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Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

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TSR's Known World
TSR’s Known World

Last month we had a look at the Top 80 Black Gate Posts of 2014, our most popular articles for all of last year.

The most popular blog posts from February include several that are guaranteed to make the Top 80 Black Gate Posts of 2015, as they garnered enough traffic last month alone to rival those near the top of our 2014 list. At the top of the heap was “The Known World D&D Setting: A Secret History,” Lawrence Schick’s fascinating reminiscence of the early fantasy world he created with Tom Moldvay that became the basis for TSR’s famed Known World campaign setting.

Second on the February list was Howard Andrew Jones’ report on the Star Trek Continues Kickstarter, “Star Trek Kickstarter Warps Ahead,” which more than doubled its $100,000 goal and secured enough funding to make two more episodes of this excellent fan-made series.

Third on the list was M Harold Page’s advice for aspiring novelists, “Writing: Why You Shouldn’t Tinker With the Beginning Until You’ve Written to the End.”

The distinguished Mr. Page had a good month, also claiming the fourth spot with “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Edmond Hamilton: Who did Douglas Adams Really Read?” And rounding out the Top Five for February was Marie Bilodeau, with her look back at classic video games like Final Fantasy II and Dragon Warrior, “Seven Lessons I Learned from RPG Games of Yore.”

The complete list of Top Articles for February follows. Below that , I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

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New Treasures: Jazz Age Cthulhu by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey

New Treasures: Jazz Age Cthulhu by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey

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Jazz Age Cthulhu-smallI like these Innsmouth Free Press folks. They’ve done some impressive work recently, including Nick Mamatas’ collection The Nickronomicon, Love & Other Poisons by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and the anthology Future Lovecraft — not to mention the ongoing Innsmouth Magazine, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, which has produced fifteen issues so far.

Jazz Age Cthulhu is a handsome paperback containing three brand new novelettes inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, set against the background of the Roaring Twenties, by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey.

Journey to Kansas City, the “Paris of the Plains,” a city of glamor and sin where cults, secret societies and music intermingle. Visit Assam, India, where a British dilettante wakes up one morning covered in bruises and welts, with a dead man in her bed and no memory of what happened in the last 24 hours. Her only clue is a trashed invitation to the exclusive Black Ram Club. Relax on the resort island of Pomptinia, an Italian enclave of wealthy socialites, expats and intellectuals. But beware — the sea conceals dark secrets.

We last covered Innsmouth Free Press with their anthology Sword & Mythos, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. We covered Jennifer Brozek’s collection Apocalypse Girl Dreaming back in October, and her heroic fantasy anthology Shattered Shields, co-edited with Bryan Thomas Schmidt, in September.

Jazz Age Cthulhu was published by Innsmouth Free Press on December 15, 2014. It is 146 pages, priced at $10 for the trade paperback and just $3.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures posts here.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 3 Now on Sale

Uncanny Magazine Issue 3 Now on Sale

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Uncanny Magazine 3-smallThe third issue of Uncanny Magazine is now on sale, with a cover that caused me to do a bit of a double take. I’m not entirely sure if it depicts a plucky adventuress assisting a monster in distress, a strange sexual romp in a pastoral field, or something else entirely. The artist is Carrie Ann Baade, and the title of the work (Unspeakable #2) doesn’t help. Click on the image at left for a bigger version, and make up your own mind.

Whatever the case, the new issue has a stellar line up, with all-new short fiction by Sofia Samatar, Rosamund Hodge, Emily Devenport, a classic reprint by Ellen Klages, and more. Here’s the complete fiction contents:

“The Lamps Thereof Are Fire and Flames,” by Rosamund Hodge
“Translatio Corporis,” by Kat Howard
‘Ivory Darts, Golden Arrows,” by Maria Dahvana Headley
“Those,” by Sofia Samatar
“When the Circus Lights Down,” by Sarah Pinsker
“Dr. Polingyouma’s Machine,” by Emily Devenport
“In the House of the Seven Librarians,” by Ellen Klages
“You Are Two Point Three Meters from Your Destination,” by Fran Wilde

Nonfiction this issues is by Ytasha L. Womack, Stephanie Zvan, Amal El–Mohtar, and L.M. Myles. There are also poems by Jennifer Crow, M Sereno, and our very own C.S.E. Cooney, and interviews with Sofia Samatar, C.S.E. Cooney, and Ellen Klages.

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Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin on Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin on Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

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The Buried Giant-small2Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled), is one of the most acclaimed novelists in the English language. His newest novel, The Buried Giant, is already generating intense interest — and debate — among fantasy fans. Witness two very different reactions… the first, from Neil Gaiman, writing in The New York Times:

This is a novel about an elderly couple going from one village to the next, set in a semi-historical England of the sixth or perhaps seventh century… Saxons and Britons live side by side in a post-Arthurian twilight, in a mythical time of ogres, sprites and dragons — most of all the dragon Querig, who dominates the second half of the book…

The narrative tone is dreamlike and measured. There are adventures, sword fights, betrayals, armies, cunning stratagems and monsters killed, but these things are told distantly, without the book’s pulse ever beating faster… Enemies are slain, but the deaths are never triumphant. A culmination of a planned trap for a troop of soldiers, worthy of a whodunit, is described in retrospect, once we already know what must have happened… this is, at its heart, a book about two people who are now past all adventure.

Gaiman’s review of the novel is largely positive, although he admits his “inability to fall in love with it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, in contrast, has harshly criticized the book — and especially the author’s clear disdain for fantasy.

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Vintage Treasures: Horrors in Hiding edited by Sam Moskowitz with Alden H. Norton

Vintage Treasures: Horrors in Hiding edited by Sam Moskowitz with Alden H. Norton

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Horrors in Hiding-smallHorrors in Hiding is the second in the trilogy of anthologies Sam Moskowitz edited for Berkely in the early 70s, and the only one we haven’t covered. The first was Horrors Unknown (1971), and the last (and the final anthology Moskowitz ever produced) was Horrors Unseen (1974).

It’s also the only one co-edited with Alden H. Norton, a noted anthologist in his own right, who co-edited four books with Moskowitz, including The Space Magicians and Ghostly By Gaslight (both in 1971).

I like Vincent Di Fate’s cover, which is moody and very striking. Although it’s awfully purple, and a little puzzling if you stare at it too long. (Is that dude eating a rock?)

The blurb on the back is short and to the point:

WARNING: Lock your doors before unleashing Horrors In Hiding. Ten grim and gruesome tales of the macabre guaranteed to chill your blood and shatter your nerves.

I count only nine stories, but let’s not be picky. They are grim and gruesome, and that’s what matters.

Moskowitz was a die-hard pulp fan, and half the stories within — those by Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth and Ray Bradbury — are culled from pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Strange Stories. The rest — by Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry, John Kendrick Bangs and Nathaniel P. Babcock — are much older.

As usual, Sam wrote fascinating and detailed introductions — author appreciations, really — for each story, and his love and knowledge of the field shine through. Sometimes I think Moskowitz produced these anthologies just so he’d have an excuse to talk about his favorite writers.

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Weirdbook Relaunches

Weirdbook Relaunches

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Weirdbook 22-smallW. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook, one of the all-time great weird fiction magazines, will be relaunched this year by David A. Riley and Black Gate blogger Douglas Draa‎.

Weirdbook, a large-sized magazine with excellent production values, produced thirty annual issues between 1968 and 1997, publishing fiction by Stephen King, Joseph Payne Brennan, H. Warner Munn, Robert E. Howard, Tim Powers, Darrell Schweitzer, Basil Wells, Charles R. Saunders, Michael Bishop, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Ramsey Campbell, Delia Sherman, and countless others. The magazine was also famous for its gorgeous interior artwork by Gene Day, Victoria Poyser, J. K. Potter, Allen Koszowski, Stephen E. Fabian, and many others.

Douglas Draa, a prolific blogger and the former Online Editor for Weird Tales, is the Managing Editor and Fiction editor; Riley has signed on as Senior Editor and Publisher. When I asked Doug for additional details he shared this with us:

We’ll closely, but not slavishly, follow the original format. Content wise we hope to have a strong mix of weird, horror, weird-sf, dark fantasy, swords & sorcery, and everything in between. The accent will be on strong story telling that the reader will enjoy. The eclectic mix of style and sub-genres that the original was famous will be our “leitfaden.” Paul is on board as Editor Emeritus with “kill-switch” powers to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Our goal is to bring the reader high quality genre fiction original in the Weirdbook tradition. The key word will be entertainment. Critics be damned.

On a personal note, W. Paul Ganley and Weirdbook were a big influence on me, and a major inspiration for Black Gate. I was consciously following in Paul’s footsteps when I launched BG 15 years ago, and I’m very excited to see his magazine return. For more details, see Doug’s announcement here, and the magazines’s new website here.

New Treasures: Monstrous by MarcyKate Connolly

New Treasures: Monstrous by MarcyKate Connolly

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Monstrous-smallNow this looks like a cool book.

Monstrous, the debut novel from MarcyKate Connolly, features a city under the sway of dark magic, a mysterious curse… and a girl with bolts in her neck, who was built to defeat the curse and rescue the inhabitants of Byre. You can read the first 72 pages online, at the HarperCollins Web Sampler.

The city of Bryre suffers under the magic of an evil wizard. Because of his curse, girls sicken and disappear without a trace, and Bryre’s inhabitants live in fear. No one is allowed outside after dark.

Yet night is the only time that Kymera can enter this dangerous city, for she must not be seen by humans. Her father says they would not understand her wings, the bolts in her neck, or her spiky tail — they would kill her. They would not understand that she was created for a purpose: to rescue the girls of Bryre.

Despite her caution, a boy named Ren sees Kym and begins to leave a perfect red rose for her every evening. As they become friends, Kym learns that Ren knows about the missing girls, the wizard, and the evil magic that haunts Bryre.

And what he knows will change Kym’s life.

Reminiscent of Frankenstein and the tales of the Brothers Grimm, this debut novel by MarcyKate Connolly stands out as a compelling, original story that has the feel of a classic.

Monstrous was published by HarperCollins on February 10, 2015. It is 432 pages, priced at $16.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

The Omnibus Volumes of Jack Vance, Part II: Tales of the Dying Earth

The Omnibus Volumes of Jack Vance, Part II: Tales of the Dying Earth

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Tales of the Dying Earth-smallI’ve been reading Jack Vance recently. My interest was initially piqued by the beautiful collections of his earliest stories from Subterranean Press, The Early Jack Vance, including the upcoming fifth book, Grand Crusades. Two weeks ago I started a project to examine the current crop of omnibus volumes collecting his most popular series, starting with Planet of Adventure.

Part of the reason I do this, of course, is that these books are a terrific value for collectors and new readers alike, gathering as they do multiple novels — many of which have been out of print for decades — in inexpensive trade paperbacks. But seeing these fat volumes on bookshelves doesn’t always do anything for me… until I have a clear picture of exactly what’s inside.

I’m a visual guy, so for me that usually means the covers of the original paperbacks. Once I see those, these handsome omnibus volumes become a lot more desirable.

Of course, we’re dealing with Jack Vance here. His books were some of the most popular fantasy of the Twentieth Century, and went through multiple editions from a whole host of publishers. And his Dying Earth novels are perhaps his most popular and enduring works — I count more than two dozen English language editions just of the first book alone, since it first appeared in paperback in 1950.

So that presents a bit of a quandary. What I’m aiming to do here is provide a snapshot of the books contained within Tales of the Dying Earth that will jog the memory of the casual reader… perhaps remind them of that fascinating paperback they picked up at the cabin back in 1979, or that forgotten series they briefly glimpsed on bookstore shelves in 1994. I won’t attempt to catalog every appearance of the four novels in the Dying Earth sequence here, but instead just focus on the most popular editions that have been in circulation for the last sixty years or so.

I hope that if this article does jog your memory, perhaps reminding you of that long-forgotten paperback copy of Eyes of the Overworld or Rhialto the Marvelous you devoured twenty summers ago, you’ll seek out one of these omnibus editions and give it a try. The publishers who have brought these vintage classics back into print deserve your support.

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Future Treasures: Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge

Future Treasures: Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge

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Crimson Bound-smallRosamund Hodge’s short story “Apotheosis” (Black Gate 15) was a marvelously original tale of three brothers who undertake a voyage across a vast sea only six inches deep, to find a new god for their small village. Her first novel, Cruel Beauty, mixed Greek mythology with Beauty and the Beast to create a tale of adventure and romance (read the first 59 pages at the HarperCollins Web Sampler).

Her second novel, Crimson Bound, is due May 5 from Balzer + Bray. This one is a dark fantasy inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, the fairy tale The Girl With No Hands, and Norse mythology.

When Rachelle was fifteen she was good — apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless — straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in a vain effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand — the man she hates most — Rachelle forces Armand to help her hunt for the legendary sword that might save their world. Together, they navigate the opulent world of the courtly elite, where beauty and power reign and no one can be trusted. And as the two become unexpected allies, they discover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic… and a love that may be their undoing. Within a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Crimson Bound goes on sale on May 5 from Balzer + Bray. It is 448 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover, and $9.99 for the digital version.

Interzone #256 Now on Sale

Interzone #256 Now on Sale

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Interzone-256-smallBlack Static 44 is now on sale here in the US, and I thought it was long past time to take a look at its sister magazine Interzone, also published by TTA Press in the UK.

Interzone was founded in 1982 by a UK collective of fans that included author and critic John Clute, Take Back Plenty author Colin Greenland, Malcolm Edwards, who became the SF editor at Victor Gollancz and creator of the highly respected SF Masterworks line, and David Pringle. David Pringle eventually became the sole editor, remaining at the helm for an incredible 193 issues, until he stepped down in 2004. Since then it’s been owned by TTA Press, publishers of Black Static and Crimewave, with Andy Cox as editor.

Interzone contains chiefly science fiction but, like Asimov’s SF here in the states, does publish the occasional fantasy piece. Issue #256 is cover-dated January/February, and contains the following stories:

“Nostalgia” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extraterrestrial Betting Markets” by T.R. Napper
“The Ferry Man” by Pandora Hope
“Tribute” by Christen Gholson
“Fish on Friday” by Neil Williamson

The cover this issue (titled Berenice) is by artist Martin Hanford, who has been commissioned to do all the 2015 covers. Click the cover for a bigger version. If the style looks familiar, you probably saw Hanford’s art just yesterday in our New Treasures piece on Swords of Steel.

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