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Author: John ONeill

Adventure in a Nightmare-fueled Landscape: Deadlands: the Weird West

Adventure in a Nightmare-fueled Landscape: Deadlands: the Weird West

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Deadlands: the Weird West (Pinnacle Entertainment Group, April 2021)

Kickstarter completely transformed board gaming a decade ago, and over the last few years it has thoroughly reinvigorated role playing as well. It’s the de facto launch platform for the hobby gaming industry these days, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon. I’ve been playing RPGs since 1979, and in all those years I’ve seen countless new and innovative game systems fail because they couldn’t grow beyond a small but dedicated fan base. Kickstarter has brought those systems a whole new lease on life — and an explosion of new content.

Deadlands is fine example. Created by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 1996, the horror/steampunk game was a huge artistic and creative success, easily one of the most talked-about RPGs of the 90s. Talk wasn’t enough to keep it alive though, and for long stretches of the last 25 years the game has sadly been unavailable.

In 2017 Pinnacle stuck a toe in the waters with a reprint of the 1999 edition, Deadlands 20th Anniversary Edition, funded by a crowdfunding campaign. Emboldened by that success, last year they tried something much more ambitious: Deadlands: the Weird West, a massive box set containing a complete system relaunch using the Savage Worlds core rules. Deadlands‘ small but loyal fanbase enthusiastically rallied to support the new Kickstarter campaign, and it blew through its $10,000 goal, with 4,973 backers pledging a whopping $568,636.

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African Folk Tales and Sword & Sorcery: Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

African Folk Tales and Sword & Sorcery: Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King (Riverhead
Books, February 2019 and February 2022). Covers by Pablo Gerardo Camacho

The first novel I bought by Marlon James was A Brief History of Seven Killings, a fictionalized version of the true story of the attempted hit on Bob Marley by seven gunmen in the late 1970s — which isn’t even fantasy or SF, but what can I tell you, I just picked it up in Barnes & Noble and it sounded cool. It won the 2015 Man Booker Prize and vaulted the Jamaican author to international prominence.

He turned heads in our own little corner of the literary world in 2019 with Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the opening novel in The Dark Star Trilogy. It won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Salman Rushdie said “Its imagination is all encompassing,” The New York Times called it “The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe,” Entertainment Weekly proclaimed it “A revolutionary book,” and Time listed it as one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.

The follow-up arrived two months ago, and it’s not a sequel in the traditional sense. Moon Witch, Spider King retells Black Leopard, Red Wolf — the tale of a mercenary hired to find a missing child in Africa — from a very different perspective. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, and Buzzfeed labeled it “Even more brilliant than the first.”

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Vintage Treasures: Planets Three by Frederik Pohl

Vintage Treasures: Planets Three by Frederik Pohl

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Planets Three by Frederik Pohl (Berkley Books, 1982). Cover by Gregg Hinlicky

I admire Frederik Pohl. He had a nearly 75-year career in science fiction, from the early stories he published as a young teen in the 1930s all the way to the Hugo Award he won in 2010 for his superb early blog, The Way the Future Blogs, at the age of 90. He was an astute and prolific fan writer, an agent, and a legendary editor, winning three successive Hugos for Best Editor for his work at IF magazine in the 60s.

His first love was writing, of course, and it’s not hard to sense some frustration at his mid-career lack of success, especially as he watched his fellow Futurians and friends enjoy stellar careers, including Isaac Asimov, Donald Wollheim, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, and many others. Asimov, whom Pohl had known since they were both teenage fans in Brooklyn, had such name-brand recognition that virtually everything he’d written was still in print in the 70s and 80s — certainly not the case for Pohl, whose early output languished in obscurity in moldering pulp magazines.

Then came Gateway.

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Solo Adventures on Grim Worlds: Modiphius’ Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands

Solo Adventures on Grim Worlds: Modiphius’ Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands

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Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands (Modiphius, 2021 and 2022). Covers by Christian Quinot

Modiphius Entertainment was launched in 2012 by husband and wife gamers Rita and Chris Birch to publish Achtung! Cthulhu, a game that remains near and dear to my heart (you know anything featuring Nazi supervillains, Cthulhu, and roleplaying is going to get some love in these quarters). But in the decade since they founded their unassuming little gaming company it’s captured the attention of the entire industry with a litany of innovative and exciting titles, including Coriolis: The Third Horizon, Alien RPG, Forbidden Lands, Star Trek Adventures, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, and much, much more.

Their newest releases, Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands, may be their best yet — at least for product-staved solitaire gamers like me. These are finely crafted solo adventures games with rich narrative campaigns that allow you to explore exotic locales, earn experience and level up your team, find exotic gear, trade, and even upgrade your starship or hideout. They’re the most exciting solitaire gaming releases of the last few years, and that’s saying something.

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A Whirlwind of Pirates, Treachery, & Witchcraft: The God-King Chronicles by Mike Brooks

A Whirlwind of Pirates, Treachery, & Witchcraft: The God-King Chronicles by Mike Brooks

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The Black Coast and The Splinter King (Solaris, March and September 2021). Cover illustrations by Clare Stacey

It’s good to see the second book in a series get more acclaim than the first. Check out this rave for The Splinter King, second book in The God-King Chronicles from Mike Brooks.

An outstanding tale of honor, religion, politics, and crime… In East Harbour, capital of the island realm of Kiburu ce Alaba, street kid Jeya continues to help the last surviving child of the Splinter King, who has taken the name Bulang, to hide from the assassins who killed Bulang’s family — but now someone is targeting Jeya’s friends and allies… Brooks throws in pirates, treachery, witchcraft, combat, and dragons to create a whirlwind of drama and intrigue. Epic fantasy readers will find characters to cheer for and action to love in this excellent sequel.

That’s from the starred review at Publishers Weekly. Read the whole thing here.

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An Annual Anthology of Strange and Darksome Tales: Nightscript

An Annual Anthology of Strange and Darksome Tales: Nightscript

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Nightscript Volume 7 (Chthonic Matter, 2021). Cover by Jana Heidersdorf

I just finished complaining about the lack of modern horror and fantasy anthologies, and along comes Nightscript strictly to prove me wrong.

I don’t know much about Nightscript. But I know I love the creep-tastic cover of Volume 7, by Berlin artist Jana Heidersdorf. I first glimpsed it when a fellow dark fantasy enthusiast posted it on Facebook, and was intrigued enough to track down the publisher (C.M. Muller’s Chthonic Matter) and order a copy.

I’m glad I did. Nightscript is a very fine production indeed. Published “annually, during Grand October,” it’s clearly a small press labor of love, but it’s also a thoroughly professional piece of work. Over the last seven years it’s published original work by Steve Rasnic Tem, Simon Strantzas, Michael Wehunt, Jason A. Wyckoff, Charles Wilkinson, Damien Angelica Walters, Ashley Stokes, and many others.

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Join Martha Wells, James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, Zig Zag Claybourne, and Sarah Avery to Celebrate C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Daughter

Join Martha Wells, James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, Zig Zag Claybourne, and Sarah Avery to Celebrate C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Daughter

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C.S.E. Cooney reads from her debut novel Saint Death’s Daughter, out this week from Solaris Books

It’s a week of celebration here at Black Gate! Tomorrow sees the long-awaited publication of SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER, the debut novel by the uber-talented C.S.E. Cooney, our first website editor. How exciting is this book? Amal El-Mohtar said, “I have never read anything so utterly alive,” Publishers Weekly proclaimed it “remarkable and… worth savoring,” and Locus called it a work of “Twisted genius!” It’s about time the world caught on to the extraordinary — and extraordinarily twisted — genius of Claire Cooney.

An all-star cast of Black Gate writers and bloggers gathered together to celebrate this past weekend, and we managed to record it all — including one of the most entertaining reading sessions we’ve seen in many years. Martha Wells read an excerpt from her multi-award winning Murderbot series, James Enge shared a Morlock story, Howard Andrew Jones delighted us with a tale of Hanuvar, Sarah Avery read a creepy fae story, and Zig Zag Claybourne shared an exciting fragment from his new novel.

To kick it all off, C.S.E. Cooney read from her new novel, the tale of a young necromancer with an allergy to violence who must navigate sinister intrigues to avenge the murder of her parents. Watch it all right here. Enjoy – -and be sure to check out Saint Death’s Daughter, on sale tomorrow at better bookstores everywhere!

Vintage Treasures: The Gods of Bal-Sagoth by Robert E. Howard

Vintage Treasures: The Gods of Bal-Sagoth by Robert E. Howard

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The Gods of Bal-Sagoth (Ace, 1979). Cover by Sanjulian

I didn’t discover Robert E. Howard through Conan. In fact, it was decades after I started reading fantasy before I read my first Conan story (“The Tower of the Elephant,” for the record.)

No, it was Howard’s rich fiction collections from Ace Books in the late 70s and early 80s that really introduced me to the master of 20th Century sword & sorcery. They were filled with enthralling tales of blood-stained history, dark adventure, and unexpected horror, like “Worms of the Earth,” “Pigeons From Hell,” and “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth.”

And those gorgeous Sanjulian covers!

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New Treasures: Destroyer of Light by Jennifer Marie Brissett

New Treasures: Destroyer of Light by Jennifer Marie Brissett

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Destroyer of Light (Tor Books, October 2021. Cover uncredited)

Looking for a good standalone science fiction novel? (I know I am. Everything is part of a series these days.) Jennifer Marie Brissett — whose first novel Elysium was nominated for the Tiptree and Locus Awards, and won a special citation from the Philip K. Dick Award jury — has a new novel out, and it looks like something that could kill a weekend for me nicely.

Destroyer of Light was published in hardcover in October of last year, and it made several Year’s Best lists, including the Kirkus Reviews 2021 Best of the Year, Bookriot‘s 20 Must Read Space Fantasy Books for 2021, and BiblioLifestyle‘s Most Anticipated Fall 2021 Sci-fi, Fantasy & Horror list (which summed it up as “The Matrix meets an Afro-futuristic retelling of Persephone set in a science fiction underworld of aliens, refugees, and genetic engineering.” That ain’t like nothing else in my TBR pile, I can promise you that.)

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Spider-Societies, Alien Structures, and Grim Wastelands: March/April 2022 Print SF Magazines

Spider-Societies, Alien Structures, and Grim Wastelands: March/April 2022 Print SF Magazines

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March/April 2022 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, 123RF, and Mondolithic Studios

One of the bennies of digital publishing is the luxury of enjoying magazine reviews while the magazines are still on the shelves. I haven’t purchased the March/April F&F yet, for example, but my interest has been sharpened by reviews like this one, by C.D. Lewis at Tangent Online, for Tobi Ogundiran’s “The Epic of Qu Shittu.”

[It] opens on a stowaway sneaking into the ship’s hold of a deadly enchanter in the hope of meeting the legend himself. What could possibly go wrong? Ogundiran’s language makes it a pleasure to read room descriptions; horror and humor meet in descriptions of “skulls wearing identical smiles as if sharing some secret joke…”  The story elements laid before the reader support so many directions it’s not initially clear whether “The Epic of Qu Shittu” will turn out to be a tragedy, a heist, a revenge plot, or something else; it’s an exciting read that adds psychological elements and moral problems to the physical conflicts.

The March/April print magazines contain stories by Matthew Hughes, Adriana C. Grigore, Ray Nayler, Will McIntosh, Marta Randall, Paul McAuley, Steve Rasnic Tem, William Ledbetter, Mark W. Tiedemann, Michael Swanwick, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Michael F. Flynn, and many others.

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