Four Thousand Year Old Bread from Ancient Egypt

Sean McLachlan was the top draw at the Black Gate blog last month, with three posts in the Top Ten for May — including the #1 article, a mouth-watering report on 4,000 year-old bread found in a tomb in Ancient Egypt (with pics!) Sean’s adventure-filled report on braving scorpions and impassible tunnels at the Queens’ Pyramids at Giza came in at #7. While he was in Egypt, Sean also interviewed Egyptian Science Fiction writer Mohammad Rabie, and that rounded out the Top 10 for the month.

It’s tough to compete with 4,000 year-old bread, but a few brave souls made the effort. Andrew Zimmerman Jones came closest to glory, with an exclusive scoop on two new Starfinder Starships, which came in at #2 for the month. Next was our advice on creating an instant SF collection (with loot pics from the Windy City Pulp & Paper show), followed by our report on the release of the second issue of Skelos, and Mick Gall’s review of the album Hardwired… to Self Destruct, “Cthulhu in Metallica.”

Coming in at #6 for the month was the update on the Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume II Kickstarter, followed by Doug Ellis’s reminiscence on art and vintage paperback collecting, “Why You Should Go to Conventions.” Closing out the list was our May 21st report on the 2016 Nebula Award winners.

The complete list of Top Articles for May follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

The Top 50 Black Gate posts in May were:

1. Four Thousand Year Old Bread from Ancient Egypt
2. Modular: Black Gate Exclusive – Two New Starfinder Starships
3. How to Assemble an Instant Science Fiction Collection
4. Skelos 2 Now Available
5. Cthulhu in Metallica
6. Support the Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume II Kickstarter!
7. The Queens’ Pyramids at Giza
8. Why You Should Go to Conventions
9. The 2016 Nebula Award Winners
10. Black Gate Interviews Egyptian Science Fiction Author Mohammad Rabie

     

11. I Became a Science Fiction Fan at Exactly the Right Time: The Sixties
12. Goth Chick News: C2E2 2017 – More Harley Quinn’s Than You Can Swing A Mallet At
13. Premiere issue of New Pulp Magazine Broadswords and Blasters, Now Available in Print and Kindle
14. Thrilling, Startling, Futuristic: The Adventure House Pulp Reprints
15. The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol 4
16. A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn
17. Even More Metal on Metal: Swords of Steel Volume III
18. Sailing Against the Tides of Perdition: Pirates in Hell, edited by Janet and Chris Morris
19. Trader to the Stars by Poul Anderson
20. The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best SF and Fantasy Books in May

     

21. Goth Chick News: Are the Blade Runner and Alien Worlds Colliding?
22. The Complete Carpenter: Escape from New York (1981)
23. We All Need to Read More Le Guin: The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin
24. Worldbuilding a “Star Punk” Future #2: Post-Certainty Society in Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s Peace
25. Exclusive Preview: Archipelago by Charlotte Ashley, Andrew Leon Hudson & Kurt Hunt
26. Buck Rogers meets Lovecraftian Horror: The Weird Space Novels by Eric Brown and Una McCormack
27. Stories from a S&S Griot: Nyumbani Tales by Charles R. Saunders
28. The Top Black Gate Posts in April
29. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Getting to Know Your Omniscient Narrator
30. Pellucidar Break: The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

     

31. Wolves, Bears, Cats & Dragons: The Best Animal Sidekicks in Fantasy
32. A Mythic Crime Story: Top Cow’s Postal
33. Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors
34. Edinburgh’s Monthly Mini-Convention: Shoreline of Infinity’s Event Horizon
35. April Short Story Roundup
36. The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol 5
37. io9 on 20 Amazing New SF and Fantasy Books in May
38. Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda
39. The Rationality of the Monstrous: Fourscore Phantasmagores
40. Derek’s Ridiculously Late 2016 Year in Review, or Book Deal!

     

41. The Return of a Classic Fantasy Hero: A Review of T.C. Rypel’s Dark Ventures
42. Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton
43. Spacial Delivery by Gordon R. Dickson
44. A Tale of Two Covers: Neal Asher’s Infinity Engine
45. Defending of Realm
46. An Homage to Classic Superheroes: After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn
47. Sound the Horns! Swords of Steel III Arrives Next Week
48. Fantasy Warriors and Plastic Toy Soldiers on Memorial Day
49. The Late May Fantasy Magazine Rack
50. May 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available

There were plenty of older articles popular last month as well. The 25 most popular blog posts written before May were:

1. The Scariest Hour in TV History: Space 1999: “Dragon’s Domain”
2. Death Knight Love Story: WMA meets WTF
3. Goth Chick News: Samuel L. Jackson Takes On Japanese OVA – Hold On To Your Butts…
4. “Are You Not Still Entertained?”: Gladiator’s 10-Year Oscar Anniversary
5. Heroic Fantasy with the Sharp Edge of Reality: A Review of The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
6. The Return of the King (1980)
7. Solitaire Adventure with Victory Point Games
8. My Fantasia Festival, Days 5 to 7: Cold in July, The Fatal Encounter, and Huntresses
9. Blowing the Doors Off the Barn: Expanding the Iron Fist Mythos
10. Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 5: Teana: 10000 Years Later, Crimson Whale, and The Shamer’s Daughter
11. New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard
12. Return to Thieves World in Beyond Sanctuary: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
13. Collecting (and Selling) Ace Doubles
14. Adventures on Stage: Fantasy Literature’s Missing Link
15. Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller RPG #0: Transported by Free Trader Beowulf!
16. Eccentric in Retrospect: Helen Simpson’s The Woman on the Beast
17. Haunt the House: The Music and Art of Will Houlihan
18. Living it Large: How Larger Than Life Characters Work
19. Adventures In Gaming: The Temple Of the Sea Gods
20. The IX by Andrew P. Weston
21. Tribulations Herculean and Tragic: Beyond Wizardwall by Janet Morris
22. The Series Series: Shieldwall: Barbarians! by M. Harold Page
23. Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
24. I, The Sun by Janet Morris
25. Read “The Great Detective” by Delia Sherman at Tor.com

The Top Black Gate Online Fiction features were:

1. The first chapter of The Wreck of the Marissa by M Harold Page
2. An excerpt from Pirates in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
3. An excerpt from The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
4. “Seven Against Hell” by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
5. “Vestments of Pestilence” by John C. Hocking
6. An excerpt from Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong
7. An excerpt from Mouth of the Dragon by Tom Barczak
8. An excerpt from Shards of the Glass Slipper: Queen Cinder by Roy A. Mauritsen
9. “Nero Wolfe – Stamped for Murder” by Bob Byrne
10. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” by Joe Bonadonna
11. “The Sorrowless Thief” by Ryan Harvey
12. “Stand at Duben-Geb” by Ryan Harvey
13. “Iron Joan” by ElizaBeth Gilligan
14. Fiction Excerpt: “Tumithak of the Corridors” by Charles R. Tanner
15. An excerpt from The Black Fire Concerto by Mike Allen
16. “Tsathoggua” by Michael Shea
17. An excerpt from Black City Demon by Richard A. Knaak
18. “In the Wake Of Sister Blue” by Mark Rigney
19. “Queen of Toads” by Joe Bonadonna
20. An excerpt from Waters of Darkness by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna
21. An excerpt from Soleri by Michael Johnston
22. Fiction Excerpt: “The Beautiful Corridor” by Jonathan L. Howard
23. An excerpt from Mad Shadows II by Joe Bonadonna
24. “A Holmes Christmas Carol” by Bob Byrne

The top categories last month were:

1. Editor’s Blog
2. Vintage Treasures
3. Art
4. News
5. Books
6. BG Staff
7. Magazines
8. Role Playing Games
9. Blog Entry
10. Interviews
11. Art of the Genre
12. Conan
13. Comics
14. New Treasures
15. Fiction
16. Reviews
17. Games
18. Goth Chick
19. Series Fantasy
20. Rich Horton
21. Pulp
22. Future Treasures
23. Convention Report
24. Pastiche

The Top 50 Black Gate blog posts in April are here, and you can see all 100 posts we made in the month of May here.