost him his immortal soul, so what role will that play in his decision? And would such an act of self-sacrifice be enough to redeem Kane in some way?

Solomon Kane isn't a perfect movie. It treads some familiar plot territory and the special effects are satisfactory, but no more than that. But the acting is legitimately excellent and I'm impressed with the moral questions the movie raises and how it comments on them without offering pat answers. I don't know if Robert E Howard was as interested in that kind of thing, but I'm eager to read his version and find out.

Rating: Four out of five passionate pilgrims.

Lord Baltimore: A Confessional [Guest Post]

Mike Mignola

By GW Thomas

They say confession is good for the soul. I suppose it is not customary to admit when you are jealous. We like to pretend we aren't that fallible. But all you have to say is, "Mike Mignola" and I'm there. Mike is about three years older than me. Just three years. And look at all he has accomplished with Hellboy and the other comics of his "Mignolaverse." Three years. And I remember the early Mignola. Most people don't. If you dig through your old copies (of course you have them nicely stacked in mylar bags) of Different Worlds (1979-1981), an obscure gaming magazine, you'll find early illos done by Mignola. And you'll look at them and think, "Sheesh, pretty bad, eh? That kid'll never come to much."

But people improve. (Well, some do. The rest just get jealous, I suppose.) But it's more than that. Mike Mignola isn't just damn entertaining. He's all that, plus he writes and draws about men and women who face monsters. That's what I like to think I do, too. More jealousy.

All this emotional baggage is simply to show you that when it comes to Mike Mignola I am tettering on the brink. That's important because like Dickens says, "This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate." For I am going to break one of my own tenets. I am constantly saying, "I don't have favorites." What's your favorite genre? Depends on my mood. "What's your favorite superhero?" Depends on the franchise. "Who's your favorite homicidal alien dictator in a 1930s serial?" Depends on the moustache. If nothing else, I am a waffler. Or honest about the variability of sense data. You decide.

Enter Mike Mignola. (Teeth clenches in jealousy.) Damn, if he doesn't break me out of my indecisiveness and make me pick. Because I can say that my favorite Mignola character is... no waffling... Lord Baltimore. Look at that. An absolute in a universe that twists and turns and leaves us constantly re-evaluating everything.

Lord Baltimore is a man who has suffered much in his pursuit of the vampire (Really? Vampire? In this day of sparkly teen idol vamps? Really. You bet!) whom he met on the battlefields of WWI, who returned to kill his wife and torment him relentlessly. The story of how they met is an illustrated novel written by Mignola and Christopher Golden in 2007. This was followed by comics that show Baltimore, in the best Solomon Kane fashion, seeking revenge; cleansing the world of evil. Not since Robert E Howard have I seen a character who hits that high water mark like Baltimore. Like the best comics today, the series is broken up into episodes. These include "The Plague Ships," "The Curse Bells," "The Infernal Train," "The Witch of Harju," and several shorter pieces in and around these tales.

One of the aspects that really make this series work for me is that Lord Baltimore is alone. He has associates, but his burning desire to seek revenge, to destroy the creatures of the night, has terrible consequences for those around him. To use a quote from Lady Caroline Lamb first applied to Lord Byron: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know." This sums up Lord Baltimore pretty well, and like Byron, despite this affliction, he fascinates us. In "The Witch of Harju," Baltimore seems to be gathering a team about him. I hope not. This would reduce that element that I enjoy in the strip. If I want a team, there are plenty out there, from Mignola's own Hellboy and BPRD to Justice League Dark.

Another aspect of the strip that sells it for me is the setting. If Mignola was lazy he would have set the story in the 18th or 19th Century as so many ghostbreakers films have done, like Van Helsing, Sleepy Hollow and The Brothers Grimm (gasp, Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters), even the excellent TV show Penny Dreadful. The Black Forest of Germany is an easy locale for dark fairy tales. But Baltimore challenges with an Edwardian setting, post World War I, quite as fascinating, especially when you start to play with history. The authors have ended WWI not with an Armistice but by a plague that kills millions. The surreal version of 1918 on is intriguing and clever.

I've prattled on about Mignola, but I think I must give credit also to the artists of Baltimore. Ben Stenbeck and Dave Stewart provide images that, while similar to Mignola's own shadow-filled style, is their own. These are panels that intrigue but are simple. Like the best of later Moebius' art, it appears easy until you really look at it. An over-blown, Victorian style would only hamper what is a fast-moving and exciting tale. Peter Bergting replaced Stenbeck with "The Witch of Harju," but his style is similar and equally efficient as Stenbock's.

So there you are. Mike Mignola (teeth less tightly clenched). Lord Baltimore, a character who goes on in his search to purge the world of evil. And like Solomon Kane before him, let's hope he never quite arrives at that final destination. Denizens of the dark, beware!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

22 Movies I Regret Not Seeing in 2012

Happy New Year, everybody!

One of my favorite things to do each January is look back at the movies of the previous year. I'm gonna do that every Wednesday for the rest of the month, starting with my least favorite and working my way up to a Top 10, but I realize that ranking movies that way is a flawed process. I can only talk about movies I've seen. There were a bunch that I had no interest in this year, but I also didn't get to see everything I wanted to.

So, by way of clearing the floor for my lists, here are 22 movies that I wish could have been on them. I have no idea how I might have ranked them, but I'm sorry I wasn't able to find out by Year End.

In the order they were released:

1. The Raven



I love Edgar Allan Poe and John Cusack. Not entirely confident about the plot that seems ripped off from the series premiere of Castle, but I'm willing to find out.

2. The Pirates: Band of Misfits



I have no idea how I missed a pirate movie starring Hugh Grant by the creators of Wallace and Gromit. That should've been something I saw opening night.

3. Safety Not Guaranteed



Audrey Plaza is very funny and I also dig Jake Johnson from New Girl. The plot also sounded intriguing with its focus on loneliness and whether or not the time travel aspect is real or just a metaphor for regret.

Full disclosure: I actually saw this movie about half-an-hour before writing this post, so maybe it shouldn't be on this list. I saw it on DVD though and the rest of my lists are all movies I saw in the theater, so I'm keeping it here.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed by Safety Not Guaranteed. It's a funny movie and worthwhile for the performances, but the story doesn't have much to say other than "loneliness sucks" and that it's better to have someone in your life. That's a fine start to a theme, but I wanted more. There's a huge, missed opportunity in a choice Plaza makes late in the film and Johnson's subplot is only halfway done when the final credits roll.

4. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World



If there's anyone I find more charming than Keira Knightley, it's Steve Carell.

5. Magic Mike



No, wait. It's Matthew McConaughey and he's hilarious in the trailer for this.

6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days



My son turned me on to the Wimpy Kid movies and I love them. They're hilarious. I'm not watching one without him though and he'd just as soon see them on DVD.

Actually, not a big fan of seeing movies in the theater, my son. He'll go if everyone's going, but he'd prefer to be at home (and we don't even have a decent TV). I don't know if that's typical of other kids, but it makes me curious about the future of the movie industry. Not about whether there is a future (of course there is), but just about what it will look like. Will future generations value having control over the presentation more than the less convenient spectacle of the big screen and giant sound?

7. Chicken With Plums



I loved the graphic novel this is based on.

8. Dredd



My only exposure to Judge Dredd is a) those Dredd/Batman crossovers they did in the '90s and b) the horrible Sylvester Stallone/Rob Schneider movie from the same time period. None of that stuff made me a fan, but I'm as fond of second chances as I am of anything Karl Urban signs up for. Judge Dredd has a lot of fans, so there must be something to him. I'm interested in seeing the character's film potential redeemed.

9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower



Like me a teenage comedy/romance. Also curious to see what Emma Watson can do post-Potter.

10. Solomon Kane



I don't know if it's accurate to call this a 2012 movie, because they've been announcing it for about three years now and I'm not real up on why it was just now released this year to a very limited number of theaters. Probably because it's not very good, but it's such a solid concept and a Robert E. Howard character, so I'll take my chances.

11. The Oranges



Hugh Laurie and Oliver Platt. Hoping this'll take the edge off my House withdrawal.

12. Cloud Atlas



I don't have high hopes that Cloud Atlas' execution is equal to its ambition (the makeup isn't at all convincing, for starters, and that seems like a big deal), but it looks like a magnificent spectacle and I'm a sucker for these stories about how we're all connected.

13. Fun Size



A Halloween comedy with Jane Levy from Suburgatory. That's all I need to know.

14. Wreck-It Ralph



I'm not enough of a gamer to be super excited by the cameos and in-jokes, but I like a good Disney animated movie and by all accounts, this is one.

15. Lincoln



Torn between loving Daniel Day Lewis on the one hand, and not liking Spielberg's sentimental side on the other. Curiosity wins out though.

16. Anna Karenina



Another one I'm conflicted about. Adultery stories usually push me away, but Keira Knightley has the opposite effect.

17. Silver Linings Playbook



Another one I was wishy-washy about. Love Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Pretty tired of uninspired romantic comedies and Robert DeNiro's being in them. I've heard this is anything but uninspired though, and it also features Chris Tucker's return to acting in something other than a Rush Hour movie. Honestly, it's that less element that finally draws me in.

18. Life of Pi



Didn't think I wanted to see a movie about a kid adrift on a lifeboat for two hours, no matter how pretty it is, who directed it, or how many CGI tigers are involved. Ironically, it took having the end spoiled for me to make me want to check it out. I wish now that I'd been willing to see it before and been surprised, but oh well. I'd like to see it so that I can talk with people about it. Sounds like there's a lot of discussion to be had around this one.

19. This is 40



Because I'll watch any Paul Rudd comedy. That rule has bitten me in the past, but most of the time it's trustworthy.

20. Zero Dark Thirty



Didn't have much interest in a docudrama about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, but the trailer sucked me in with its focus on Jessica Chastain's character and her team. Also, the mission itself looks absolutely haunting. Should've trusted Kathryn Bigelow to do this right.

21. Jack Reacher



Looks like a mediocre Tom Cruise action flick, but I still tend to enjoy those.

22. Django Unchained



I'm not as in love with the indulgent, alternate reality of Inglorious Basterds as most people, so I'm not all thrilled at the possibility of seeing it repeated against the backdrop of the Antebellum South. I'd prefer to examine history as it really was and learn from that instead of seeing Quentin Tarantino play out his fantasies onscreen. On the other hand, I love pretty much everyone in this movie and want to judge it on its own merits instead of on my fears about it.

Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.

"Hey, lady! You call him Dr. Jones!"

Indy may be getting older, but I still wouldn't screw around with him. Thanks to Comic by Comic for the image.

And speaking of Dr. Jones: "The story is told in the Kebra Negast (Glory of the Kings), Ethiopia's chronicle of its royal line: the Queen of Sheba, one of its first rulers, traveled to Jerusalem to partake of King Solomon's wisdom; on her way home, she bore Solomon's son, Menelik. Later Menelik went to visit his father, and on his return journey was accompanied by the firstborn sons of some Israelite nobles—who, unbeknown to Menelik, stole the ark and carried it with them to Ethiopia. When Menelik learned of the theft, he reasoned that since the ark's frightful powers hadn't destroyed his retinue, it must be God's will that it remain with him."

True story? Smithsonian Magazine's Paul Raffaele tries to find out. It's true, as one commenter to the article put it, that Raffaele is "no Indiana Jones," but it's still a cool story full of mystic locales and secretive guardians. And this one definitely is true.

Never mind.

Yesterday, when I teased about the book questioning Jesse James' DNA test, the reason I didn't write about it then was that I was in a rush and didn't have time to read the whole press release I'd saved. Now that I have, I recognize the book's author as being one of a couple of folks claiming to be descendants of Jesse James. Everything you need to know about her and her case is in the link, but I've heard her story on one of those Jesse specials I mentioned yesterday and I'm skeptical. In spite of the fantasy we pose in Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly, there's no real evidence that leads me to believe that Jesse survived his encounter with Bob Ford's gun.

Solomon Kane Poster

As much as I love Robert E. Howard's Conan stories (and I so do), I've never tracked down his Solomon Kane stories because deep in my heart I don't believe that anyone, not even Howard, could write stories cool enough to do justice to the idea of a wandering, Puritan monster-hunter.

I have to say though that the poster for the movie adaptation looks pretty damn cool. Sort of makes me want to read some Howard stories. (Thanks to Christopher Mills for the link).

Chuck picked up.

I'm pretty sure I watched the pilot episodes of every new show this season. Some shows never got a second viewing; others I dropped after checking out a few additional episodes. Without question, the best new show of the Fall has been NBC's Chuck. It's like they took Jim from The Office, turned him into a reluctant spy, and had the hottest, most butt-kickingest secret agent ever and Jayne from Firefly protect him. It's funny, it's action-packed, and it's got a ton of heart. It's also been picked up for a full season, which -- assuming the WGA strike is resolved and they can actually create new episodes -- is the best news I've heard all week.