We’re celebrating a major publishing event at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters today: the arrival of Seven Sorcerers, the third novel in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper series.

When Seven Princes, the first book in the series, arrived in January 2012, it marked the debut of a major new fantasy talent. Seven Kings cemented that reputation, and over the next two years, John graduated from promising new novelist to full-fledged literary star. The critical acclaim for the first two books has been stellar — Barnes & Noble called them “flawless epic fantasy,” Library Journal praised Seven Princes as “A stand-out fantasy series from an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building,” and io9 labeled the same novel “Epic with a capital EPIC.”

John’s talent is too big to be contained just in novels — on June 3, 2013, 01Publishing published his first collection The Revelations of Zang, gathering his baroque and fascinating sword & sorcery Zang Cycle, featuring the tale of a revolt against the nine Sorcerer Kings whose power displaced the gods themselves.

We published three stories from John R. Fultz’s Zang Cycle in the print version of Black Gate: “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine,” that tale of Taizo the thief and his daring heist in spider-haunted Ghoth (BG 12); “Return of the Quill,” in which Artifice’s long-simmering plan to bring revolution to the city of Narr finally unfolds (BG 13); and the prequel story “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). Next, John took us back in time to Artifice’s first year as a member of the travelling Glimmer Faire in “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” which appeared as part of the Black Gate Online Fiction line here in January.

Somehow missed out on all the excitement? Read the excerpts and stories linked above or try the complete first chapter of Seven Kings for free. Get more details on Seven Sorcerers here.

Seven Sorcerers was published today by Orbit Books. It is 448 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Look for it in bookstores everywhere — and stay tuned to Black Gate for a special opportunity to win a signed copy!

Last week I wrote about the famous editorial penned by Francis Church in response to a query by a girl named Virginia O’Hanlon as to whether there is a Santa Claus. Re-reading “Is there a Santa Claus?”, I was struck by a curious correspondence between part of Church’s argument and the very first paragraph of one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous stories, “The Call of Cthulhu.” I’ll run the relevant excerpts from Church, followed by the Lovecraft paragraph. See for yourself:

“…All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge… The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see… Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.” (Church 1897)

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” (Lovecraft 1928)

Hmmm. Man is a mere insect in his intellect, unable to grasp the whole of truth and knowledge. His mind is unable to correlate all its contents. We are ignorant, in black seas of infinity, unable to peer through the veil covering the unseen world… See what I did there? Pretty much jumbled them together, and they are of a piece.

The shared premise, I think, is what Shakespeare succinctly expressed through the character of Hamlet four centuries ago: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Shakespeare 1602).

The correspondence between the Christmas editorial and “The Call of Cthulhu” is undoubtedly coincidental, and there are two salient differences in the discordant philosophies expressed in both texts. Church asserts that we can only gain glimpses through that veil of ignorance via “faith, fancy, love, poetry, romance,” whereas Lovecraft suggests the sciences are drawing back the veil. And, of course, Church posits the hidden “supernal beauty and glory beyond” as a good thing. Lovecraft, most assuredly, portrays those “terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein,” as a bad thing. A very, very bad thing.

Both views resonate with me; I, perhaps contradictorily, sympathize with both. What does that say about me?

Let it be known that I missed the release of Star Trek: Nemesis because, in 2002, I was busy shepherding the next generation of science fiction fans into this wondrous, weary world. Eleven years later, I finally have the time to rectify that deficiency.

If the initial appeal of Star Trek (the TV series) was interstellar adventure coupled with wear-it-on-your-sleeve humanism, the long term attraction has proven to be much like that of visiting extended family, the kind of affable clan where reunions are always a treat.  Even if the vehicle in question is a stinker (Star Trek: The Motion Picture et al), a certain pleasure remains simply in spending a few hours in the company of trusted, far-flung friends.

Sure enough, good company is the chief pleasure of the Next Generation’s final outing. Nemesis proves to be a convoluted, shadowy film that trots out any number of sci-fi standbys (baddies in stiff vinyl costumes, fearsome ships much larger than the Enterprise, and diplomatic missions fraught with duplicity and danger), but it’s not by any means a disaster. Gone are the bright scarlet and black uniforms of old; now that the crew has aged a bit, a more somber black-and-heather-blue attire holds sway. Perhaps this is metaphorical? More than a few of our old friends do seem to be feeling the miles. Two exceptions: newlyweds Deanna Troi and Will Riker both look better than ever. Actors Mirina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes are lucky people; age has brought out a rugged sturdiness to their familiar faces.

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Bill Crider is reporting that Colin Wilson, the British author of over 110 books — including Ritual in the Dark (1960), The Mind Parasites (1967), The Space Vampires (1976), Science Fiction as Existentialism (1980), and the Spider World novels — passed away late last week.

Wilson debuted in 1956 with a bestselling work of non-fiction, The Outsider, when he was only 24 years old. Written mostly in the Reading Room of the British Museum, while he was living in a sleeping bag on Hampstead Heath, the book examined the psyche of the Outsider by looking at the lives of artists and writers including Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent van Gogh, T. E. Lawrence, and others. (See “Now they will realise that I am a genius,” The Observer‘s entertaining piece on his autobiography, for more details)

Wilson was immediately celebrated as one of Britain’s leading intellectuals — a reputation “that sank as fast as it had rocketed” (as he later observed) after the publication of his second book, Religion and the Rebel (1957), which Time magazine reviewed under the headline “Scrambled Egghead.” By the 60s and early 70s, Wilson had left academic subjects behind to focus on the Occult, in books like The Occult: A History (1971), Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), and biographies of other spiritualists. Wilson became an active member of the Ghost Club and began to seriously explore topics such as telepathy, life after death, and the existence of spirits in his later writing.

Wilson’s fiction includes several noted Cthulhu Mythos pieces. The hero of The Return of the Lloigor (1974) discovers the Voynich Manuscript is actually a medieval translation of the Necronomicon; and in the preface to his 1967 novel The Mind Parasites, Wilson wonders “what would have happened if Lovecraft had possessed a private income – enough, say, to allow him to spend his winters in Italy and his summers in Greece or Switzerland?… what he did produce would have been highly polished, without the pulp magazine cliches that disfigure so much of his work.”

In 1985, Poltergeist director Tobe Hooper filmed Wilson’s The Space Vampires as Lifeforce. Wilson hated the film version (so did a lot of people), but it’s cheesy fun, as Leonard Maltin happily reported in his review for Entertainment Tonight.

Colin Wilson was a tireless writer; his last two books, Super Consciousness and Existential Criticism: Selected Book Reviews, appeared in 2009. He suffered a stroke in June of last year, losing the ability to speak. He died on December 5th in Cornwall, at the age of 82.

Late last October, the first issue of Sandman: Overture reached comic store shelves. The start of a new bimonthly six-part story, with art by J.H. Williams III, it’s a prologue to writer Neil Gaiman’s widely-acclaimed Sandman series, which ran for 75 issues (plus a special, some spin-off miniseries, a novella, and a collection of short comics stories) from 1988 to 1996. The series built in popularity as it went on and seems to have continued to find an audience in the years since its conclusion. It’s sustained a level of commercial appeal — perhaps as much as any single comic series, it helped to create the contemporary market for trade paperbacks — while also drawing critical praise, both inside and outside of comics. Issues or storylines of the main series were repeatedly nominated for the British Fantasy Awards, and once for the Stoker, while one issue won the 1991 World Fantasy Award.

Why did the comic become so important? What does it do so well? And does it look like the new series can hold up? I want to take a stab at answering those questions, in reverse order. There’s a lot to be said about Sandman, and this really scratches the surface of possible interpretations; but for what it’s worth, this is the framework in my head when I look at the comic.

To start with the new stuff: the first issue’s incredibly promising. It’s a prequel that looks to tell a story worth telling — a story that answers an unanswered question from the main tale. The original Sandman series began with the main character, Dream of the Endless, also known as Morpheus, captured by a group of occultists in the early 20th century. We later find out that Dream’s a fundamental force of the cosmos, one of a group of more-than-godly siblings; so how did a group of semi-accomplished would-be wizards manage to imprison him? This new miniseries, it seems, will describe the conflict which weakened Dream to the point where he could be held for decades in a glass prison.

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We last saw E.E. Knight’s hero, The Blue Pilgrim, in the acclaimed “The Terror of the Vale” — one of the most popular stories we’ve ever published. He first appeared in Daniel Blackston’s 2004 heroic fantasy anthology Lords of Swords; here’s Todd McAulty’s review from Black Gate 8:

The real payoff in Lords of Swords comes from three long pieces by three different writers, any one of which could stand alongside the work of the masters mentioned above — and all of which deliver on the promise of the best adventure fantasy: strong characters, fast action in colorful settings, and genuine flair and wit…

Finally, we have what may be my favorite piece: “That of the Pit,” by Vampire Earth novelist E.E. Knight. The Blue Pilgrim is a rebel against the cruel rule of the Sayhrae, and a practitioner of The Way, an ancient devotion that gives him considerable martial prowess and subtle mental arts. But he is virtually alone in his battle, and when he’s captured he discovers the dark sorceries of the Sayhrae are not all masquerades. The climax of this tale is one of the most effective I’ve read in a long time.

We’ve long been fans of “That of the Pit” and we are pleased and delighted to be able to present the story to you in its entirety online for the first time, as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction library.

E.E. Knight is the author of the Vampire Earth series, which began with Way of the Wolf, and the six-volume Age of Fire books. He is a frequent blogger for Black Gate.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vaughn Heppner,  Howard Andrew Jones, David C. Smith, David Evan Harris, Janet Morris and Chris Morris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Peadar Ó Guilín, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, C.S.E. Cooney, and many others, is here.

“That of the Pit” is a complete 6,300-word short story of heroic fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

In all of our recent discussions of pulps, we have sorely neglected one of the greatest pulp fantasy magazines of all time: John W. Campbell’s magnificent Unknown. It wasn’t deliberate; we’ve just been focusing on Amazing Stories, Galaxy, and the pulp roots of Dungeons and Dragons of late.

So to do a little catch-up, I thought I’d talk about a splendid anthology I’ve been reading this weekend: The Unknown, a collection of ten short stories and one novelette from the pages of Unknown. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to quote from the Wikipedia entry on Unknown, since I think it does a fine job of summarizing the genesis and impact of Campbell’s great experiment in fantasy:

Unknown (also known as Unknown Worlds) was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith’s science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race… The magazine is generally regarded as the finest fantasy fiction magazine ever published, despite the fact that it was not commercially successful, and in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley it was responsible for the creation of the modern fantasy publishing genre.

The Unknown contains an excellent survey of Unknown magazine, with entertaining editorial comments and fiction contributions from Henry Kuttner, Nelson S. Bond, Theodore Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp, H. L. Gold, Manly Wade Wellman, Fredric Brown, and Anthony Boucher — plus a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tale from Fritz Leiber, and more.

It also reprints interior art from the magazine by the great Edd Cartier (see a sample here), who painted the covers for many Unknown issues. I wish more paperbacks from the era did this, as I found the artwork delightful.

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I have a soft spot for Weird Westerns. (I know, last month I said I have a soft spot for dwarves. Well, they’re both true. If anyone ever writes a Weird Western with a dwarf protagonist, I’ll be all over it.) This wasn’t always the case, but a couple of years ago I had an idea for a story that turned out to be a Weird Western, and I developed an appreciation for the genre in the process of writing it. (Not that I’ve yet managed to sell that story, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I didn’t want to review The Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto last month, partly because I had just reviewed a vampire book the month before, and to be honest, I’m not much of a fan of vampires. At least in this book, the vampires were unabashedly bad guys, drinking the blood of the living and engaging in all sorts of debauchery. The main character of the book is Mordecai Slate, a professional vampire hunter in the Old West. Apparently, vampires were more of a problem back then than I realized. Mordecai has been hired to capture, rather than kill, a vampire, and to bring him back to be staked by Don Pedro to avenge his daughter. It’s an unusual mission for Mordecai, but the pay is very good, so he takes it.

Capturing the vampire, Kord Manion, proves easy enough, but soon Kord’s brother Dax and his gang are on Mordecai’s tail. He plans to set up an ambush for the six of them, but he runs into some trouble on the way, rescuing a girl from some outlaws, and gets himself shot. He needs to visit the doctor at the small town of Rio Verde, renamed Rio Muerto since the river dried up, and that doesn’t give him enough time to recover before Dax and his gang are at the town’s doorstep and he needs to convince the suspicious townsfolk to help him before the place is destroyed.

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I recently reviewed L. Sprague de Camp’s 1976 Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers and Lin Carter’s 1973 Imaginary Worlds. As good as both were, I lamented that there didn’t seem to be a history of fantasy past the mid 1970s.

But thankfully, I was wrong. Enter Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James’s wonderful 2009 A Short History of Fantasy.

Besides treating all of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and even the first decade of the 21st century, this volume has other merits that de Camp and Carter’s lack. In sum, it is a more comprehensive and well-rounded approach to the subject. I’ll spend a little time highlighting why and then give some brief critical comments.

First, this book deals with more than just literature, per se. Mendlesohn and James also talk about movies, games, and even children’s lit in each period –- and most of the chapters tackle a single decade. I think this is insightful, in that it condenses all the possible influences that may have gone into fantasy.

For example, given that many fans will agree that Tolkien’s The Hobbit and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were gateway drugs, so to speak, to their love of the genre, it makes sense to think more about other children’s fantasy and their connection to the field. For instance, Mendlesohn and James address in some detail such writers as J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman. I think more should probably be written about the influence of children’s books upon fantasy.

Another huge advantage over de Camp and Carter is author perspective. There are two authors here; neither is American and one is a woman. It should be obvious that, usually, two perspectives are better than one; a second perspective can bring attention to things that a single author may miss. Thus, there’s a better chance that more diverse fiction will be covered and less minutia (there are drawbacks to this as well that I’ll get to later).

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British writer John Meaney, author of The Nulapeiron Sequence (Paradox, Resolution, and Transmission), has been called “the most important new SF writer of the 21st century” by The Times of London. Impressive, but it was his turn towards gothic fantasy with Bone Song that really caught my attention. The sequel, Black Blood, has been described as a blend of futuristic noir, gothic fantasy, and thriller, all set in a lushly detailed necropolis where a cop must stop a conspiracy of killers whose power is fueled by spilling black blood.

He’s lucky to be alive. That’s what everyone tells him. Except Tristopolitan police lieutenant Donal Riordan doesn’t feel lucky and he isn’t really alive. In one horrific moment not even death can erase from memory, Donal lost the woman he loved even as her ultimate sacrifice saved his life. Now it’s literally her heart that beats in his chest and her murder that Donal “lives” to avenge.

While being a zombie cop has its upsides — including inhuman reaction time and razor-sharp senses — Donal’s new undead status makes him the target of Tristopolis’s powerful Unity Party, whose startling rise to power is built on a platform of antizombie paranoia and persecution. The Party is no friend, to be sure — but it’s the secret cabal known as the Black Circle and their stranglehold on the city’s elite that consume Donal’s black heart. For at the center of this ring of evil is the man responsible for his lover’s murder — a man Donal has already had to kill once before.

Now, with ominous reports of white wolf sightings throughout the city and a dangerous sabotage attempt at police headquarters, all signs indicate that the Black Circle is planning a magical coup d’état. And the terror will begin with a political assassination triggered by a necroninja already hidden… in a place no one expects. For Donal, it’s no longer a matter of life and death but something far more serious. How can he stop a killer who won’t stay dead and an evil that death only makes stronger?

Sounds like the beginning of a promising new series, especially if you like your fantasy blended with dark science fiction (and necroninjas!) Black Blood was published February 24, 2009 by Bantam Spectra. It is 384 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback or $9.99 for the digital edition.