Inky Horizons

Evan Lewis writes mysteries, westerns and historical fiction. He has a new story coming up in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 2010. He also has a blog called  Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West that I check out on a regular basis. 

He has lots of good stuff, including posts about old Detective and Cowboy magazines including their covers. He has a real love for these magazines that set the standards of today and it shows. Check out his blog if you can, I think you will like it.  :)

Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West

Drops of Crimson is having a well-deserved birthday! This magazine is now one year old and they're working on the second volume. They've just published again and it's full of the kind of horror fiction you've come to expect: scary and well-written. Can't beat that. Chock full of interviews and reviews, too. 

This issue is very good and like all the others a fun read. I loved  "House of Worship" by Brady Golden. It really stood out for me.

Another awesome issue. Enjoy!

The new Drops of Crimson magazine is up. And while I'm not in this issue (okay, that's not entirely true, the superb Haxan artwork wedschilde did accompanies her interview) I urge you to give it a look-see. I personally like this little mag, it often has good, quality horror in it.

So, please, make with the clickie on the banner below and if you like the stories then tell the authors. Thanks! :)

(I'm sorry to be late on this. I had to get a power cord for my laptop because it's been acting wonky the last couple of days, so I missed this news: I apologize.)

The latest issue of Three Crow Press is online! This literary magazine is starting to garner some attention. Click on the banner below and read the good fiction and articles inside. My story "Tryst" is there, but trust me read the other stories, too, they're awesome and many of them are from friends of mine. Have fun!

John Scalzi is matching donations to Strange Horizons today. So, please, help support this great magazine with your donation TODAY! 

DC's Showcase: Enemy Ace , written by Robert Kanigher and penciled by the legendary Joe Kubert, is the most unrelentingly nihilistic comic I've ever read.

It presents the face of war from the side of the enemy.  In this case it's Hans Von Hammer, a WWI fighter pilot modeled after Baron Manfred Von Richthofen, better known as the "Red Baron".  Like his namesake Von Hammer collects victory cups for each plane he shoots down and flies a red Fokker DR1, just like the Baron.  There are many other aspects of his life that parallel Richthofen's,  which makes the comic (for those who know something about WWI aces) a real joy to read.

The technology and fighting tactics are correct for the most part. But, these are comics and sometimes you get goofy characters the Enemy Ace has to go up against and defeat, or situations that stretch credulity.  But overall the stories themselves are top-notch and crushing in their nihilism and bleak outlook of men at war.

Von Hammer has no friends.  Death follows him.  The ground crew call him a killing machine and always remark on how cool he looks and how easily he kills.  He cannot connect in any emotional way with other human beings, and his only friend is a black wolf he meets in the forest -- another killer.  They develop a psychic connection.  They both know one day they will be killed.  Killers are always killed -- Nature demands it.  Von Hammer returns to the forest many times between missions.  He can find solace only at the side of this black wolf, his only true friend.  It is his only moment of peace.

But more than that it is the sky which endures in these comics.  The sky, as Von Hammer notes, is the "enemy of us all."  He is "a killing machine" but one day he knows the sky will kill him.  The sky itself is a main character in all these stories.  It is vast, uncaring, unmoving.  The sky strikes down friend and foe alike.  There are many panels where Von Hammer's plane is but a tiny speck in the vast space.  He is nothing compared to the infinite power of the sky, and he knows he can never be anything but a lonely speck waiting his turn to be killed.  As he kills.

About the only drawback to these stories is they are presented in black and white. These were originally four-color comics and we miss the red of his plane, the blue sky, the checkerboard green quilt of the land below.  Sometimes a comic can still work published in black and white even though it first appeared in color.  The Showcase: Jonah Hex collection is such an example.  But the absence of color hurts the overall appearance of these Enemy Ace stories, I think.  We want to see his red plane.  You can tell some of the panels were set up to enhance the color and make the action more alive.

Aside from that these stories are pretty darn good.  If you want to read a nihilistic comic and are interested in WWI flying aces, this collection is the one to read.

Give it a peek.

Within the pages of the magazine it's argued horror is either on the edge of a horrendous implosion or on the cusp of a golden renaissance.  I think that's about right.  Horror literature itself is a fairly shallow field.  Widespread, but shallow.  It makes half-hearted attempts every ten years or so to break out and become more mainstream, but often the impetus behind these efforts dies out and the genre, at least as far as fiction goes, lapses into senescence for another decade. 

I suppose it's because horror is so visceral, that's why it works so well in film.  To be sure there are classic horror novels that not only helped shape modern science fiction but, I would argue, modern fantasy as well, if not most other genres.  Horror is by far the oldest form of storytelling.  The first storyteller, I'm willing to bet, didn't tell a story about happy people and golden love around that Neanderthalic camp fire.  It was a story of woe, fear, darkness, angst.  You know, horror.

So it was with some, well, not trepidation but not exactly optimism, either, that I opened this magazine. I am happy to report I stumbled upon a little treasure myself.  

I've talked to other writers about this and many agree horror, good horror, is very difficult to write.  If you doubt me go to the horror section of your local bookstore, pick up a book at random, and read the first page. Nine out of ten times it'll be crap.

But horror based on H.P. Lovecraft's stories is even more difficult to write, and on the face of it you might think it's damn near impossible. No one writes like Lovecraft except Lovecraft, and despite all the attempts since his death, no one ever has come close.

But, fortunately, the stories in this issue don't try to imitate Lovecraft.  They use his work as a springboard.  That gives the authors enough creative room to do some real broken-field running.  There wasn't a clinker in the bunch.  Which is not to say some stories were not better than others.  The centerpiece of the magazine was an interview with Brian Lumley followed by his story, "The Man Who Killed Kew Gardens."  The interview was awesome, the story less so. Lumley makes the awful mistake of trying to scientifically ground the reason behind his horror.  Okay, we can live with that, but does it really have to come from the old hoary idea of a meteorite from outer space?   C'mon.  Lumley's better than that, and he seems to know it, too.

The other stories were good, standouts being "Daddy," a reprint by the late Earl Godwin, and the deliciously satiric "The Paramount Importance of Pictures" by Lynne Jamneck.  An in-depth review of Japan's horror boom rounds out the memorable issue.

All in all, I highly recommend you check out this magazine.  The layout is good, the tone is perfect, and the fiction ain't half bad.  I think you'll like it.

Today I had occasion to read the revamped Weird Tales magazine.  You remember Weird Tales.  That's the magazine Robert E. Howard used to write his Conan stories for.  Along with Lovecraft's Cthulhuian horrors and the lurid, colorful covers by Margaret Brundage.  Horror and fantasy and the unknown leavened with a healthy dose of the unexpected from Clark Ashton Smith and Seabury Quinn. That was what WT used to be like.  You know, cool stuff like that.

That's not what I read today.  Hell, it didn't come close.

First, the new cover design.  In a word it sucks.  Weird Tales has been around in one way or another since 1923.  That's a long time.  It earned a brand that was easily recognizable from across the bookstore.  It screamed at you to come pick it up and carry it home under your arm, preferably in a paper bag to hide the semi-clad Brundage nudes ornamenting the cover.  Can't let the pastor see that, or Mom.  Best read under the blanket at night with a flashlight, too....

Even Ward Cleaver, on an episode of Leave it to Beaver admitted to June he used to have a subscription to Weird Tales when he was a kid, and loved them.  How cool is that?

Now?  Eh.  Now it has all the panache of an indifferent shrug.  The new logo is a maniacal scrawl no different from the umpteen thousand other maniacal scrawls we've seen in horror movies and other magazines that only wished they had the cachet of the original WT.  At least the publishers are willing to admit they've taken a bold step with this new logo.  In the Eyrie (thank God it's still there) we read "The most immediately obvious change, of course, is the new logo on the cover.  We've already heard quite a bit about it from readers who've seen sneak peeks."

Yeah, I fucking bet you did, too.

Forget the past, Weird Tales now wants to be hip, modern, street-wise, cutting-edge.  Yeah, you read that last sentence right.

I know. I feel your pain. Trust me.

But modernized logos aside, WT has always been about the fiction first and foremost.  That's the core engine that runs this magazine.  It's why we remember it, it's why we read it, it's why we thought of stealing it from the drugstore when we didn't have the money to buy it.  So in good conscience I buckled down and read all the stories in the latest issue.  Quite frankly, I didn't read too many Weird Tales-type stories.

What's that you say?  There's a certain story that must be a Weird Tales story? Betcha, bunky.  And I didn't see many examples of what the magazine's strengths were, are, and should be.  Okay, there were a few.  Richard Parks had a good story called "The Man Who Carved Skulls" along with "Six Scents" by Lisa Mantchev.  These two came closest to reaching what we know and all remember as WT stories.   The others?  Pedestrian.  Pedestrian horror, pedestrian humor, pedestrian science fiction, pedestrian fantasy.  Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with pedestrian.  Pedestrian sells.  Bookshelves are filled with it.  Television makes a living off of it. But this is Weird Tales we're talking about!

Uh, that is, it used to be Weird Tales.

And it's not that the writing was bad, overall.  It was fine, really.  But it wasn't Weird Tales fine.

There were other good parts of the magazine that bear mentioning.  Darrel Schweitzer had a nicely done article about Kafka's  "The Metamorphosis".   Some decent book reviews were included.  But the fiction fell short, in my opinion.

Now I want to go on record and say I'm not predicting the death rattle of Weird Tales.  This isn't a classic fuck up like we saw happen to Amazing in the 80s.  But the clock is ticking.  I hope this latest incarnation of WT survives, I honestly do.  I hope they do well and if I write a story I think is appropriate for their new editorial direction I will happily and proudly submit it to them.

But it comes down to this.  When I want to read an Analog story I buy Analog.  When I want to read a Realms of Fantasy story I read Realms.  When I want to read a Weird Tales story...well, I guess I'll just have to read the backdated issues.

And that's a goddamn shame.

I'm pretty much a Leftist when you get right down to it.  I think we should dust off The Widow and reignite class warfare.  And that's on a good day.

So on a whim I finally decided to pick up The Nation and give it a peruse.  And I gotta admit...I was wholly disappointed in what is considered by most to be a major (if not influential) magazine of the Left.

First of all, the writing was obtuse, and that's being generous.  It comes at you in huge dense blocks with arguments that make "angels on the head of a pin" look like something from kindergarten. (You know, kinda like this review.)  I agree some issues can't be distilled into five second sound bites.  The Repugs are good at that because it satisfies the level of ignorance which is endemic in their knuckle-dragging base.  But we Democrats need to learn how to frame our arguments better than this.  You don't have to use 1000 words to make a ten word point.  Verbosity isn't a virtue.

There's also a level of elitism which hurts more than helps the level of dialog in The Nation.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I know a lot of right-wing loons accuse the Left of being elitist. For the most part it's an unfair characterization.  However, I admit for myself I am very much an elitist.  Not only do I think I'm better than the majority of knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing troglodytes that comprise the right-wing regime, I fucking know I am.  But this magazine goes beyond the boundary of elitism into the maelstrom of introspective navel gazing.  This not only devalues the arguments which are presented within the pages it perpetuates the lie that Democrats are elitist.  Most Democrats are decidedly not elitist.  They're just ordinary Americans trying to get on with their ordinary lives in extraordinary times.  The Nation fails to elucidate that point, and it fails quite spectacularly.

So everything being equal I can't recommend this magazine to anyone interested in reading about Liberal issues.  The Nation simply fails to close the deal, and that's a real shame. This failure doesn't stem from the editorial bent of the magazine, it stems from the editorial thrust of the magazine.  The writing is, quite simply, pretty damn bad and has little, if any, clarity.

My advice: Skip The Nation for your Liberal fix and pick up Rolling Stone.  They still do pretty good journalism and the writing is always top-notch and much more relevant than any microscopic examination of political issues you will find in The Nation.