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Author: John ONeill

Check Out the Tangent Online 2016 Recommended Reading List

Check Out the Tangent Online 2016 Recommended Reading List

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Analog March 2016-small Black Static 55-small Compelling Science Fiction 3-small

We’re approaching awards season, which means that there will be more and more Recommended Reading lists out there for novels, anthologies, collections, genre non-fiction, and much more. But for my money, the most useful list in the genre is the annual Tangent Online Recommended Reading List.

What’s makes Tangent‘s list so special? For one thing, it’s massive — 19 reviewers contributed to it, combing dozens and dozens of magazines and original anthologies to produce a comprehensive list of the top short stories, novelettes, and novellas of the year. And Tangent‘s editor, the tireless Dave Truesdale, has organized the list into one, two, and three star selections, and copiously illustrated the list with magazine and book covers — with live links to publishing websites. It’s a really terrific resource for anyone interested in learning what’s going on in short fiction markets, and I guarantee you’ll make some new discoveries. I cover over 40 magazines every month for Black Gate, and I still managed to find a few new ones. Thanks Tangent!

Here’s a handy set of links to all of their recent lists, including this year’s:

Tangent Online 2016 Recommended Reading List
Tangent Online 2015 Recommended Reading List
Tangent Online 2014 Recommended Reading List
Tangent Online 2013 Recommended Reading List
Tangent Online 2012 Recommended Reading List
Tangent Online 2011 Recommended Reading List
Tangent Online 2010 Recommended Reading List

Lawrence Ellsworth’s New Translation of Dumas’ The Red Sphinx

Lawrence Ellsworth’s New Translation of Dumas’ The Red Sphinx

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Dumas The Red Sphinx

Lawrence Ellsworth (known to gaming fans as Lawrence Schick, creator of White Plume Mountain, and the lead writer for The Elder Scrolls Online), has written many popular articles for Black Gate over the years, including one of our top posts of 2015, “The “Known World” D&D Setting: A Secret History,” and more recently his fabulous Silent Screen Swashbucklers series.

In addition to his renowned gaming work, Lawrence is also a popular author and translator in his own right. His most recent release is a brand new translation of a nearly forgotten novel by the great Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. (That’s Lawrence above, showing off both his new book and his dashing wardrobe.)

The Red Sphinx, a sequel to The Three Musketeers that picks up where that book ended, is a massive 837-page tome that Michael Dirda calls “As fresh as ever… excellent, compulsively readable” in the Washington Post. It was published in hardcover by Pegasus Books on January 3.

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A Lou Reed Song With a Knife to Your Throat: Daniel José Older’s Bone Street Rumba Trilogy

A Lou Reed Song With a Knife to Your Throat: Daniel José Older’s Bone Street Rumba Trilogy

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Half-Resurrection-Blues-small Midnight Taxi Tango-small Battle Hill Bolero-small

The opening novel in Daniel José Older’s Bone Street Rumba trilogy, Half-Resurrection Blues, was selected as one of the Best Fantasy Books of 2015 by BuzzFeed, Barnes & Noble, and other sites. Portion of the second, Midnight Taxi Tango, were originally published at Tor.com as three original short stories: “Anyway: Angie,” “Kia and Gio,” and “Ginga.” All are still available for you to sample.

The novels follow the adventures of Carlos Delacruz, one of the New York Council of the Dead’s most unusual agents. Saladin Ahmed, Hugo-nominated author of Throne of the Crescent Moon, says “Simply put, Daniel José Older has one of the most refreshing voices in genre fiction today,” and Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim) calls Older “As real as fresh blood and as hard as its New York streets. A Lou Reed song sung with a knife to your throat.” The third novel in the series, Battle Hill Bolero, was finally released in paperback by Roc last month.

Read excerpts from all three novels at Tor.com.

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Occult Detective Quarterly #1 Now Available

Occult Detective Quarterly #1 Now Available

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Occult Detective Quarterly 1-small Occult Detective Quarterly 1-contents-small

Back in October, shortly after the launch of the Occult Detective Quarterly Kickstarter, we welcomed co-editor John Linwood Grant to Black Gate to tell us a little about his exciting new project. Here’s what he said, in part.

I was always a Carnacki man, staunch and true. An Edwardian adventurer, willing to admit that I was afraid, but determined to stiffen that lip and see the game through. And as a follower of William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghostfinder, I quickly took to games like Call of Cthulhu when it first came out in the eighties. The dedicated investigator pitted against almost indescribable horrors had an obvious appeal. It turned out to be a shock, because unlike our usual, intriguing fantasy RPG campaigns, in CoC we died a lot. A real lot. We were, generally, doomed.

So when we decided that we would launch a new magazine, Occult Detective Quarterly, we knew what we wanted. Someone even suggested that Doomed Meddler Quarterly would be a good alternative name. We wanted tales of psychic detectives, amateur supernatural sleuths, embittered foes of the Dark, and people who ended up having to investigate malevolent forces against their wills. New Lovecraftian terror was welcome, as was old-fashioned pluck. Stories from Carnacki to Constantine, with terrified innocents thrown in along the way.

The first issue of the magazine is now available, and it’s exceeded my expectations in virtually every way. We are witnessing the birth of a major fantasy magazine.

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Future Treasures: In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle

Future Treasures: In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle

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In Calabria Peter Beagle-smallPeter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn and The Folk of the Air, is one of the finest writers we have, and a new Beagle novella is a major event.

In Calabria, the tale of a lonely farmer in Italy’s scenic Calabria who finds himself a worldwide sensation when his farm becomes a haven for a host of unicorns, is a highly-anticipated return to the subject that made him famous. It’s available in trade paperback from Tachyon on Valentines’ Day.

Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy’s scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming and writing poetry. But one chilly morning, as though from a dream, an impossible visitor appears at the farm. When Claudio comes to her aid, an act of kindness throws his world into chaos. Suddenly he must stave off inquisitive onlookers, invasive media, and even more sinister influences.

Lyrical, gripping, and wise, In Calabria confirms Peter S. Beagle’s continuing legacy as one of fantasy’s most legendary authors.

Our previous coverage of Peter Beagle includes:

Future Treasures: Summerlong
The Mystery of Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons
How to Support Peter S. Beagle with The Last Unicorn Blu-ray by Ryan Harvey
The Secret History of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle

In Calabria will be published by Tachyon Publications on February 14, 2017. It is 176 pages, priced at $19.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Presents: Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Conversation with Ryan Harvey

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Presents: Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Conversation with Ryan Harvey

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast Ryan Harvey

Dream Tower Media, the mad geniuses behind The Blue Lamp by Robert Zoltan (which Fletcher Vredenburgh called “marvelous… a full sound production, like a radio show”), have released Episode 2 of their new audio series, the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast. The title is spot on, as this one-hour episode is a thoroughly entertaining and far-ranging discussion of the great Edgar Rice Burroughs, featuring Robert Zoltan and Black Gate‘s own Ryan Harvey.

Like The Blue Lamp, this is no typical podcast, but an imaginatively designed (and frequently hilarious) radio show set in the windswept Dream Tower (with a talking raven). But stellar production aside, the real star of the show is the always-interesting Ryan Harvey, whose deep knowledge and profound enthusiasm for his subject prove infectious. Even if you’re not an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, you will be by the end their discussion. Terrific stuff.

I was also pleased to hear that the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast will be produced on a regular schedule. Robert tells us:

I made a real effort to create something unique and engaging, almost like a MST 3000 feel, that would be an ongoing serial. The third episode in February is going to be Orcs!: A Conversation with Historical Fantasy Author Scott Oden.

Great news! Check out all the episodes of the Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast here.

B&N Blog on 96 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in 2017

B&N Blog on 96 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in 2017

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog has gradually become one of my favorite places on the web. It’s well written, entertaining, and has a lot of content — virtually all of it focused on books. What’s not to love?

It’s not afraid of tackling big projects either. While lesser blogs may give you a peek at 10 upcoming releases and then head down to the pub, the hard-working crew at the B&N Sci-Fi Blog labor late into the night to compile a monster list of nearly 100 of the best genre books coming your way. How do they do it? Here’s Joel Cunningham with the scoop.

We asked sci-fi and fantasy editors from all the major publishing houses to share with us the books they are most excited to release into the wild in 2017. Let us just say, these editors are very excited — so excited, the list quickly ballooned to nearly 100 books. That’s 100 books that we’re really excited about too, even if the knowledge that we can’t possibly hope to read every one of them makes us lament, again, our pesky mortality.

Grab a fresh cup of coffee or your beverage of choice, and settle in. This is a big one.

Yeah, Joel’s right about that. It took a lot of work with compile this list, and I guarantee you that you’ll find something that will catch your interest. Here’s a handful of titles that I found especially intriguing.

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Another Magazine Gone: Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Packs it In

Another Magazine Gone: Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Packs it In

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Fantastic Stories of the Imaginations January February 2017-smallThere’s a healthy number of genre magazines on the market in 2017… but that doesn’t mean that all (or even most) of them are healthy. The vast majority of independent and small press magazines operate on paper-thin margins, which means that even minor setbacks can put the whole enterprise at risk.

We lost one of the highest-paying short fiction markets in the industry last month, as publisher Warren Lapine announced on January 18th that a combination of financial difficulties and personal setbacks had conspired to doom Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. In his Message From the Publisher he writes:

It’s with deep regret that I announce the closing of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. The January issue will be our final regular issue and the People of Color Take Over issue will be our final issue. I’m really proud of the body of work that we produced at Fantastic. There are a number of reasons that now is the time for me to close the webzine. According to my projection, it’ll take more than five years for Fantastic to become self sustaining, and I simply don’t feel that that is a reasonable time frame.

I had planned to stick it out another year, but my personal life has made that much more difficult. Last month my daughter’s house burned down and she and her family are staying with us while we try to sort everything out with an insurance company that doesn’t want to pay; and this month my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer… For those of you who are owed portions of an electronic subscription. Your subscription will be filled with electronic copies of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Cascadia Subduction Zone. That means you’ll be getting two magazines for every one we owe you.

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination was founded in August 2014, and published 17 issues over the past two and a half years. It took its name from the fondly-remembered digest Fantastic Stories, published from 1952-1980 by Ziff-Davis, and continued the original’s numbering scheme. The modern version was a free webzine that published two new stories every issue, plus reprints, reviews and commentary. It was edited by Warren Lapine and published by Wilder Publications, and available free online, and in a variety of digital formats for $2.99.

We last covered Fantastic Stories of the Imagination with the September-October 2015 issue. The final issue will be the Kickstarter-funded People Of Color Take Over Fantastic Stories, inspired by the hugely-successful People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction special issues of Lightspeed and Nightmare. The last regular issue contains new fiction by Wendy Nikel and Tamoha Sengupta; check it out here.

Steven Brust’s Five Roger Zelazny Books that Changed His Life

Steven Brust’s Five Roger Zelazny Books that Changed His Life

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Zelazny Lord of Light Creatures of Light and Darkness-small

Over at Tor.com, Steven Brust (The Incrementalists, the Vlad Taltos novels) talks about what may be my favorite fantasy novel, Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (1967).

You always get asked, “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?” And, of course, there’s no answer, or a thousand answers that are all equally valid. But I usually say, “In high school, when I read Zelazny’s Lord of Light.”

You see, until then, I had never known you could do that. I never knew you could make someone feel all those different things at the same time, with all of that intensity, just by how you used 26 characters and a few punctuation marks. What was it? Well, everything: Sam and Yama were the most compelling characters I’d come across; it was the first time I’d ever stopped reading to just admire a sentence; it gave me the feeling (which proved correct) that there were layers I wouldn’t get without a few rereadings; and, above all, it was when I became of what could be done with voice — how much could be done with just the way the author addressed the reader. I remember putting that book down and thinking, “If I could make someone feel like this, how cool would that be?” Then I started reading it again. And then I went and grabbed everything else of his I could find.

Steven uses this as a springboard to discuss Five Roger Zelazny Books that Changed My Life by Being Awesome, including the spiritual successor to Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), which includes the brilliant “Madrak’s Possibly Proper Death Litany, or the “agnostic’s prayer” as it has come to be called.” Read the entire article here.

January 2017 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

January 2017 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

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Nightmare Magazine January 2017-smallThe January 2017 issue of Nightmare is now available, with original fiction from Cadwell Turnbull and Carrie Vaughn, and reprints by Lilliam Rivera and Ashok Banker. Here’s Kevin P Hallett’s thoughts from Tangent Online:

“Loneliness is in Your Blood” by Cadwell Turnbull

This short dark horror describes a female vampire who makes herself invisible while she hunts for human blood. The vampire thinks she is immortal, living among the American slaves. But after hundreds of years, she finds herself growing old. As she ages, she is compelled to suck a young couple dry of their blood, an act that induces her own pregnancy and the birth of a new girl vampire…

“Redcap” by Carrie Vaughn

This horror short introduces us to Violet, the youngest of three sisters charged with minding the sheep. Her elder sisters warn her each day of the dangers outside the home, and that they will all starve if any sheep are lost. One day, as she prepares to herd the sheep from the pasture, she finds a lamb missing. Violet is torn between her sister’s warnings about the dangers and their cautions about starving if any sheep are lost.

She decides to search for the lost sheep. Drawn to its bleating, she climbs the haunted hill where the demon, Redcap, traps her… The story had a nice pace to it and the plot was engaging, pulling the reader forward…

Read his complete review here. The complete contests of the issue are listed below.

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