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Author: John ONeill

Vintage Treasures: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg

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Famous Fantastic Mysteries Weinberg-smallI spent yesterday and Friday at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in Lombard, Illinois, about 30 minutes from my house. And as soon as I finish this article, I’m going to scoot over there again.

I found a great many treasures at this show this year. More than usual, even. And I’m looking forward to reporting on them here. One of the more interesting was a copy of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a 1991 pulp reprint anthology from Gramercy edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg, in terrific shape, which I bought for just $5.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries was a much-beloved fantasy pulp which ran from 1939 to 1953. The publisher was Frank A. Munsey, a name well known to pulp fans. The first bi-monthly issue was cover-dated September-October 1939, and contained A. Merritt’s “The Moon Pool,” Ray Cummings’ “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” and stories by Manly Wade Wellman, Donald Wandrei, and many others. The magazine was a success, and it quickly switched from bi-monthly to monthly.

While the magazine relied chiefly on reprints, especially in the early days, it commissioned original art from many of the top artists of the day, especially Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Sterne Sevens, and today is treasured as much for the fabulous covers and interior art as the fiction.

In its 81 issues, Famous Fantastic Mysteries offered reprints of SF and fantasy pulp stories by Max Brand, E. F. Benson, Robert W. Chambers, William Hope Hodgson, Lord Dunsany, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and countless others, as well as brand new fiction from Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Murray Leinster, Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, Margaret St. Clair, Arthur C. Clarke, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and many more. See the complete issue checklist at Galactic Central.

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Robin Hobb Wraps Up the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy with Assassin’s Fate

Robin Hobb Wraps Up the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy with Assassin’s Fate

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Two decades ago Robin Hobb (who also writes fantasy as Megan Lindholm) burst on the scene with her debut the Farseer Trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin’s Quest). They were almost immediately successful, and by 2003 Robin Hobb had sold over a million copies of her first nine novels.

The Farseer Trilogy is the first-person narrative of FitzChivalry Farseer, the illegitimate son of a prince, and his adventures with an enigmatic character called the Fool. The story continued in the Tawny Man Trilogy (Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, and Fool’s Fate), and in 2013 Hobb announced she would pick up the tale decades later with the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy. The first two books are now in print in both hardcover and paperback, and the third and final volume arrives in hardcover next month. So for those of you who hang on until a series is complete to start the first book, the long wait is finally over.

Fool’s Assassin (667 pages, $28 hardcover, $8.99 paperback, $7.99 digital, August 12, 2014)
Fool’s Quest (784 pages, $28 hardcover, $8.99 paperback, $7.99 digital, August 11, 2015)
Assassin’s Fate (864 pages, $32 hardcover, $14.99 digital, May 9, 2017)

All three are published by Del Rey, with covers by Alejandro Colucci.

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Guile by Constance Cooper Now Available in Paperback

Guile by Constance Cooper Now Available in Paperback

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Guile Constance Cooper paperback-smallWe’re always proud when a Black Gate author breaks out to wider success in the publishing world. That happened with Constance Cooper’s Guile, her debut novel set in the same world — and drawing on the same characters — as her acclaimed story “The Wily Thing” from Black Gate 12.

Guile was published in hardcover by Clarion Books last year. Here’s Sarah Avery from her BG review.

In the town of Wicked Ford, an orphan girl with a secret claim on high town respectability but a history in a bayou stilt village lives under an assumed name and a false claim. Yonie makes her living as a pearly, an assessor of magical objects… she’s a self-taught antiquarian with a brilliant eye for detail, but to detect and diagnose magic, she needs the help of her business partner the talking cat…

Guile is a remarkable layerwork of mysteries. From the seemingly trivial and isolated mysteries about enchanted lockets and street signs that Yonie and LaRue solve for their daily subsistence, a larger pattern emerges that demands investigation. Mysteries of personal origin run beneath them, and every relationship Yonie has with kin, allies, friends, and suitors will be changed one way or another by the end of the book. Deepest of all runs the mystery of the river’s magic and the fallen civilizations that once understood it.

Constance Cooper’s debut novel delighted me from start to finish. The worldbuilding feels thoroughly lived in, as if we could step ahead of Yonie around any corner or shrub and something amazing would already be there for us to find. The characters are richly imagined individuals, and together they add up to a social world that is both kinder and more dangerous than Yonie ever guessed. The plot runs like the river delta it’s set in, its streams parting and rejoining and braiding around obstacles until it runs clear to its conclusion.

Read Sarah’s complete review here..

The paperback edition of Guile is now avaiable from HMH Books. It was published on March 14, 2017. It is 384 pages, priced at $9.99 for both the trade paperback and digital editions.

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper, Part II

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper, Part II

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Horror on the Asteroid at Windy City Pulp 2016-small

Horror on the Asteroid, and other fabulous treasures

Happy Saturday morning everyone!

I leaped out of bed this morning, and hastily started packing up to head out to the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in nearby Lombard, IL. I spent most of the day there yesterday, catching up with Jason Waltz, Arin Komins, Rich Warren, David Willoughby, Bob Garcia, Doug Ellis, and many other old friends… and more than a few fellow happy buyers and sellers.

I also found more than a few treasures, including a seller in the back with an absolutely gorgeous collection of 1970s and 80s science fiction paperbacks that looked glossy and flawless. He was asking $2 each, in many cases less than the original cover price, so it was like stepping back in time and plucking brand new books by Roger Zelanzy, Sherri Tepper, H. Beam Piper, P.C. Hodgell, Gene Wolfe, and Robert E. Howard off the shelves. I even found a complete set of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium sequence, which Fletcher Vredenburgh enthusiastically wrote up here at Black Gate. I spent a small fortune at that booth alone, and it took a few trips back to the car to carry all my bags.

Windy City has the kind of treasures I cannot find anywhere else, like rare Arkham House collections and early issues of Weird Tales, and even a copy of the first collection by my favorite pulp writer, Edmond Hamilton’s The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror, published in hardcover by Philip Allan in 1936. I’ve only seen one copy in my entire life, and that was at last year’s show, resting on a table among dozens of other near-priceless volumes, like early first editions of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert A Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and lots more (click the image above for a closer look).

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The April Fantasy Magazine Rack

The April Fantasy Magazine Rack

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We had lots of great coverage for magazine fans this month, including Doug Ellis’s look at 1930s-era letters from famed editor and fan Julius Schwartz on A. Merritt, Amazing Stories, and the First Worldcon, and Derek Kunsken’s report on Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine‘s 40th Anniversary Celebration in Manhattan. For vintage magazine fans, we had Rich Horton’s retro-review of the October 1968 Galaxy, and Allen Steele’s new take on the classic pulp hero Captain Future.

We also added no less than three new magazines to our coverage for the first time: 3×3 Illustration, Wired, and the brand new magazine of fantasy, science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and sword & sorcery, Gathering Storm.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Late March Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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Future Treasures: A Tyranny of Queens, Book 2 of The Manifold Worlds, by Foz Meadows

Future Treasures: A Tyranny of Queens, Book 2 of The Manifold Worlds, by Foz Meadows

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An-Accident-of-Stars-medium A Tyranny of Queens-small

Foz Meadows, who’s been nominated for a 2017 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, wraps up her 2-volume Portal Fantasy The Manifold Worlds with A Tyranny of Queens, arriving in mass market paperback from Angry Robot next month. When she signed a 2-book deal with Angry Robot in 2015, Foz wrote,

After years of quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) obsessing over magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies, I’m delighted to announce that Angry Robot has decided to enable me in these endeavours. An Accident of Stars is the book I desperately wanted to read, but couldn’t possibly have written, at sixteen – and, as you may have guessed, it features (among a great many other things) magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies. I’m immensely excited to share it with you, and I look forward to collaborating in its production with our glorious Robot Overlords, who only asked in exchange a very small blood sacrifice and part ownership of my soul.

A Tyranny of Queens arrives on May 2.

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Presents: Robert E. Howard, Master of Sword & Sorcery: A Conversation with Author Howard Andrew Jones

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Presents: Robert E. Howard, Master of Sword & Sorcery: A Conversation with Author Howard Andrew Jones

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Show Howard Andrew Jones

I have thoroughly enjoyed the last two audio shows from Robert Zoltan’s Dream Tower Media, a lively conversation with Black Gate blogger Ryan Harvey on Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a fascinating discussion with Scott Oden on the history and writing of J.R.R. Tolkien. So I was very excited to see that for Episode #4 the subject was the distinguished Howard Andrew Jones, author of the beloved Dabir & Asim Arabian fantasy tales, and the future bestseller For the Killing of Kings, out next year from St. Martin’s Press. The topic this time was none other than Robert E. Howard, the legendary creator of Conan, and perhaps the greatest Sword & Sorcery author of all time.

As usual, calling this a podcast doesn’t do it justice, as it’s really a professionally-produced radio show set in the dimension-hopping Dream Tower (with a talking raven). I’ve had plenty of lengthy discussions with Howard — who is the Managing Editor of Black Gate — over the years, and here he’s at the peak of his form, entertaining and highly informative. The podcast opens with a animated discussion of life in small town Texas, Robert E. Howard’s substantial gifts as a storyteller, and why he added whipping scenes to so many pulp tales. It looks at REH’s enduring creations — including Conan, Solomon Kane, and Dark Agnes — before exploring our fascination with ruins, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and the influence of gaming on modern fantasy.

My only criticism is the host’s tendency to wander off topic, and repeatedly cut off his guests to talk about himself. Robert Zoltan is a fascinating guy, and I enjoy his opinions, but that doesn’t mean that a 1-hour podcast on Robert E. Howard is the right place for a 3 minute monologue on Van Gogh, or a 7-minute monologue on narcissism and how hard it is to make a living as a musician. Future podcasts should focus more on his guests, or maybe just do away with the pretense of an interview entirely. That might set better expectations with listeners.

Check out Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Presents: Robert E. Howard, Master of Sword & Sorcery: A Conversation with Author Howard Andrew Jones, and all the episodes of the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast, here.

New Treasures: The Lovecraft Squad: All Hallows Horror by John Llewellyn Probert

New Treasures: The Lovecraft Squad: All Hallows Horror by John Llewellyn Probert

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The Lovecraft Squad-smallEditor Stephen Jones is a busy guy, with over 140 books to his credit, and no less than four World Fantasy Awards and twenty-one British Fantasy Awards under his belt. His latest project is an interesting one — he’s the creator of The Lovecraft Squad. a series of novels that follow a secret organization dedicated to stopping the dark horrors accurately described in H.P. Lovercraft’s fiction. The first volume, All Hallows Horror, by novelist John Llewellyn Probert, was published in hardcover by Pegasus last month.

There has always been something wrong about All Hallows Church. Not just the building, but the very land upon it stands. Reports dating back to Roman times reveal that it has always been a bad place — blighted by strange sightings, unusual phenomena, and unexplained disappearances. So in the 1990s, a team of para-psychiatrists is sent in to investigate the various mysteries surrounding the Church and its unsavory legends. From the start, they begin to discover a paranormal world that defies belief. But as they dig deeper, not only do they uncover some of the secrets behind the ancient edifice designed by “Zombie King” Thomas Moreby but, hidden away beneath everything else, something so ancient and so terrifying that it is using the architect himself as a conduit to unimaginable evil.

After four days and nights, not everybody survives — and those that do will come to wish they hadn’t. Imagine The Haunting of Hill House, The Amityville Horror, The Entity and The Stone Tape rolled together into the very fabric of a single building. And then imagine if all that horror is accidentally released…

John Llewellyn Probert’s previous work includes the novels The House That Death Built and Unnatural Acts and the collection, The Faculty of Terror. He won the British Fantasy Award for his novella The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine.

The next volume of The Lovecraft Squad, titled Waiting, will be released in hardcover on October 3, 2017.

The Lovecraft Squad: All Hallows Horror was published by Pegasus Books on March 7, 2017. It is 377 pages, priced at $25.95 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Douglas Klauba.

Carrie Patel Completes The Recoletta Trilogy With The Song of the Dead

Carrie Patel Completes The Recoletta Trilogy With The Song of the Dead

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I love tales of subterranean cities. Like Charles R. Tanner’s fabulous Tumithak pulp adventure tales, Gary Gygax’s famous Drow enclave Erelhei-Cinlu, R.A. Salvatore’s Menzoberranzan, and… uh, that’s it, really. My love is fierce, but lonely.

At least it was, until Carrie Patel came along with her novels of the fantastical, gaslit underground city of Recoletta, where the last remnants of mankind huddle after a mysterious apocalypse. There have been two novels so far, and the third is due in paperback next month from Angry Robot.

The Buried Life (359 pages, March 6, 2015)
Cities and Thrones (448 pages, July 7, 2015)
The Song of the Dead (448 pages, May 2, 2017)

All three books are priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The covers are by John Coulthart.

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April 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available

April 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available

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Clarkesworld 127-smallIn his editorial in the April issue, Clarkesworld founder Neil Clarke reflects on his first few months as a full time editor.

I left my day job at the beginning of February, but it’s only now beginning to feel real. Previously, whenever I had vacation time, I’d shift to full-time editor, so when I finally did quit, it just felt like one of those vacations: lots of work, little downtime. The same here, initially: I had a small mountain of tasks on my to-do list and I’ve been head-down plowing through them. It’s hard to notice your world has changed when you are that focused.

It took nearly two months for me to clearly notice that this is my new life. I’ve been doing some freelance consulting for my former employer — a few hours here and there — so I haven’t fully disconnected from them. It’s all been remote assistance, so when I stopped by to help them with a more difficult problem, I noticed that stress that I had felt while working there, was gone. While there, I talked with friends about the ongoing situation and I sympathized, but it didn’t generate any anxiety. I walked to my car knowing that I was free.

A few days later, I left for a week of back-to-back events… Coming back from all the travel was a return to my new routine. Taking care of a sick child, reading story submissions, sending out contracts, paying the insurance bill, vacuuming the house . . . This is my career now. It’s no longer just what I do on the side. It’s not a vacation, so maybe I need to add one of those to my to-do list. I like the sound of that.

Read Neil’s complete editorial here.

The April Clarkesworld contains original fiction from Robert Brice, Bogi Takács, Vajra Chandrasekera, Juliette Wade, and Fei Dao, plus reprints from Adam Roberts and Michael Swanwick.

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