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Future Treasures: The Art of the Pulps edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg

Future Treasures: The Art of the Pulps edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg

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The Art of the Pulps Doug Ellis-small

Ed Hulse, editor and co-founder of pulp zine Blood ‘n Thunder, collector extraordinaire Robert Weinberg, and collector (and Black Gate blogger) Doug Ellis have teamed up to produce what may be my most anticipated book of 2017: The Art of the Pulps, a gorgeous 240-page celebration of the magazines that gave birth to the heart and soul of modern Pop Culture. Miss this book at your peril.

Experts in the ten major Pulp genres, from action Pulps to spicy Pulps and more, chart for the first time the complete history of Pulp magazines — the stories and their writers, the graphics and their artists, and, of course, the publishers, their market, and readers.

Each chapter in the book, which is illustrated with more than 400 examples of the best Pulp graphics (many from the editors’ collections — among the world’s largest) is organized in a clear and accessible way, starting with an introductory overview of the genre, followed by a selection of the best covers and interior graphics, organized chronologically through the chapter. All images are fully captioned (many are in essence “nutshell” histories in themselves). Two special features in each chapter focus on topics of particular interest (such as extended profiles of Daisy Bacon, Pulp author and editor of Love Story, the hugely successful romance Pulp, and of Harry Steeger, co-founder of Popular Publications in 1930 and originator of the “Shudder Pulp” genre).

With an overall introduction on “The Birth of the Pulps” by Doug Ellis, and with two additional chapters focusing on the great Pulp writers and the great Pulp artists, The Art of the Pulps covers every aspect of this fascinating genre; it is the first definitive visual history of the Pulps.

F. Paul Wilson provides the Foreword. The Art of the Pulps will be published by IDW Publishing on October 24, 2017. It is 240 pages, priced at $49.99 in hardcover. There is no digital edition.

Support an Exciting New Magazine of Sword & Sorcery: Tales From the Magician’s Skull

Support an Exciting New Magazine of Sword & Sorcery: Tales From the Magician’s Skull

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Tales from the Magician's Skull-small

Here’s the best news I’ve heard all month: Goodman Games, publisher of the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics line of old-school RPG adventures, has launched a brand new magazine of Sword & Sorcery, Tales From the Magician’s Skull. The editor chosen to helm this groundbreaking project? None other than our very own Howard Andrew Jones. Here’s Howard with the scoop.

A gong shivers…
The mists part to reveal a grisly object lying upon a mound of rubble, a browned and ancient head with one glowing, malefic eye…
It speaks, in a voice of cold command: “Silence, mortal dogs! It is time now for
TALES FROM THE MAGICIAN’S SKULL!
Goodman Games [has launched] the Kickstarter for the exciting new sword-and-sorcery magazine inspired by Appendix N. I am mightily pleased to be the magazine’s editor, and I’ve had a blast assembling it with Joseph Goodman. We’ve been working together for almost a year, and I’ve got to tell you that the result is GLORIOUS. Just check out that Jim Pavalec cover.

The first issue, with stories by James Enge, John C. Hocking, Chris Willrich, Howard Andrew Jones, C.L. Werner and others, truly is a knockout. The Kickstarter funded in less than 24 hours, and continues to gather momentum. Make a pledge, and make sure you get your copy of the the first issue of what’s sure to be one of the most important magazine launches of the decade. And check back here this week for a 3-way interview with publisher Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the grinning skull itself!

The Dead Ride Fast

The Dead Ride Fast

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The Dead Ride FastHey nerds! My latest collection, The Dead Ride Fast, is available at Amazon and Kobo.

It certainly feels like there’s been a recent abundance of weird Western fiction. Just this past summer alone several anthologies appeared on shelves, and even straitlaced historical magazines like True West have published listicles celebrating the genre.

Yet oddly we seem to have hit peak weird West way back in 2014, with searches today chugging along at 50 percent of that frequency. Still, the fact that searches haven’t dropped precipitously suggests a steady and abiding interest in cowpokes and aliens and zombies.

The Dead Ride Fast bundles together five previously published short stories of mine that appeared in Black Static and anthologies such as Eric Guignard’s Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations (nominated for a Stoker!). Also included is an original story involving a spoopy haunted house.

A gang of bank robbers arrives in a town where everyone knows the future. A prospector discovers the cost of gold is the loss of himself. An abandoned ranch house conceals a dark history. An ailing sailor is initiated into a secret world after consuming an unusual medicine. A businessman reopens a silver mine that should have been left sealed. Two young girls confront a string of unnoticed disappearances.

Just in time for Halloween! Makes a great gift!

If you’re interested in the collection’s provenance — how the book came together and the stories behind the stories — I’ve been blabbering about it at my blog.

Rock Stars, Bloggers, and Hidden Magic: The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint

Rock Stars, Bloggers, and Hidden Magic: The Wind in His Heart by Charles de Lint

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The Wind in His Heart Charles de Lint-smallI met Charles de Lint when he was an unpublished author in the early 80s. We both hung out at the best bookstore in town, the much-missed House of Speculative Fiction in downtown Ottawa. There was a big fuss about his first novel, The Riddle of The Wren (1984), plucked out of the slush at Ace Books by legendary editor Terri Windling, but it was the bestselling Moonheart (Ace, 1984) that made us realize that Charles wasn’t just a local boy who done good — he was a major artist embarking on an extraordinary career.

71 books later, Charles is one of the most revered writers in fantasy. He’s been enormously kind to us over the years, even contributing a terrific story to the very first issue of Black Gate.  I asked Charles to tell us a bit about his latest book, and he was generous enough to send me this yesterday.

I’m excited to get back to writing for adults. It took me three years to write my new novel, The Wind in His Heart, pretty much double the time I’d normally take to complete a book, but this 545-page story was tricky to put together. It’s about a young man who works at a trading post and is the sole supporter in his family yet longs to go and explore the world; a rock star hiding from fame out in the desert; a teenage girl from an abusive family who gets tossed out of her dad’s car in the middle of the desert, and a blogger trying to come to terms with the suicide of her best friend. The story is about how their lives collide, and how they deal with their past and future. Many of my readers have been asking if it’s a Newford book, and the short answer is no, but it does have some Newford threads and connections.

This is a major new novel from one of the most important writers at work today. When word broke in our offices that it was arriving this month, there was frenzy to settle who would have the privilege of reading it first (Zeta Moore won; she’ll be reviewing it for us in a few weeks.)

The Wind in His Heart will be published by Triskell Press on September 19, 2017. It is 545 pages, priced at $7.99 for the digital edition. Read an excerpt in the Autumn issue of Faerie Magazine, and learn more at Charles’ website. And check out all our coverage of his previous books here.

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

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Literary Wonder and Adventure Show The Golden Age of Science Fiction Part 2 Rich Horton

Part II of II; read a review of Part I here.

Host Robert Zoltan has returned with his second installment of a look back at the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Zoltan and (Edgar the Raven’s) guest for Part II is Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (Prime Books), reprint editor for Light Speed, and columnist for Locus and Black Gate.

Horton endorses the standard narrative of the start and finish of science fiction’s “golden age,” which begins with editor John Campbell fully assuming the reigns of Astounding Stories around 1938, and ends when the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy began publishing in 1949 and 1950, respectively. These latter two magazines moved the genre in new directions, though not necessarily worse ones: Horton in fact argues that the fiction published in the silver age of the 1950s was often higher in quality, which seems to undercut the Golden Age moniker affixed to the Campellian era. But the golden age had the benefit of the “shock of the new”; it was a time when new ideas sprang from the pages of Astounding Stories with each new issue. It saw the emergence of some of science fiction’s greatest ideas and lasting tropes, if not consistently high execution or literary sophistication.

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Vintage Treasures: Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin

Vintage Treasures: Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin

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Dragonfly Frederic Durbin-small Dragonfly Frederic Durbin-back-small

Dragonfly was published in 1999 by Arkham House — the last novel the legendary publishing house produced in the 20th Century, and very nearly their last novel, period (they published one subsequent novel, John D. Harvey’s The Cleansing (2002), and about a dozen collections and anthologies, before effectively shutting down in 2010.)

It was an extraordinary coup for a debut novelist to win a contract from the publisher behind the earliest collections of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and numerous other major American fantasists. But Dragonfly was an extraordinary novel. The International Horror Guild nominated it as Best First Novel of the year, and Weird Tales called it “A marked success… makes us marvel that if could be a first novel.” Rambles labeled it “The perfect book for the Halloween season.”

Ace Books reprinted Dragonfly in paperback six years later, with a cover by Merritt Dekle (above). The paperback is becoming harder and harder to find these days, so when I stumbled on a new copy at Half Price Books this summer, I snapped it up immediately.

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New Treasures: Halls of Law by V. M. Escalada

New Treasures: Halls of Law by V. M. Escalada

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Halls of Law VM Escalada-smallOur Friday blogger Violette Malan, author of the Dhulyn and Parno fantasy novels, has just launched an ambitious new series, the Faraman Prophecy, under the name V. M. Escalada. Violette talked about writing under a pseudonym in her most recent article for us, “What’s in a Name?”

I have to admit that when my agent first suggested I use a penname, my immediate reaction was unfavourable. There are all kinds of reasons for such a suggestion, however, some of which I touched on in a previous post. Today, I’d like to talk about the actual, practical experience…

My first concern? What explanation do I give people who know me, personally? After all, people who have never met/heard of Violette Malan, aren’t likely to ask for any. The short answer, by the way, is “it’s a marketing thing.” The long answer we don’t have time for. Buy me a beer sometime at a con and I’ll tell you.

Which brings me to my second concern: Who am I in public? At a con, for example? The easy answer is: I’m whoever was invited. That’s the name that will go first on the con badge. It’s not unusual, at cons, to see people with two names on their badges, the one who was invited, and (in brackets? smaller print?) the other one. If you weren’t invited as a special guest? If you’re just registered as a regular panelist? That’s when it gets tricky. Do you use the established, familiar name first? or the new one?

Halls of Law, the first book in the Faraman Prophecy, introduces a world of military might and magical Talents on the brink of destruction. Julie E. Czerneda cals it a “fresh, engaging new fantasy series set in a world of marvelous texture and magic.” It’s available now in hardcover from DAW.

Here’s the description.

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Andrew Liptak on 16 SF, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Read in July

Andrew Liptak on 16 SF, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Read in July

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The Harbors of the Sun Martha Wells-small Tomorrow's Kin Nancy Kress-small Bannerless Carrie Vaughn small

By my count, there are two days left in July. If I don’t sleep for the next two days, and ignore e-mail and the phone, I may be able salvage some of my July reading plan.

Of course, that assumes I don’t discover a new batch of enticing July titles. And with Andrew Liptak on the job, chances of that are slim. Over at The Verge, he’s compiled a list of 16 science fiction, fantasy, and horror books to read this July, featuring space operas, superheroes, and fantasies. It includes a new novel from one of the most popular authors to appear in Black Gate, the marvelous Martha Wells, a Nazi superhero thriller from Kay Kenyon, the opening novel in a new trilogy from Nancy Kress, a post-apocalyptic murder mystery from the brilliant Carrie Vaughn, and the saga of a San Francisco superheroine by Sarah Kuhn.

Let’s see what Andrew has for us.

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Monsters, Murder and Magic in Victorian London: Storm and Ash by Elizabeth Cady

Monsters, Murder and Magic in Victorian London: Storm and Ash by Elizabeth Cady

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Storm and Ash - Elizabeth Cady-small

Black Gate blogger Elizabeth Cady (whose last article for us was a review of Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway), has launched a captivating web serial titled Storm and Ash. The Greysons, a powerful and respected British family, is thrown into turmoil at the death of eldest son Edmund’s fiancee. When it’s revealed the cause of her death was necromancy, the family must adapt quickly to a world they never even dreamed existed. (As Elizabeth tells me privately, it’s Buffy meets Sherlock — monsters, murder and magic in Victorian London.) Here’s the full blurb.

Just a few months ago, the Greysons appeared to be an utterly unremarkable family. Wealthy, well-regarded, but by the standards of London society, not extraordinary. Oldest son Edmund had taken over the family’s affairs after the death of their father. Rafe, the troublesome middle child, alternated his wanderings between the far side of the ocean and the underside of London’s streets. Youngest son Stephen was finishing his studies at university and preparing to join Edmund in business, while his twin sister Wilhelmina was planning her official debut into society.

The first blow came when Edmund’s fiancee, Charlotte, died unexpectedly. Grief turned to horror when the true cause of her death was revealed. And while the culprit may have been found, they were left with far more questions than they could have imagined.

Still, necessity is the mother of discovery. They have new allies, new skills, and a newfound faith in each other. Just in time, because the longest night of the year is coming, and the bodies have begun to appear again.

Chapter 6 went live on June 17; new chapters are posted twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. The promo image above is by Jayd Ait-Kaci. Check it out at www.stormandash.com, or dive right into the first chapter here.

Weirdbook 35 Now Available

Weirdbook 35 Now Available

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Weirdbook 35-small Weirdbook 35-back-small

Last issue, editor Douglas Draa shared the good news that Weirdbook would produce four issues this year — plus a themed annual. That seemed a little ambitious for a re-launched magazine still getting its sea legs… but the second issue of 2017 arrived right on schedule last month. Weirdbook has fast become one of the most reliable and energetic new fantasy magazines on the market, and with over 80,000 words of fiction (nearly 200 pages) crammed into every issue, its already one of the best values around. I predict great things for this magazine.

In his editorial, Doug reported that the themed issue this October will be dedicated to Witches. A fine choice. A glance at the TOC for this issue reveals a pair of names that will be familiar to Black Gate readers: Darrell Schweitzer (who published two pieces in the print edition of BG) and John R. Fultz, who contributed no less than four (including “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” which you can read in its entirety online as part of our Online Fiction Library.)

Here’s what John had to say about his newest story on his blog.

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