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Author: John ONeill

Future Treasures: The Wall of Storms, Book II of The Dandelion Dynasty, by Ken Liu

Future Treasures: The Wall of Storms, Book II of The Dandelion Dynasty, by Ken Liu

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The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu’s debut novel, was nominated for the Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It was also one of four launch titles for Saga Press, and it helped make that fledgling publisher one of the most respected publishing houses in the genre.

Next week Saga release The Wall of Storms, the second volume in what’s now being called The Dandelion Dynasty. It arrives in hardcover on October 4th. Here’s the description.

In the much-anticipated sequel to the “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR) Grace of Kings, Emperor Kuni Garu is faced with the invasion of an invincible army in his kingdom and must quickly find a way to defeat the intruders.

Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara, but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara — and chaos results.

But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara’s savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.

The Wall of Storms is 880 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Sam Weber. Read an interview with Ken, and an excerpt from the book, at io9.

A Long-Overdue Retrospective: The Best of Michael Moorcock

A Long-Overdue Retrospective: The Best of Michael Moorcock

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Tachyon Publications released The Best of Michael Moorcock, edited by John Davey and Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, back in 2009, and I finally bought a copy last month. I don’t know what took me so long.

Moorcock has an enormous back catalog of fantasy; so vast I’ll never be able to read even a fraction of it. But this book finally gives me the opportunity I’ve wanted for years: to sample the full range of Moorcock’s storytelling craft in one compact volume, with some of his most famous stories — including his famous 1968 Nebula Award winning novella “Behold the Man,” the Elric tale “A Portrait in Ivory,” and the Jerry Cornelius story “The Visible Men.”

The book received rave notices when it first appeared. Bookgasm says it “Serves as a superb introduction to the boundless imagination of this unique and fascinating author,” and The Guardian calls it “A long-overdue retrospective.” And Booklist says it’s “A wild, fascinating batch of stories fairly balancing the fantastic and the nearly ordinary, and showcasing Moorcock’s talent very well.”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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September 2016 Lightspeed Magazine Now Available

September 2016 Lightspeed Magazine Now Available

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lightspeed-september-2016-smallIt’s the end of the month, and you know what that means. The complete contents of Lightspeed have now been posted online, awaiting your pleasure. Here’s Charles Payseur’s summary from Quick Sip Reviews.

The September issue of Lightspeed Magazine is all about crime and punishment. About people running from their pasts, running from authority, running from justice or injustice alike. In each of the stories there is a looming threat of some sanction. Police officers trying to maintain a status quo or a corrupt government trying to quash transparency or some nebulous force urging surrender or an actual crocodile waiting for the right moment to… These are stories that complicate crime and resistance, activism and revolution. And though they are unified by their focus on characters running from pursuit, from punishment, they show very different motivations and outcomes…

“Unauthorized Access” by An Owomoyela (10,700 words).  This is a rather fun story about activism and bureaucracy and corruption, all wrapped in a warm cyberpunk blanket… The world is a vibrant and rather different New York, filled with solar collectors and data and big government but also a grittier side, an Undercity that Aedo fears to tread and a whole lot in between. And I love Aedo as a character, trying to do the right thing while continually finding herself in the right place at the right time to do something… a tense and rather thrilling ride at times, and I would be excited to see if there’s more to come from this world and these character. A great story!

Read Charles’ complete review of the September issue here.

This month editor John Joseph Adams offers us original fantasy by Maria Dahvana Headley and Jaymee Goh, and fantasy reprints by Tim Pratt and Christopher Barzak, plus original science fiction by An Owomoyela and Sean Williams, along with SF reprints by Alec Nevala-Lee and Charlie Jane Anders.

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Nathan Long Spills the Beans on The Bard’s Tale IV

Nathan Long Spills the Beans on The Bard’s Tale IV

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Nathan Long, lead writer on inXile’s upcoming Bard’s Tale IV, posted a major update on the game’s Kickstarter page last night, alongside the above gameplay clip.

This clip is meant to illustrate the tone that we are looking to capture for our environments and creatures in The Bard’s Tale IV – a captivating and expansive landscape for you to explore, and a menagerie of creatures inspired by myth and Celtic folklore. We’ve also been feverishly working on the combat system and have made some amazing progress, but we don’t want to show our hand on it quite yet…

Right from the beginning, we made the decision that BTIV would be a game of free exploration. You’d be able to go in any direction you chose, ignore the main story to do side quests if that’s what tickled your fancy, or just noodle around and find cool stuff. We therefore made Skara Brae and the land it resides in, Caith, big places with lots of space and lots of story, scenery and secrets to get lost in. Skara Brae is a city now, with multiple levels of sewers, catacombs, and crypts below it, while the lands that surround it are vast and varied, with broad fields, haunted villages, deep forests, treacherous fens, and looming mountains, all riddled with caves, ruins, dungeons, and hidden places, all ripe for exploration.

inXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera team is scheduled for release early next year; The Bard’s Tale IV will arrive sometime after that. They’ve recently announced their next game Wasteland 3, follow-on to the acclaimed Wasteland 2, will be launching a crowdfunding campaign on Fig on October 5th, 2016. Nathan Long is the author of Jane Carver of Waar, and has written extensively in the Warhammer universe, most notably his Black Hearts, Ulrika the Vampire, and Gotrek & Felix novels. Read Bill Ward’s two-part Black Gate interview with him here and here, and enjoy Nathan’s complete update here.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

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george-rr-martin-awards-and-alfie-award-to-john-oneill-of-black-gate-smallFollowing on our record 1.26 million page views in July, Black Gate had an even more incredible August. There were lots of small triumphs, but the big one was receiving an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin at Worldcon (at right). In his blog post explaining this year’s awards, George wrote:

One of my special ‘committee awards’ went to Black Gate, which had 461 nominations in the Fanzine category, second among all nominees and good for a place on the ballot. But Black Gate turned down the nomination, just as they did last year, to disassociate themselves from the slates. Turning down one Hugo nomination is hard, turning down two must be agony. Integrity like that deserves recognition, as does Black Gate itself. Editor John O’Neill was on hand to accept the Alfie.

Our top article last month was my report on the Alfie Awards, with pics from the associated Hugo Losers party. Second was M Harold Page’s study on how to capture the magic of a great dungeon crawl in fiction. And third was our look at Michael McDowell’s classic horror novel Cold Moon Over Babylon.

Rounding out the Top Five were William Patrick Maynard’s review of The Midnight Guardian (“a hardboiled pulp yarn that is so good, it immediately makes you set the author to one side with a handful of other standouts”), and Neil Baker’s gaming piece, “How No Man’s Sky Has Reinvigorated a Gaming Generation (No, Not That One).”

Also in the Top Ten were our report on the 2016 Hugo Award Winners, Parts One and Two of Fletcher Vredenburgh’s Summer Short Story Roundup, our summary of the Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July, and Bob Byrne’s detailed history of the TSR classic Dungeon!

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Space Barbarians and Uranium Mining on Mars: Rich Horton on Empire of the Atom by A. E. Van Vogt and Space Station #1 by Frank Belknap Long

Space Barbarians and Uranium Mining on Mars: Rich Horton on Empire of the Atom by A. E. Van Vogt and Space Station #1 by Frank Belknap Long

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It’s been a month or two since I’ve been able to make time for some classic pulp SF. But over at his website Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton has piqued my interest in a 1957 Ace Double, pairing A.E. van Vogt’s Empire of the Atom and Space Station #1 by Frank Belknap Long. Here’s Rich:

I approached Empire of the Atom with some caution. It is another “fix-up”, though a fairly coherent one, comprising five novelettes first published in Astounding in 1946 and 1947. It was published in hardcover by Shasta in 1957, followed the same year by this abridged Ace Double edition…. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised…

It is set some 10,000 years in the future, after humans have colonized the planets of the Solar System, and then been reduced to barbarism on each of these worlds. A city-state, Linn, arose, and in the recent past it conquered the world and began to try to annex the barbarians on Venus, Mars, and even outer satellites such as Europa. The ruler, or Lord Leader, is a vigorous man but getting older. A new child is born to his scheming second wife, Lydia. (These are, of course, analogues to Augustus and Livia.) The new baby, named Clane, turns out to be a mutant — Lydia was accidentally exposed to radiation — this society uses radioactive metals (and worships the “Atom Gods”) but has no idea how they work. As a mutant Clane should be killed. However, a leading Temple Scientist wants to raise him and show that mutants, if treated properly, have the same potential as anyone. So Clane is raised, somewhat isolated, and becomes an unusual but very intelligent young man… There is a sequel, The Wizard of Linn, serialized in Astounding in 1950.

Empire of the Atom was one of Van Vogt’s most popular novels, with over a dozen editions from multiple publishers over the next four decades.

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New Treasures: Black Rain by Matthew B.J. Delaney

New Treasures: Black Rain by Matthew B.J. Delaney

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Matthew B.J. Delaney’s first novel, Jinn, won the International Horror Guild Award. His latest is a near future science fiction thriller in which cures to terrible diseases are brokered on the Stock Exchange, and humanity has become dependent on a new race of synthetic slaves… slaves who are on the verge of revolt.

Read an except from Black Rain here, and see author Matthew B.J. Delaney describe the book in just 15 seconds on YouTube.

Black Rain was published by 47North on September 1, 2016. It is 373 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition.

The 2016 British Fantasy Awards Winners

The 2016 British Fantasy Awards Winners

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rawblood-catriona-ward-smallThe winners of the 2016 British Fantasy Awards have been announced by the British Fantasy Society. Tea and crumpets for everyone!

Since we forgot to report on the nominees three months ago, we’ll make up for it here by listing both the winners and the nominees in each category. Ready? Here we go.

Best Fantasy Novel — The Robert Holdstock Award

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Macmillan)

Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Harper Voyager)
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Macmillan)
Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
Guns of the Dawn, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
The Iron Ghost, Jen Williams (Headline)

Best Horror Novel — The August Derleth Award

Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

Welcome to Night Vale, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor (Orbit)
The Silence, Tim Lebbon (Titan)
A Cold Silence, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher)
Lost Girl, Adam Nevill (Pan)
The Death House, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

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Future Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3, edited by Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly

Future Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3, edited by Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly

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years-best-weird-fiction-volume-3-smallMichael Kelly’s Year’s Best Weird Fiction has fast become one of my favorite Year’s Best series. Kelly is the editor of the acclaimed anthology series Shadows and Tall Trees, and every year he invites a guest editor to help select the finest strange and weird fiction from the last 12 months.

Laird Barron and Kathe Koja ably assisted with the first two volumes, and this year Simon Strantzas (Burnt Black Suns, Shadows Edge) bent his considerable editorial talents to the task. It arrives in hardcover and trade paperback from Undertow Books next month.

Showcasing the finest weird fiction from 2015, volume 3 of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction is our biggest and most ambitious volume to date.

Acclaimed editors Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly bring their keen editorial sensibilities to the third volume of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction. The best weird stories of 2015 features work from Robert Aickman, Matthew M. Bartlett, Sadie Bruce, Nadia Bulkin, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Conn, Brian Evenson, L.S. Johnson, Rebecca Kuder, Tim Lebbon, Reggie Oliver, Lynda E. Rucker, Robert Shearman, Christopher Slatsky, D.P. Watt, Michael Wehunt, Marian Womack, Genevieve Valentine.

No longer the purview of esoteric readers, weird fiction is enjoying wide popularity. Chiefly derived from early 20th-century pulp fiction, its remit includes ghost stories, the strange and macabre, the supernatural, fantasy, myth, philosophical ontology, ambiguity, and a healthy helping of the outre. At its best, weird fiction is an intersecting of themes and ideas that explore and subvert the Laws of Nature. It is not confined to one genre, but is the most diverse and welcoming of all genres.

This series is perfect for those Black Gate readers who prefer dark fantasy, or who are looking for something just a little left of ordinary.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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September/October Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

September/October Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

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the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-september-october-2016-smallWhen I was at Worldcon last month, I attended the Friday morning reading group hosted by F&SF. It featured five writers reading their stories from the magazine — Cat Rambo, David Gerrold (above middle), Sarah Pinsker (right), William Ledbetter, and Esther Friesner — and was moderated by editor C.C. Finlay (above left).

It was a lot of fun… and it certainly built up anticipation for the upcoming September/October issue. Two of the authors, David Gerrold and Sarah Pinsker, read extremely enticing excerpts from stories appearing in that issue. At the end of the panel Charles Finlay announced early copies were available in the back. I got in line to get one, but ended up giving my precious copy to someone at the con, and I wasn’t able to retrieve it before flying back to Illinois (*sob*). So I had to wait impatiently for several weeks until the issue arrived in my local bookstore, and I snapped up a copy a few days ago.

It’s a David Gerrold Special Issue, featuring two new novellas by Gerrold, a memoir, and an appreciation by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, “The Amazing Mr. Gerrold.” It’s F&SF‘s first author special in over a decade, and I’m glad to see Finlay bringing the idea back. (Gerrold is having quite a renaissance in the pages of F&SF… his novelette “The Thing on the Shelf,” featuring a horror writer nominated for the coveted Stoker Award, appeared last issue.)

The issue’s “The Dunsmuir Horror,” a Lovecraft pastiche starring author David Gerold, is both funny and very disturbing. Written in the form of a letter to Gordon van Gelder, F&SF‘s publisher and former editor, from the narrator as he recovers in a mental institution (as I said… very Lovecraftian), the story relates Gerrod’s investigations into a sinister American town that tries to lure weary travelers into stopping.

It’s an exceptional piece and a very fun read, and already getting some good notice. Here’s Clancy Weeks at Tangent Online.

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