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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 178 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 178 Now Available

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Beneath-Ceaseles-Skies-178-smallBeneath Ceaseless Skies #178 has a new story by Raphael Ordoñez, author of “Day of the Dragonfly” (and the novel Dragonfly, featuring the same character), and Benjanun Sriduangkaew, better known as notorious blogger Requires Hate, subject of Laura J. Mixon’s Hugo-nominated “Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names.” It also features a podcast by Kate Marshall, and a reprint from Nicole M. Taylor.

“The Scale-Tree” by Raphael Ordoñez
Zeuxis led them up to the highest storey. There he left them while he went back and forth between darkroom and roof with his camera and the parts to his flying machine, carrying them up to the pavement that surrounded the topmost spire.

“The Insurrectionist and the Empress Who Reigns Over Time” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
In a palace shaped like bromeliads Yin Sanhi sat sipping a liquor of fermented cactus essence and sand persimmon. The chamber was papered by scrolls of proverbs on statecraft. The mathematicians and artists meant to send her dancers in pale silk and musicians with wrists like flutes, but she had declined, choosing instead silence and solitude.

Audio Fiction Podcast: “Stone Prayers” by Kate Marshall
Mattar comes to the house of Anaharesh in search of a single word; a word to end a war.

From the Archives: “A Spoonful of Salt” by Nicole M. Taylor (from BCS #79, October 2011)
He tasted of salt. Naomi half-expected to see him melting in the places where her mouth had been.

Issue 178 was published on July 23, 2015. Read it online completely free here.

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The New Dungeons & Dragons Movie Will Be Set in The Forgotten Realms

The New Dungeons & Dragons Movie Will Be Set in The Forgotten Realms

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Drizzt Do’Urden-smallWe’re learning more about the new Dungeons & Dragons movie announced by Warner Bros. this week.

The first D&D movie, produced by New Line Cinema in 2000, was an epic failure (and its sequel was even worse), but this film will be produced by the studio behind The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter franchises, which has been on the hunt for a premium fantasy property for some time. An ongoing lawsuit over ownership of the D&D film rights prevented the project from going ahead, but Variety reports that dispute has finally been resolved.

A movie based on the widely popular game Dungeons & Dragons is in the works at Warner Bros., the studio announced Monday, 10 months after a trial over who owned the rights to the fantasy game ended.

After months of negotiation, Warner Bros., Hasbro’s Allspark Pictures and Sweetpea Entertainment said they had come to an undisclosed arrangement, ending the 2-year-old lawsuit, and are moving forward with the feature film franchise. David Leslie Johnson (The Conjuring 2) has already written the screenplay set in the D&D fantasy world of [The] Forgotten Realms. Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Stephen Davis, Sweetpea Entertainment’s Courtney Solomon and Allan Zeman, and Roy Lee (The Lego Movie) are producing the high-priority project.

“This is far and away the most well-known brand in fantasy, which is the genre that drives the most passionate film followings,” said Greg Silverman, Warner Bros. president of creative development and worldwide production. “D&D has endless creative possibilities, giving our filmmakers immense opportunities to delight and thrill both fans and moviegoers new to the property…”

The Forgotten Realms, created by Ed Greenwood in 1987, is home to the drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, the mighty wizard Elminster, and countless other famous D&D characters. It has been featured in over 200 novels and countless adventure modules and supplements.

Read the complete article at Variety.

New Treasures: Edge of Sundown: Tales of Horror in the Wild West, edited by Kevin Ross and Brian M Sammons

New Treasures: Edge of Sundown: Tales of Horror in the Wild West, edited by Kevin Ross and Brian M Sammons

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Edge of Sundown Chaosium-smallI’m a big fan of weird westerns. But you already knew that, just based on my recent articles on R. S. Belcher’s The Shotgun Arcana, Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion, Guy Adams’s Heaven’s Gate trilogy, and the anthologies Ceaseless West, Razored Saddles, and Dead Man’s Hand.

But here’s something new — an original anthology of western horror from Kevin Ross (Dead But Dreaming) and Brian M. Sammons (Tales of Cthulhu Invictus, World War Cthulhu, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu), and published by Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu). Here’s a snippet from the guidelines.

We’re looking for stories set in the American west (west of the Mississippi River) in the latter half of the 19th century, basically from about the Civil War era until the dawn of the 20th century… This is an incredibly rich historical period, full of possibilities for good stories, from real-life heroes and villains to Indians and their legends, cryptozoology, and yes, even opportunities to use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Most importantly, what we’re looking for are good, SCARY stories set in the old west. We’re not looking for tongue-in-cheek works, but ones that take the genre seriously. (Compare, for example, the old Gene Autry serial The Phantom Empire and the more recent western creature-feature The Burrowers.) There can be elements of pulp, fantasy, or adventure, but in the long run the story must have a very strong horror element to it. Other examples of the type of thing we’re looking for would include the serious western (and western horror) fiction of Robert E. Howard, films such as High Plains Drifter, Django the Bastard (AKA The Stranger’s Gundown), and the novel and film The White Buffalo…

With Edge of Sundown our target is very specific, like a bullet straight through the heart: good, serious, scary western horror tales.

Edge of Sundown was published by Chaosium on July 1, 2015. It is 306 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: Fantastic Stories: Tales of the Weird & Wondrous, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Patrick L. Price

Vintage Treasures: Fantastic Stories: Tales of the Weird & Wondrous, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Patrick L. Price

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Fantastic Stories Tales of the Weird & Wondrous-small Fantastic Stories Tales of the Weird & Wondrous back-small

Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR acquired Amazing Stories, the longest running science fiction magazine in the world, in 1982, as a vehicle to help promote their family of games to SF readers around the world. By the mid-80s, TSR had their first fiction bestseller on their hands with the first Dragonlance trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which sold well over three million copies worldwide and spawned dozens of sequels, and TSR quickly became very adept at leveraging all aspects of publishing to support their properties. If publishing D&D novels helped introduce millions of young readers to their products, why not try the same with Amazing Stories?

So TSR contracted Martin H. Greenberg to produce five mass market anthologies, mining six decades of Amazing fiction. The results weren’t particularly big sellers (and they didn’t save Amazing from eventually folding), but they were nonetheless a fabulous boon for collectors. Best of all, they included the most comprehensive survey ever done of the pulp Amazing Stories, a three-volume set containing nearly 1,000-pages, covering 1926 to 1955. I looked at all five volumes in 2012, in a Vintage Treasures article on TSR’s Amazing Science Fiction Anthologies.

The long-running companion magazine to Amazing, Fantastic — which published some of the finest early sword & sorcery in the field, including stories by Fritz Leiber, John Jakes, Poul Anderson, Avram Davidson, James Tiptree, Jr., John Brunner, George R. R. Martin, Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorock, and Dean Koontz — merged with Amazing in 1980, and the rights fell to TSR. As part of their initiative to promote their magazine properties, TSR also commissioned Greenberg and new Amazing Stories editor Patrick L. Price to compile a deluxe anthology collecting 30 years of Fantastic fiction, with new artwork and an 8-page color section reproducing some of their most famous covers. The result was a fine collection, and one of the only anthologies dedicated to one of the all-time great S&S magazines.

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Future Treasures: Last Song Before Night by Ilana C. Myer

Future Treasures: Last Song Before Night by Ilana C. Myer

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Last Song Before Night-smallJust two days ago, in my Monday post on the fantasy debut The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, I noted that Tor has brought us some strong debuts over the past 18 months. And now here’s another promising fantasy debut from Ilana C. Myer, a high fantasy that tells the tale of a young woman who dares to defy a culture that says that only men can be poets and set their work to music, and who undertakes a dangerous quest to restore her world’s lost magic.

Her name was Kimbralin Amaristoth: sister to a cruel brother, daughter of a hateful family. But that name she has forsworn, and now she is simply Lin, a musician and lyricist of uncommon ability in a land where women are forbidden to answer such callings — a fugitive who must conceal her identity or risk imprisonment and even death.

On the eve of a great festival, Lin learns that an ancient scourge has returned to the land of Eivar, a pandemic both deadly and unnatural. Its resurgence brings with it the memory of an apocalypse that transformed half a continent. Long ago, magic was everywhere, rising from artistic expression — from song, from verse, from stories. But in Eivar, where poets once wove enchantments from their words and harps, the power was lost. Forbidden experiments in blood divination unleashed the plague that is remembered as the Red Death, killing thousands before it was stopped, and Eivar’s connection to the Otherworld from which all enchantment flowed, broken.

The Red Death’s return can mean only one thing: someone is spilling innocent blood in order to master dark magic. Now poets who thought only to gain fame for their songs face a challenge much greater: galvanized by Valanir Ocune, greatest Seer of the age, Lin and several others set out to reclaim their legacy and reopen the way to the Otherworld — a quest that will test their deepest desires, imperil their lives, and decide the future.

Last Song Before Night will be published by Tor Books on September 29, 2015. It is 416 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Stephan Martiniere. Read more at Myer’s website here.

Book Riot Suggests 9 Books That Will Challenge Your Idea of Fantasy

Book Riot Suggests 9 Books That Will Challenge Your Idea of Fantasy

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Imaro-smallOver at book site Book Riot, Troy L. Wiggins has posted an excellent list of fantasy books that venture outside the ordinary.

Fantasy recommendation lists are characterized by their safety. Curious newcomers to the genre, having enjoyed their sample of escapist literature, request more stories, more worlds to lose themselves in. More often than not, though, the recommendations that they receive are the same few critically acclaimed authors… My belief is that Fantasy literature is the perfect lens for readers to challenge our ideas of humanity, violence, society, and power. My recommendations in this list (yes, another list!) will reflect that belief. Buckle up.

His list includes The Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley, A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, Aliette De Bodard’s Obsidian & Blood, and the too-often overlooked Imaro series by Charles Saunders.

On the other side of the “often gets compared to Conan the Barbarian” coin we have Charles Saunders’ Imaro series, a groundbreaking series of sword and sorcery novels and short stories set on the fictional continent of Nyumbani, which serves as an alternate world representation of the African continent. Imaro is the very first representative work of a genre called “Sword and Soul,” which takes fantasy out of Medieval Europe and places it in Africa. Imaro is a one of a kind type of book series, and finishing it can lead you down a rabbit hole of Sword and Soul titles – the genre itself is experiencing something of a resurgence.

Read the complete list here.

July 2015 Issue of Outposts of Beyond Now on Sale

July 2015 Issue of Outposts of Beyond Now on Sale

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Outposts of Beyond July 2015-smallI heard some reports of a new magazine a few weeks ago, and finally had a moment to investigate this morning. The magazine is Outposts of Beyond, and it has published eight issues since its debut in July 2013 — meaning I’m late to the party. The magazine is edited by James Tiptree Award nominee Tyree Campbell, author of the Nyx series and Tree Hugger, and published by Alban Lake, publishers of Aoife’s Kiss and Disturbed magazine. Here’s the general description:

Outposts Of Beyond features science fiction and fantasy tales of elsewhere and elsewhen. These stories are seasoned to taste with just a touch of related poetry, and interspersed with reviews, interviews, and articles related to the genres. We hope you’ll come along for the journey.

I find their Submission Guidelines interesting:

Outposts of Beyond publishes original science fiction and fantasy short stories, poems, art, articles, reviews, and interviews. Preferred are adventure stories, space opera, and magic opera [like space opera, but fantasy]. Also preferred are stories that take place on other worlds. Stories must have the following: characters the reader cares about, plots and subplots, and settings that draw the reader into them. Must have.

I’ve never heard of “Magic opera” before, but the description seems intuitive enough. And I like the emphasis on interesting settings.

The latest issue has fiction by Adrian Simmons, Beth Powers, Tyree Campbell, and others. Here’s the complete TOC.

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Sarah Avery Wins the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for Tales from Rugosa Coven

Sarah Avery Wins the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for Tales from Rugosa Coven

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tales-from-rugosa-coven-Avery-smallBlack Gate blogger Sarah Avery has been awarded the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for her novel Tales from Rugosa Coven, published in 2013 by Dark Quest. (As she put in in her e-mail to us, “Don’t look now, but there’s a very small lion in my suitcase.”)

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, series, or collection for adults published during the previous year that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings,” the Oxford literary discussion group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The winners were announced at Mythcon 46, held July 31 – August 3, 2015, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The complete list of winners follows.

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

  • Sarah Avery, Tales from Rugosa Coven (Dark Quest)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature

  • Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic (Scholastic)

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois

New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois

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The Year's Best Science Fiction Thirty-Second Annual Collection-smallIt’s always a mini-celebration in the O’Neill household when Dozois’ annual Year’s Best collection arrives.

This year’s volume comes packed with the best short fiction of the year by Nancy Kress, James Patrick Kelly, Adam Roberts, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Gareth L. Powell, Karl Schroeder, Rachel Swirsky, Alastair Reynolds, Ellen Klages, Michael Swanwick, Lauren Beukes, Peter Watts, Lavie Tidhar, Paolo Bachigalupi, Aliette de Bodard, and many others — over 600 pages of fiction, plus Gardner’s detailed summary of the very best of the year in books, magazines, movies, anthologies, collections, websites, and much more.

Gardner is usually a pretty fair predictor of the Hugo Awards, and I when the Hugo ballot arrived every year I could usually just open up his volume and read most of the nominees. Not this year. As most folks know, this year the Hugo ballot was hijacked by the Rabid Puppies campaign (and, to a much lesser extent, the much smaller Sad Puppy campaign).

None of the stories on the Hugo ballot this year was selected by Gardner for his Year’s Best (or for any other Best of the Year anthology that I’m aware of).

But fret not. Here’s your chance to see what magnificent tales could have been on the Hugo ballot this year — all assembled for you in one handsome package.

The complete table of contents for The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection follows.

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Sasquan Announces Record Voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards

Sasquan Announces Record Voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards

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SasquanSasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, announced this morning that voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards has reached record levels.

Sasquan is pleased to announce that it received a record­breaking 5,950 valid ballots for the 2015 Hugo Awards. 5,914 voters used the online voting system and 36 submitted paper ballots. The 5,950 total surpasses the vote total record for previous years (3,587 ballots, set by Loncon in 2014) by more than 65%.

More than 57% of the convention members eligible to vote cast ballots this year, making this the highest level of participation in Hugo Awards voting in the past decade.

Sasquan will announce the Hugo Awards winners Saturday, Aug. 22, at 8 p.m. at a ceremony hosted by authors Tananarive Due and David Gerrold.

For those unable to attend the ceremonies, Sasquan will also live stream the Awards ceremony here. There will also be a text stream available on the Hugo Awards webpage.

Voting for the Hugos is now closed. Sasquan will release final vote counts at the conclusion of the Aug. 22 ceremony.

Black Gate declined our first Hugo nomination this year, on account of the bloc voting from the Rabid Puppy campaign. My comments on this year’s Hugo ballot are here.