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Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: Dave vs. The Monsters by John Birmingham

New Treasures: Dave vs. The Monsters by John Birmingham

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Dave vs. the Monsters Emergence-small Dave vs. the Monsters Resistance-small Dave vs. the Monsters Ascendance-small

I’m not sure what to make of this new trend of releasing an entire trilogy in two months. In my day, you had to wait years for all three novels in a fantasy trilogy. And the publisher never told you when the last book was coming out because, hell, they didn’t know. Nobody knew. You just walked back and forth to the bookstore every single week, dutifully checking. In the snow. Uphill, both ways. And we liked it that way.

Kids today, they don’t know what waiting is. Take the new fantasy trilogy by John Birmingham, Dave vs. The Monsters, for example. The first volume, Emergence, was released on April 28, and the second one, Resistance, on June 2. And just in case that five week wait between volumes was too traumatic for you, Del Rey is releasing the final volume, Ascendance, just four weeks later, on June 30.

You’re spoiled rotten. You know that, right?

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Vintage Treasures: Kelwin by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Vintage Treasures: Kelwin by Neal Barrett, Jr.

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Kelwin Neal Barrett-smallWe have the makings of a small Neal Barrett, Jr. fan club here at Black Gate. It began when a discussion of his Aldair novels — which Fletcher Vredenburgh called “a blast of strangeness and adventure” — broke out in the comments section of a post about Mark Frost’s The List of 7. Shortly after Barrett’s death last year, Keith West briefly recounted meeting him at various conventions, and Fletcher reviewed The Prophecy Machine, the first of his novels of Finn, the Master Lizard Maker, saying:

I started it immediately and found myself in a fun, almost goofy story of craftsmen, duelists, animal people, and machinery not meant to be fiddled with by man…

From its first page, The Prophecy Machine heralds fun… Barrett has created a hilarious city of lunatics ruled by lunatic rules for Finn’s adventures to take place in… the book’s a lark. It’s funny and inventive from end to end. Jessica Slagg’s an amusing foil for the occasionally pompous and cocksure Finn. Sabatino’s exchanges with Finn are a funny mix of menace and camaraderie.

The only thing I can possibly compare it to is one of Jack Vance’s Cugel books. Like Vance, Barrett’s fantasy world doesn’t feel beholden to any real world setting. But the comparison really doesn’t do it justice. Barrett’s sly voice and Finn’s world are entirely his own.

I recently stumbled on a copy of Barrett’s first novel, Kelwin, a post-apocalyptic novel packaged as a sword & sorcery novel. It’s a fine example of 70s-era science fantasy, and I didn’t hesitate to make it mine.

Kelwin was released in paperback by Lancer Books in 1970 with a Jim Steranko cover. It has never been reprinted, and has now been out of print for 45 years. For Barrett fans, it makes a fine collectible.

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The mid-June Fantasy Magazine Rack

The mid-June Fantasy Magazine Rack

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The big news this week is that Clarkesworld has started considering novelettes. They’ve also raised their rates to 10¢/word for the first 5,000 words, and 8¢ for each word over 5,000. For the pulp fans in our audience, Matthew Wuertz had a look at the September 1939 issue of John W. Campbell’s famous fantasy magazine Unknown, and Rich Horton posted a Retro Review of the July 1957 issue of Venture, with stories by James E. Gunn, Theodore R. Cogswell, H. Beam Piper, C. M. Kornbluth, Lester Del Rey, and Tom Godwin.

In his May Short Story Roundup, Fletcher Vredenburgh reviews the latest issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine #40 and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #24, calling the latter “maybe their best yet,” with equal praise for Cullen Groves’ “The Madness of the Mansa,” Dennis Mombauer’s “Melting Gold and Ashes,” and “The Reeds of Torin’s Fields by Andrea G. Stewart.

Check out all the details on each of the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our early June Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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Future Treasures: Iron and Blood by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin

Future Treasures: Iron and Blood by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin

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Iron and Blood-smallGail Z. Martin is the author of Chronicles of the Necromancer, The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, and Deadly Curiosities, among other fine novels of heroic fantasy. Her first collaboration with Larry N. Martin was “Airship Down: A Sound and Fury Adventure,” a short story in Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier’s 2014 anthology Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens.

That apparently worked out well, because the husband and wife writing team has launched a new series together: The Jake Desmet Adventures. The first installment, Iron & Blood, is due next month from Solaris. And it looks pretty darned interesting.

New Pittsburgh, 1898 –- a crucible of invention and intrigue. Born from the ashes of devastating fire, flood and earthquake, the city is ruled by the shadow government of The Oligarchy. In the swarming streets, people of a hundred nations drudge to feed the engines of progress, while in the abandoned tunnels beneath the city, supernatural creatures hide from the light, emerging only to feed.

Jake Desmet and Rick Brand travel the world to secure treasures and unusual items for the collections of wealthy patrons, accompanied by Jake’s cousin, Veronique LeClerque. But when their latest commission leads to Jake’s father’s murder, the three friends are drawn into a conspiracy where dark magic, industrial sabotage and the monsters that prey on the night will ultimately threaten not just New Pittsburgh, but the whole world.

Iron and Blood will be published by Solaris on July 7, 2015. It is 432 pages, priced at $9.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. Read more at the Solaris website.

Clarkesworld 105 Now on Sale

Clarkesworld 105 Now on Sale

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Clarkesworld 105-smallSo much news from Clarkesworld this month. The big news is that it is now accepting fiction up to 16,000 words — great news for those of us who enjoy longer stories. Its rates have increased as well: it’s now paying 10¢ per word for the first 5,000 words, and 8¢ for each word over 5,000. And at the Nebulas last weekend, I met editor Neil Clarke and learned he had no less than three stories he’d edited up last for awards — more than any other editor in the field.

Issue #105 is now on sale, and it’s a great time to try Clarkesworld if you haven’t before. It contains four new short stories, plus reprints from Terry Bisson (the first Wilson Wu and Irving story) and Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“Somewhere I Have Never Traveled (Third Sound Remix)” by E. Catherine Tobler
“Asymptotic” by Andy Dudak
“This Wanderer, in the Dark of the Year” by Kris Millering
“Forestspirit, Forestspirit” by Bogi Takács
“The Hole in the Hole” by Terry Bisson (from Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 1994)
“Riding the White Bull” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (from Argosy Magazine, January-February 2004)

Non-fiction includes “The Day-Glo Dystopia of Poly Styrene: Punk Prophet and Science Fiction Priestess” by Jason Heller, “The Paradox of the Telescope: A Conversation with Robert Charles Wilson” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, “Another Word: The Vaguely Picaresque Adventures of a New Writer” by John Chu; and an editorial, “Once Again Down the Rabbit Hole” by Neil Clarke, in which he analyzes the results of his reader survey. This issue also includes two podcasts.

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New Treasures: The Edge of Reason Trilogy by Melinda Snodgrass

New Treasures: The Edge of Reason Trilogy by Melinda Snodgrass

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Melinda Snodgrass’s The Edge of Reason was originally published in hardcover with a snoozer of a cover (seriously — see below) by Tor Books in 2008. For the paperback edition in 2009 Tor recolored the cover, which I don’t think helped much. Maybe in 2009 it made sense to dress up the tale of a secret war between the forces of science and superstition as a Da Vinci Code lookalike, but here in 2015 we know better.

Maybe that’s why I never noticed The Edge of Reason when it first appeared. Why have I noticed it now? Because Tor reissued it on April 21 with a vastly superior cover by Chris McGrath (above). Seriously, this book has giant tentacles, and no one thought to feature them on the cover? This is Publishing 101, people.

Tor has not gifted us with a newer, awesomer edition of The Edge of Reason simply because Chris McGrath had a free weekend. The sequel, The Edge of Ruin, will be reprinted in paperback on July 28th (above, cover by McGrath), and the third volume, The Edge of Dawn, arrives on August 4th — also with a McGrath cover. Which also prominently features tentacles. Because that’s how you do it.

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Ancient Explorers Unveils the True Horror of the Rat King

Ancient Explorers Unveils the True Horror of the Rat King

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Rat King-smallThe Ancient Explorers Facebook group has explored some fascinating topics recently, including an ancient Chinese cure for obesity, the mysterious Nazca lines of Peru, and the enigmatic Voynich manuscript. But they’ve never posted anything quite like the true story of the Rat King, a near legendary medieval monster.

Several museums around the world contain bizarre once-living artifacts of a pseudo-legendary beast from the Middle Ages called a “rat king.” A rat king is formed when several rats have their tails fused together, whether by knotting or being somehow glued together. The result is a small horde of rats all facing outward from the central knot, presumably forced to act as one composite beast. The more fanciful accounts hold that one leader rat is suspended in the middle and acts as the “head” who directs the rest — a nightmarish notion, especially considering the fears of plague that rats conjure up.

The largest of these disturbing artifacts contains 32 of the little horrors and resides at the Mauritianum Museum in Altenburg, Germany. Some existing rat kings are mummified, while others are preserved in jars. Rat kings have been found in Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Indonesia. In every case except Indonesia, the rats were black: Rattus rattus L. In the case of Indonesia, they were small field rats: R. argentiventer.

As recently as 2005, a farmer named Rein Koiv found a rat king consisting of 16 individuals (nine of which were already dead) underneath the floorboards of his farm in Estonia, their tails glued together by frozen sand.

Read the complete story here.

Vintage Treasures: Ariosto by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Vintage Treasures: Ariosto by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

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Two weeks ago I wrote about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s third novel, Hôtel Transylvania (1978), the opening novel in the celebrated Count Saint-Germain series, one of the first (and most successful) vampire romance sagas. It reminded me that, before Yarbro became a celebrated horror writer, she was well on her way to being one of the most acclaimed fantasists in America, with two of her earliest novels, The Palace (1979) and Ariosto (1980), nominated for the World Fantasy Award.

Ariosto was first published by Pocket Books, with a cover by Don Maitz (left). In addition to the World Fantasy, it was also nominated for the Balrog Award, and placed 11th in the Locus poll for best Best Fantasy Novel of the year. It was reprinted only once in the US, in a new paperback edition by Tor Books in January 1988 (right, cover by McPheeters), and has been out of print for nearly 30 years.

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C.S.E. Cooney Gets a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly

C.S.E. Cooney Gets a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly

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Bone Swans CSE Cooney-smallC.S.E. Cooney, Black Gate‘s website editor emeritus, signed with Mythic Delirium Press for her first short fiction collection, Bone Swans, and it’s already gathering rave reviews in advance of its July release. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying:

Cooney’s brilliantly executed collection of five stories is a delicious stew of science fiction, horror, and fantasy, marked by unforgettable characters who plumb the depths of pathos and triumph. In “Life on the Sun,” sacrifice and rebirth are explored in a fantastical desert where future tech and wizardry mingle, as a mystical pharaoh-like figure forces a young rebel fighter to stoically embrace her fate. Children bravely battle to survive an adult-free, post-apocalyptic Earth in “The Big Ba-Ha,” even though they know their demise — hungrily anticipated by the ghoulish creatures that now share their world — is inevitable… Cooney’s magical prose elicits laughter even as gruesome scenes induce shudders, and her expert pacing breathlessly buoys the reader to each story’s conclusion. All of these stories could easily serve as the foundation for novels while also working beautifully at their current length. These well-crafted narratives defiantly refuse to fade from memory long after the last word has been read.

Bone Swans will be released next month, but if you can’t wait you can read some of the stories in their original online appearances, including right here at Black Gate: “Life on the Sun,” (from Black Gate), “Martyr’s Gem” (from Giganotosaurus) and “How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain with the Crooked One” (from Giganotosaurus).

Bone Swans will be published by Mythic Delirium Press on July 7th, 2015, with an introduction by Gene Wolfe. It is 224 pages, priced at $5.99 for the digital edition. Get more details on their website.

Future Treasures: Dead Man’s Reach by D. B. Jackson

Future Treasures: Dead Man’s Reach by D. B. Jackson

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Dead Man's Reach-smallBlack Gate readers may remember we published a popular short story by David B. Coe, “Night of Two Moons,” in Black Gate 4. In a fascinating article written for us last year, The Life and Times of a Midlist Author, David B. Coe wrote:

Writing now as D. B. Jackson, I am the author of The Thieftaker Chronicles, a historical urban fantasy series set in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The first two books, Thieftaker (Tor Books, 2012) and Thieves’ Quarry (Tor Books, 2013), have been received very well critically and did well enough commercially that Tor bought two more books from me. The first of these, the third in the series, is called A Plunder of Souls and it drops on July 8, 2014. (Please buy it. In fact, feel free to buy a few copies; they make great gifts and come in an attractive package complete with artwork by Chris McGrath. We now return to our regularly scheduled blog post…)

The fourth Thieftaker novel, Dead Man’s Reach, will be out next summer.

In addition, David (as D.B. Jackson) interviewed his main character Ethan Kaille, the Thieftaker, in a funny and very insightful post for us in July of 2013.

The fourth novel that David mentioned in his article last year, the highly anticipated Dead Man’s Reach, is finally due from Tor Books next month. It is a stand alone story, and can be enjoyed separately from the others in the series.

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