Jay Maynard’s “A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling” was the most popular post on Black Gate last month. It’s been read over 30,000 times since September 10th, and garnered nearly 500 comments. If there’s a topic BG readers really care about, it’s clearly SF awards.

The #2 post on the list was our look at the breakout success of Cixin Liu’s novel The Three-Body Problem, the first Chinese-language novel to win the Hugo Award. #3 was Guy Windsor’s very first contribution to Black Gate, “Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman.”

Rounding out the Top Five for September were Scott Taylor’s Art of the Genre Kickstarter essay, “Why I Hate Stretch Goals and You Should Too,” and Jay Maynard’s report on game designer Ken Burnside’s experience as a Sad Puppy at the Hugo Award ceremony, “Ken Burnside Tells the Hugo Story from the Inside.”

Our Top Ten posts last month also included articles by M. Harold Page (“Conan is My Spirit Guide”), Neil Clarke on “The Sad Truth About Short Fiction Reviews,” William I. Lengeman III defending Children of Dune, Sarah Avery’s “How One Award-Winning Author Thinks About Awards,” and a detailed look at the classic Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance.

The complete list of Top Articles for September follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

The Top 50 Black Gate posts in September were:

1. A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling
2. Cixin Liu the Superstar: How Taking a Risk on a Chinese Author Paid Off Big For Tor
3. Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman
4. Art of the Genre: Kickstarter, Why I Hate Stretch Goals and You Should Too
5. Ken Burnside Tells the Hugo Story from the Inside
6. Conan is My Spirit Guide
7. Neil Clarke on The Sad Truth About Short Fiction Reviews
8. Defending Children of Dune
9. How One Award-Winning Author Thinks About Awards
10. Vintage Treasures: The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance

     

11. Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?
12. Behind the Microphones: How the Uncanny Magazine Podcast Gets Made
13. New Treasures: Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell
14. New Treasures: The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1 by Clark Ashton Smith
15. Ancient Damascus: What We Might Lose Next
16. Out of the Mouth of Madness
17. Discovering Robert E. Howard: Rob Roehm – Tragic Things
18. A Deal You Can Refuse, But Shouldn’t
19. Back to Ancient Opar
20. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

     

21. Blowing the Doors Off the Barn: Expanding the Iron Fist Mythos
22. Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)
23. The September Fantasy Magazine Rack
24. Dracula: The Definitive Edition
25. When Big Game Hunting was Glamorous: The Man-Eaters of Tsavo
26. Future Treasures: The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane
27. Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH
28. Adventures In Commitment: To Watch Beyond the Pilot?
29. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: No TV for You
30. Slushpile Blues

     

31. Sahib: Colonial Military Life in India or on Mars
32. RuneQuest: Korantia and Mythic Britain
33. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Seven Common Approaches to Stories That Use Mythology, Fairy Tales & Other Established Source Material
34. Persian Fire: History like Harold Lamb Used to Do It
35. The Perfect Prescription for Perdition: Doctors in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
36. Laxmi Hariharan on Marketing Books in India, Her Ruby Iyer Series, and Bombay as a Modern Day Dystopia
37. Future Treasures: Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
38. Multiple Passes: A Post About Editing
39. Diablo 3: Fourth (Season)’s the Charm
40. Another Old Fan Gone: “Ned” Cuyler Warnell Brooks Jr., 1938-2015

     

41. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
42. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?
43. Fantasia Diary 2015: A Coda
44. For Gonji Lovers: A Hungering of Wolves by T.C. Rypel
45. Future Treasures: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin
46. Little Green Men, Couriers of Chaos, and Miners on Uranus: Things, edited by Ivan Howard
47. Dear Prudentia: What is Best in Life?
48. August Short Story Roundup
49. New Treasures: The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road by Abbie Bernstein
50. Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 18: Ava’s Possessions, The Golden Cane Warrior, H., and Turbo Kid

The top categories last month were:

1. Books
2. Blog Entry
3. Art of the Genre
4. New Treasures
5. Magazines
6. BG Staff
7. Comics
8. Art
9. Black Gate Goes to Summer Movies
10. Conan
11. Convention report
12. Vintage Treasures
13. Contest
14. Discovering Robert E. Howard
15. Editors Blog
16. Reviews
17. Pulp
18. Future Treasures
19. Game Reviews
20. Music

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in August are here, and you can see all 144 posts we made in the month of September here.