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Author: John ONeill

The Tragic and Poignant Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist: A Night on the Moor & Other Tales of Dread

The Tragic and Poignant Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist: A Night on the Moor & Other Tales of Dread

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A Night on the Moor-smallIt’s probably no surprise that I got a new volume in the Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural series for Christmas.

I’m not familiar with R. Murray Gilchrist, but that’s the beauty of this series — it’s introduced me to a wide range of excellent ghost story writers. Gilchrist wrote chiefly in the late 1800s and he produced a fine range of supernatural ghost stories, including horror, humor, mystery, and even tragic romance. A Night on the Moor is a slender volume (at just 190 pages, it’s considerably shorter than most of the recent Wordsworth edition we’ve covered), but I’m enjoying it so far.

Robert Murray Gilchrist (1868-1917) is perhaps best known for his interest in topography, and for his stories set in Derbyshire’s Peak District. But he was also a master of mystery and horror, as this richly varied collection shows.

If you are looking for a conventional horror story, in which the supernatural element is paramount, try “The Crimson Weaver,” “Dame Inowslad,” “Witch In-Grain,” or “A Night on the Moor.” If you are more taken with the psychology of the participants, often allied to a fascination with the killing of friends or lovers, then “Francis Shackerley,” “The Noble Courtesan,” “Althea Swathmore,” and “My Friend” will be right up your street. For humor we are offered the Peakland comedy of “The Panicle” or “A Witch in the Peak.” And when it comes to love, there are the tragic and poignant tales we might expect (“The Return,” “The Lost Mistress,” “The Madness of Betty Hooton”), but also the engaging and unusual “Bubble Magic” — a story of romantic betrayal which hints at a happy ending.

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James Bond is in the Public Domain in Canada

James Bond is in the Public Domain in Canada

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James Bond 007-smallNews that the character of James Bond entered the public domain in several countries around the world, including Canada, on January 1st 2015, has stirred considerable excitement among small press publishers.

As io9 reported on Thursday, for many countries who signed the international Berne Convention governing copyright, an author’s works are protected until 50 years after her death. Ian Fleming died in 1964, which means his work entered the public domain this year. Fleming’s original novels can now be published by anyone in Canada, and new film adaptions of those works are fair game.

Canadian publishers such as Neil Baker’s April Moon Books, who recently produced the popular anthologies The Dark Rites of Cthulhu and Amok!, are exploring what this means to those interested in producing new Bond-related books and anthologies. Here’s Neil:

Here is what I know so far. The name James Bond is currently not trademarked, and it wouldn’t be an issue if it was. However, James Bond OO7 is trademarked, and would cause a kerfuffle. The movies are off-limits, so no fluffy white cats or Q. Movie versions of James are off-limits, as is SPECTRE and, to some extent, villains using nuclear threats. It’s all a bit murky, but I’m still digging.

I’m trying to clarify the position of writers outside of Canada, bear with me on this.

Keep up with developments on the April Moon Facebook page.

The 2014 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees

The 2014 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees

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Reach For Infinity Solaris-smallThe Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually for distinguished science fiction originally published in paperback in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.

The six finalists this year are (with links to earlier Black Gate coverage, where appropriate):

Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett (Aqueduct Press)
The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter by Rod Duncan (Angry Robot)
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison (Sybaritic Press)
Memory Of Water by Emmi Itäranta (Harper Voyager)
Maplecroft: The Borden Dispatches by Cherie Priest (Roc)
Reach For Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)

I wasn’t aware that anthologies are eligible for the Dick Award, but I’m very pleased to see Jonathan Strahan’s Reach for Infinity on the list this year.

Last year’s winner was Countdown City by Ben H. Winters, author of The Last Policeman, with a special citation going to Toh EnJoe’s Self-Reference Engine.

This year’s winner will be announced on Friday, April 3, 2015 at Norwescon 38 in SeaTac, Washington. The 2014 judges are Jon Armstrong, Ritchie Calvin, Ellen Klages, Laura J. Mixon (chair), and Michaela Roessner. See more details at the Official Philip K. Dick Awards Home Page.

See all of our recent News articles here.

The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, Part II

The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, Part II

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Chanur’s Endgame-small Alternate Realities Cherryh Alliance Space-small

Last week I wrote the first installment of a three-part series looking at DAW’s ambitious program to bring some two dozen of C.J. Cherryh’s early fantasy and space opera novels back into print, The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, Part I. I looked at The Faded Sun Trilogy, The Morgaine Saga, and The Chanur Saga, published in January, March, and May of 2000, respectively.

In the Comments section of that article, Joe H. observed,

That first Chanur omnibus always confused me because it was functionally equivalent to putting The Hobbit, Fellowship and Two Towers into a single volume. And then you had that seven-year gap before the second Chanur omnibus was published…

Joe is quite correct. Chanur’s Homecoming, the fourth novel in the series, was in effect the conclusion of a trilogy which began in Chanur’s Venture and The Kif Strike Back. Readers coming to the novels for the first time with the first omnibus had to track down a copy of the final volume, or wait until it was collected with Chanur’s Legacy in the omnibus Chanur’s Endgame in 2007.

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January 2015 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

January 2015 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

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Nightmare magazine January 2015-smallThe January 2015 issue of Nightmare Magazine is now available.

Nightmare is the sister publication to the highly-regarded science fiction and fantasy magazine Lightspeed. It’s an online magazine of horror and dark fantasy, with a broad focus — editor John Joseph Adams promises you’ll find all kinds of horror within, from zombie stories and haunted house tales to visceral psychological horror. Fiction contents this month are:

Original Stories

“Returned” by Kat Howard
“The Trampling” by Christopher Barzak

Reprints

“The Hollow Man” by Norman Partridge
“Blessed Be the Bound” by Lucy Taylor

There’s also an editorial with news on the follow-up to the groundbreaking Women Destroy Science Fiction! anniversary issue of Lightspeed, the upcoming Queers Destroy Science Fiction! project, as well as new subscription pricing through Amazon. Read the complete editorial online here,

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New Treasures: Dangerous Games edited by Jonathan Oliver

New Treasures: Dangerous Games edited by Jonathan Oliver

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Dangerous Games Jonathan Oliver-smallTime for another New Treasure. This time, I’m in the mood for an anthology — one I can really sink my teeth into. Fortunately, I think I have just the thing.

The latest anthology from Solaris, Dangerous Games, collects original short fiction from Chuck Wendig, Lavie Tidhar, Paul Kearney, Pat Cadigan, and many others, on a theme near and dear to my heart: games.

In a world of chances, one decision can bring down the house, one roll of the dice could bring untold wealth, or the end of everything. In this anthology of all new short stories the players gather, their stories often dark, and always compelling.

The players and the played, this new anthology from Jonathan Oliver (Magic, End of The Road, House of Fear, The End of The Line, World War Cthulhu) brings together brand new stories from an international team of talented authors, each with their own deadly game. This collection is set to include a full house of top authors including Hugo award-winning American writer Pat Cadigan, Brit Gary McMahon, Mexican Silvia Moreno Garcia, plus Tade Thompson, Rebecca Levene and more!

We’ve covered several excellent anthologies from Solaris recently, including Ian Whates’s Solaris Rising, Solaris Rising 2, Solaris Rising 3, and two from Jonathan Strahan’s — his SF books Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, and Reach for Infinity, and his fantasy volumes Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics.

Dangerous Games was edited by Jonathan Oliver and published by Solaris Books on December 2, 2014. It is 320 pages, priced at $9.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital version.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Fantasy, First Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Fantasy, First Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

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The Year's Best Fantasy First Annual Collection-smallSome 27 years ago, the first volume of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s long-running Year’s Best Fantasy series appeared.

Created in conscious imitation of Gardner Dozois’s even longer-running Year’s Best Science Fiction (also published by St. Martin’s), Datlow and Windling’s Year’s Best Fantasy became the most prestigious and long-lived fantasy annual the genre has yet seen. Renamed The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror beginning with the third book in 1990, it lasted an impressive 21 years, publishing its final volume in 2009.

The series accumulated numerous accolades and award nominations over the decades, and became the acknowledged yearbook for the field. Just as Dozois did with his sprawling summations, Datlow and Windling summarized the year’s news, events, and gossip in lengthy and highly readable intros. If you were a new writer, publication, or small press, it was a major career milestone just to be name-checked.

I remember how excited I was to finally get my hands on a copy in the fall of 1988. I took it to the common room of my graduate dorm in Urbana, Illinois, and curled up in a comfy chair, where I read for hours while the first winter snow accumulated outside. I read this first volume cover to cover, in the process getting introduced to dozens of writers like Delia Sherman, Michael McDowell, David J. Schow, Susan Palwick, and many others. The book was the equivalent of a graduate course in modern fantasy.

In fact, there was just one problem. I didn’t like most of the stories.

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New Treasures: The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter by Rod Duncan

New Treasures: The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter by Rod Duncan

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The Bullet Catcher's Daughter-smallRod Duncan is a mystery writer with three novels to his credit: Backlash, Breakbeat, and Burnout. His first fantasy novel, The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter, is advertised as the first book in The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire series.

Duncan brings his talent for mystery to the shadowy streets of a fantasy metropolis, where Elizabeth Barnabus maintains a dangerous secret identity as she earns a living as a private detective. Graham Joyce called The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter “A magic box pulsing with energy. Compulsive reading from the get-go… [a] blend of steampunk alternative history wrapped in the enigma of a chase.”

Elizabeth Barnabus lives a double life – as herself and as her brother, the private detective. She is trying to solve the mystery of a disappearing aristocrat and a hoard of arcane machines. In her way stand the rogues, freaks and self-proclaimed alchemists of a travelling circus.

But when she comes up against an agent of the all-powerful Patent Office, her life and the course of history will begin to change. And not necessarily for the better…

The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter was published by Angry Robot on August 26, 2014. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Will Staehle.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

The Top Black Gate 50 Posts in December

The Top Black Gate 50 Posts in December

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Chainmail bikini-smallMarie Bilodeau, our newest blogger, didn’t waste any time making a name for herself. Her first post, “Nine (mostly) Distinct (almost) Positive Traits of Chainmail Bikinis,” shot right to the top of the traffic charts for the month of December, and stayed there. Welcome aboard, Marie! I think you’re going to fit right in.

Sticking with the theme of fashionable armor, Dungeons and Dragons turned out to be a popular topic last month as well — and fantasy gaming in general, from Call of Cthulhu to the new Dragon Age game.

Mark Rigney examined early fantasy miniatures in our #3 post for the month, “AD&D Figurines: Youth In a Box?” And James Maliszewski proved that it’s not just readers who are frequently overwhelmed with choices, with his post “The Coolest RPGs I’ve Never Played,” fifth for the month.

Connor Gormley took a hard look at the overused trappings of much of modern fantasy in his article “Dwarves, Dragons, Wizards and Elves: Thinking About the Standard Fantasy Setting,” which clocked in at #2.

Also on the Top Five was Adrian Simmons, with another look at subtle storytelling of J.R.R. Tolkien, “Frodo Baggins, Lady Galadriel, and the Games of the Mighty,” a follow up to his popular article “Fools in the Hotzone: Saruman as the Bold but Incompetent Firefighter.”

Moving on to the Top Ten, we have M Harold Page’s latest review, “More Hardboiled than The Dresden Files: The Way Into Chaos: Book One of The Great Way by Harry Connolly.” Harry’s been a perennial favorite with our readers since we published his very first story, “The Whoremaster of Pald,” back in issue #2.

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Start Off the New Year With Strange Tales

Start Off the New Year With Strange Tales

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Strange-Tales-Wildside-Pulp-Reprint-smallerSanta was good to me this year. Lots of great paperbacks, some Warhammer 40K audio dramas, two graphic novels… and a copy of Strange Tales #6, cover dated October 1932 (the Wildside reprint edition, of course.)

Nothing like getting a famous pulp magazine for Christmas. This one contains a novella by Victor Rousseau and short stories by Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Hugh B. Cave, Sewell Peaslee Wright, and Henry S. Whitehead, among others. I even know who Henry S. Whitehead is, thanks to my recent post on the Wordsworth edition of Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S. Whitehead (and yes, I felt smug when I spotted him on the TOC). There’s even an essay on True Tales of the Weird by Robert W. Sneddon. The reprint includes all of the interior artwork by Amos Sewell and Rafael Desoto. Here’s the complete table of contents:

“The Hunters from Beyond” by Clark Ashton Smith
“The Curse of Amen-Ra” by Victor Rousseau
“Sea-Tiger” by Henry S. Whitehead
“The Dead Walk Softly” by Sewell Peaslee Wright
“Bal Macabre” by Gustav Meyrink
“Strange Tales and True,” essay by Robert W. Sneddon
“The Infernal Shadow” by Hugh B. Cave
“The Artist of Tao” by Arthur Styron
“In the Lair of the Space Monsters” by Frank Belknap Long
The Cauldron (Letters)

We covered several of Wildside’s pulp reprints in December. Strange Tales #6 is about 148 pages, priced at $14.95. Wildside’s has replicas of issues 4, 6, and 7 for sale as pulp reprints here.