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Future Treasures: Valiant Dust by Richard Baker

Future Treasures: Valiant Dust by Richard Baker

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Valiant Dust-smallRichard Baker began his career at TSR where, with Colin McComb, he designed the Birthright campaign setting in 1994, the first D&D campaign setting to support PCs as rulers, creating a hybrid game based on “diplomacy, politics, trade, construction and (of course) war” (Pyramid magazine). His next major release was the fondly remembered Alternity SF RPG in 1998, with Bill Slavicsek.

His first novel was Forgotten Realms: The Adventures: The Shadow Stone (1997); it was followed quickly by nearly a dozen others for TSR, including two novels in the Star*Drive setting (1999), the New York Times bestselling War of the Spider Queen: Condemnation (2003), and the Blades of the Moonsea trilogy (2008-2010).

Valiant Dust marks his first non-licensed project, and I’m glad to see it. It’s the opening volume of the military science fiction series Breaker of Empires, set in an era of great interstellar colonial powers. It arrives in hardcover from Tor in two weeks.

Sikander Singh North has always had it easy ― until he joined the crew of the Aquilan Commonwealth starship CSS Hector. As the ship’s new gunnery officer and only Kashmiri, he must constantly prove himself better than his Aquilan crewmates, even if he has to use his fists. When the Hector is called to help with a planetary uprising, he’ll have to earn his unit’s respect, find who’s arming the rebels, and deal with the headstrong daughter of the colonial ruler―all while dodging bullets.

Sikander’s military career is off to an explosive start ― but only if he and CSS Hector can survive his first mission.

Our previous coverage of Richard Baker’s game books includes:

Lost Empires of Faerûn
Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave
Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land

Valiant Dust will be published by Tor Books on November 7, 2017. It is 349 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Larry Rostant. Read the complete first chapter here. Read all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

In Search of a new Weird Tales: An Interview with Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the Talking Skull!

In Search of a new Weird Tales: An Interview with Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the Talking Skull!

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Tales from the Magician's Skull-small

Recently Goodman Games announced a Kickstarter campaign to fund the launch of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, a magazine of all-new swords & sorcery fiction in the classic pulp style. The first issue is a delight for Black Gate readers, with tales from popular BG contributors James Enge, John C. Hocking, Howard Andrew Jones, Chris Willrich, Bill Ward, and others. And best of all, Goodman has invited Howard Andrew Jones on board as editor, guaranteeing a top-notch product. The spectacular success of the Kickstarter campaign — more than quintuple its goal, with more than a week to go — demonstrates just how well the creators have read the market demand for a true sword & sorcery publication. I sat down with Joseph Goodman, founder and publisher of Goodman Games, and Howard — along with their undead master, the mighty Magician’s Skull — to find out more about one of the most exciting magazine launches in a decade.

My first question is for Joseph… why a magazine? How does that fit in with your laser-like focus on classic gaming?

Joseph: Thanks for the interview, John! To answer your question, I have to start with Appendix N. In the 1982 edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, the creator included an obscure bibliography. It was Appendix N, the 14th appendix in the book, where he listed the works of fiction that inspired him to create D&D. That list has since become notorious. It is now a de facto “required reading list” for diehard fans of the game.

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October 2017 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

October 2017 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

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Nightmare Magazine October 2017-smallIf you’ve never tried Nightmare magazine… well, let’s face it, what better time than October? The latest issue has a nice assortment of creepy tales, including Joanna Parypinski’s “We Are Turning on a Spindle,” a short fable about a traveler who tirelessly searches the universe for a very particular castle, with a legendary resident. The universe, it turns out, is downright lousy with castles.

After years of searching, he found the castle on a remote forgotten world in an abandoned corner of the unknown universe. Castles littered the cosmos like dead stars, relics of the ancients…

What is our hero doing way the heck out here?

There was no beauty left in the known cosmos, as far as he could see, and so he had ventured to the unknown cosmos… These are strange worlds that lie on the fringes, so old they may have existed before physics settled down with its proper rules.

Parypinski has a real gift for turning a phrase (“The interior of the castle was likewise ruined and decrepit, its diseased antediluvian stone like a scabbed wound”), and the tale is short, about 2,400 words. While the prose is sparking and new, the tale is a very old one indeed, and the ending isn’t hard to predict. That’s sort of the point, I think, and the horror of the climax isn’t diminished by our ability to see it coming. Check it out here.

The October issue of Nightmare also contains original fiction from Cassandra Khaw, and reprints by Brian Evenson and Robert Shearman.

There’s also an editorial from John Joseph Adams, with all the latest news on upcoming titles from John Joseph Adams Books, including the Hugh Howey collection Machine Learning, and Molly Tanzer’s second novel Creatures of Will and Temper, plus the latest installment of “The H Word,” in which Kristi DeMeester shares her thoughts on horror. There’s also author spotlights, and a feature interview with Josh Malerman.

The complete contests of the issue are listed below.

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New Treasures: Swords Against Darkness edited by Paula Guran

New Treasures: Swords Against Darkness edited by Paula Guran

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Swords Against Darkness Guran-small Swords Against Darkness Guran-back-small

I’ve been anticipating Paula Guran’s monumental Swords Against Darkness anthology for over a year, ever since word started to leak out about the massive amount of research she was doing to make her selections (including reading every issue of Black Gate). The book was finally released this summer, but it wasn’t until last weekend that I was able to settle in with it.

And so far, it’s been a delight. It’s divided into three sections: Forging and Shaping, covering the canonical works that first defined the genre in the pulps (Howard, Vance, Leiber, Moorcock, and others); Normalizing and Annealing, those writers who followed in their footsteps (Tanith Lee, C. J. Cherryh, Karl Edward Wagner, James Enge, etc.); and Tempering and Sharpening, the modern writers who’ve brought something brand new (Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Saladin Ahmed, Scott Lynch). Paula offers a paragraph or two to introduce the authors and put each story in context.

As you’d expect, the pages contain tales of Conan, Jirel of Joiry, Eric John Stark, the Dying Earth, Zothique, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric, Kane, and Nifft the Lean. But there’s also stories of Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, Samuel R. Delany’s Nevèrÿon, Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion, James Enge’s Morlock, and Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky. There’s even one original tale, by John Balestra, a name I’m unfamiliar with.

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Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors — October Edition

Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors — October Edition

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The Harbors of the Sun-small After the End of the World Jonathan L. Howard-small The Robots of Gotham-small

As we head into fall, the list of upcoming novels, stories and features from Black Gate‘s authors and bloggers continues to expand — and grow more and more impressive. Here’s a partial list of the current and upcoming releases from some of your favorite BG writers.

The Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells, the last in the Books of the Raksura series, came out in July from Night Shade Books
After the End of the World by Jonathan L. Howard, Volume 2 in the Carter & Lovecraft series, will be published in hardcover by Thomas Dunne on November 14
Todd McAulty’s debut novel The Robots of Gotham arrives in hardcover from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 19
Howard Andrew Jones’ For the Killing of Kings, the opening novel in a brand new epic fantasy series, arrives in hardcover from Thomas Dunne in July 2018
Derek Kunsken’s debut novel The Quantum Magician will be published by Solaris in 2018, and serialized in Analog starting with the January/February issue

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A Tale of Three Covers: The Mammoth Book of Dracula / In the Footsteps of Dracula, edited by Stephen Jones

A Tale of Three Covers: The Mammoth Book of Dracula / In the Footsteps of Dracula, edited by Stephen Jones

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The Mammoth Book of Dracula 1977-small The Mamoth Book of Dracula-small In the Footsteps of Dracula-small

One of the most interesting books I received in the mail the last few months was In the Footsteps of Dracula: Tales of the Un-dead Count, edited by Stephen Jones, a fat 679-page hardcover from Pegasus Books that contains 33 stories and a poem, all building on the legend of Dracula, whom Stephen King calls “still literature’s greatest villain.” It’s a true feast for vampire lovers of all kinds, with stories by Thomas Ligotti, Manly Wade Wellman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul J. McAuley, Charlaine Harris, Brian Stableford, Michael Marshall Smith, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper, Nancy Kilpatrick, and many others.

As I was researching the book for this article, I discovered a brief Facebook post from Stephen Jones that noted that it was a “revised and updated edition of [an] older Mammoth book,” The Mammoth Book of Dracula, originally published in the UK by Robinson in 1997 with a cover by Paul Aston (above left). The book appeared in a revised edition in 2011 with a more modern cover (above middle, uncredited) and containing one additional story, the Sookie Stackhouse tale “Dracula Night.” The new hardcover edition (above right, cover by Derek Thornton) adds a new title, an “About the Editor” page, and Acknowledgement and Credits, but otherwise looks identical to the 2011 edition. It arrived in bookstores on October 3.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

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The God in the Bowl-small

The top articles at Black Gate in July and August were both features on Conan, and last month Bob Byrne managed to nab the top slot with his look at a strange mash-up of police procedural and sword & sorcery, the Conan tale “The God in the Bowl.” Conan was created by Robert E. Howard in the pages of Weird Tales in 1932; 85 years later, he’s still the most popular character among our readers. That’s durability.

The second most popular article at Back Gate in September wasn’t about Conan, but it did feature a sinister cosmic entity also created in Weird Tales, this time in H.P. Lovecraft 1928 story “The Call of Cthulhu” — our report on the latest Call of Cthulhu solo module, Alone Against the Flames. At #3 was Elizabeth Crowen’s interview with popular cosplay photographer Bruce Heinsius. Fletcher Vredenburgh placed two articles in the Top Ten last month; the first was his review of Roger Zelazny’s 1983 novel Dilvish, the Damned, which placed at #4. Rounding out the Top Five was an article on famous book hoarders, “What do George Lucas, Michael Jackson, and Harry Houdini Have in Common?”

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Ghosts, Strange Science, and Trains That Vanish: The Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle

Ghosts, Strange Science, and Trains That Vanish: The Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle

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Tales of Twilight and the Unseen Arthur Conan Doyle-small Tales of Terror and Mystery Arthur Conan Doyle-small Tales of Long Ago Arthur Conan Doyle-small Tales of Adventures and Medical Life Arthur Conan Doyle-small

We bow to no one in our appreciation of Arthur Conan Doyle here at Black Gate. Bob Byrne’s long-running Monday column The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes explored all facets of the career of his most famous creation, and over the years William Patrick Maynard, Mark Rigney, Ryan Harvey and other folks have written here about Doyle’s work and its many adaptations.

But Doyle made many contributions to the fantasy, detective and horror genres during his long career, and over the decades his work has been reprinted in numerous anthologies like Horrors in Hiding (1973), Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1991), Ancient Egyptian Supernatural Tales (2016), and many others. From 2014-2015 British publisher Alma Classics gathered dozens of his tales into four collections, all of which are still available, and all of which are worth tracking down.

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Julian May, July 10, 1931 — October 17, 2017

Julian May, July 10, 1931 — October 17, 2017

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Julian MayJulian May, fan and bestselling science fiction writer, died this week at her home in Bellevue, Washington.

Julian May was active in US fandom in the 40s and early 50. She published her first story, “Dune Roller,” in the December 1951 Astounding; it was filmed as The Cremators in 1972. She was the first woman to chair a Worldcon, with the Tenth World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1952. The next year she married T.E. Dikty, co-editor (with Everett F. Bleiler) of The Best Science Fiction Stories, the first Year’s Best SF anthology. Over the next few decades she wrote 250 books, chiefly non-fiction books for young readers and adults, including A Gazeteer of the Hyborian World of Conan (1977, under the name Lee N Falconer).

In 1976 May began attending SF conventions again, starting with Westercon 29 in Los Angeles. She wore an elaborate diamond-encrusted space suit to the costume party, and started sketching ideas for who might actually wear such a suit. In 1978 she began writing what became the Saga of Pliocene Exile, the tale of a group of refugees from the twenty-second century who flee six million years into Earth’s past, only to discover two alien species in deadly conflict with humans who’ve already arrived.

May demonstrated an immediate talent for ambitious SF series, and turned that 4-volume saga into essentially into an extensive prelude for Galactic Milieu sequence: Intervention (1987) Jack the Bodiless (1992), Diamond Mask (1994) and Magnificat (1996). Her other work includes three trilogies: Trillium (written with Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley, published 1990-97), The Rampart Worlds (1998-2001), and Boreal Moon (2003-06). The Science Fiction Encyclopedia calls her work “at times reminiscent of the Planetary-Romance Baroque of Roger Zelazny.”

May was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame at the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention in 2015. She died on October 17, 2017. She was 86 years old.

Future Treasures: Ka by John Crowley

Future Treasures: Ka by John Crowley

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Ka John Crowley-smallMatthew David Surridge says John Crowley’s World Fantasy Award-winning Little, Big is “the best post-Tolkien novel of the fantastic I’ve read,” and Mark Rigney calls it “among the best and most endearing fantasy novels ever written… If there’s another book I’ve encountered in my adult life that calls louder to be re-read, and which reveals an even richer experience on doing so, I cannot imagine what it is.” Crowley’s thirteenth novel Ka, a fable about the first crow in history with a name of his own, arrives in hardcover from Saga Press next week.

A Crow alone is no Crow.

Dar Oakley — the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own — was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned. Through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, and around the world, he found secrets that could change the humans’ entire way of life — and now may be the time to finally reveal them.

Our previous coverage of John Crowley includes:

In Praise of Little, Big by Mark Rigney
John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle, Books One and Two by Mark Rigney
The Deep

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr will be published by Saga Press on October 24, 2017. It is 442 pages, priced at $28.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Melody Newcomb.