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Author: John ONeill

Play a science-fiction mini-game from Dark City Games

Play a science-fiction mini-game from Dark City Games

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To promote their new science-fiction role-playing game At Empire’s End, Dark City Games has created S.O.S, a short solitaire SF role-playing game. We’re pleased to reprint the game in its entirety here on the Black Gate blog.

You can either read the text as choose-your-own-adventure style paragraphs, or grab some dice and play according to the short rules. Experienced role players, or those familiar with The Fantasy Trip, should be able to jump right into the action.

Without further ado, we present S.O.S, a Legends of Time and Space science-fiction role-playing adventure by George Dew.

You come out of hyperspace around the barren, rocky, waste-planet of Lemm. It orbits a distant star, and lacks an atmosphere. As a result, the inhospitable grey surface boasts temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero.

Your sensors scan for traces of the distress signal, when suddenly, an alien contact flashes across your navigation screen. Do you want to hail it (001) or attack with initiative (002)?

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Letters to Black Gate

Letters to Black Gate

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btga41Kim Patrick Weiss, of Bavaria, Germany, writes:

I tend to browse the Black Gate website every day, to check the news and, of course, read the new chapter of “The Weird of Ironspell” every Wednesday. When I read your article about Before the Golden Age by Isaac Asimov, two things immediately caught my interest: “…civilizations in grains of sand…” and “…humans in rags taking on entrenched alien conquerors…” and I knew I had to look into getting this book.
      Well, a couple minutes after I finished reading the article, and with my imagination already running wild, I decided to pick up a used copy from Amazon. I was in luck, the 1974 hardcover version by Doubleday was available for only $20. The book arrived today and I already read “Submicroscopic” and “Awlo of Ulm”, the ones that seemed the most appealing, and I can’t say I regret buying the book right away instead of checking out that website you mentioned first. Your article opened my eyes to a wider variety of sci-fi stories and authors, and I just have to say thanks for that 🙂
       It’s also a very nice experience to find out about so many old classics that I never knew existed. Your magazine and website are a great source for new (well, new to me) books and authors and I’m sure there’s still a lot more to discover in the archives. So, thanks again for a great website and an awesome magazine, both of which I hope will stay around for a long, long time!

Glad you enjoyed it, Kim.  “Submicroscopic” and its sequel “Awlo of Ulm,” both by Capt. S. P. Meek, are in fact the stories I had in mind when I mentioned “civilizations in grains of sand.”  They first appeared in Amazing Stories in 1931, and they’re still great fun today.

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SF Site reviews Black Gate 14

SF Site reviews Black Gate 14

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bglgAuthor Sherwood Smith, who has reviewed virtually every issue of Black Gate, shares her thoughts on our latest issue in a feature review at SF Site:

This issue of Black Gate, clocking in at 384 pages, is more book than magazine…. A few stories are outstanding, and most of the rest are solid entertainment. Add in generous page count on reviews, and the issue is a strong one. Readers tempted to start subscribing ought to consider beginning with this issue, as the prices are going to go up. (Though so is the page count.)

She admits to being pleasantly surprised by “The Word of Azrael” by Matthew David Surridge:

When I read that this tale was “initially inspired by the old Conan paperbacks which preceded each story with a snippet of Conan’s bio,” I groaned…. Was I wrong! Within two pages, Surridge’s deft, ironic voice had disarmed me.  We begin on a battlefield where seven kings and their armies died. The warrior Isrohim Vey wakens alone, except for the Angel of Death… What follows seems to be a series of iceberg-tip stories, that is, the climactic moments of what could have been longer tales. Increasingly intriguing tales. The reader begins to perceive patterns weaving them together into a tapestry of solid gold.

She highlights several additional pieces, including “On a Pale Horse” by Sylvia Volk:

Salsabil regards her father’s mare as her sister, as they share the same name. This isn’t a problem until she takes her sister grazing, and discovers a single-horned stallion following them…. Drought brings the raiding Mutair down on Salsabil’s people. Though they do their best to fight back, they are being driven out of their own lands, many of them killed, but meanwhile the mysterious horned pale horse follows them… A lovely story with a flavor of Arabian Nights.

And “La Señora de Oro” by R L Roth:

A few years ago, my spouse inherited some letters written by one of his ancestors who was a silver miner just after the gold rush. Roth’s epistolary story, which takes place between March and September 1850, is an eerie match in tone and (early on) in details as Tom writes to his wife Annie, telling her about his search for the gold that is supposed to save his family from want. The story is fantasy-horror, the fantastic element serving as a metaphor for what happened to far too many gold rush miners… Hats off to Roth for a disturbingly well-wrought tale, pitch-perfect for the period.

The complete review is here.

Welcome to the Digital Age, Before the Golden Age

Welcome to the Digital Age, Before the Golden Age

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btga2One of my favorite books — among a host of many favorites, of course, many many favorites, collected over decades of careful reading in a wide variety of genres, it’s hard to choose, depends on the time of day, naturally, and what we’re talking about, whether you want to include non-fiction, and it’s difficult to judge pleasure reading against, you know, literature like The Sound and the Fury, which was great until the part where I quit reading and pretty much gave up. That Quentin character though, man, what a dick.  Anyway. Where was I.

Aww, screw it.  My favorite book of all time, bar none, is Isaac Asimov’s Before the Golden Age.

Why is it so great?  Dude, it’s totally undiluted science fiction awesomeness. Asimov collected the early pulp stories that first hooked him on science fiction, from magazines such as Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories of Super Science, and Science Wonder Stories, in a 900-page omnibus that captured the heart and soul of early American SF.

Published between 1931 and 1938 — the year that John W. Campbell took over Astounding and ushered in what’s now generally referred to as the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” — the stories in Before the Golden Age feature brain stealers from Mars, two-fisted scientists battling monster hoards, amateur time travel  (“Kiss 1935 good-bye!”), shrink rays, civilizations in grains of sand, humans in rags taking on entrenched alien conquerors, killer robots, giant brain monsters,  and much more.

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Apex Magazine re-opens to Submissions

Apex Magazine re-opens to Submissions

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apexmagApex publisher Jason Sizemore has announced that the magazine has re-opened to submissions.

This is great news for fans, since the magazine announced last May that it was temporarily suspending publication. It began as print edition Apex Digest in 2005, swtiching names to Apex Magazine when it became online-only in 2008. It resumed online publication in June 2009 and has published monthly since. 

Note that Apex has new Submission Guidelines. The pay rate is five cents a word, and the new fiction editor is Catherynne M. Valente. The magazine has added Dark Fantasy to their list of interests (originally focused on science fiction and horror), and their Guidelines are worth the read:

What we want is sheer, unvarnished awesomeness. We want the stories it scared you to write. We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful. We want science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three—the dark, weird stuff down at the bottom of your little literary heart. This magazine is not a publication credit, it is a place to put your secret places and dreams on display. Just so long as they have a dark speculative fiction element—we aren’t here for the quotidian.

The latest issue of Apex includes original fiction from Paul Jessup and Jerry Gordon, a reprint from Catheryyne M. Valente, Audio Fiction from Jerry Gordon, and a Dark Faith roundtable interview with Gary A. Braunbeck, Jay Lake, Nick Mamatas, and Catherynne M. Valente.

The complete magazine is also available in a downloadable, pay-what-you-want edition through Smashwords, and in a Kindle edition (for 99 cents).

Apex Book Company also recently published Dark Faith, reviewed right here at the Black Gate blog by David Soyka.

Paizo Announces Pathfinder Tales

Paizo Announces Pathfinder Tales

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winter-witchPaizo, publisher of the Pathfinder role playing game, has announced a new fiction line called Pathfinder Tales.

It’s a move that has a certain inevitability. When TSR announced a line of novels to support Dungeons and Dragons — beginning with the Dragonlance novels of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman in 1984 — it was an instant hit, and helped catapult TSR to new success as the fourth largest publisher in the country.

For a brief time in the early 90s, TSR’s novels far surpassed their game products in sales. At some point virtually every major adventure game publisher — including White Wolf (Vampire the Masquerade), Game Designer’s Workshop (Traveller), FASA (Battletech, Shadowrun), and Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon) — has experimented with a fiction line, with varying success.

Now that Pathfinder has grown to be the system of choice for many gamers, something similar was clearly in the cards. This from the official announcement:

Pathfinder Tales novels are standalone adventures written by some of fantasy’s bestselling authors…  journey through Golarion as you never have before, through the eyes of canny warriors and flippant scoundrels, and see firsthand why the Pathfinder world has twice earned the prestigious ENnie Award for Best Campaign Setting.

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Realms of Fantasy on Realms of Fantasy

Realms of Fantasy on Realms of Fantasy

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realms-december-2008Following some of the recent discussion on the future of the magazine, including the Wednesday report here on the Black Gate blog that publisher Warren Lapine had written to warn subscribers that it might be shut down, Realms of Fantasy editor Douglas Cohen has weighed in with a State of the Union piece on the Realms website.

Creatively speaking, RoF’s future is looking bright and there is a lot to be excited about. Financially speaking… It’s fair to say we’re currently navigating some choppy waters. Behind the scenes, there has been some sacrifice involved in RoF reaching this point…. If we can get through this rough patch the magazine could be secure and stable for a very long time.

There’s been plenty of debate on both the announcement and just how fans should respond in other quarters as well, including a discussion kicked off by Nick Mamatas on how the magazine might have gotten the message out without appearing quite so doomed, some comments from long-time RoF (and Black Gate) author Richard Parks, a news story at Examiner.com, an exchange with editor Douglas Cohen at The Dreaded Sword, and of course ongoing discussion right here at Black Gate.

It’s tempting to treat this as just a news story and remain objective, but I’m not going to do that. Regardless of how you feel about how the message got out, Realms of Fantasy is a terrific magazine, one of the few professional fantasy publications that will publish and promote new writers, and it deserves your support. 

You can buy a subscription here for just $19.99 for a full year.

Goodbye Realms of Fantasy — Again?

Goodbye Realms of Fantasy — Again?

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realms-april2010Reports have surfaced that Realms of Fantasy publisher Warren Lapine has written to subscribers of the magazine, telling them that if they don’t renew their subscriptions he’s going to shut it down.

Warren rescued Realms just last year, when his Tir Na Nog Press purchased it with much fanfare from Sovereign Media, who had announced that April 2009 would be the final issue. Tir Na Nog’s first issue was July 2009, and the magazine has continued with renewed vigor ever since — publishing new fiction from Euan Harvey, Bruce Holland Rogers, Richard Parks, Harlan Ellison, Carrie Vaughn, and many more.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Warren’s complaints stem from his obvious disappointment that so many fans were highly vocal about the pending loss of the magazine last year, and yet so few are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

However, as author and subscriber Mishell Baker so eloquently puts it, “Why should I send my money to a guy who’s telling me there may not be a magazine by the time he cashes my check?”

Warren clarified his position to Baker in a follow up post at The Dreaded Sword:

I think your missing the point of the letter. The magazine isn’t quite making enough money to go on as things stand right now. It was close down the magazine now, or send the letter. So saying that I shouldn’t have sent the letter suggests that I should have just shut down the magazine and not given it’s readers a heads up before closing it. Fortunately, your reaction to our letter is not the norm. Many people have a larger sense of community than you are displaying here and I expect this to save the magazine.

Realms of Fantasy is one of the few remaining professional fantasy magazines, and well worth your support.  You can purchase a subscription here.

The Cimmerian Takes a Final Bow

The Cimmerian Takes a Final Bow

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cimmerian2The Cimmerian, one of the most respected websites devoted to heroic fantasy — indeed, perhaps the most respected — has announced it will wrap up in on June 11.

The Cimmerian began as a bi-monthly print journal in April 2004. Edited by Leo Grin and dedicated to the work of Robert E. Howard, it ran for thirty-five issues and was twice nominated for the World Fantasy Award.

The Cimmerian website launched the following year, featuring contributions from Steve Tompkins, Rob Roehm, and Mark Finn, and it attracted considerable attention. When the print version came to an end in December 2008, Grin handed the reins to Tompkins, who managed the site until his tragic death a few months later. 

Since December 2008 the website has broadened focus, becoming “a website and shieldwall for Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Best in Heroic Fantasy, Horror and Historical Adventure.” Under the guidance of new manager Deuce Richardson, over the past year it’s also turned its keen critical eye to Sax Rohmer, David Gemmell, Karl Edward Wagner, Charles R. Saunders, Michael Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and many others. With the greater scope has come greater readership, growing to nearly 100,000 viewers/month.

The articles at The Cimmerian, by such folks as Miguel Martins, Al Harron, Barbara Barrett, William Maynard, Jeffrey Shanks, Keith Taylor, Brian Murphy, and Jim Cornelius, have never been less than fascinating, covering everything from the latest on the new Conan movie to Weird Tales to the recent — and excellent — tributes to Frank Frazetta.

Leo Grin says the blog will continue until June 11, the anniversary of Robert E. Howard’s death, and after that the site will be archived.  Its loss will be keenly felt.

Rogue Blades Announces Challenge! Writing Contest

Rogue Blades Announces Challenge! Writing Contest

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2010-discoveryRogue Blades Entertainment (RBE) has published some terrific fantasy anthologies over the past few years, including Return of the Sword and Rage of the Behemoth, featuring original work from writers such as E.E. Knight, James Enge, Bill Ward, Michael Ehart, Thomas M. MacKay, S.C. Bryce, Steve Goble, Brian Ruckley, C.L. Werner, Harold Lamb, and many others.

This week Rogue Blades publisher Jason M. Waltz announced the first annual RBE Challenge! Writing Contest. The competition is open to anyone, and the top stories will be printed in the competition anthology, Discovery (cover at right).

Submissions must consist of heroic adventure in any genre, and must arrive between June 1st and September 1st, 2010.  The top twelve stories will recevie a copy of the anthology; the top three will also receive cash awards, and a detailed critique from the contest judges.

The entry fee is only $10, almost criminally cheap. If you’re any aspiring writer looking for an opportunity to show your stuff, now’s your chance to appear in a new anthology from one of the top publishers of modern heroic fantasy.

More information is on the Official Announcement page, including this invitation from Jason Waltz:

Using V Shane’s artwork and the title Discovery as inspiration, pen me mighty and mysterious tales of action and adventure. Speculative fiction is NOT required… Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, even Horror and Romance! You name it, so long as it’s heroic fiction, you can submit it.

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