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Year: 2015

New Treasures: The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells

New Treasures: The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells

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The Devil's Only Friend-smallDan Wells’ novel, I Am Not A Serial Killer, featuring monster-killing teenage sociopath John Cleaver, was the first novel in a trilogy. It was followed by Mr. Monster (2010) and I Don’t Want To Kill You (2011). Wells became a New York Times bestseller with Ruins, the third novel in his YA Partials series. Now he returns to the John Cleaver series with the first novel in a brand new trilogy, The Devil’s Only Friend.

John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they’ve killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he’s always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can…

…but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war.

John doesn’t want the life he’s stuck with. He doesn’t want the FBI bossing him around, he doesn’t want his only friend imprisoned in a mental ward, and he doesn’t want to face the terrifying cannibal who calls himself The Hunter. John doesn’t want to kill people. But as the song says, you can’t always get what you want. John has learned that the hard way; his clothes have the stains to prove it.

When John again faces evil, he’ll know what he has to do.

I’m not the only reader in my house, and I have to admit I wasn’t the one who discovered The Devil’s Only Friend. My daughter brought it home from the bookstore on Saturday, and has been glued to it ever since. Maybe I’ll get her to do a review.

The Devil’s Only Friend was published simultaneously in hardcover and trade paperback by Tor Books on June 16, 2015. It is 304 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, $14.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital version.

Salamanca: Medieval Paintings and Preserved Arms in Spain’s Historic University Town

Salamanca: Medieval Paintings and Preserved Arms in Spain’s Historic University Town

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The apse of Salamanca's Old Cathedral. Photo courtesy Lourdes Cardenal
The apse of Salamanca’s Old Cathedral. Photo courtesy Lourdes Cardenal

Salamanca is one of Spain’s better-preserved medieval cities. It’s famous for its university founded in c.1130 and chartered in 1218, numerous old stately homes, winding medieval streets, some great bookstores, and a cathedral renowned for its rare medieval paintings. The entire Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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The Omnibus Volumes of Murray Leinster

The Omnibus Volumes of Murray Leinster

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Med Ship-small Planets of Adventure-small A Logic Named Joe-small

Last week, in my article on The Omnibus Volumes of James H. Schmitz, I noted how Eric Flint edited seven omnibus volumes collecting the science fiction of James H. Schmitz, starting in 2000. Those books were successful enough that Eric expanded his project to include other great SF and fantasy writers of the mid-20th Century.

And boy, did he expand it. By the time he was done, Baen had published volumes dedicated to A. E. Van Vogt, Michael Shea, Howard L. Myers, Keith Laumer, Randall Garrett, Christopher Anvil, Cordwainer Smith, Lois McMaster Bujold, A. Bertam Chandler, P.C. Hogdell, Andre Norton, and many others. Today I want to look at the three volumes dedicated to Murray Leinster, “The Dean of Science Fiction,” whose work I think still has enormous appeal even today.

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Vintage Treasures: The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories

Vintage Treasures: The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories

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The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories-small The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories-back-small

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories is one of the oldest paperbacks I own. It is, in fact, one of the oldest fantasy paperbacks produced in the United States. It was published in 1941, just two years after Pocket Books released the first paperbacks in 1939, revolutionizing the American publishing industry. And like a lot of old things, it’s a little strange and doesn’t do things in a familiar way.

For one thing, as it was one of the first paperback anthologies ever produced, apparently no one thought the name of the editor was important. Some folks assume it was W. L. Parker, who wrote the intro, and others assume W. Bob Holland, but no one is really sure.

Also, it’s called The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins and 25 Other Ghost Stories not because it contains The Haunted Hotel (by Wilkie Collins) and twenty-five more stories about ghosts, but because it’s actually a mash-up of two previously published books: the novel The Haunted Hotel (by Wilkie Collins), and Twenty-Five Ghost Stories. So naturally, the page numbering re-starts halfway through the book. In the early days of paperbacks, publishers were trying all kinds of wacky things. Except original titles, apparently. Because, hey, let’s not go crazy.

And another thing. Have a look at the strange back cover (click for a bigger image). Today, we think of the back cover as, you know, a great place to tell prospective buyers a little about the book in their hands. In 1941, you mostly told readers what the hell a paperback book was. You imparted critical information, like “opaque paper,” “delightful flexibility in handling,” and “stained on all three sides with fast book dyes.” It’s easy to mock the primitive publishers of 1941 today, but let’s face it — if they hadn’t sold their early readers on paperbacks, you and I would be reading books exclusively in hardcover and clay tablets.

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Bill Ward on Poul Anderson’s “Thud and Blunder” — Thirty Years Later

Bill Ward on Poul Anderson’s “Thud and Blunder” — Thirty Years Later

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Swords Against Darkness III-smallNearly seven years ago, Bill Ward wrote “On Thud and Blunder — Thirty Years Later,” one of the first articles ever posted at BlackGate.com. Here’s what he said, in part.

It’s been thirty years since Poul Anderson wrote his essay on the need for realism in heroic fantasy, ‘On Thud and Blunder,’ which you can read in its entirety at the SFWA site, and I think it holds up well even though the genre — and the perception of it — has changed greatly. ‘On Thud and Blunder’ originally appeared in the third installment of Andrew Offutt’s classic anthology series Swords Against Darkness; though it was in the excellent, if unimaginatively named, collection of Anderson’s called Fantasy that I first encountered it. But already at the time of my reading a whole generation of writers had made a name for themselves by following the dictates of realism and common sense in designing their fantasy worlds.

The essay begins with a satire of the genre that features a barbarian cleaving through armor with a fifty-pound sword and riding a horse as if it were a motorbike, among other ridiculous things. It’s the kind of thing that gave heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery a bad name, and perhaps the sort of thing that meant it would soon be eclipsed by a rising tide of ‘high fantasy’ in the eighties and nineties. But, in 1978, hf — as Anderson terms heroic fantasy in an abbreviation that seems to have never caught on — was an emerging star.

In the Comments section, James Enge wrote, “Thanks for this: I’m a big Anderson fan and it’s a pleasure to reread this article… it’s still the authentic points of concrete imagination that strike deep, and Anderson was a past master at those.”

Read the complete article here. We’ll be presenting more classic articles from BG‘s rich history over the next few months.

Apex Magazine #74 Now on Sale

Apex Magazine #74 Now on Sale

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Apex Magazine Issue 74-smallCongratulations to Ursula Vernon, whose story “Jackalope Wives” (Apex 56) won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story! Charlie Jane Anders at io9 called it “the most beautiful story I’ve read in ages.” Check it out here.

Columnist Charlotte Ashley reviews the Hugo Award short fiction nominees this month in her short fiction column in Apex #74, and she address the controversy head on:

I will not be coy and pretend I do not know that the contenders for this year’s Hugo Awards are controversial. The nominees in, especially, the short fiction categories have mostly been drawn from the “Rabid Puppies” slate: stories chosen to reflect the values of a vocal ideological minority in fandom, often published by them directly. These are stories that were largely unfamiliar to most readers of speculative fiction until very recently.

I intend to vote in the Hugo Awards, and while I am well aware that voting “No Award” in the face of a slate offered in bad faith is an option preferred by many of my peers, I prefer to make my decisions armed with well-informed reasons for my choices. I have opted to read the slates with a generous attitude, to determine for myself if there are any hidden gems in the corners of SFF that I have unfairly overlooked.

“On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2) is definitely not that gem. This is a straight-forward piece about a Methodist minister posted to a remote outpost on the planet Ymilas. The local aliens are a “low-tech highly-ritualized” people who live alongside the ghosts of their dead, called “Helpful Ancestors.”…

Read the compete article online here.

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Future Treasures: The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

Future Treasures: The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

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The House-of-Shattered-Wings-smallI’ve been a fan of Aliette de Bodard since the publication of her Aztec mystery novels, collected in Obsidian & Blood, so I was thrilled to have the chance to meet her at the Nebulas last month. She is articulate, funny, and absolutely charming in person, and I’m very excited about her upcoming fantasy novel, The House of Shattered Wings, to be published by Roc next month.

Aliette has won the Nebula Award (twice), the Locus Award, and the 2010 British Science Fiction Award, and has been nominated multiple times for the Hugo. The House of Shattered Wings is set in a devastated Paris ruled by fallen angels, and tells a tale of the War in Heaven, divine power and deep conspiracy…

In the late twentieth century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins, the aftermath of a Great War between arcane powers. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.

Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation — or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.

The House of Shattered Wings will be published by Roc on August 18, 2015. It is 402 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover art is uncredited.

A Brief Guide to Space Race Documentaries

A Brief Guide to Space Race Documentaries

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While I liked the space race movies I wrote about here recently, my preference is for documentaries. Fortunately, there are quite a few good examples of this breed. This isn’t a definitive listing, but rather a few of the better known space documentaries that are worth a look.

For All Mankind 1989-small

For All Mankind (1989)

It’s probably no accident that For All Mankind appeared in 1989, exactly two decades after humans first set foot on the moon. It focuses on the Apollo missions that culminated in several trips to the moon and features the usual array of archival footage, along with comments by Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Jim Lovell (Apollo 8/13), and 11 other Apollo astronauts. All of which is set to appropriately spacey music by ambient music pioneer, Brian Eno.

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New Treasures: Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher

New Treasures: Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher

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Beyond Redemption-smallWe all love to see new novels by our favorite writers. But this industry also warmly embraces new authors, especially when they bring something fresh and new. The latest hot buzz I’m hearing is for Canadian author Michael R. Fletcher, who’s just released his second novel, Beyond Redemption, the first in a gritty new series set in a world where delusion becomes reality… and the fulfillment of humanity’s desires may well prove to be its undoing.

When belief defines reality, those with the strongest convictions — the crazy, the obsessive, the delusional — have the power to shape the world. And someone is just mad enough to believe he can create a god . . .

Violent and dark, the world is filled with the Geistrekranken — men and women whose delusions manifest. Sustained by their own belief — and the beliefs of those around them — they can manipulate their surroundings. For the High Priest Konig, that means creating order out of the chaos in his city-state, leading his believers to focus on one thing: helping a young man, Morgen, ascend to become a god. A god they can control.

Trouble is, there are many who would see a god in their thrall, including the High Priest’s own doppelgangers, a Slaver no one can resist, and three slaves led by possibly the only sane man left. As these forces converge on the boy, there’s one more obstacle: time is running out. Because as the delusions become more powerful, the also become harder to control. The fate of the Geistrekranken is to inevitably find oneself in the Afterdeath. The question, then, is:

Who will rule there?

According to Fletcher’s bio, the next two novels in the Manifest Delusions series, The All Consuming and The Mirror’s Truth, are already complete, and are currently being edited for release.

Beyond Redemption was published by Harper Voyager on June 16, 2015. It is 512 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $10.99 for the digital version.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?

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Sherlock Season 3Now, it’s certainly possible that I’m clueless (and I do LOVE Without a Clue), but I don’t think I’ve got the following all wrong regarding BBC’s Sherlock.

Except for the grumpy old man contingent (‘Get Sherlock out of modern day!’), fans of Holmes, including scholarly geeks like me who make their own newsletter, overwhelmingly liked this new show and the three episode season one.

I don’t know too many Holmes fans (other than GOM group: see above) who disliked this show. Even those who were moderately approving seemed pleased and intrigued with it and willing to tune in for another season.

So, season two came along, and more huzzahs and approval. I don’t remember Holmes friends of mine thinking it was going south. I certainly didn’t: I thought the first two seasons were brilliant and fun updatings of the great detective. I found cool references to Doyle’s tales all over the place.

Once again, no comments that it jumped the shark. Folks were absolutely looking forward to seeing how Holmes survived his Reichenbach Fall. It was one of my five all time favorite tv shows and probably battling Justified for number one.

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