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Author: John ONeill

Win a copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

Win a copy of Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

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kuttnerHaffner Press has released the first volume of their new series The Early Kuttner, titled Terror in the House, and we have no less than three copies to give away.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers  — including the legendary Kaldar: World of Antares by Edmond Hamilton, copies of which now sell for $2,000 and up — are some of the most collectible books in the genre, and Terror in the House promises to be popular indeed. Here’s the book description:

Henry Kuttner was a frequent contributor to the pulp magazines that specialized in the weird, supernatural, horror, and science fiction genre. Beginning in 1936, with the minor classic “The Graveyard Rats,” Kuttner launched a steady stream of short stories aimed at Weird Tales, Mystery Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and others… Kuttner set several stories in Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos” and several are presented in Terror in the House including: “The Secret of Kralitz,” “The Eater of Souls,” “The Salem Horror,” The Jest of Droom-Avista,” “The Frog,” “The Invaders,” and “The Bells of Horror.”

He contributed reams of copy to the weird-menace (a sub-genre of horror where a seemingly supernatural plot is resolved with a pedestrian ending) pulps, Thrilling Mystery and Spice Mystery… Terror in the House is the first volume in a set collecting many of Kuttner’s earliest stories, most of which have never been reprinted.

Terror in the House is 712 pages in hardcover, with a preface by Richard Matheson and introduction by Garyn G. Roberts, Ph.D. It is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by Harry V. Parkhurst, and has a retail price of $40.

How do you win a copy? Easy! Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Kuttner Contest,” with a one-sentence review of your favorite Henry Kuttner short story. Three winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Seriously, these things are heavy and we’re on a budget.

Black Gate at World Fantasy Convention 2010

Black Gate at World Fantasy Convention 2010

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Well, I’ve finally returned to the Black Gate rooftop headquarters here in St. Charles, Illinois, after a weary week of travel. We had the largest team gathering in the magazine’s history at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio last weekend — including several Contributing Editors, half a dozen bloggers, and over two dozen writers and contributors. I started the magazine ten years ago and have been attending conventions for decades, and there were several long-term staff members I met for the first time, including the distinguished Ryan Harvey and John R. Fultz.

Team Black Gate
Team Black Gate: editor John ONeill, contributing editor Bill Ward, author and blogger James Enge, Jason Waltz (Rogue Blades), managing editor Howard Andrew Jones, author and blogger John R. Fultz, and author and blogger Ryan Harvey.

All of us were invited to take part in a podcast on Sword & Sorcery organized by the charming Jaym Gates — stay tuned for the broadcast location and date.  Our Saturday night reading was a rollicking success, as nearly two dozen Black Gate authors read from work sold to the magazine over the past ten years, including James Enge, Frederic Durbin, E.E. Knight, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, L.E. Modesitt Jr, Darrell Schweitzer, Donald S. Crankshaw, Howard Andrew Jones, Martha Wells, Ryan Harvey, Robert J. Howe, John R. Fultz, Myke Cole, Renee Stern, Steven Silver, Michael Shea, S. Hutson Blount, Janet Stirling, F. Brett Cox, and Frederick Tor.

I also got the chance to meet with other contributors including Mike Resnick, Jeffrey Ford, David B. Coe, Ellen Klages (and her charming sister), and Charles Coleman Finlay.  It was a delight to finally meet artist Jim Pavelec in the Dealer’s room, as well as fellow editors Adrian Simmons (Heroic Fantasy Quarterly) and Mike Allen (Mythic Delirium), and make several new friends, including long-term reader Matthew Wuertz. I made the trip with Jason Waltz, publisher of Rogue Blades Entertainment, who shared our table and turned out to be a stalwart traveling companion.

Due to the sheer size of the convention there were also BG writers wandering the halls I somehow managed to miss completely, including Jeremiah Tolbert and Rick Bowes. Ah well, maybe next year. There’s a reason it’s called the World Fantasy Convention. No matter how much you try, life is too short to see it all.

Nov/Dec Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

Nov/Dec Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

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fsfnov-dec2010aHuzzah!  The latest issue of my favorite fantasy magazine goes on sale today.

Ahem.  Favorite other than Black Gate, of course.

The big November/December double issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction includes contributions from Robert Reed, Alan Dean Foster, Albert E. Cowdrey, Alexander Jablokov, and many more.

Here’s what the editor, Gordon van Gelder, tells us about the issue:

The Robert Reed story about running in this issue is so effective that I lost 8 pounds and knocked 0:31 off my best mile time just by editing it. Speaking of editing it, it is 100% true that when it was on submission, I read one of the stories in the issue while attending one of my daughter’s tea parties. (I won’t say which story.) Jerry Oltion has bought 5,000 copies of this issue and stored them away, just in case he might need them in the future. Alex Irvine didn’t get the memo that he was supposed to send me a story just so his name could be on the cover.

We last covered F&SF with their Oct/Nov issue, with Richard Chwedyk, Michael Swanwick, Terry Bisson, and Richard Matheson. If you missed it, maybe it’s time to consider subscribing?

Complete details (and a subscription form) are available on their website.

WisCon 35 Withdraws Elizabeth Moon’s Guest of Honor Invitation

WisCon 35 Withdraws Elizabeth Moon’s Guest of Honor Invitation

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wisconSF3, the Society for the Furtherance & Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, the parent organization of Wiscon, has withdrawn Elizabeth Moon’s Guest of Honor Invitation for WisCon 35.

This follows several weeks of intense controversy after Moon made some surprising (and to me, frankly dumb) comments about Muslims on her blog on Sept. 11:

I do not dispute that there are moderate, even liberal, Muslims, that many Muslims have all the virtues of civilized persons and are admirable in all those ways…  But Muslims fail to recognize how much forbearance they’ve had…. I feel that I personally (and many others) lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom.  It would be helpful to have them understand what they’re demanding of me and others – how much more they’re asking than giving.

As you’ve probably guessed, both events have generated the kind of blog outrage that glues you to your screen and makes you twenty minutes late for the marketing meeting. (Highlights at the World SF Blog and Wiscon News blog, among many others).

Black Gate attended its first WisCon this year and I was extremely impressed with the convention, although I think the “World’s Leading Feminist SF Convention” tag is a little misleading. WisCon seems to have evolved into something much broader, and still crucially important: a friendly and informed gathering not just for feminists, but for women, POC (people of color), and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) fans and their friends to discuss science fiction and — more importantly, I think — amplify their voice sufficiently to make the rest of us aware of just how diverse and rich the field truly is.

After just one trip to WisCon I’m hardly an expert, but even I was keenly aware that a key part of that formula is “friendly and informed.” Folks on all sides of this debate are welcomed at WisCon — indeed, welcoming all sides of a debate is something the convention is exceptionally good at — but having their Guest of Honor make so many guests feel uncomfortable must have been very awkward for the convention organizers.  This had to be a tough and extremely painful decision, but ultimately I think they made the right one.

Excerpt from Star Soldier by Vaughn Heppner, Book 1 of the Doom Star Series

Excerpt from Star Soldier by Vaughn Heppner, Book 1 of the Doom Star Series

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star-soldier1Last month we reported that Black Gate author Vaughn Heppner had cracked the bestseller list at Amazon with Star Soldier, Book #1 of the Doom Star Series.

Star Soldier and its sequels, Bio-Weapon and Battle Pod, now occupy the top three spots at Amazon’s bestseller list for Series Science Fiction in Kindle ebooks, — outselling Dune, Foundation, and many others.

In the general Science Fiction Bestsellers list for Kindle editions, Star Soldier remains solidly at #2, where it’s been for nearly two months.

Star Soldier is a full 82,000 word novel, available for download at Amazon.com for just 99 cents.

We’re very proud to offer you an exclusive preview of the first 5,000 words of Star Soldier, an action-packed space opera of the invasion of Earth in 2350, Doom Star pirates, and genetically designed super soldiers caught in a brutal war of extinction.

…

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Join the Sorcerer’s Guild Today

Join the Sorcerer’s Guild Today

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harpers-penJeff Crook, the mastermind behind The Harper’s Pen Award, has announced some changes to the Award, and opened up membership to the Sorcerer’s Guild, the voting body.

He’s also offering a free PDF copy of Black Gate 14 (sold here for $4.95) to the first 100 members:

The time has come to start thinking about nominations for the next Harper’s Pen Award. That means it’s time to unlock the adamantine doors of the Sorcerer’s Guild and open our membership drive. The Sorcerer’s Guild is an autonomous anarcho-syndicalist collective of fans, editors and authors of the short fiction genre commonly known as Sword and Sorcery (cue lights, smoke, thunder). We gather once each year to trade spells and knitting patterns and select the winner of the presigious and lucrative Harper’s Pen Award. The 2009 winner was John C. Hocking for his story “The Face in the Sea” published in Black Gate #13.

Beginning this year, you must be a member of the Sorcerer’s Guild to nominate a story for the Harper’s Pen. Cruel, I know, but we must maintain some standards. Luckily, joining the Sorcerer’s Guild is not only easy, it’s rewarding, because we are prepared to offer the first 100 new members a pdf download of Black Gate #14. Yes, that’s right – by joining today, you will receive a free magazine of the some of the best Sword and Sorcery short fiction being published today.

The complete announcement is here.

If you’re interested in Sword & Sorcery or short fiction, or nominating authors for the Harper’s Pen Award, joining the Sorcerer’s Guild could be extremely rewarding — and not just for the free issue of Black Gate.

Brent Knowles Reviews Black Gate 14 on the iPad

Brent Knowles Reviews Black Gate 14 on the iPad

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ipad1So this is kind of cool.

Long time reader Brent Knowles, who reviewed our last issue here, has now also weighed in on Black Gate 14, as viewed in PDF on the iPad:

Earlier in the year I changed my print subscription to Black Gate into an electronic one. This was done mostly to save postage expense, I love the print magazine and have every issue and so this was my first time reading it digitally. I transferred the PDF through the iTunes Books folder and read it using the iBooks app. As you can see the text and images look sharp on the iPad… So all in all I’m pretty happy with reading Black Gate this way.

Brent did acknowledge the one drawback other readers have commented on — the  two-column format:

About the only difficulties I encountered were with the two-column layout that appeared for longer stories (most stories were single column). The two-column stories and articles were more of a challenge to read because the text became rather smallish.

Something of a dilemma, since the feedback on the two-column format for print readers has been universally positive, and we plan to switch the entire issue to two columns starting with Black Gate 15. We’re still looking for a solution for PDF readers.

Concerning the contents of the issue itself, Brent had several kind things to say.

…

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The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, by James Kakalios

The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, by James Kakalios

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amazingquantumJames Kakalios, the author of The Physics of Superheroes, is out with another popular science text: The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science That Made Our World.

I took a couple courses in Quantum Theory, including a graduate course in Quantum Mechanics as part of my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois —  just about the most difficult course of my career. And mama, it had some math.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Schrödinger’s wave equation, the Atomic orbital model and Quantum field theory. Good times, good times.

Now James Kakalios is trying to make all those anguished nights attempting to comprehend the inner workings of the universe using only my incomprehensible class notes obsolete, with a new book that depends on far more reliable sources: comic books and American pulp magazines. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Most of us are unaware of how much we depend on quantum mechanics on a day-to-day basis. Using illustrations and examples from science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics explains the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that underlie the world we live in.

Sheer genius.  More complete details are in the Amazon.com listing.

Kakalios, buddy, where were you 20 years ago?  All those evenings wasted studying, when I could have been trying to pick up girls. Don’t make my mistake, students of the future. Buy your copy today.

Peadar Ó Guilín’s “The Evil-Eater” Podcast on Pseudopod

Peadar Ó Guilín’s “The Evil-Eater” Podcast on Pseudopod

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The Evil EaterOne of our more popular recent stories, Peadar Ó Guilín’s “The Evil-Eater,” has been given the full podcast treatment by Pseudopod.org.

Dave Truesdale at Tangent Online described the story thusly:

Toby works nights at the desk of a European hotel and dreams of becoming an actor. His one and only acting gig was a cola commercial a year before. His new girlfriend, the beautiful but shallow Marie, was first attracted to him on his claim of being an actor… Toby comes into possession of a printed invitation to a very exclusive — and expensive — restaurant, a 2,000-year-old establishment shrouded in mystery. As a last ditch attempt to impress Marie, he invites her to accompany him. What Toby and Marie discover at first delights them, but Toby soon discovers to his horror that not paying for his meal has consequences far beyond his imaginings…

“The Evil-Eater” first appeared in Black Gate 13.  You can read an excerpt from our Sneak Peek of the issue here.

Pseudopod is a free weekly horror podcast hosted by Alasdair Stuart.  “The Evil-Eater” is episode 208, posted October 15, and is ably read by Wilson Fowlie, who has a clear gift for Irish accents.

The complete podcast is available here.

Original art by John Kaufmann.

R.I.P. Realms of Fantasy

R.I.P. Realms of Fantasy

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rofoct1Tir Na Nog Press has shuttered Realms of Fantasy magazine, this time apparently for good. Its last issue was September/October, pictured at left.

Realms of Fantasy was one of the few remaining professional fantasy fiction magazines. Founded in October 1994 by Sovereign Media as a sister magazine for Science Fiction Age, it published acclaimed  fiction from some of the biggest names in the industry. Its long-time fiction editor was Shawna McCarthy.

In addition to fiction and top-notch review columns, the magazine was well known for its slick look and thoroughly professional design, and it pioneered a mix of art and fiction with gorgeous color galleries of top fantasy artists virtually every issue.

In a controversial move early this summer, publisher Warren Lapine threatened to close the magazine if enough subscribers didn’t renew — which generated some lively discussion on whether publicizing approaching doom was a workable marketing tactic for a modern magazine. [Looks like it wasn’t.]

In his farewell note, Lapine complains about how much money the magazine cost him, and offers to sell it to “a responsible party” for $1. He claims the December issue is ready for publication, and will be released in PDF format on the website for free download by subscribers. He is also closing his vampire magazine Dreams of Decadence.

Realms of Fantasy was well known for discovering and nurturing writers who have since gone on to stellar careers, something done by fewer and fewer magazines. Its departure leaves a significant void in the industry.