Browsed by
Author: John ONeill

Cast Your Spell on a Medieval Town in The Village Crone

Cast Your Spell on a Medieval Town in The Village Crone

The Village Crone-smallI’m something of a collector (this may not come as a surprise). I collect vintage paperbacks, pulps, science fiction digests, comics, and lots of other paper ephemera.

But chiefly what I collect is games. Goodness, I have a lot of games. I hoard them in the basement. I drive to games auctions (like the marvelous Games Plus auction in Mount Prospect, IL), I track down obscure Amiga games on eBay, and I compulsively hunt every solitaire role playing game ever made.

I’m almost given up buying modern fantasy board games, though. Not that they’re not any good — far from it! — but even an obsessive like me has his limits. We’re living in a Golden Age of Board Games, and it’s a huge challenge keeping tabs on even a fraction of all the interesting games being released every month.

You know what I can do, though? I can try some of the games Amazon.com has deeply discounted every month. I’m not sure what the story is with these games — were they discontinued? Replaced with a newer edition? Did they flop? — but hey, I don’t actually care all that much. They’re super cheap, they look cool, and I’m ready to buy. Take my money.

I’ve been buying 1-2 every week for the past month or so, and some of them look pretty darn good. Like Fireside Games’ The Village Crone, an accessible Euro-style game with modular boards in which 1-6 players harvest spell ingredients, give their familiars secret tasks, casts spells, turn villagers into frogs, and compete for the power and authority that comes with being named Village crone.

Read More Read More

Sample the New Pathfinder Tales Soundclips from Macmillan Audio!

Sample the New Pathfinder Tales Soundclips from Macmillan Audio!

Pathfinder Tales Audio Pirate's Prophecy-small Pathfinder Tales Audio Lord of Runes-small Pathfinder Tales Audio Liar's Island-small

Audio samples are great way to try out new authors and new series — especially when they’re free! Macmillan Audio has offered us no less than six 10-minute soundclips from their hit Pathfinder Tales line, and we’re very pleased to be able to share them with you. The first three are (links will take you to our previous coverage):

Pathfinder Tales: Pirate’s Prophecy by Chris A. Jackson
Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes by Dave Gross
Pathfinder Tales: Liar’s Island by Tim Pratt

So sit back, close your eyes, and let professional reader Steve West whisk you away to a world of magic and adventure.

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

New Treasures: Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

Children of Earth and Sky-smallI remember when Guy Gavriel Kay’s three volume Fionavar Tapestry appeared in my native Canada in the mid-80s. It was an instant hit, and put Kay on the map as a major fantasist immediately (to understand why, see Fletcher Vredenburgh’s retrospective of the first two volumes, The Summer Tree and The Wandering Fire). He followed with Tigana (1990), A Song for Arbonne (1992), The Lions of al-Rassan (1995), and The Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors). Kay isn’t particularly prolific, producing a new fantasy volume every three years or so. In his review of Kay’s 2010 novel Under Heaven, fellow Canadian Todd Ruthman wrote:

We don’t have that many rituals in our home. One is the creeping countdown to Guy Gavriel Kay’s newest novel. I am always a little sad when it finally comes, though, because it means years before I will see his next one.

There hasn’t been a new Kay novel since River of Stars (2013). It’s been three years, and along comes his newest, like clockwork. Children of Earth and Sky, a standalone fantasy set in a world inspired by Renaissance Europe, was released in hardcover on May 10, and called “Magnificent” by Library Journal.

From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request — and possibly to do more — and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.

The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif — to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming. As these lives entwine, their fates — and those of many others — will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world…

Children of Earth and Sky was published May 10 by NAL. It is 592 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover, and $13.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1, edited by Neil Clarke

Future Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1, edited by Neil Clarke

The Best Science Fiction of the Year 1 Neil Clarke-small The Best Science Fiction of the Year 1 Neil Clarke-back-small

While I was at the Friday night mass autographing session at the Nebula Awards weekend, I discovered Neil Clarke had a small number of copies of his upcoming anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1 at his table — a book I’ve been looking forward to for months — and I was delighted to be able to buy one. Since we were at an autographing session, after all, I asked if he’d sign it. I also asked, as I usually do when requesting autographs, if he’d add, “To my one true love, John.” Neil, who knew of my ongoing plan to save my marriage (it’s a long story), wrote the following:

To John,

Since everyone does it… to my one true love. See Alice, we really do this all the time.

It’s good to have friends who care if I stay married.

Read More Read More

The 2015 Nebula Award Winners

The 2015 Nebula Award Winners

Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City perform the brilliant Radio SFWA at the 2016 Nebula Awards 2-small

Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City
perform the brilliant “Radio SFWA” at the 2016 Nebula Awards

I attended the 2016 Nebula Awards banquet here in Chicago on Saturday night, and I thought that meant I’d be able to announce the winners in a timely fashion. Instead, I wasted my time hobnobbing with winners, nominees, and just all around cool people until very late in the evening, got home at 2:15 am, and fell asleep for roughly 24 hours. So I’ve been scooped by every website in the industry (and even some periodicals that only publish monthly).

Ah, that’s okay. For those loyal readers who steadfastly looked away when other sites reported the winners, and waited with confidence for the Black Gate report, thank you (both of you.)

The highlight of the weekend was the awards ceremony, hosted by the genuinely hilarious John Hodgman (from The Daily Show). And the surprise highlight of the ceremony was the opening number by Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City, “Radio SFWA,” which I’ve been humming non-stop for the past two days. You don’t attend an SF conference expecting to hear live pop music, much less an 80s New Wave/Space Disco anthem that doubles as a recruitment tool for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but that’s exactly what it was. I’m a 52 year-old guy who can’t dance, but at the end I was on my feet, pounding my hands together and ready to jump into the mosh pit.

Songwriter, lead singer and front man Henry Lien is some kind of genius. Listen to the whole thing here (be sure to read the hilariously brilliant lyrics by clicking “Show More”), and read the background here.

Read More Read More

The SFWA Bulletin #208, the 2016 Nebula Awards Special Issue, is Now Available

The SFWA Bulletin #208, the 2016 Nebula Awards Special Issue, is Now Available

The SFWA Bulletin 208-smallWhen I arrived at the Nebula Awards conference on Thursday, one of the first things I received was a complimentary copy of issue #208 of the flagship publication of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The SFWA Bulletin. It’s an oversize magazine (not a digest), an impressive 84 pages on heavy stock, which I read on my long train ride back to St. Charles later that night.

The SFWA Bulletin has changed a lot over the years, and I’ve enjoyed plenty of issues. But this is certainly the best single issue of the magazine I’ve ever read. It is devoted almost exclusively to the 2016 Nebula Award nominees, with a 50-page section that examines each and every nominee in detail — with mini-author bios, a story synopsis, a few paragraphs on the origin and story-behind-the-story from the nominees, and fascinating tidbits on each tale, such as favorite reactions from fans, thoughts on possible sequels, and lots more.

There’s also cover reproductions — book or magazine as the case may be — for each entry, which I greatly appreciated. (I don’t know why I enjoy seeing high-res cover reproductions of recent magazines, but I do!)

This also happens to be Neil Clarke’s first issue as full-time editor of the Bulletin (he’s been acting as interim editor since John Klima’s departure last year). While he’s done a stellar job, it’s clear he’s not 100% satisfied. In his editorial, he wonders whether readers might not be better served with a post-Nebula issue instead.

Read More Read More

We Are a Romance of the Machine: An Hour With CJ Cherryh, SF’s Newest Grandmaster

We Are a Romance of the Machine: An Hour With CJ Cherryh, SF’s Newest Grandmaster

This weekend I attended the 2016 Nebula Conference here in Chicago, where CJ Cherryh received the SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Part of the Friday afternoon programming included “An Hour With CJ Cherryh, SF’s Newest Grandmaster.” I sat in the front row, with Nebula nominees Ann Leckie and Lawrence M. Schoen, and captured the first part of the speech, in which Cherryh entertained the audience with recollections of her childhood ambition to be a writer, discovering science fiction, her early career, selling her first novel to Donald Wollheim at DAW Books, and her recent marriage to fellow novelist Jane Fancher. She spoke of the core of optimism in her work, calling it “The attitude behind my writing.” About science fiction writers, she said:

That’s our job… to make people face the future with confidence. With a notion that there is something they can do, and they should be doing it. Because, remember that [we’re] one generation removed from barbarism. People have to believe there’s a reason to keep on keeping on, and this is what we are. We are a romance of the machine. In the time when people declared Romance was dead, we were the despised literature that kept going, and kept inventing, and saying, ‘There’s a way out of this.’

The clip above includes the entirety of her prepared remarks (about 13.5 minutes), and her responses to the first few questions, including why she choose to write under “CJ Cherryh” rather than her full name.

New Treasures: A Shadow All of Light by Fred Chappell

New Treasures: A Shadow All of Light by Fred Chappell

A Shadow All of Light-smallBack in March, when I posted a Future Treasures article about the upcoming fantasy novel A Shadow All of Light by the distinguished poet Fred Chappell, Sarah Avery left this intriguing comment:

They’re not kidding about the “distinguished poet” bit. Have you seen this guy’s bio? Whoa.

I dutifully checked it out, and I see what she means. Here’s a snippet:

Acclaimed poet and novelist Fred Chappell was born on a small farm in Canton, North Carolina in 1936. He attended Duke University, where he befriended fellow writers Anne Tyler, Reynolds Price, and James Appelwhite. The author of over a dozen books of poetry, a handful of novels and short story collections, and two books of critical prose, Chappell has received numerous awards for his work, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Bollingen Award, the Aiken Taylor Award, an award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and the best foreign book prize from the Academie Française. He was named North Carolina Poet Laureate in 1997, a position he held until 2002.

In addition to all those laurels, Fred Chappell also won a World Fantasy Award for his short story “The Lodger” (1993). He’s the author of the classic horror novel Dagon (1968) and I Am One of You Forever (1985), and was the subject of a deluxe Masters of the Weird Tale volume from Centipede Press last December. Read his complete bio here.

His latest, A Shadow All of Light, is an epic adventure featuring pirates, master thieves, monsters, and fantasy detectives. It was published by Tor Books on April 12, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. Read a lengthy excerpt at Tor.com.

Is Weird Tales Dead… Again?

Is Weird Tales Dead… Again?

Weird Tales 362-smallWeird Tales magazine, the oldest and most storied fantasy magazine in America, has died and returned numerous times in its near century-long history. And I’m beginning to wonder if it’s dead again.

Marvin Kaye took the editorial reins from Ann VanderMeer five years ago with much fanfare, but since then has produced only three issues — the last of which was two years ago. The magazine’s website has not been updated in well over two years. And worst of all, I’m now hearing reports from authors who sold work to the magazine that they’ve had stories returned with little or no explanation.

In fact, the lead story about Weird Tales these days is the complete lack of communication coming out of the editorial offices. At the Nebula Awards conference here in Chicago, which began yesterday, all mentions of the magazine have been accompanied by a shroud of gloom. And earlier today I received this from Black Gate author Joe Bonadonna, who sold a story to them several years ago:

Weird Tales is supposed to print one of my novellas on the online version of their Sword & Sorcery Special Edition — it’s too long for their print version. But it’s been 3.5 years since I heard from them, so who knows when that issue will be out? They are not very good at answering emails, and their website is terrible — no news on that either.

When a magazine essentially stops publishing, that’s bad news. When it fails to update its website for years, that worse. But when it goes dark for three years or more, it’s usually dead. So far, that yardstick has proven pretty reliable.

Weird Tales has been deader than this, and surged out of the grave before. I hope it does so again. But I’m beginning to doubt it.

Future Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu edited by Paula Guran

Future Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu edited by Paula Guran

The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu-smallI’m very much looking forward to Paula Guran’s annual Best of the Year collections — The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016, coming in June, and especially The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, shipping in August.

While we wait we have her latest anthology to tide us over, and it looks like a lot of fun. The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu is a thick collection of all-new Mythos fiction by Michael Shea, Laird Barron, John Langan, Usman T. Malik, Helen Marshall, Silvia Moreno, John Shirley, Simon Strantzas, and many others (plus reprints from Caitlín R. Kiernan, Veronica Schanoes, and Damien Angelica Walters).

An outstanding anthology of original stories inspired by H. P. Lovecraft from authors who do not merely imitate, but reimagine, re-energize, and renew his concepts in ways relevant to today’s readers. Fresh new fiction that explores our modern fears and nightmares. From the depths of R’lyeh to the heights of the Mountains of Madness, some of today’s best weird fiction writers—both established award-winning authors and exciting new voices — The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu collects tales of cosmic horror that traverse terrain created by Lovecraft and create new eldritch geographies to explore…

With stories by: Laird Barron, Nadia Bulkin, Amanda Downum, Ruthanna Emrys, Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Lisa L. Hannett, Brian Hodge, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan, Yoon Ha Lee, Usman T. Malik, Helen Marshall, Silvia Moreno, Norman Partridge, W. H. Pugmire, Veronica Schanoes, Michael Shea, John Shirley, Simon Strantzas, Sandra McDonald, Damien Angelica Walters, Don Webb, Michael Wehunt, and A.C. Wise.

The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu will be published by Robinson/Running Press on May 24, 2016. It is 476 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback. The cover is by Tim McDonagh. No word yet on the digital edition.