Foreign Bodies, Part III

Foreign Bodies, Part III

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Sick Nurses (Sahamongkol Film International, June 14, 2007)

A new, twenty-film watch-a-thon, this time looking at horror films from around the world. The rules are the same — they must be films I haven’t seen before, and they must be free to stream.

With a bit of luck, this new watch project will feature a lot more quality films as I unearth horror from around the globe. With that said…

Sick Nurses – Thailand – (2007)

Hey there, you. Fancy watching a film about six sexy nurses who sell body parts on the side getting offed by a vengeful ghost? Would you like your story with a side of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, in an unspecified setting save a remarkably under-populated hospital? Would you like this tale to be at once hilarious and downright ghastly, with lashings of gore and death by handbag?

How about some frenetic filmmaking with surreal set-pieces, bizarre lighting, and a scary, long-haired spirit who looks like she’s doing a Vogue spread?

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Tor Doubles #25: Gene Wolfe’s The Death of Doctor Island and John M. Ford’s Fugue State

Tor Doubles #25: Gene Wolfe’s The Death of Doctor Island and John M. Ford’s Fugue State

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Cover for Fugue State by Wayne Barlowe
Cover for The Death of Doctor Island by Ron Walotsky

Tor Double #25 was originally published in September 1990 and collects Gene Wolfe’s The Death of Doctor Island and an expanded version of John M. Ford’s Fugue State. Both stories have settings which question the nature of reality, although in very different ways.

The Death of Doctor Island was originally published in Universe 3, edited by Terry Carr and published by Random House in October, 1973. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, winning the latter. It also won the Locus poll.

Wolfe’s story focuses on Nicholas de Vore, who rescues himself from a sandy pit to discover he is living on a nearly deserted island. He eventually learns that there are two other people living on the island, Ignacio, an older man who attacks Nick upon first meeting him, and Diana Phillips, a young woman who provides him with advice and assistance in surviving on the island. The most important “person” he meets, however, is the disembodied voice of “Doctor Island,” who is Nicky’s primary source of communication on the island.

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Stray Missiles, Alien Plagues, & Underwater Laboratories: September-October Print Science Fiction Magazines

Stray Missiles, Alien Plagues, & Underwater Laboratories: September-October Print Science Fiction Magazines

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September-October 2025 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and
Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Tithi Luadthong/Shutterstock

It’s the 500th issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction! That explains why I’ve had to start stacking them sideways since 2004. Sheila Williams celebrates this incredible milestone in her editorial, touching on just a sampling of the truly extraordinary fiction to appear in the magazine over the past 48 years. Here’s an excerpt.

Under our first editor, George H. Scithers, we published great tales by writers like Barry Longyear, Roger Zelazny, and Somtow Sucharitkul. Kathleen Moloney’s tenure lasted less than a year, but during that time we published Connie Willis’s earliest award-winning stories — “A Letter from the Cleary’s” and “Fire Watch,” as well as David Brin’s “The Postman.” Important work published by Shawna include Octavia Butler’s “Blood Child,” Greg Bear’s “Hardfought,” George R.R. Martin’s “Portraits of his Children,” Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Green Mars,” and Robert Silverberg’s “Sailing to Byzantium.”

Gardner Dozois’s years at the helm brought us James Patrick Kelly’s “Think Like a Dinosaur,” Pat Murphy’s “Rachel in Love,” Neal Barrett, Jr.’s “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus,” Terry Bisson’s “Bears Discover Fire,” Allen M. Steele’s “The Death of Captain Future,” Michael Swanwick’s “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur,” Charles Stross’s “Lobsters,” and much more.

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The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part I

The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part I

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Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton (Ace Books, 1965). Cover by Ed Valigursky

Edmond Hamilton, who I’ve mentioned here before as Leigh Brackett’s husband, wrote mostly Science fiction and I consider him one of the first generation of Space Opera writers. And one of the best of the bunch. You might wonder what Space Opera is and how it differs from Sword & Planet fiction, as well as from more mainstream SF. Well, let me explain.

Space Opera was coined to be used pejoratively, to denigrate a certain type of SF in which action and drama were king. This type of story supposedly only used the trappings of SF to tell an adventure tale rather than engaging with futuristic ideas. And the trappings included such things as ray guns, faster-than-light travel, and space battles.

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Clark Ashton Smith Conference – A Rendezvous in Smith’s hometown, Auburn, California

Clark Ashton Smith Conference – A Rendezvous in Smith’s hometown, Auburn, California

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For many enthusiasts of pulp fiction, there is a rite of passage in which the reader stumbles into H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, or Clark Ashton Smith, and as they track down stories or read adjacent publications, they learn about the others and they were pen pals and shared numerous cross-over characters/ideas.  People usually discover Howard or Lovecraft first, and are often floored last by the poetic, cosmic madness of Smith. Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet at heart, also a sculptor and artist, and his approach to weird fiction was to introduce lyricism and literary depth. Indeed, he is a major reason I started interviewing authors on their take on “Beauty in Weird Fiction” in 2014, the series hosted by Black Gate since 2018. Check out the Eldritch Dark website for his fiction, nonfiction, and images of his drawings and sculptures.

He could not tell the duration of the weaving, the term of his enthrallment.  Dimly, at last, he beheld the thinning of the luminous threads, the retraction of the trembling arabesques.  The globe, a thing of evil beauty, alive and aware in some holocryptic fashion, had risen now from the empty armor of Yanur.  Diminishing to its former size, and putting off its colors of blood and opal, it hung for a little while above the chasm…

– From “Weaver in the Vault”, a Zothique tale, CAS (1934)

So, it is with great pleasure that we spotlight a conference dedicated to Clark Ashton Smith, duly hosted in the author’s hometown (Auburn, CA, to be held Jan 10th, 2026)! Read this to find out all the details, the amazing panelists, and get an inside perspective from the organizer about the origin of the event.

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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: A Plethora of Pastiches! In 2 Paragraphs Each

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: A Plethora of Pastiches! In 2 Paragraphs Each

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And we are wrapping up Cimmerian September. Which I think will be an annul thing here at Black Gate. Maybe I’ll do a broader Robert E. Howard month around his birth (January) or death (June). But it’s more Conan this week.

If you’re a regular here, you know that I post almost exclusively positive stuff. You can go anywhere on social media for negative stuff. I like to share things I like – with people who wanna comment on it sometimes. It’s cool.

A notable exception is that festering pile of garbage that was Max Landi’s Dirk Gently TV series. Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade.

I’m gonna give some thoughts on twenty different Conan pastiches from over the years. And some aren’t good. So, not all happy stuff here. But I think a legitimate opinion is worthwhile. Even mine…

Not ranking them, but listing them in alphabetical order by author. I’ll give some info on the story in the first paragraph, and a very short review in the second. I’ve done in-depth reviews here at Black Gate. These are just light looks at a bunch of Conan stories, to put them on your radar. Hopefully, you’ll find this post useful.

There are others I haven’t read at all,

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The Battleborn Interview: Part Two

The Battleborn Interview: Part Two

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Having beaten back the kobolds (see Part One of this interview, here at Black Gate), Sean CW Korsgaard sat down again to talk Sword & Sorcery, and his editorial vision for Battleborn, his upcoming magazine.

With your editor hat firmly on, what’s something you nearly always respond to positively? Heroic animal companions? A romantic sub-plot? A surfeit of halberds? 

Given Battleborn‘s approach to sword-and-sorcery, it should surprise nobody that memorable characters and authentic, hard-hitting action scenes are right above home plate for me.

For characters, you follow in the traditions of heroes like Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric, Kane, Hanuvar, and more. So, even as you plot out your story, every detail you give your lead character matters. Are they distinctive in your mind’s eye? Do they have a few details that make them stand out, not only in the story, but as they stand beside a century of sword-and-sorcery heroes? Do you have an arc for them planned? Do you have some ideas for sequel stories where we follow that arc?

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Foreign Bodies, Part II

Foreign Bodies, Part II

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Uncaged/Prey (Dutch FilmWorks, October 13, 2016)

A new, twenty-film watch-a-thon, this time looking at horror films from around the world. The rules are the same — they must be films I haven’t seen before, and they must be free to stream.

With a bit of luck, this new watch project will feature a lot more quality films as I unearth horror from around the globe. With that said…

Uncaged (AKA Prey) – Netherlands – (2016)

We are introduced to Lizzy (Sophie van Winden) with her hand down a crocodile’s gullet, trying to retrieve a cellphone. This tells us a couple of things; she’s fearless, and she’s okay working with large animal puppets. This will come in useful. Lizzy is called in by the police as an expert after some folks turn up mangled, having been mauled to death by something big. Following another attack on a golf course, a rogue lion is confirmed, and it seems to have set its sights on Amsterdam.

After a series of botched and bloody attempts to trap the beast, Lizzy teams up with her dodgy boyfriend, cameraman Dave (Julian Looman), and her old flame, British hunter Jack De La Rue (Mark Frost), who is confined to an impressive wheelchair due to the last lion he hunted biting his leg off. After much larking around, the final confrontation takes place in Amsterdam University, and things get messy for a fun climax.

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Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

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Cover for The Graveyard Heart and Elegy for Angels and Dogs by Bob Eggleton

Tor Double #24 was originally published in August 1990 and is the final volume in the series which compiled a classic story along with a sequel (or prequel) written by another author. Walter Jon Williams used the world Zelazny created with an overlap of only a few characters to expand Zelazny’s story. Not original to the Tor Doubles series, Elegy for Angels and Dogs was originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 26 years after The Graveyard Heart appeared.

The Graveyard Heart was originally published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in March, 1964. Opening at New Year’s Eve 2000, Zelazny offers a decadent society of the Set, who live to attend flamboyant parties and be seen, going into cryosleep between the parties to prolong their lives. Alvin Moore has managed to get an invitation to the “Party of Parties,” where he promptly falls in love with Leota, one of the Set.

Since the Set only come out of hibernation every few years to attend elaborate parties, there can be no relationship between Moore and Leota. Unable to accept this, Moore decides he must be admitted to the Set and goes about figuring out how to improve his chances of achieving his goal.

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Quatro-Decadal Review: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1999, edited by Gordon Van Gelder and Robin O’Connor

Quatro-Decadal Review: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1999, edited by Gordon Van Gelder and Robin O’Connor

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1999, with a Chesley Bonestell cover

This is a 50th Anniversary double issue… why did it have to be a double issue? I hate to start the review with a petty observation like that, but honestly, this was a bigger task than I was hoping for, especially because the November ’99 Asimov’s SF was also a double issue!

Right inside the cover is an ad for Frank M. Robinson’s Science Fiction of the 20th Century:  An illustrated History.  Really pulling the nostalgia strings for the older sf!  Another item to put on my ‘to buy’ list.

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