Search Results for: Tor.com

Catching up with Tor.com Publishing — August 2020 edition

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Just some of the Tor.com releases that have accumulated in the Black Gate reference library since 2015 Arrgh. I can’t keep up with all the cool stuff coming from Tor.com. You think it’d be easy. These are short little novellas, quick reads. I love novellas, and got all excited when they launched back in 2015, covered the first 33 releases in detail as they arrived, and watched in satisfaction as they started getting Hugos and Nebula nominations — and then…

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Tor.com on Six-Guns and Strange Shooters

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It’s been a very good year for science fiction, horror, and dark fantasy, and overall I am content. But, you know, I’m never totally content, because really, what’s the point of that? This year my crankiness originates from a near total lack of Weird Westerns. It’s like the genre dried up and blew away in the wind in 2019. At least there are a few Weird West books, movies and comics to fall back on. Earlier this year at Tor.com Theresa DeLucci shared her…

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Intergalactic Wars, Ancient Gods, and Living Ships: New Novellas from Tor.com

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The last Tor.com novella I read was Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney, and it made me want to read a lot more. The prose (as one expects from Cooney) was delightful, but it was also the perfect length for a light-but-also-surprisingly-dark fae fantasy. It had exactly the right number of calories, and now I find myself looking around for something equally tasty and not too filling. Fortunately the Tor.com back catalog is deep and gorgeous. They started their handsome…

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Low-rate Mining Gigs, Warships, and the Power of Song: Tor.com on 7 Space Operas and Adventures

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I’ve been saying for a while now that we’re in a space opera renaissance, and I’m not the only one to have noticed. There’s been plenty of discussion of some of the best new titles at many of our favorite sites. Back in March I bought a copy of Arkady Martine’s Tor debut A Memory Called Empire, the tale of an independent mining station’s efforts to avoid being absorbed by the encroaching Teixcalaanli Empire, and as part of their promotional…

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Tor.com on Robert E. Howard’s First (and Best?) Barbarian

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Kull the Fabulous Warrior King (Bantam, 1978). Art by Lou Feck Rogue Blades Entertainment mastermind Jason M Waltz tipped me off to this article at Tor.com this morning, saying, A decent article, even well-argued, but I disagree Kull is the better barbarian. Kull is the precursor to the culmination that is Conan; without Kull, Conan would be a lesser creation. Yet I enjoyed the article. The piece itself, by Alan Brown, is a thoughtful look at one of Robert E….

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Tor.com on Abandoned Earths and Inhospitable Planets

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Everyone knows that Top Ten lists are irresistable clickbait for bibliophiles. That’s why there are so damned many. Top Ten Science Fiction novels of the 80s. Top 50 Fantasy Novels of All Time. Top 100 Hobbits in Science Fiction, Yo. Don’t lie to me, you know you love ’em. Anyway, over the last few years book sites have gotten a little more clever, spicing up run-of-the-mill Top Ten lists with more interesting themes. A couple of my recent favorites both appeared at…

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Read an Excerpt from Howard Andrew Jones’ Upcoming For the Killing of Kings at Tor.com

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Howard Andrew Jones upcoming novel For the Killing of Kings is the finest thing he has ever written — and considering his previous books include the modern fantasy classics The Desert of Souls and The Bones of the Old Ones, that’s saying a great deal. It is the opening volume The Ring-Sworn Trilogy, and one of the major fantasy releases of the year. I had a chance to blurb the hardcover release from St. Martin’s Press, and did so enthusiastically. Here’s…

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Future Treasures: Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by Irene Gallo

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Tor.com is one of the finest genre websites on the planet. Originally created to promote Tor Books, it has taken on a very substantial life of its own, with news, art, commentary, thoughtful re-reads of many of my favorite novels (and more than a few that I’ve overlooked)… and especially fiction. It’s become widely renowned for its top-notch fiction, from many of the biggest names in the genre. How did it all start? Tor.com publisher Irene Gallo tells all in the Preface…

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Tor.com Celebrates 50 Years of Locus Magazine

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Over at Tor.com, Paul Weimer (who comments occasionally at Black Gate and elsewhere as PrinceJvstin) has written a fine tribute to one of my favorite magazines — Locus, the news magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field. He captures exactly what the magazine has meant to readers over the years, especially in the 80s and 90s when it was the trusted news source that tied together the entire genre. In 1968, the legendary anthologist and editor Charles N. Brown created…

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Catching Up With the Fiction at Tor.com

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Tor.com is one of the most successful and acclaimed sources of genre short fiction we have. They routinely lead the field in award nominations, as they did with this year’s Hugo nominations. And as recently as 2014, they swept the short fiction categories of the Hugo Awards. They publish one new work of short fiction every week, completely free, at the Tor.com website. But because they don’t have regular issues, I don’t do a very good job of including them in…

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