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Rage Machine Magazine #1: December 2005 [MultiFormat]
eBook by G. W. Thomas
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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Mystery/Crime
eBook Description: The premiere issue of the multi-genre magazine for readers who enjoy stories in which something actually happens. Featuring C. J. Burch's "A Voice from the Past", a novella of Talia Corva and Bail Hunter, two warlock-hunters on the trail of an evil presense from the days of the Donner Party. Also included are the weird western "The Screaming Gun" by Joshua Reynolds, a wilderness adventure "Omaha" by Robert David Anderson, an Elizabethan fantasy "Dee's Gentlemen" by Barbara Davies and a science fiction adventure, "Father Mars" by Jack Mackenzie. The first installment of the science fiction/action novel To Drive The Cold Winter Away by G. W. Thomas presents a world dying under freezing cold. Cover by Daniel Ljunggren and interior artwork by G. W. Thomas
eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/PageTurner, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2005
9 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [195 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [192 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [173 KB]
, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [194 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [179 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [234 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [485 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [262 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [160 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [199 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [239 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [255 KB]
Words: 59983
Reading time: 171-239 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
What's this?
 
EDITORIALI am sitting at my computer with a stack of old Pulps beside me. Doc Savage, Weird Tales, Amazing Stories. There is something magical in the double columns filled with exciting tales and two-page spread illos. In their day they were cheap, disposable fun. Now they have a patina of something else. What is it? It's hard to divine in our age of Oprah and cell phones. There is a feeling of safety, of time to sit and enjoy a story. There is a desire to thrill the reader, to excite their imagination. All this and the commercials at the back where you can ignore them if you want to. This is not iPod-fast, or Internet-driven. (There are no pop-ups or cards that fall on the floor in the magazine shop.) Nostalgia perhaps encapsulates some of it. But there is more. The people who read these magazines are gone today. They were raised to be faithful Christians, hard-workers, to be good citizens, expected to be good mothers and fathers. If children, they were to grow up to be all the above. They weren't trying to be hip, trendy or cool, unlikely to own anything as expensive as a Lexus. They were working people trying to hold families together, living through times like The Great Depression and World War II. Keeping their bellies full and a roof over their heads were first and foremost. There simply wasn't time to worry how you were going to get mom and dad's permission for an ass-tat or the ring-tone on your cell. It is easy to over-simplify people in the past. Did they have peer pressure, bullying, issues with their physical appearance, etc. that seem to plague us in our Entertainment Tonight reality? Of course they did. They just didn't have as much leisure time to let it grind them down. They bought magazines with pictures of movie stars. They listened to radio programs with Bing Crosby and ads for Lucky Cigarettes. ("Nine out of ten doctors smoke Luckies!") Gernsback looked at this world of work and little play and thought what would tomorrow be like? He saw the technological wonders, failed to see anything like global warming or the rise of obesity due to too much Gameboy. And to further that vision: one day people may look back at magazines from the "turn of the millennia" and wonder at our simple ways. Words like "Video Game" or "Personal Computer" will seem like "Radio Show" or "Pulp Magazine" do to us today. These are the ephemeral things that date quickly. If you don't believe me, dig through your magazines from the 1980s. (If you are in your Forties as I am, you should have some old copies of Twilight Zone Magazine or Asimov's kicking around.) Even twenty years later there are some good laughs. Ads for Dungeons & Dragons or early computer games that will make you shake your head. Times change. Commercial crap changes with them. What doesn't change? What makes a good story hasn't changed, even from the time of Aristotle who said a story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Simple enough but if you had to wade through the number of mind-numbing vampire tales with no real story in them, just a cool-looking vamp-dude-hero, you'd know that even today there are still people learning this truth. Another thing that hasn't changed is there are people who want to read stories that excite them. Like those old Pulp stories seventy-five years ago. Sure, the big monies in video games, CGI movies, talk shows and a pile of other stuff that changes, changes, changes. But monies not everything. There are still people who lock themselves up in little rooms, between shifts at the office, mill or Starbucks, and peck away at keyboards to scrawl out tales of adventure, horror and wonder. Why? Because people still get bored of the grind. Just like those Pulp-buying workers in 1930, just like the factory-working men and women of 1940, just like the suburb-living workers of 1950, etc. That never changes. People need stories. Whether they read them on a palm pilot commuting to work, a cell phone, or even in an old-fashioned book or magazine, doesn't matter. They want stories. They want exciting stories. That's what RmMag offers. Stories that move. You won't find deep penetrating character analysis here. No lengthy descriptive journeys or Victorian catalogues of details. This is not a literary magazine--it's a modern day Pulp! Recently I discovered an old school book from about the time I was born. In The Harrap Book of Modern Short Stories (Clark, Irwin & Co., 1964) are collected stories Mr. J. G. Bullocke thought of interest to young men and women in high school. The editor had a keen sense of what made short fiction--at least the stuff he had chosen--of interest to his young readers. I quote: "Incident, not character, and not description, is in my estimation, the fundamental business of the short-story writer, though many writers to-day by their practice deny that opinion." How little times change. If you are yourself a writer, many times have you seen guidelines that say "we purchase character-driven stories..." The plot-driven tale has fallen on hard times. Despite this the best selling book of our day is J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, all heavy in incident and plot. (Who's reading all this character-driven stuff, anyway? If magazine titles and sales are any reflection, not many.) RmMag tries to be the exception. We want characters. We want description. But first and foremost, we want "incident", cracking good incidents, set on other planets, in imaginary worlds, or in our own world slightly ajar. This first issue spotlights C. J. Burch, a master of the moving tale, the fun adventure. Burch makes writing adventure fiction look easy. (Just try it.) His heroic divas are fun personified. "A Voice from the Past" has Talia Corvan and her male companion, Bail Hunter, are on the trail of warlocks once again, this time one connected with a certain tragic wagon train. What Pulp would be complete without a serialized novel? I offer my vision of the future in To Drive The Cold Winter Away, a post-apocalyptic world filled with dangerous creatures like the devil-dogs and man-bats, not to mention gun-toting humans. As the novel progresses through many issues you will find out the secret of how our world was frozen to death and filled with these strange beings. Also in this issue you'll find a weird Western by Joshua Reynolds. Written with gusto and color, it's a wicked delight. "Dee's Gentlemen" is an Elizabethan fantasy by Barbara Davies that plays with our version of history. Davies has a wonderful touch, making exciting figures like Raleigh and Drake even more fantastic. Robert David Anderson gives us "Omaha", a creature feature set in the remote forests of America. Finally a Science Fiction adventure by Jack Mackenzie, who takes us back to Mars, a planet well-known to us through Ray Bradbury, Leigh Brackett and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Mackenzie offers his own unique vision of the red planet, filled with his insight and action. All this in a hundred illustrated pages, not for a quarter unfortunately, but, we hope, well-worth the money all the same. G. W. Thomas * * * * A VOICE FROM THE PAST C. J. BURCHTalia Corvan stood in the center of her bedroom, under soft lights, feeling in equal parts, embarrassed excited and flattered. She was excited because she and her boy friend, Bail Hunter, had her house completely to themselves, flattered because Bail Hunter seemed to truly enjoy her current state of undress, and embarrassed because... Well, in truth, she wasn't embarrassed for herself. She had worked long and hard to augment her body's natural curves. She was damned proud of the results and not particularly shy about exhibiting her handiwork, in front of the right man in the right circumstances. No, she wasn't embarrassed for herself. She was embarrassed for Hunter. For while Corvan stood in the middle of the room wearing a lovely smile and very little else, Bail Hunter waddled about before her looking like a buffoon. On his head he wore a beret tilted rakishly to one side. His normally clean shaven features had been disguised with pieces of electrical tape that covered his upper lip and his chin. Beyond that, he wore a painter's smock and carried a palette in his left hand. To finish the picture he had hooked a pair of bedroom slippers to his knees with rubber bands and was walking about on his knees as if he were a midget. Corvan wasn't sure whether she should giggle or call the police. "Bail, what are you doing?" Hunter shook his head. "Oh no no, is not Bail Hunter. Is famous painter Toulouse le Marx." Corvan raised an eyebrow. For purposes of his fantasy Hunter had grafted Groucho Marx onto Toulouse Lautrec. Had either man lived he would have been displeased with the result. "And what is the point of all this?" Hunter looked insulted. "You silly, silly woman, imminent and celebrated artiste is going to paint zee nude." Of course there was no easel in sight. "Where's your canvas?" Corvan asked. Rather than answer, Hunter gave her a leer that would have shamed the big bad wolf. Corvan, who had learned to appreciate Hunter's kindness--and strangeness--giggled. "I'm the nude?" "Ah," Hunter held up one finger triumphantly. Then he reached in his pocket with a flourish and grabbed, in order, a small jar of apple jelly and a tiny bottle of Hershey's chocolate. "Where's your brush?" Corvan's sterling grasp of the obvious was just one of the things that kept her firmly mired in the lower middle class. Hunter shook his head. "Bah!" he said, "Bah with zee brushes. I will paint the finger paints." Corvan's giggle became more infectious. Her face flushed. Hunter carefully dabbed bits of jelly and chocolate onto his palette. When he was finished he put the bottles away. "And when the nude is painted we will lick it clean and start again." Corvan laughed so hard her shoulders shook. "Bail, that jelly is going to be cold." Hunter strode towards her on his knees. "Of course, but zee process of warming it is the most rewarding part of painting the nude." By the time Hunter had reached her, he was dabbing his fingertips in a bit of jelly. Then the damned phone rang. Hunter hesitated. Corvan laid a hand in his hair gently. "I have an answering machine." Hunter returned to his palate. He had begun to smear jelly across her sleek stomach when the answering machine picked up. "A great good evening to you dearest darling." The voice was female, and Jamaican, "I assume that on a glorious Friday night you are out and about." Hunter hesitated again. His terrible accent disappeared. "You want to answer it?" The woman on the phone continued. "If you could come to see me in the morning I would be most appreciative." Corvan shook her head. "Leelee can wait till morning. You get back to work, Pierre."
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