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The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in May

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in May

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Federation Commander Klingon BorderWe published 99 posts in the month of May. 99! If I’d known that I would have tossed off one more at the last minute, just to cross that magic 100.

But we focused on quality, not quantity (he tells himself stoically). And our top article for the month — no doubt ably assisted by the release of Star Trek Into Darkness — was a look at the Federation Commander: Klingon Border board game. Number two was also gaming-related: a peek at the Against the Odds historical gaming magazine. Third was our obituary for the talented editor and Thieve’s World author Andrew J. Offutt, followed by Violette Malan’s entirely reasonable question, “Why is it Always a Northern Barbarian?” and a guest post by Milton Davis on Sword and Soul fantasy.

The Top 50 Black Gate posts in May were:

  1. New Treasures: Federation Commander: Klingon Border
  2. Explore History Through Tiny Cardboard Counters With Against the Odds Magazine
  3. Andrew J. Offutt: August 16, 1934 – April 30, 2013
  4. Why is it Always a Northern Barbarian?
  5. Sword and Soul Revisited
  6. The Hunger Games and Kids: When to Say When
  7. The Kids Are Alright: The Fate of the Novel lies in the Hands of Teenagers
  8. Forrest J Ackerman and the Days of the Do-it-Yourself Anthology
  9. Vintage Treasures: Robert E Howard’s Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors
  10. Remembering Ray Harryhausen Through Ten Great Visual Effects Scenes 

     

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An Interview with John Joseph Adams

An Interview with John Joseph Adams

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John Joseph Adams
John Joseph Adams

Nearly every fabulous anthology you’ve read in the past ten years was edited by John Joseph Adams.*

OK, OK, that might be a little much. I’ll restate. Nearly every fabulous anthology you’ve read in the past ten years was either edited by John Joseph Adams or Ellen Datlow. Cross my black heart and bet you a Tardis, that statement’s got sturdy stems.**

Today we focus on Mr. Adams – king taste-maker of spec fic. He’s been a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award. When he isn’t busy creating anthologies and being lauded for them, the man publishes Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines. Don’t forget about that podcast he does for Wired, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dude’s busy.

Black Gate honey-badgered our way into a talk with John Joseph Adams about his process and his anthology, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. If you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? Mad scientist stories by the likes of Austin Grossman, Seanan McGuire, David D. Levine, Carrie Vaughn, Naomi Novik, and Theodora Goss? YES, PLEASE! Seriously, the table of contents is next level, ninja. And have you eyed that COVER? It guts you with glass-tubed-screaming-creature awesome. Go buy it. We can wait.

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The Top 20 Black Gate Fiction Posts in May

The Top 20 Black Gate Fiction Posts in May

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The Sealord's Successor Part OneAaron Bradford Starr’s latest tale of Gallery Hunters Gloren Avericci and Yr Neh — the 35,000-word epic fantasy mystery “The Sealord’s Successor,” which Louis West at Tangent Online called “A gripping tale of fantasy, mystery, murder and intrigue. A must read!” — was our top fiction post last month.

Coming in a close second was Robert Rhodes’s story of a time-traveling swordsman, “Devotion,” followed by Vera Nazarian’s tale of armies, gods and a city on the brink of collapse, “Niola’s Last Stand.” Also making the list were terrific stories by Michael Penkas, Howard Andrew Jones, Mary Catelli, Judith Berman, Joe Bonadonna, Jason E. Thummel, and many others.

If you haven’t sampled the adventure fantasy stories offered through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line, you’re missing out. Every week, we present an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry, all completely free. Here are the Top Twenty most read stories in May:

  1. “The Sealord’s Successor,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
  2. “Devotion,” by Robert Rhodes
  3. “Niola’s Last Stand,” by Vera Nazarian
  4. “The Worst Was Yet to Come,” by Michael Penkas
  5. An excerpt from The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
  6. “The Turtle in the Sea of Sand,” by Mary Catelli
  7. “The Poison Well,” by Judith Berman
  8. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
  9. “Assault and Battery,” by Jason E. Thummel
  10. An excerpt from The Waters of Darkness, by David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna

     

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Four

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Four

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The Death of the NecromancerBlack Gate is very proud to present Part Four of Martha Wells’s Nebula Award-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, presented complete online for the first time. On her blog, Martha describes the book thusly:

It’s basically about a Moriarty-like master criminal and his friends in an otherworldy version of La Belle Epoque Paris with magic, who get involved in a clandestine battle with a sorcerer who seems to be trying to raise the dead.

And Publishers Weekly had this to say about the novel:

The setting echoes with the lively sounds and sights of turn-of-18th-century France, with a mesh of dark magic woven throughout. In her third novel, Wells (City of Bones; The Element of Fire) continues to demonstrate an impressive gift for creating finely detailed fantasy worlds rife with many-layered intrigues and immensely personable characters.

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen fantasy novels, including City of Bones, The Element of Fire, The Cloud Roads, and The Serpent Sea. Her most recent novel is the YA fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, published by Strange Chemistry Books in April. Her previous fiction for us includes “Reflections” in Black Gate 10, “Holy Places” (BG 11), and “Houses of the Dead“ (BG 12). Her most recent article for us was “How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?,” which appeared here March 13. Her web site is www.marthawells.com.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

The Death of the Necromancer was originally published in hardcover by Avon EOS in 1998. The complete, unedited text is being presented here; it began on June 2 with the first four chapters here.

Part Four includes Chapters Fourteen through Eighteen. It is offered at no cost.

Read Part Four of the complete novel here.

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews Circle of Enemies

Sean T. M. Stiennon reviews Circle of Enemies

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Circle of EnemiesCircle of enemies cover
By Harry Connolly
Del Rey (320 pages, mass market first edition August 2011, $7.99)

And so we come full circle. Circle of Enemies is the final novel in the Twenty Palaces series as it stands, and in some ways the most crowded with monsters, sorcery, and mysteries. If it has one major flaw, it’s that it whet my appetite for a sequel that will likely never be written.

The action moves south from the Pacific northwest hamlets of Child of Fire (my review here) and Game of Cages (review) to the sun-scorched sidewalks and shadowy mansions of Los Angeles, as Ray revisits the life he lived before his stay in prison. One of his old friends from his carjacker days — a woman named Caramella — arrives in Ray’s Seattle room with a cryptic message: “You killed me, Ray.” After delivering it, she vanishes into thin air.

Magic — and all the horrors that accompany it — have found Ray’s old crew. He drives south to his old stomping grounds in Los Angeles to find his old allies and save them before the Twenty Palaces society arrives to wipe them out. The world is once again in danger from a predator with the potential to annihilate all human life, one hapless victim at a time.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Three

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Three

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The Death of the Necromancer KindleBlack Gate is very proud to present Part Three of Martha Wells’s Nebula Award-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, presented complete online for the first time. Here’s a quote from Donna McMahon’s SF Site review:

It’s relatively easy to convey the plot of Necromancer, but far more difficult to describe the extraordinary texture of its setting. The city of Vienne has an Italian Renaissance flavour, plus nineteenth century technology, hints of Victorian England, and even whiffs of A Tale of Two Cities and The Tempest. From this seemingly improbable mix of historical and fantasy elements, Martha Wells creates a stunningly vivid society…

Wells’ characters are equally compelling: among them Nicholas, who is a gentle man with a dark streak of rage; Madeline, the ambitious actress who lives with him; Reynard, the disgraced but proud army officer; and Crack, the tough, terse henchman. And there are many more, none of them forgettable.

Still, Necromancer’s most impressive feature may be its complex, twisting plot and swift pacing, which kept me glued to the pages… this is a terrific novel. Wells is in a league with top writers like Lois McMaster Bujold and Barbara Hambly.

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen fantasy novels, including City of Bones, The Element of Fire, The Cloud Roads, and The Serpent Sea. Her most recent novel is the YA fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, published by Strange Chemistry Books in April. Her previous fiction for us includes “Reflections” in Black Gate 10, “Holy Places” (BG 11), and “Houses of the Dead“ (BG 12). Her most recent article for us was “How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?,” which appeared here March 13. Her web site is www.marthawells.com.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

The Death of the Necromancer was originally published in hardcover by Avon EOS in 1998. The complete, unedited text will be presented here over the next three weeks; it began on June 2 with the first four chapters here.

Part Three includes Chapters Nine through Thirteen. It is offered at no cost.

Read Part Three of the complete novel here.

Once Upon a Time in Zang…

Once Upon a Time in Zang…

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zangcover (1)…a fugitive author and a devious cutthroat began a revolt against the nine Sorcerer Kings whose power displaced the gods themselves. Like the revolt, which began in far-flung places, the Zang Cycle of stories would grow slowly and cover a lot of ground.

Now at last the entire story cycle is complete with the publication of The Revelations of Zang on Amazon Kindle. 

It all started with “The Persecution of Artifice the Quill,” in the pages of Weird Tales #340 (2006). The cover of that issue featured a horde of the faceless warlocks known as Vizarchs, who drag Artifice the Quill away in the story’s opening scene, a scene painted by the talented Les Edwards.

WT340
The Vizarchs are coming!

The story was a turning point for me: The fulfillment of a long-standing dream (getting published in Weird Tales) and the introduction of two characters I would return to many times: Artifice the Quill and Taizo the Thief.

I wrote eleven more Zang Tales and moved the series to the welcoming pages of Black Gate, where it flourished for many issues.

The first story to grab BG founder John O’Neill’s attention was “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine” — a tale of Taizo and his infamous heist in spider-haunted Ghoth. It ran in BG #12 (2008). I wrote one Zang story after another over a 3- to 4-year period, building toward a single climactic tale.

The cycle’s penultimate story, “Return of the Quill,” wherein Artifice finally returns to Narr and sparks a revolution, was featured in BG #13 (2009). By this time, Artifice has embraced the sorcery that he once loathed and learned to alter reality with his Great Art. He is the leader of the mystical troupe known as The Glimmer Faire.

Meanwhile, Taizo has taken his own dark journey through tragedy, sorcery, and suffering toward vengeance. These two main characters only meet twice during the cycle: Once in the first story, and once again in the last.

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SF Signal Interviews Scott Taylor on A Knight In The Silk Purse

SF Signal Interviews Scott Taylor on A Knight In The Silk Purse

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The Black Gate district of the city of TauxSF Signal interviews editor and Black Gate blogger Scott Taylor on the occasion of his sixth Kickstarter project: A Knight in the Silk Purse, the follow-up to his enormously successful shared world anthology, Tales Of The Emerald Serpent.

Nick Sharps: What lesson did you learn from the first anthologies campaign that has carried on to Volume II? Are there plans for future anthologies?

ST: Well, we learned that selling fiction is hard, and selling a anthology is even harder. Still, we were happy to get the backing for our first endeavor, and we knew that if we could just produce that work, people would get what we were doing and that would carry over to further volumes. So far, we’ve been right, and this new Kickstarter has built-in stretch goals that could see to the production of up to six full volumes of this series that would take us to the culmination of the story we all set out to tell.

A Knight In The Silk Purse returns to the Free City of Taux, a fantasy port of cursed stones, dark plots, and a cast of characters who have made a name for themselves in the infamous Black Gate District. It is edited by R. Scott Taylor and includes contributions from Martha Wells, Julie Czerneda, Elaine Cunningham, Todd Lockwood, Lynn Flewelling, Dave Gross, Juliet McKenna, and others. With 23 days to go, it is already more than halfway to its target goal of $10,000 (with stretch goals that go all the way up to $300,000).

Read more about the launch of Tales Of The Emerald Serpent here and read the complete interview with Scott here. You can also read his recent article The Joy and Pain of Kickstarter [and How Backed Projects Still Fail].

You can pledge to support A Knight In The Silk Purse at Kickstarter here.

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Two

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Death of the Necromancer, Part Two

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The Death of the Necromancer paperbackBlack Gate is very proud to present Part Two of Martha Wells’s Nebula Award-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, presented complete online for the first time.

Nicholas Valiarde is a man of several parts, or roles. One is that of disenfranchised nobleman, bent on revenge for the execution of his godfather, Edouard Viller, who was falsely accused of the capital offense of necromancy by the scheming Count Montesq. Another is that of the master thief Donatien, legendary criminal of Ile-Rien. These two roles collide when Nicholas encounters ghouls and a sorcerer known as Doctor Octave in the cellars of a duchess’s house while carrying out a robbery.

Sinister forces are at work in Ile-Rien. Citizens have gone missing, corpses have turned up vivisected, bones have washed up in the sewer gates. All the evidence points to a necromancer at work, very probably someone with access to the books of the infamous Constant Macob, believed dead for over 200 years. As he investigates, Nicholas and his misfit friends uncover a plot that leads them into a series of escalating confrontations with the evil creations of Macob, as the necromancer schemes to gather enough power to return to life…

Martha Wells is the author of fourteen fantasy novels, including City of Bones, The Element of Fire, The Cloud Roads, and The Serpent Sea. Her most recent novel is the YA fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, published by Strange Chemistry Books in April. Her previous fiction for us includes “Reflections” in Black Gate 10, “Holy Places” (BG 11), and “Houses of the Dead“ (BG 12). Her most recent article for us was “How Well Does The Cloud Roads Fit as Sword and Sorcery?,” which appeared here March 13. Her web site is www.marthawells.com.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mary Catelli, Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

The Death of the Necromancer was originally published in hardcover by Avon EOS in 1998. The complete, unedited text will be presented here over the next four weeks, beginning last week with the first four chapters here.

Part Two includes Chapters Five through Eight. It is offered at no cost.

Read Part Two of the complete novel here.

A Review of Osprey’s Dragonslayers

A Review of Osprey’s Dragonslayers

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Dragonslayers: From Beowulf to St. George
Mythsandlegends_DragonslayersBy Joseph McCullough
Osprey (80 pages, May 2013, $17.95)

Osprey is justly famous for its Men-at-Arms series. Probably almost everyone who’s a military history buff, historical gamer, or historical fiction writer has at least heard of the series, which illustrates the arms, armor, capabilities and customs of different forces from different eras in extremely well-researched detail. Need to know just how fast the Mongolian cavalry from the era of Genghis Khan moved, or what they ate on the ride? Curious to find out more about the forces from the 2nd Punic war? The Men-at-Arms series is a crucial stop.

Now Osprey is advancing its standard of excellence into new territory. Its Myths and Legends line strives to bring the same sterling level of research to fantasy and myth. Several weeks ago, Osprey sent me the first book of their new series, Dragonslayers.

It’s different from the older Men-At-Arms series books on my shelves in that it’s more profusely and colorfully illustrated, but the information is just as thorough and well presented. I have to admit that I wasn’t initially that curious about the subject matter, but writer Joe McCullough pulled me right in to both the tales I was already familiar with and the sagas of dragonslayers unfamiliar to me, which is no small feat considering how busy I’ve been. It’s pretty impressive that such a small book can pack in so much information, and make it engaging besides.

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