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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Gentle Sleeper” by David Evan Harris

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Gentle Sleeper” by David Evan Harris

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David Evan Harris2David Evan Harris, author of the acclaimed stories “The Mudslinger” and “Seeker of Fortune,” returns to our pages with the tale of a daring confrontation between the dread Baron Weller and a mysterious assassin known as Arland, “The Gentle Sleeper.”

“You are Arland,” the Baron continued. “First Elder of the House of Elementals in the Kingdom of Corland.”

“You are mistaken, my lord,” said Arland.

“Marraine described you perfectly,” said the Baron. “From your height, to the tangled hair. She claimed you were much stronger than you looked.”

“My name is Edward,” said Arland. “I am a fabric merchant.”

“You are an assassin,” said the Baron casually. “The Gentle Sleeper, they call you. A man of little magical strength but with perfect control, who can stop the air from reaching a man’s lungs. You’ve come to kill me, I expect. And I expect you realize by now that you have failed, and that an unpleasant death will begin for you quite shortly.” The Baron leaned back in his chair, holding the bell against his chest.

“Does this mean you don’t want me to find you some clothing?” Arland asked.

Grasping For the Wind called “The Mudslinger” “An epic fantasy… I look forward to more” and Tangent Online called “Seeker of Fortune” “Exceptional. A must read.”

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Peadar Ó Guilín, Vaughn Heppner, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“The Gentle Sleeper” is a complete 5,000-word short story of adventure fantasy. It is offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Get Graphic Classics Volume 23: Halloween Classics for only $10 in October

Get Graphic Classics Volume 23: Halloween Classics for only $10 in October

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Graphic Classics Halloween Classics-smallI’m a big fan of Tom Pomplun’s Graphic Classics comic anthologies. I’ve lost track of exactly how many he’s published so far, but it’s a lot — including volumes showcasing Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, R.L. Stevenson, O. Henry, Rafael Sabatini, Oscar Wilde, and my favorite, H.P. Lovecraft.

Each book is 144 pages in graphic novel format, collecting some the best stories from each of the featured authors, illustrated by a stellar line-up of artists. And seriously, that Lovecraft release is the bee’s knees.

He’s also done a series of special theme volumes, including Western Classics, Fantasy Classics, Gothic Classics, Horror Classics, and Adventure Classics. As an added bonus, the most recent of these (including Science Fiction Classics, Poe’s Tales of Mystery, and Native American Classics) are in full color.

Now Graphic Classics Volume 23: Halloween Classics is just $10 for the entire month of October (reduced from $15 ). This volume features an EC-style introduction, by Mort Castle and Kevin Atkinson, and contains Matt Howarth’s adaptation of the screenplay of the classic silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, alongside adaptations of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Ben Avery and Shepherd Hendrix, H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” by Rod Lott and Craig Wilson, Mark Twain’s “A Curious Dream’’ by Antonella Caputo and Nick Miller, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Lot No. 249” illustrated by Simon Gane.

We covered Halloween Classics when it was first released last September. Get more details or order a copy on their website and see the complete line-up of fabulous Graphic Classics here.

Vintage Treasures: Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

Vintage Treasures: Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

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Strange Eons Robert Bloch-smallBack in July, I did a Vintage Treasures article on The Best of Robert Bloch, the second in my series on Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction. In doing the research for that article, I came across references to Bloch’s book of Lovecraftian fiction, Strange Eons, first published in 1979.

My curiosity was piqued. It took a while to track down a copy, but this is the age of the Internet, when all things are possible. I settled in to read it this morning and I was surprised to find it’s a novel, not a collection, as I assumed. Given the big Doctor Who news today, I was also amused to find the last page given over to a house ad for Pinnacle’s Doctor Who novelizations, with a banner quote from Harlan Ellison: “Incomparable… extraordinary… my hero, Doctor Who!”

The book is dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft — at least that wasn’t a surprise. As the publisher notes on the back of Strange Eons, Bloch was a protégé of Lovecraft and, at the age of fifteen, the youngest member of the “Lovecraft Circle” of writers. The novel builds unabashedly on the work of the master, starting with the premise that the creatures he wrote of are real, and his books form a dire warning for mankind:

What men know is called science; what they have not yet learned they call magic. But both are real….

In the world of today and the near future, three people inexorably linked by a common interest in the work of H. P. Lovecraft, discover: that the legendary creatures he created in his fantasies have hideous counterparts in reality… that his fiction is incredible fact… that his message is a warning…

Spooky stuff. I’ll see if the execution lives up to the promise. Strange Eons was published by Pinnacle Books in June 1979, with cover art by David Hada. It is 249 pages, priced at $1.95 in paperback. I paid $5.50 for a fine condition copy on eBay.

See all of our recent Vintage Treasure articles here.

Nine Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found in Nigeria

Nine Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found in Nigeria

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The Web of Fear DVD-smallThanks to the BBC’s notorious policy of erasing and re-using video tape, there are still 106 missing classic Doctor Who episodes — and the only reason that number isn’t a lot larger is due to the tireless efforts of fans who have, over decades, tracked down individual episodes in the hands of private collectors or sitting on dusty shelves in overseas television stations.

If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’re aware of the rumors that have been flying around for months about a new trove of lost episodes found in Ecuador, or Africa, or some such place. If you’re a true fan, you’re probably aware that rumors like this tend to pop up from time to time and most of them aren’t true.

Well, it appears there was more than a grain of truth to this one. On Thursday, the BBC released nine previously lost episodes found in a television station in the Nigerian city of Jos — reducing the number of lost episodes to 97.

The BBC says it believes this is “the largest haul of missing episodes recovered in the last three decades.” It includes the complete six-part serial The Enemy of the World from 1967-68 (only episode 3 had previously been found), and most of the six-part The Web of Fear from 1968 (episode 3 is still missing, and episode 1 was already in archive). Both black-and-white serials star Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor.

The BBC has announced that newly-remastered versions of both serials will be released on DVD, with The Enemy of the World coming on November 25, 2013, followed by The Web of Fear on February 24, 2014. See the provisional artwork and details for both here. Both have also been released online as iTunes exclusives for $9.99 each — see the trailers at EnGadget.

“An Absolute Joy to Read”: James Reasoner on “Vestments of Pestilence”

“An Absolute Joy to Read”: James Reasoner on “Vestments of Pestilence”

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river-thru-dark-277James Reasoner, author of Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West and The Civil War Battle Series, weighs in on John C. Hocking’s newest Archivist tale, published here September 29:

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a new sword-and-sorcery story by John C. Hocking, author of Conan and the Emerald Lotus, and what an absolute joy it is to read… The Archivist and Lucella have returned to civilization only to find themselves immediately drawn into a clash between two members of the royal family, a brother and sister who are bitter rivals and who have tried to kill each other in the recent past. The princess coerces The Archivist and Lucella into helping her get her hands on an artifact from the old Southron civilization that may contain sorcerous power.

Of course, with a street gang, an oily “astrographer,” a sinister tower, and a plague demon in the mix, things don’t really go all that smoothly…

The plot of this story is traditional sword-and-sorcery, but the prose is pure hardboiled action writing of the best sort, reminiscent of, yes, Robert E. Howard… Hocking is that good. There are touches of humor as well, and The Archivist and Lucella are very appealing characters… If you’re a fan of action-packed heroic fantasy, I guarantee you’ll be entertained.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is the second Archivist tale we’ve published, following “A River Through Darkness and Light,” in Black Gate 15, which SF Site called “a strong blend of the old sword and sorcery action and mood, but with modern attention to character development.”

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, Michael Shea, Ryan Harvey, Peadar Ó Guilín, Vaughn Heppner, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a complete 10,000-word novelette of sword & sorcery. Read the complete story here.

Read James’s complete review on his blog Rough Edges. Art for “A River Through Darkness and Light” by Storn Cook.

New Treasures: Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger by Guy Adams

New Treasures: Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger by Guy Adams

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Deadbeats Guy Adams-smallI first stumbled on the novels of Guy Adams with The World House and its sequel, Restoration, both modern fantasy from Angry Robot, and his novel of hidden laboratories, genetic engineering, and Sherlock Holmes, The Army of Dr. Moreau (August, 2012). But it was his gonzo fantasy-western, The Good The Bad and the Infernal, released in March, that really got my attention.

Guy is not exactly sitting on his hands. The sequel to his March novel, Once Upon a Time in Hell, is scheduled to arrive in December, and his companion to the hit TV series Sherlock, The Sherlock Files, shipped in July. For those of you not keeping score, that’s four books in about 18 months. Damn.

So you can imagine my surprise when my weekly trip to the bookstore turned up Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger, a paperback by Guy Adams that was released in June, 2013. This is a pretty impressive run — all the more impressive because this one sounds like the most intriguing book yet.

Max and Tom are old, old friends, once actors. Tom now owns a jazz nightclub called Deadbeat which, as well as being their source of income, is also something of an in-joke. In a dark suburban churchyard one night they see a group of men are loading a coffin into the back of a van. But, why would you be taking a full coffin away from a graveyard and, more importantly, why is the occupant still breathing?

Tom and Max are on the case. God help us…

Deadbeat was published by Titan books in June 2013. It is 289 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions. The sequel, Deadbeat: Dogs of Waugh, is scheduled to arrive June 2014.

Support The Great Way, an Epic Fantasy Trilogy by Harry Connolly

Support The Great Way, an Epic Fantasy Trilogy by Harry Connolly

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The Great Way Harry ConnollyWe try not to pimp too many Kickstarter projects here on the BG blog. We know you’re probably as tired of hearing about them as we are. But today, we’re making an exception for Harry Connolly.

Why? Because he’s awesome.

Harry’s first fiction sale, “The Whoremaster of Pald,” originally appeared in Black Gate 2, and quickly became one of the most popular stories we’ve ever published. It was also the first tale we presented online in its entirety, and that experiment was so successful it helped launch the entire Black Gate Online Fiction line. Harry returned to the decadent city of Pald in BG3 with “Another Man’s Burden,” and his brilliant tale of a civilization on the brink of extinction, “Soldiers of a Dying God,” appeared in Black Gate 10. We couldn’t keep him to ourselves forever, and Harry’s first three novels — Child of Fire, Game of Cages, and Circle of Enemies, together comprising the Twenty Palaces trilogy — were published by Del Rey between 2009 and 2011.

Harry wasn’t won over by Kickstarter right away, pointing out the platform is a fantastic resource but not right for every project in his January 2013 column “Let me tell you about my ambitions, and why they don’t include Kickstarter (right now).” He’s apparently come around, however: on September 19, he kicked off a campaign to fund the completion of The Great Way, an epic fantasy trilogy about a supernatural invasion that destroys an empire.

The first draft of The Great Way is already complete, and weighs in at a whopping 300,000 words. Harry has made Chapter One of the first volume, The Way into Chaos, available on his blog. Cover artist Christian McGrath has agreed to do the cover art for all three books as a stretch goal, if the campaign reaches $34,000.

That’s a pretty safe bet; as of this writing, it stands at $33,300 (well past its original $10,000 goal), and shows no signs of slowing down. The Kickstarter ends on Oct 19th, so there’s still time to back it and ensure that you get copies of an exciting new fantasy trilogy from one of the best new writers in the genre. Check it out here.

Sword & Sorcery for the Girl Who Wants to be Conan: Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel

Sword & Sorcery for the Girl Who Wants to be Conan: Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel

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Babylon Steel-smallI can’t keep up with all the fabulous fiction rolling off the assembly lines of the great factories of modern publishing (I can just barely stay on top of the story-a-week we publish here at Black Gate, truth be told). It’s amazing… I spend all day – and most of the night – reading and writing about this genre, and still can’t encompass it all. Either we live in amazing times, or being hopelessly clueless is just an intrinsic part of my nature.

Eh. Probably a little of both.

Fortunately, there are other bloggers out there to help me out. Liz Bourke’s “Sleeps With Monsters” column at Tor.com helped me out this week, by pointing me to Gaie Sebold’s debut fantasy novel, Babylon Steel.

Now, anyone can miss a novel or two, but I have no excuse for not being on top of this one. For one thing, Solaris has been putting out terrific fantasy recently, and obviously deserves more attention; for another, I’ve had my eye on Gaie Sebold ever since I bought her brilliant and funny “A Touch of Crystal” (co-written with fellow Brit Martin Owton), the tale of a shopkeeper who discovers some of the goods in her New Age shop are actually magical, for Black Gate 9. Here’s Liz:

Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel (Solaris, 2011) is a remarkably entertaining debut. It’s as though someone took the best bits of Robert E. Howard and the fantasy noir city of Simon R. Green’s Hawk and Fisher novels, threw in some more Cool S**t ™, and reimagined them through a lens that foregrounded female perspectives. This is sword-and-sorcery pulp wish fulfillment for the kind of girl who wanted to be Conan… And that? That makes one of the most awesome things I’ve read this year…

Sebold evokes mood and atmosphere — and character — very well. And the climactic BOOM LIKE THAT is an earned one.

An excellently entertaining book. Give me more like this. MORE I TELL YOU.

Babylon Steel was nominated in two categories for the Gemmell Awards: The Morningstar (best newcomer) and the Legend (best novel). It came out so long ago now that there’s already a sequel (dang! I really am clueless). Dangerous Gifts appeared in January of this year.

Babylon Steel was published in December 2011 by Solaris. It is 544 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

New Treasures: Ghosts Know by Ramsey Campbell

New Treasures: Ghosts Know by Ramsey Campbell

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Ghosts Know-smallLook at that, it’s October already. And you know that that means, don’t you? It’s spooky reads season, when all the major publishers inundate us with the year’s best creepy fiction.

I like to try new authors every October. Ramsey Campbell is hardly new, but I know him almost exclusively through his short fiction. I’ve been wanting to try one of his novels for years, and this appealing new hardcover from Tor will fit the bill nicely.

Graham Wilde is a contentious, bombastic host of the talk radio program Wilde Card. His job, as he sees it, is to stir the pot, and he is quite good at it, provoking many a heated call with his eccentric and often irrational audience. He invites Frank Jasper, a purported psychic, to come on the program. He firmly believes that the man is a charlatan, albeit a talented one. When Jasper appears on his show, Wilde draws upon personal knowledge about the man to embarrass him on air, using patter similar to that which Jasper utilizes in his act.

Wilde’s attack on Jasper earns him the enmity of his guest and some of the members of his audience. He next encounters Jasper when the psychic is hired by the family of a missing adolescent girl to help them find her. Wilde is stunned and then horrified when Jasper seems to suggest that he might be behind the girl’s disappearance.

Thus begins a nightmarish journey as circumstantial evidence against Wilde begins to mount, alienating his listeners, the radio station, and eventually, his lover. As Wilde descends into a pit of despair, reality and fantasy begin to blur in a kaleidoscope of terror….

Ghosts Know was published by Tor Books on October 1st. It is 285 pages, priced at $25.99 for the hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

“How Many Psychiatrists Does it Take to Change a Genre?” Karl Edward Wagner in Fantasy 55

“How Many Psychiatrists Does it Take to Change a Genre?” Karl Edward Wagner in Fantasy 55

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Fantasy Newsletter 55-smallI need to spend less time on eBay. A few weeks ago, I stumbled on a collector selling significant lots of vintage fanzines and critical journals from the 70s and 80s — things like Science Fiction Review, The Alien Critic, Fantasy Review, SF Collector, Fantasy, and others.

Hard-to-find-stuff, as I later told my wife Alice, trying to explain why the postman had delivered a 16-pound package and why we were out over two-hundred bucks.

So now I’m in the doghouse. But keeping me company are 87 beautiful magazines packed with news, reviews, artwork, and opinion on the state of fantasy three decades ago, so really, things aren’t so bad. That was probably the height of my book collecting, so there’s lots here that’s of interest. The first one I opened was Fantasy 55, from January 1983, a Locus-like genre news magazine edited by Robert A. Collins. I’d never even heard of Fantasy, so it’s a little humbling to discover it’s clearly a major magazine (which published over 60 issues, apparently). It’s professionally laid out and designed, with lots of art and photos.

Two things I notice right off the bat. First, the cover verges on pornography, with a nude woman sprawled on a bed, getting pretty worked up while some guy with horns drools saliva on her. Eeeugh. Man, the 80s. What can  I tell you.

(A lot of these fanzines feature naked women on the covers. Naked women piloting starships. Naked women battling monsters. Naked women in dungeons. This was the era when a lot of young women avoided conventions due to routine sexual harassment. Think there’s a connection?)

The second thing I notice is the fabulous line-up of contributors, including Fritz Leiber, Darrell Schweitzer, Mike Ashley, John Morressy, Somtow Sucharitkul, and many others. I still haven’t read a third of the articles, but the thing that really opened my eyes was Collins’s editorial, in which he quotes contributor Karl Edward Wagner’s thoughts on the expected fantasy boom following the release of Conan the Barbarian and the genesis of his Kane collection, Night Winds:

Last month… Wagner again attacked fantasy fans, writers, and publishers for their apparent inability to evolve intellectually and/or artistically, for constantly rewarming “the same simple plots and conflicts that were boring Robert Bloch back during Conan’s heyday in 1934.” Both writers and fans, he said, eventually “turn their backs on heroic fantasy,” leaving the field to a new crowd of adolescents. “One would hope for a new sophistication among the readers, and one may grow old hoping.”

…

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