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Author: John ONeill

A Tale of Horrific First Contact: The Sentience Trilogy by Terry A. Adams

A Tale of Horrific First Contact: The Sentience Trilogy by Terry A. Adams

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Covers by James Gurney, Richard Hescox, and Stephan Martiniere

Every time an author completes a trilogy, we bake a cake at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters. Given how long some big fantasy trilogies take to wrap up, we’ve learned patience over the years. Even so, we rarely have have to wait 27 years, as dedicated fans did for Terry A. Adams popular Sentience trilogy.

It opened with Sentience, Adams’ debut novel, which made quite a splash in 1986.  It was nominated for the Locus Award for Best First Novel; Locus magazine said “Adams writes with an elaborate, intricate prose … [and] weaves an elegant tale that makes for fascinating reading,” and Voya called it “an exciting story, well told and well written…. An excellent SF thriller by a new writer.” John Clute at The Science Fiction Encyclopedia describes the series this way:

Begins in the conflict between “true” humans and D’Neerans, who are human telepath, and builds into a Space-Opera sequence involving new races and challenges to their female telepath protagonist, who saves several worlds. They are told in a skittish but engaging style designed to give some sense of a telepath’s way of thinking.

Ken Richards gave the first book a 4-star review at Goodreads. Here’s an excerpt from his more detailed review.

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New Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 54 edited by Nibedita Sen

New Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 54 edited by Nibedita Sen

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The Nebula Awards Showcase is one of the most auspicious and long running anthology series in science fiction. Founded way back in 1966 by Damon Knight (the man who founded the Science Fiction Writers of America), the series was originally created to help fund the annual Nebula Awards, and in that regard it’s had a successful run for over five decades — and produced a great many top-notch anthologies in the process.

Want examples? Just have a look at the first three volumes, which contained such stories as “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison, “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” by Roger Zelazny, “The Saliva Tree” by Brian W. Aldiss, “Light of Other Days” by Bob Shaw, “The Last Castle” by Jack Vance, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick, “Aye, and Gomorrah…” by Samuel R. Delany, “Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock, and “Gonna Roll the Bones” by Fritz Leiber.

This year’s volume is unusual in that it’s the first to be published directly by SFWA (technically SFWA, Inc, which as far as I know was created solely to publish this book). Otherwise, it hews pretty close to tradition. It’s edited by a rising star in the industry — in this case Bengali writer Nibedita Sen — and contains as many of last year’s Nebula Award winners and nominees as they could cram between two covers.

The book was released last month in trade paperback; digital editions are coming soon. Here’s a look at the complete Table of Contents.

Intro & Essays

Introduction by Nibedita Sen
“It’s Dangerous to Go Alone” by Kate Dollarhyde
“Into the Spider-verse: A Classic Origin Story in Bold New Color” by Brandon O’Brien

Best Short Story

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” by P. Djèlí Clark — Nebula winner
“Interview for the End of the World” by Rhett C. Bruno
“And Yet” by A. T. Greenblatt
“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” by Alix E. Harrow
“The Court Magician” by Sarah Pinsker

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Discover How We’ll Get into Space in Stellaris: People of the Stars, edited by Les Johnson and Robert E. Hampson

Discover How We’ll Get into Space in Stellaris: People of the Stars, edited by Les Johnson and Robert E. Hampson

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Stellaris: People of the Stars (Baen, August 2020). Cover by Sam Kennedy

I complain (a lot) about the death of the mass market science fiction anthology. So when I see a new one on the shelves, it’s worth celebrating — especially when it looks as strong as Baen’s Stellaris: People of the Stars, which is obviously a tie-in to the hugely popular Stellaris computer game from Paradox.

Except it isn’t, which I discovered after I bought a copy and brought it home. It was inspired instead by a gathering of scientists and writers at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, and is a mix of fiction and non-fiction essays on space travel. Here’s a slice from by Kevin P Hallett’s review at Tangent Online.

This anthology contains ten science fiction stories themed around humanity’s quest to expand out to the stars and the many challenges they will face. With very few exceptions the stories are strong page turners. Scattered among the stories are six essays on various challenges that humanity will face, ensuring the anthology is a broad exploration of space colonization in the future….

“At the Bottom of the White” by Todd McCaffrey

Cin is a crewmember of the Valrise, a trading spaceship that is renewing contact with the abandoned colony of Arwon. The trader’s technology far exceeds Arwon’s sectarian government that starves its disaffected minorities.

Unaware of the nuances in such a charged political environment, Cin and the other members of the ship’s crew try to trade. Only to find themselves suddenly embroiled in the brutal politics of subjugation and faced with tough choices. Cin must risk going ‘down to the white’, if she’s to help the people. This was an interesting character-centric story with its fair share of intrigue and action.

Les Johnson is the author of Mission to Methone; his previous anthology was Going Interstellar (2012), edited with Jack McDevitt. Robert E. Hampson is the editor of the forthcoming The Founder Effect.

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Vintage Treasures: Saraband of Lost Time by Richard Grant

Vintage Treasures: Saraband of Lost Time by Richard Grant

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Saraband of Lost Time (Avon, March 1985). Cover by Jim Burns

Richard Grant has had a fine career as an American fantasy writer, with works such as Rumors of Spring (1986), Views from the Oldest House (1989) and the Philip K. Dick Award winner Through the Heart (1991). But his career began with his 1985 debut Saraband of Lost Time, a science fiction novel that was a Locus Award nominee for Best First Novel and received an Honorable Mention from the Philip K. Dick Award jury.

Saraband received a lot of attention at the time. In his Books column in F&SF Algis Budrys called “one of the most engaging first novels in years… a piece of cultured prose which by its nature confers importance on its cast of characters and on their activities.”

But what do modern readers make of it? It has generally positive reviews at Goodreads; Tom Britz calls it “a far reaching future tale of environmental changes [that] jumped around to different characters as it tried to make sense of this future world.” And in a 4-star review, Avis Black sums up by saying,

Grant is one bizarre writer, and Saraband is his best and most (relatively speaking) accessible novel.

But Geoff Clarke found it took a second reading to really appreciate it.

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A Tale That Calls to Mind Classic SF Sagas: The Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton

A Tale That Calls to Mind Classic SF Sagas: The Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton

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The Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton (Del Rey, 2018-2020). Covers by Anna Kochman

You know, I remember when Peter F. Hamilton was known for hardboiled science fiction like the Greg Mandel series (Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder, and The Nano Flower, 1993-95). His breakout work was the massive 1.2 million-word The Night’s Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God, 1996-99) which turned him into the 21st Century’s poster child for Space Opera. Since then he’s become one of the top selling modern SF writers, with a series of NYT bestselling space opera trilogies, including the Commonwealth Saga, the Void Trilogy, and the Chronicle of the Fallers.

This month sees the release of The Saints of Salvation, the third novel in The Salvation Sequence. Here’s a slice from Paul Di Filippo’s rave review at Locus Online.

Peter Hamilton just keeps getting better and better with each book, more assured and more craftsmanly adroit, and more inventive. And to his credit, he wants to stretch and try different things, not just repeat himself. His newest – the first in a fresh cycle – is, to my eye, rather different than any of his previous books. I detect a distinct Neal Stephenson vibe layered atop his own signature Hard SF moves…

What’s the year 2204 like? Pretty amazing and different…  what could upset this arcadian applecart? The discovery of an unknown alien ship on a distant planet – a ship filled with semi-butchered yet still living humans. Immediately the Connexion Corp mounts a top-secret mission to Nkya. Helmed by an employee named Feriton, the posse consists of several deadly security experts, masters of dirty tricks and brute survivalism… Hamilton gives us a tale – or at least the maximally effective start of a tale – that calls to mind such classic sagas as Greg Benford’s Galactic Center series and Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee cycle… It’s a bravura performance from start to finish….

The flashback sequences are remarkable, heart-stopping mini-thrillers, kind of police procedurals-cum-spy-capers. Hamilton should really be tasked with doing the script for the next Mission: Impossible film… In short, Hamilton is juggling chainsaws while simultaneously doing needlepoint over a shark tank. It’s a virtuoso treat, and I for one can hardly wait for Salvation Lost.

Lucky for you, you don’t have to wait. Salvation Lost was published last year. Here’s the complete deets on all three volumes, all released by Del Rey.

Salvation (576 pages, $30 hardcover/$9.99 paperback and digital, September 4, 2018) – cover by Anna Kochman
Salvation Lost (512 pages, $32 hardcover/$9.99 paperback and digital, October 29, 2019) – cover by Anna Kochman
The Saints of Salvation (528 pages, $30 hardcover/$14.99 digital, November 17, 2020) – cover by Anna Kochman

See all our recent coverage of the best new Space Opera trilogies (and other high quality series) here.

Black Gate is Moving!

Black Gate is Moving!

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Black Gate is moving!

If you’ve had trouble leaving a comment recently, or logging into the site to create an article (or for any reason), that’s the likely reason. For the last 20 years we were hosted at Toybox in Ottawa, run with tireless efficiency by Roy Hopper, but Roy has decided to wind down the business. Effective yesterday afternoon, we migrated the entire site to a brand new hosting service in Florida.

This wasn’t exactly an easy process (not according to the exhausted late-night calls we got from Support at our new service provider, anyway). It involved moving over 211,000 files, uncounted gigs of images, sound files (who uploaded sound files?), and strange databases apparently created by DAW Books in the 1970s. Our offices look like a Marvel Studios sound stage after a wrap party.

All of this is a prelude to begging your indulgence for the next few days. Simultaneous with the migration, we upgraded our WordPress install, moved our email servers, and shed several old databases and obsolete plug-ins. Like Bones stepping off a transporter pad, we’re padding ourselves down to make sure all our parts arrived intact. Things are sure to be a little off-kilter for at least the next few days — and maybe a little later than usual. (And if you’re a BG contributor frustrated with the new setup, don’t hesitate to get in touch to ask for help.)

With luck, the whole team will be back to normal next month. In the meantime, enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday (for our US readers), and for international visitors, enjoy the coming slate of holidays SF and fantasy books.

And thanks in advance for your patience with us!

New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Nexus & Other Stories

New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Nexus & Other Stories

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Nexus & Other Stories-small Nexus & Other Stories-back-small

Nexus and Other Stories (Black Library, October 2020). Cover by Amir Zand

My favorite audiobook of 2020 — and easily one of my favorite books of the year, period — was Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40,000: The Magos. In addition to reminding me what a good writer Dan Abnett is, it reignited by interest in Warhammer 40,000, and its gorgeously rendered future of superstition, terror, and dark sorcery. I enormously enjoyed the audiobook versions of the first Horus Heresy novels, which helped me cope with a daily 90-minute commute through Chicago traffic back in 2015.

Nexus & Other Stories, which I stumbled on last Saturday on a trip to Barnes & Noble, looks like a great way to dip my toe back in the water. It’s a collection of Warhammer 40K stories by Dan Abnett, Guy Haley, Peter McLean, and many others — including a 120-page novella by Thomas Parrott. Here’s the description at the Black Library website.

Take your first steps into the adrenaline-fuelled fiction of the 41st Millennium with a thrilling collection of tales, including an action-packed novella pitting noble Ultramarines against sinister necrons.

Whether you’re dipping a toe into the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 or are a hardened veteran of the universe, this anthology is the perfect way to discover the many factions of the games in action-packed tales.

Nexus & Other Stories includes a total of 16 tales; mostly reprints (although they’re all new to me). Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Vintage Treasures: New Voices I: The Campbell Award Nominees edited by George R.R. Martin

Vintage Treasures: New Voices I: The Campbell Award Nominees edited by George R.R. Martin

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New Voices I (Jove/HBJ, 1978). Cover by Tripshur

The Campbell Award anthologies, published between 1977-84 by Macmillan, Jove / HBJ, Berkley, and Bluejay Books, were intended to help promote neglected and overlooked SF and fantasy writers whose careers were just getting started. In that regard they were a huge success. Just check out the list of struggling and underappreciated contributors: George R. R. Martin, John Varley, C. J. Cherryh, Stephen R. Donaldson, Bruce Sterling, Jerry Pournelle, Suzy McKee Charnas, George Alec Effinger, Joan D. Vinge, Tom Reamy, Jack L. Chalker, Felix C. Gotschalk, Lisa Tuttle, Ruth Berman, Arsen Darnay, M. A. Foster, Carter Scholz, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Thomas F. Monteleone, Spider Robinson, and many others.

I don’t know about you, but the idea of returning to the late 70s and early 80s to read early stories from “promising young writers” like George R. R. Martin, C. J. Cherryh, Bruce Sterling, Suzy McKee Charnas, Tom Reamy, and Felix C. Gotschalk is pretty exciting. Unfortunately, while the series was artistically successful, it struggled commercially, and after just five volumes was finally killed by the collapse of Bluejay Books. (Except for an ultra-rare sixth volume that we’ll get to in a minute.)

But we still have those five volumes, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise to hear that they’re well worth a look today. The first, edited by George R.R. Martin and published in hardcover in 1977 by Macmillan, included stories by George R. R. Martin, Ruth Berman, George Alec Effinger, and Robert Thurston — plus a long novella by Lisa Tuttle and a Falkenberg’s Legion novella by Jerry Pournelle. Here’s Ben Bova, from his introduction.

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Gizmodo on November’s New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Gizmodo on November’s New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

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The Rush’s Edge by Ginger Smith-small This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman-small Fishing for Dinosaurs and Other Stories by Joe R. Lansdale-small

Covers by Kieryn Tyler, Adam Auerbach, and Timothy Truman

We’re getting close to the holiday season, and you know what that means. 2020 will finally be over. But also! Many of us will have enough vacation time to catch up on our reading.

The new flurry of November releases hasn’t made that any easier. What we need is a roadmap to the most interesting destinations in this publishing wilderness. Something like Cheryl Eddy’s comprehensive list of November New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Help You Make It Through 2020’s Home Stretch at Gizmodo, which includes new titles from Brandon Sanderson, E.E. Knight, Joe R. Lansdale, Tamsyn Muir, Connie Willis, Peter F. Hamilton, Harry Turtledove, Ernest Cline, Bernard Cornwell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Jonathan Lethem, C.S. Friedman, Charlie Holmberg, W. Michael Gear, Diana Gabaldon and John Joseph Adams, Tim Lebbon, Jonathan Maberry, Kiersten White, Christopher Hinz, P.D. Cacek, James Lovegrove, Greg Cox, R.F. Kuang, Tochi Onyebuchi, R.J. Barker, Benedict Jacka, Holly Black, Mercedes Lackey, and lots more. Here’s a look at some of the highlights.

The Rush’s Edge by Ginger Smith (Angry Robot, 328 pages, $14.99 paperback/$6.99 digital, November 10, 2020) — cover by Kieryn Tyler

A past-his-prime “genetically-engineered and technology implanted” former soldier is discarded by the government that created him, so he takes a salvage gig to pass the time. Things get complicated when the ship’s computer is overtaken by an alien invader.

Deep space salvage, rogue computers, aliens…. This debut novel is headed to the top of my TBR pile for November.

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Take Advantage of the Thanksgiving Sale at Dark City Games

Take Advantage of the Thanksgiving Sale at Dark City Games

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Dark CIty Games

If you’ve been paying attention, you know we’re big fans of solo role playing games here at Black Gate. Whenever someone asks me for a superior modern example, I point them without hesitation to Dark City Games.

George Dew and his talented team of writers and artists at Dark City Games have been producing high quality solitaire fantasy and science fiction games for nearly two decades. They started with programmed adventures in the mold of The Fantasy Trip classics like Death Test, and soon graduated to much more sophisticated fare. Their games include ambitious fantasy epics likes The Island of Lost Spells (which I reviewed as Todd McAulty in Black Gate 10), and The Sewers of Redpoint, exciting SF fare like Void Station 57 and At Empire’s End, a line of Untamed West western adventures, and even tactical wargames set in WWII. Howard Andrew Jones took a fond look at their early catalog back in 2008, and we even published a free Dark City sample adventure titled S.O.S. in 2010.

That’s why I was so excited to see they have a Thanksgiving Sale. Every game in stock is discounted to $10. I ordered four — the SF horror title Into Chaos, dark fantasy Punisher’s Keep, Battle of the Bulge, first in their Combat Boots series of tactical wargames, and the SF mystery tale The Dark Star Incident.

Whether you’re a new gamer curious about role playing who wants to dip your toe in at your own pace, an experienced player looking for a real challenge, or just someone looking for a great bargain, Dark City has a game for you. Have a look at their catalog here, and try a game or two for just ten bucks each. And tell them Black Gate sent you!