Search Results for: archipelago

Weird Sea Adventures: Archipelago – Calendar Year 1

Comments 0 Comment

Archipelago Portal Some time back I posted a brief review of the Archipelago Kickstarter reward chapbook. I was impressed, and joined the Archipelago crew at their chosen home, Patreon, becoming a Crew Member for the princely sum of $2 per month. This slightly higher rank than the run-of-the-mill $1-paying Bilge Rats allows for certain privileges, such as voting in the occasional Blood Pearl polls, through which one can guide the direction of certain stories. The main privilege of course is access to the…

Read More Read More

Weird Sea Adventures: A Review of the Archipelago Kickstarter Reward Magazine

Comments 0 Comment

First there was the Weird Tale, which hit the mark. Then there was the Weird Western, which hit the mark for many, but not all. Now there is the Weird Sea… The advent of Archipelago came to my attention on Black Gate via Brandon Crilly’s post post earlier this year, which included some cool art and a teaser story – “The Ur-Ring” by Charlotte Ashley. As a longstanding fan of maritime literature, specifically the Richard Bolitho stories by Alexander Kent (pseudonym…

Read More Read More

Exclusive Preview: Archipelago by Charlotte Ashley, Andrew Leon Hudson & Kurt Hunt

Comments 6 comments

As I’m sure you’ve figured out, I’m a huge fan of propping up and promoting other writers. Most of the time that has been spotlighting and reviewing new novels and short fiction, but today I present to you Archipelago, a serialized online adventure fantasy series jointly written by authors Charlotte Ashley, Andrew Leon Hudson and Kurt Hunt. This isn’t just serial fiction that you can read and enjoy – it’s collaborative and competitive, where the readers get the opportunity to…

Read More Read More

Neverwhens: Ancient Civilizations Topple and the Age of Heroes ends in the Blades of Bronze Trilogy by Mark Knowles

Comments 3 comments

I sincerely doubt any Black Gate reader needs an education in who Ray Harryhausen was or why his films, despite the sea-change in special effects technology, remain seminal classics (I’ve been making my way through a bunch of his swashbuckling adventures with my Zoomer son, who notes, time and again, how ‘cheesy and awesome’ the stop motion is, but also calls out how perfect at times the strange movements are at making monsters seem, well…strange and *monstrous* in a way…

Read More Read More

Christopher Priest, July 14, 1943 — February 2, 2024

Comments 3 comments

Galaxy December 1973, containing Part I of The Inverted World. Cover by Brian Boyle I find myself writing another obituary for a major SF writer — this has been a terrible couple of months. Christopher Priest, one of the true giants of our field, has died at 80. He is survived by his partner, Nina Allan, a brilliant SF writer in her own right. (I suppose Priest had a “type,” as his two ex-wives, Lisa Tuttle and Leigh Kennedy, are also…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Comments 2 comments

The Mountain in the Sea (Picador reprint edition, May 30, 2023). Cover by María Jesús Contreras Ray Nayler has published dozens of short stories in many of the major genre fiction markets. His debut novel The Mountain in the Sea was published in hardcover by MCD last year and nominated for a Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. But I ignored it because it pretty much had the most boring cover for a science fiction…

Read More Read More

What I’ve Been Watching: (A BritBox) December 2021

Comments 5 comments

During my hiatus from Black Gate, I watched a lot of shows, and some movies. And I grabbed a BritBox subscription, so today, we’re going across the pond. I might drop a minor item here and there, but these reviews are mostly spoiler-free. DEATH IN PARADISE I had just finished season four of this enjoyable British police show on Netflix, back when the newly-created BritBox snatched this – and many other shows – away. I recently got a ‘two months…

Read More Read More

The State of the Unions: Twilight: 2000

Comments 2 comments

In this journey exploring the Twilight: 2000’s first edition adventures and supplements, we have two remaining items (other than the supplements of weapons and vehicles) that address the state of the United States and United Kingdom. Both are supplemental releases that allow players and referees (gamemasters) to conduct adventures and campaigns. The Survivor’s Guide to the United Kingdom is the only official supplement by the late GDW that covers the isles. And the situation is not good in the old…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Black Coast by Mike Brooks

Comments 0 Comment

Mike Brooks’ Dark Run space opera trilogy was published in 2016/17, and was warmly received. Kirkus Reviews called it an “old-fashioned space Western… an entertaining page-turner,” and Andrew Liptak at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog said it “deserves to be this year’s break out. A space opera in the rollicking tradition of Timothy Zahn [and] John Scalzi…” For the past few years Brooks has been playing around in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, writing novels like Rites of Passage and…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Amid the Crowd of Stars by Stephen Leigh

Comments 2 comments

Stephen Leigh has had a long and successful writing career. I bought his debut novel Slow Fall to Dawn forty year ago. It turned out to be the opening volume in the Hoorka trilogy, an epic tale of space-faring assassins, recently collected in the handsome DAW omnibus volume Assassin’s Dawn. In the four decades since Leigh has published some 20 novels and over 40 short stories, including six volumes in the Ray Bradbury Presents series and, under the name S.L….

Read More Read More