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Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone by G.S Denning

New Treasures: Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone by G.S Denning

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Warlock Holmes-smallBob Byrne, our Monday blogger who posts under The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes byline, is our go-to Holmes guy. But even can’t report on all the Sherlockian developments these days, which is why I’m here to tell you about G.S Denning’s new book Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone, released in trade paperback by Titan Books in May. Robert Brockway (The Unnoticeables) give us the details:

What if Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a brilliant detective, but an awkward magician with prophetic fits? What if Scotland Yard was staffed by vampires and ogres? And above all, what if it was funny? Warlock Holmes should have you from the title alone, but if it doesn’t, know that it’s full of charm, humor and demons. Lots of demons.

Humor is hard — and especially humor at length. I can count the number of truly funny novels I’ve read on one hand. But I enjoy a good parody, and this collection of humorous Sherlock pastiches with a dark fantasy twist looks like it would fit the bill nicely.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius who uses the gift of deduction and reason to solve the most vexing of crimes. Warlock Holmes, however, is an idiot. A good man, perhaps; a font of arcane power, certainly. But he’s brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn’t deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart flatmate. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety… and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

An imaginative, irreverent and addictive reimagining of the world’s favorite detective, Warlock Holmes retains the charm, tone and feel of the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while finally giving the flat at 221b Baker Street what it’s been missing for all these years: an alchemy table.

Reimagining six stories, this riotous mash-up is a glorious new take on the ever-popular Sherlock Holmes myth, featuring the vampire Inspector Vladislav Lestrade, the ogre Inspector Torg Grogsson, and Dr. Watson, the true detective at 221b. And Sherlock. A warlock.

Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone was published by Titan Books on May 17, 2016. It is 336 page, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version.

Future Treasures: Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone

Future Treasures: Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone

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Four Roads Cross-smallFour Roads Cross is the fifth novel in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, which Ken Liu calls “Brilliant, elegant, epic, astonishing, smart, gritty,” and Django Wexler says is “garnished with skeleton kings, serpent gods, and lawyer-magicians. It’s glorious.” Here’s the description.

The great city of Alt Coulumb is in crisis. The moon goddess Seril, long thought dead, is back – and the people of Alt Coulumb aren’t happy. Protests rock the city, and Kos Everburning’s creditors attempt a hostile takeover of the fire god’s church. Tara Abernathy, the god’s in-house Craftswoman, must defend the church against the world’s fiercest necromantic firm–and against her old classmate, a rising star in the Craftwork world.

As if that weren’t enough, Cat and Raz, supporting characters from Three Parts Dead, are back too, fighting monster pirates; skeleton kings drink frozen cocktails, defying several principles of anatomy; jails, hospitals, and temples are broken into and out of; choirs of flame sing over Alt Coulumb; demons pose significant problems; a farmers’ market proves more important to world affairs than seems likely; doctors of theology strike back; Monk-Technician Abelard performs several miracles; The Rats! play Walsh’s Place; and dragons give almost-helpful counsel.

We covered all four previous novels — which, as Max explains on his blog, are ordered not by publication date, but by title:

Last First Snow
Two Serpents Rise
Three Parts Dead
Four Roads Cross
Full Fathom Five

Here they are in correct sequence.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong

Black Gate Online Fiction: Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong

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Truck Stop Earth banner-small

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong, published in deluxe trade paperback and digital formats this month by Perseid Press. Here’s Janet Morris, publisher of Perseid.

Is Truck Struck Earth a memoir? Science fiction? New Pulp? Paranormal (or paranoid) fantasy? Noir in the Shaver tradition? UFOlogy? Magical realism? Social Commentary? Black humor? We dunno. But we’re proud to bring you this tough, dangerous book that breaks every rule you thought separated true from false, good from bad, and literature from trash.

Michael A. Armstrong’s first novel was After the Zap. His short fiction has been published in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Science Fiction, Fiction Quarterly, and various anthologies, including Not of Woman Born, a Philip K. Dick award nominee, and several Heroes In Hell anthologies. His other novels include Agviq, The Hidden War, and Bridge Over Hell, part of the Perseid Press Heroes in Hell universe.

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The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

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The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Berkley 1967-small Astounding Tales of Space and Time Berkley 1967-small

The lifecycle of a modern anthology ain’t that complicated. It comes out in hardcover or trade paperback from a small press, stays in print for 5-6 years or so — or until the small press suffers a horrible death, whichever comes first — and then vanishes, popping up thereafter only on eBay and at SF conventions, like a Star Trek action figure.

It didn’t always used to be this way. Used to be that anthologies would appear originally in hardcover, just like real books, and then get reprinted in paperback (also, just like real books). And sometimes those paperbacks would get multiple editions over the decades. (No, I’m not joking. And yes, I know we’re talking about anthologies.)

But go back father than that, to the beginnings of American publishing itself — scholars of this dark and mysterious period are conflicted about actual dates, but in general we’re talking about the 1940s and 50s — and we enter a time when paperbacks had a fixed upper page limit. So how did these primitive cave-dwelling publishers reprint popular volumes, like for example John Campbell’s 600-page beast The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (Simon & Schuster, 1952), when the typical paperback of the era contained barely 100 pages?

No easy task, but our intrepid publishing forefathers found a way. They broke the book up into two volumes and, because giving them similar names would have been just too easy, gave the paperback editions completely different titles. Thus the groundbreaking hardcover edition of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology spawned two paperbacks: The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology  and Astounding Tales of Space and Time, both of which remained in print in various editions for years, confusing collectors like yours truly for decades. Let’s have a closer look, because I ended up buying all seven of the damn things before I figured out they were all the same book, and they might as well be useful for something.

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Clarkesworld 118 Now Available

Clarkesworld 118 Now Available

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Clarkesworld 118-smallClarkesworld #118 has five new stories by Mike Buckley, Eric Schwitzgebel, John Chu, Jack Schouten, and A Que, and two reprints by Linda Nagata and Mary Rosenblum.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“Helio Music” by Mike Buckley
“Fish Dance” by Eric Schwitzgebel
“The Sentry Branch Predictor Spec: A Fairy Tale” by John Chu
“Sephine and the Leviathan” by Jack Schouten
“Against the Stream” by A Que
“Nahiku West” by Linda Nagata (from Analog Science Fiction, October 2012)
“Lion Walk” by Mary Rosenblum (from Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2009)

The non-fiction is:

Paradise Lost: A History of Fantasy and the Otherworld by Christopher Mahon
Talkative Creatures and a Mesozoic Cocktail: A Conversation with Michael Swanwick by Chris Urie
Another Word: Burning Bridges by Peter Watts
Editor’s Desk: What is it with Readercon? by Neil Clarke

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New Treasures: In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, edited by Stephen Jones

New Treasures: In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, edited by Stephen Jones

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In the Shadow of Frankenstein Tales of the Modern Prometheus-smallMary W. Shelley’s gothic horror masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was published in 1818, shortly after the author turned 20. As we approach the 200th anniversary of one of the greatest horror novels in history, we can expect to see plenty of tribute volumes. But for my money, the only one you need is Stephen Jones’ massive In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, a 712-page tome which collects pulp stories from Astounding and Weird Tales, modern riffs on the legend of Frankenstein, and three complete novels.

Frankenstein… His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments, and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world’s most famous creature lives again.

Here are collected together for the first time twenty-four electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest — with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow, and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and new contributions from Graham Masterson, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton. Plus, you’re sure to get a charge from three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and Mary W. Shelley’s original masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it’s time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know.

In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus is a revised an updated edition of The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Carroll & Graf, 1994), and if you have that volume, you probably don’t need this one. This new hardcover edition adds a new Foreword by Neil Gaiman and one new story, Stephen Volk’s “Celebrity Frankenstein,” from Postscripts 28/29 (2012), bringing the total to 24 stories. Diabolique Magazine calls the new edition “a stunning array of stories;” check out their complete review here. In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus was published by Pegasus Books on July 5, 2016. It is 712 pages, priced at $27.95 in hardcover and $26.23 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer

Future Treasures: Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer

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Swords v Cthulhu-smallAre you a Lovecraft fan? Are you just a little bit tired of nodding to yourself at the 5-page mark at every tale, thinking, “Well, this is going to end horribly.” And are you tired of being right every single time?

If you are, you’re not alone. And editors Jesse Bullington (The Enterprise of Death) and Molly Tanzer (Vermilion) have the answer: Swords v Cthulhu, a collection of brand new sword & sorcery Mythos fiction by a stellar list of contributors — including Black Gate authors Jonathan L. Howard and Jeremiah Tolbert, plus Michael Cisco, John Hornor Jacobs, John Langan, E. Catherine Tobler, Carrie Vaughn, and many others — featuring stalwart adventurers squaring off against the greatest horrors of the Lovecraftian pantheon. Okay, sure, most of the tales within probably still end horribly. By at least the protagonists go down swinging!

What hope has a humble adventurer when faced with a fight against Cthulhu himself? No matter; the true swordsperson cares not for hope — only for the bite of steel against flesh, whether that flesh be eldritch or more conventional. So, grab your khukuri knife, your iklwa spear, or a legendary blade and journey with us from ancient Rome to feudal Japan, from the Dreamlands to lands there are no names for in any of the tongues of men.

If you have any doubts, inside this tome you can consult ask some of Lovecraftiana’s hottest voices, be they seasoned veterans or relative newcomers… Hope be damned. Glory awaits!

Relentlessly hurtling you into madness and danger are: Natania Barron, Eneasz Brodski, Nathan Carson, Michael Cisco, Andrew S. Fuller, A. Scott Glancy, Orrin Grey, Jason Heller, Jonathan L. Howard, John Hornor Jacobs , John Langan, L. Lark, Remy Nakamura, Carlos Orsi, M. K. Sauer, Ben Stewart, E. Catherine Tobler, Jeremiah Tolbert, Laurie Tom, Carrie Vaughn, Wendy N. Wagner, and Caleb Wilson.

Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft will be published by Stone Skin Press on August 1, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $13.99 in paperback. No news yet on a separate digital edition. See more details at the Stone Skin website, including teaser excerpts from many of the stories.

Black Gate Nominated for a World Fantasy Award

Black Gate Nominated for a World Fantasy Award

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World Fantasy AwardThe 2016 World Fantasy Awards Ballot, compiled by the voting attendees of the World Fantasy Convention, has just been released. And I’m very pleased to note that several contributors to Black Gate feature prominently, including:

Long Fiction — “Farewell Blues,” Bud Webster (BG blogger and poetry editor)
Short Fiction — “Pockets,” Amal El-Mohtar (BG blogger)
Collection — Bone Swans, C.S.E. Cooney (BG website editor)
Special Award, Nonprofessional — John O’Neill, for Black Gate

This is a tremendous honor for Black Gate, and for me personally. The awards will be presented at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, on October 30th. I hope to see you there.

The winners in every category are selected by a panel of judges. Here’s the complete list of nominees, with links to our previous coverage:

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Is There Such a Thing as an RTS Board Game? Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Thinks So

Is There Such a Thing as an RTS Board Game? Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Thinks So

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Last month I bought a copy of Rivet Wars, one of the most popular light war games on the market. It was designed by veteran computer game designer Ted Terranova (Rise of Nations), who worked hard to give the game the feel of a computer RTS (real time strategy) game…. and, going by the reviews, he largely succeeded. Here’s the description.

Rivet Wars is a miniatures boardgame that springs forth from the warped imagination of Ted Terranova – set on a world that never quite left World War I but with crazy technology like walking tanks, diesel powered armor, unicycled vehicles and armor plated cavalry! Don’t let the cute visuals fool you; it’s a world full of angst, war-torn camaraderie and dark humor. Rivet Wars is at its heart a strategy game, with both players deploying units each round to counter the threats set forth by their opponent and stay one tactical step ahead. Heavily influenced by Ted’s experience working on RTS games like Rise of Nations, players gather resources (bunkers and capture points) and use these to deploy streams of new units! There’s an ebb and flow on the tactical landscape and you can stock up surprises for your opponent to be unleashed even as he thinks he’s winning!

And here’s a peek at the back of the box.

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Tin House 64, the Summer Reading Issue, Now Available

Tin House 64, the Summer Reading Issue, Now Available

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TIn House 68 Summer 2016-small TIn House 68 Summer 2016-back-small

Tin House is an American literary magazine, showcasing fiction and poetry from new and established writers. The magazine was founded in 1999, and has published fiction by Stephen King, Kelly Link, Jonathan Lethem, David Foster Wallace, and many others. The 2016 Summer Reading issue is huge — 224 pages — and filled with fiction. There are 11 stories, including five in translation, and an excerpt from the dark environmental thriller Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith.

In his Editor’s Note, Rob Spillman gives us a sneak peek at the contents.

Booksellers like the ones I met in Denver challenge us to keep seeking out the most exciting and thoughtful work by new and established writers from all over the world, and because of them we’re confident there is an audience for their work. In this issue we’re proud to bring you five fabulous translations, among them Dorthe Nors’s “By Sydvest Station,” translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s “The Dress of Honey,” translated from the French by Edward Gauvin. Alexis M. Smith’s debut novel, Glaciers, was an indie sensation, and here we feature an excerpt from her follow-up, Marrow Island. Smith is joined by other indie darlings, Deb Olin Unferth, Josh Weil, and Saša Stanišic, as well as esteemed poets Dorianne Laux and John Ashbery, who return to our pages. We’re also happy to welcome new-to-us poets Anna Journey and Sam Riviere.

Here’s a look at the complete Table of Contents.

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