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Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: The Midnight Games by David Neil Lee

New Treasures: The Midnight Games by David Neil Lee

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The MIdnight Games David Neil Lee-small David Neil Lee wrote about “the most terrifying of all labor-saving devices” in Chainsaws: A History; his first novel was Commander Zero. With The Midnight Games, he offers us something very interesting indeed: a young adult novel of an adventurous lad in southern Ontario who stumbles on a cult trying to summon the Great Old Ones to Earth in the unused stadium near his home.

In the hardscrabble east end of Hamilton Ontario, young Nate Silva has grown up with the reassuring racket of football games from nearby Ivor Wynne Stadium. But now strange noises and music boom from the stadium late at night, and the air throbs with the chanting of excited crowds. When Nate sneaks into one of these “midnight games,” he is thrown headlong into a movement spearheaded by the secret Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods, who are summoning to Earth the monstrous Great Old Ones who ruled the planet long ago.

In this thrilling young adult novel, David Neil Lee captures the “Cthulhu Mythos” of horror author H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and unleashes it in gritty, post-industrial Hamilton. Pitted against the worshippers of the mind-bending extraterrestrial Yog-Sothoth, Nate finds unexpected allies as he is pursued by savage alien creatures, the murderous Hounds of Tindalos, and the desperate minions of the Great Old Ones.

This is precisely what the world needs: an action-packed Young Adult Cthulhu Mythos novel. You know it’s true.

The Midnight Games was published by Wolsak and Wynn on October 27, 2015. It is 200 pages, priced at $12 in paperback. Learn more at David Neil Lee’s website.

Future Treasures: Swords of Steel II edited by D.M. Ritzlin

Future Treasures: Swords of Steel II edited by D.M. Ritzlin

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Swords of Steel II-smallDave Ritzlin’s Swords of Steel anthology, published last February by DMR Books, was a popular topic here at Black Gate and elsewhere. In his review, Fletcher Vredenburghw wrote:

When John O’Neill posted a few weeks ago about Swords of Steel, edited by D.M. Ritzlin, I knew I had to read it. The hook was simple: swords & sorcery stories written by members of metal bands. Tons of heavy bands — Uriah Heep, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Metallica, Megadeth, to name several — have drawn on the themes of heroism, monster-fighting, and sorcery for lyrics and look… Ritzlin set out to recreate a 1970s-style anthology akin to Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords! or Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness, and has succeeded.

I’m very pleased to report that a second volume is in the works, to be released next month. I asked Dave for a quote, and here’s what he told me:

The Swordsmen of Steel return! Attacking once more now with twice as much strength, the most epic practitioners of the heavy metal arts fill another volume with tales of terror and heroic adventure. Swords of Steel II features stories by such artists as E.C. Hellwell (MANILLA ROAD), Byron Roberts (BAL-SAGOTH), Mike Scalzi (SLOUGH FEG) and Howie Bentley (CAULDRON BORN). A total of eight stories (each accompanied by an illustration) are contained herein, as well as two poems and an essay by David C. Smith (author of the Red Sonja and Oron novels). Don’t read this book unless you have nerves of STEEL!

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January/February Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

January/February Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

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Fantasy and Science Fiction January February 2016-smallThe January/February issue of F&SF is all about the planet Mars — starting with a great cover, titled “Martian Vortex,” by Bob Eggleton. Here’s editor C.C. Finley:

Usually we start with a story and commission a cover for it but when Bob Eggleton sent us the Martian landscape that adorns this issue, we snatched up the illustration and went looking for stories to match. In the end, we found you not one, but three, all of them very different in tone and focus.

The Three Tales of Mars promised on the cover are by Gregory Benford, Alex Irvine, and Mary Robinette Kowal. The issue also includes stores by Alex Irvine, David Gerrold, Matthew Hughes, Terry Bisson, Albert E. Cowdrey and others.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

NOVELETS

  • “Number Nine Moon” – Alex Irvine
  • “The White Piano” – David Gerrold
  • “Telltale” – Matthew Hughes

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Bradley W. Schenck Shows Us Grace Keaton on Her Aeroflite Flying Scooter

Bradley W. Schenck Shows Us Grace Keaton on Her Aeroflite Flying Scooter

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Grace Keaton on her Aeroflite

Over on his Webomator blog, artist Bradley W. Schenck has posted a work-in-progress I like a lot, part of his ongoing Retropolis art series. He tells this brief story to go along with the painting.

Here’s Grace Keaton on her aged but serviceable Aeroflite flying scooter; it’s a work vehicle, standard issue for couriers in the Retropolis Courier Service. Grace makes her deliveries on the notoriously dangerous Route X and she’s the longest-lasting (in fact, the only surviving) courier on that route.

Route X couriers make four times the wages of normal couriers and Grace works half days. That’s a comfortable living for a graduate student. Unless you weaken. But somebody has to deliver along Route X. How else would the denizens of Retropolis’ Experimental Research District get their ‘mildly’ toxic chemicals, their suspiciously glowing minerals, or their generally illegal biological specimens?

See all the details here.

I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island

I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island

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Balls Pyramid is Monster Island-small

Seriously. Monster Island. Scientists at the Melbourne Zoo have now started breeding these giant insects, because apparently no one at the Melbourne Zoo has ever watched a single monster movie.

Four years ago, NPR’s Robert Krulwich’s wrote an in-depth feature on the astounding discovery made by a determined group of Australian scientists who scaled Ball’s Pyramid, the fragment of an ancient volcano that juts out of the South Pacific off the coast of Australia (that’s it above. What did I tell you? Monster Island). Climbing that crag of rock in the middle of the night, the scientists discovered a tiny colony of Lord Howe stick insects, Dryococelus australis, or “tree lobsters,” the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Tree lobsters were native to Lord Howe Island, and were long thought extinct.

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New Treasures: The Detainee Trilogy by Peter Liney

New Treasures: The Detainee Trilogy by Peter Liney

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The Detainee Peter Liney-small Into the Fire Peter Liney-small In Constant Fear Peter Liney-small

Why do I always discover exciting new series with the third volume?

I received a copy of the newly-released In Constant Fear a few weeks ago, and was instantly intrigued. Sure, mostly it was that eye-catching reddish-purple cover, which stands out at thirty paces. But I also found the description promising, about a “ragged band of survivors” who’ve escaped from “the hellish reality of the City,” and are eking out a secretive existence in an abandoned town. The cover quote from the Hollywood Reporter, “The Hunger Games for adults,” didn’t hurt either.

But right there at the top were the words The Detainee Trilogy, Book Three. Meaning I somehow missed the first two books. How’d I manage that? A quick trip to BarnesandNoble.com confirms that, yes indeed, there were two previous volumes: The Detainee (March 2014) and Into the Fire (March 2015). All three were released by Jo Fletcher Books here in the US. Apparently I’m not as hip to the publishing scene as I like to think I’m am.

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Future Treasures: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman

Future Treasures: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman

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Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club-small The Dark Days Club-small

Alison Goodman is the author of the New York Times bestseller EON, winner of the 2008 Aurealis Award and a Tiptree nominee, and its sequel EONA, both set in a mythical China. Her other novels include the SF thriller Singing the Dogstar Blues and Killing the Rabbit. Her latest novel is The Dark Days Club (published as Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club in her native Australia), a Regency adventure starring a stylish and intrepid demon-hunter. It is the opening volume in the new Lady Helen fantasy series.

Helen must make a choice: Save her reputation, or save the world.

London, 1812. Eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall is on the eve of her debut presentation at the royal court of George III. Her life should revolve around gowns, dancing, and securing a suitable marriage. Instead, when one of her family’s maids disappears, she is drawn into the shadows of Regency London. There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few able to stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons that has infiltrated all levels of society. Carlston is not a man she should be anywhere near, especially with the taint of scandal that surrounds him. Yet he offers her help and the possibility of finally discovering the truth about the mysterious deaths of her parents.

Soon the two of them are investigating a terrifying conspiracy that threatens to plunge the newly Enlightened world back into darkness. But can Helen trust a man whose own life is built on lies? And does she have the strength to face the dangers of this hidden world and her family’s legacy?

The Dark Days Club will be published by Viking Books on January 26, 2016. It is 496 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover, and $10.99 for the digital edition.

Fantasy Scroll Magazine 10 Now Available

Fantasy Scroll Magazine 10 Now Available

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Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue 10-smallThe tenth issue of the online-only Fantasy Scroll Magazine, cover dated December 2015, is now available. In his editorial Iulian Ionescu’s celebrates the release of their Year One anthology, Dragons, Droids and Doom, and points out that in Year Two Fantasy Scroll published 55 short stories from 53 authors, totaling 181,000 words of fiction.

Iulian also provides his usual sneak peek of the contents of the issue. Here’s a snippet:

We start with “The Genie and the Inquisitor,” a new and fresh take on the genie myth by Johnny Compton, partly funny and partly horrific, but definitely bone-chilling. “The Hummingbird Air” by Paul Roberge is next, a fantasy story that follows the path of a boy and his growth into a man, ready to deliver a life-long awaited revenge.

Next is “The Empty Faux-Historical Residential Unit” by Rachel Hochberg, a science fiction story that takes place in a future dominated by robots, but brings us back into an old-fashion London scene. Jeremy Szal delights us in his epic fantasy story “Last Age of Kings”; there’s a lot of bloody action in this story, but also depth of character, all happening in an interesting setting.

“Kara’s Ares” is another science fiction story, by Clint Spivey, who follows the struggle of a mission to Mars and its aftermath. For some comic relief, we follow with “Protecting Nessie” by Hank Quense, who tells the story of three sisters with magical powers, fighting hard to defend the pet of their queen. “Dancing an Elegy, His Own” by Julie Novakova is next — a science fiction story that focuses more on the relationship between characters than on the setting, creating an emotionally loaded atmosphere, and closing with an unexpected twist.

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New Treasures: Devil or Angel and Other Stories by Matthew Hughes

New Treasures: Devil or Angel and Other Stories by Matthew Hughes

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Devil or Angel and Other Stories-small Devil or Angel and Other Stories-back-small

Matthew Hughes’ novels include the To Hell and Back trilogy (Damned Busters, Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay), Gullible’s Travels, The Other, and his Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira). He also writes crime fiction as Matt Hughes, and media tie-in novels as Hugh Matthews.

I’ve been extremely impressed with his short fiction, which has been collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories (2005), The Meaning of Luff (2013), and Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (2013). His newest self-published collection, Devil or Angel and Other Stories, is subtitled “Old-Style Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales.” It includes 16 stories that originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and a smattering of anthologies. One story, “Ant Lion,” appears here for the first time. Hughes is one of the best short fiction writers working in fantasy today, especially if you’re a fan of the classic space-opera style of Jack Vance.

Devil or Angel and Other Stories was self-published by Matthew Hughes on July 30, 2015. It is 264 pages, priced at $12.99 in paperback and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Bradley W. Schenck.

Vintage Treasures: Travelers of Space, edited by Martin Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: Travelers of Space, edited by Martin Greenberg

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Travelers of Space 1951-small

Gnome Press, the brainchild of Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle, was founded in 1948, and it published some of the most important science fiction and fantasy of the 20th Century in hardcover for the first time — including Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein (1949), The Castle of Iron by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (1950), Conan the Conqueror by Robert E. Howard (1950), I, Robot (1950) and Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, City by Clifford D. Simak (1952), Robots Have No Tails by Lewis Padgett (1952), Judgment Night by C.L. Moore (1952), and Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke (1952). The Gnome Press hardcovers — gorgeously designed and made with great care — are some of the most collectible books in the field.

For me however, the most desirable Gnome Press books are their original titles, and especially their anthologies, which gathered neglected short fiction from the Golden Age of science fiction pulps for the first time. They published several in their Adventures in Science Fiction series, all edited by Martin Greenberg, including Men Against the Stars (195), Journey to Infinity (1951), The Robot and the Man (1953), and Travelers of Space (1951).

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