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Cover Reveal: Damnation by Peter McLean

Cover Reveal: Damnation by Peter McLean

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Drake, the first novel in Peter McLean’s new series, was published in January. The highly-anticipated second novel, Dominion, will be released on November 2nd in the US, and November 4 in the UK and the rest of the world. Here’s what I said about Drake late last year.

Peter McLean’s first novel will be released in paperback by Angry Robot in early January, and it sounds pretty darn good.

Don’t believe me? Drake features a hitman who owes a gambling debt to a demon, his faithful magical accomplice The Burned Man (an imprisoned archdemon), the Furies of Greek myth, an (almost) fallen angel named Trixie, and oh, yeah. Lucifer. Dave Hutchinson calls it “a gritty, grungy, funny, sweary noir thriller with added demons. Don Drake is a wonderful creation.” I told you it sounded good. Drake is the opening installment in a new series titled The Burned Man.

Black Gate is very proud to present an exclusive cover reveal for the third novel, Damnation, scheduled to appear on May 2 of next year. See below for additional details of the book, and a high-res pic of the cover.

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My Top Ten Novel-to-Movie Adaptations

My Top Ten Novel-to-Movie Adaptations

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3-musketeers-posterLast time I was having a look at William Goldman, both his screen and novel writing. You can see the whole post here, but for my review of my top ten movie adaptations, I’d like to repeat what Goldman says about writing screenplays:

Here is one of the main rules of adaptation: you cannot be literally faithful to the source material.

Here’s another that critics never get: you should not be literally faithful to the source material. It is in a different form, a form that does not have the camera.

Here is the most important rule of adaptation: you must be totally faithful to the intention of the source material.

— from Which Lie Did I Tell?

In another spot, and I’m paraphrasing here, because now I can’t find the quotation, he tells us how a book has maybe 400 pages, and a screenplay has around 135 pages, and not full pages at that, so what do you think happens between one version and the other?

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of JG Ballard

Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of JG Ballard

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On September 3rd of this year, I attended the 2016 Chicagoland Pulpfest. It’s a friendly gathering of Chicago area pulp fans and science fiction readers, held ever year at Doug Ellis’ house in Barrington Hills. I’d been hoping for an excuse to get out to Doug’s house for the last four years, ever since he invited me to dig through the massive — and I do mean massive — collection of paperbacks in his garage, originally belonging to famous editor Martin H. Greenberg.

Doug and Bob Weinberg had acquired the collection from Marty’s family shortly after his death, and Doug was looking for a buyer for the paperbacks. I wrote about my first encounter with Marty’s incredible collection (and acquiring a small portion of it) at the 2012 Windy City Pulp & Paper show. The sheer scale of the collection defeated me then, but I was spoiling for a re-match, and Doug’s invitation to dig into it during the party was just too tempting to resist.

Well, I tried to be social (honestly I did), but the lure of thousands of vintage paperbacks in the garage was just too strong. After a few hours I wandered away from the party and soon found myself elbow deep in boxes, happily sorting through an incredible selection of books — including some I’d been searching for for decades. Virtually all were in fabulous, like-new condition, and it wasn’t long before other book enthusiasts joined me.  Soon enough it seemed like the party had moved into the garage, as one after another most of the boxes were opened and we collectively cooed over the contents.

I walked away with nearly 300 paperbacks (which I bought from Doug for a criminally bargain price), including numerous treasures. Of course, I wasn’t the only one to make fabulous finds. I saw copies of The Best of Clifford Simak, a complete set of Wild Card volumes, and numerous vintage Lovecraft collections dug out of boxes and gleefully set aside by my fellow book prospectors. But for me the big regret of the evening, the one that got away, was The Best Science Fiction of JG Ballard, a 1977 Futura paperback that I didn’t even know existed until I saw it pulled out of a box in Doug’s garage.

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New Treasures: Swift to Chase by Laird Barron

New Treasures: Swift to Chase by Laird Barron

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In his review of the 2014 Laird Barron tribute volume The Children of Old Leech, James McGlothlin wrote:

If you’re not familiar with Laird Barron, you really should be. He’s a multiple Shirley Jackson Award winner and currently on the 2014 World Fantasy Award ballot. I’ve raved about him several times on Black Gate, including here and here and here. Barron’s writing is often called Lovecraftian; but not in a pastiche sort of way.  Rather, Barron is really good at capturing a cosmic-horror-feel in his stories that many believe Lovecraft perfected.

In addition, Barron is also like Lovecraft in that in his stories have recurring regions, locations, characters, and even a recurring evil book… [Barron is] one of the true masters of the weird that we currently have.

Barron is not resting on his laurels, however. In the last 12 months he’s released two novellas, Man With No Name and X’s For Eyes, and his highly anticipated fourth collection Swift to Chase arrived in hardcover, trade paperback and digital format earlier this month. Click on the images above to read the complete back cover copy.

Swift to Chase was published by JournalStone on October 7, 2016. It is 294 pages, priced at $29.95 in hardcover, $18.95 in trade paperback and $7.95 for the digital edition. See all our recent Laird Barron coverage here.

One Last Time into the Primal Land: Sorcery in Shad by Brian Lumley

One Last Time into the Primal Land: Sorcery in Shad by Brian Lumley

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oie_242034314rvenvucAll good things must come to an end. I get that, and as I’ve gotten older I appreciate that more than ever. However, they do not all have to end badly. Sometimes, though, as with Brian Lumley’s Primal Lands stories, they do. Despite some rough-hewn edges and some too-purple prose, I completely enjoyed the first two collections in the series, The House of Cthulhu and Tarra Khash: Hrossak! (follow the links to my Black Gate reviews). I looked forward to the culmination of these tales in the final volume, Sorcery in Shad (1991). Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a flop. Only Lumley’s easy-going style, colorful world-building, and a clear love for his characters kept its reading from being drudge work.

Lumley is a controversial figure in the world of Lovecraft Mythos fiction. By inclination, he is a writer of action and adventure. What he brought to Mythos stories were heroes who fought back, unwilling to acquiesce in the face of existential dread (and monsters), which didn’t always work very well.

It served him splendidly here, though, in his stories set on Theem’hdra, the continent-sized remnant of a gigantic volcano, in the earliest days of Man on Earth. House of Cthulhu introduced the setting and several recurring characters, most notably the sorcerer, Teh Atht, through a series of mostly independent short stories. Tarra Khash, through several linked stories, told the escapades of its titular good-hearted barbarian wanderer. By the end, Tarra Khash and his friends had saved the world from demonic domination and he had decided to head back home.

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An Experiment in Gor: What Are John Norman’s Books About, Really? The Hidden Secret of the Counter-Earth Saga is an Over-Abundance of…

An Experiment in Gor: What Are John Norman’s Books About, Really? The Hidden Secret of the Counter-Earth Saga is an Over-Abundance of…

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tarnsman_of_gor_vallejo_coverI’m positive that I read the first book in the [Counter-Earth Saga/Tarl Cabot Saga/Chronicles of Counter-Earth/Gorean Cycle/Gorean Saga/take your pick], sometime back in junior high. That would be Tarnsman of Gor, first published in 1966 by Ballantine, which recounts how Earth professor Tarl Cabot is mysteriously transported to our solar system’s hidden tenth planet orbiting the sun in a position exactly counter to Earth’s. There he encounters a Barsoomian-inspired sword-and-planet environment. He quickly adapts, becoming a Gorean swordsman and assimilating into the culture of his adopted planet.

If I read any of the sequels, I can’t recall — although I remember enjoying the first book, at least the first part of it recounting Talbot’s strange experiences (involving a mysterious package, I believe) and subsequent relocation to another world. As The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), a huge tome sitting here on my bookshelf, notes, the first Gor books were passable Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches, and that’s the impression I came away with too. As a boy, I was a huge fan of ERB’s John Carter of Mars stories and was looking for something else along those lines.

The Encyclopedia goes on to condemn later volumes in the series (which now total 34), noting that they “degenerate into extremely sexist, sadomasochistic pornography involving the ritual humiliation of women, and as a result have caused widespread offence.” DAW, which published the series from volumes 7 through 25, apparently dropped Norman for this reason (Naughty Norman!), and the subsequent 9 volumes are only available in e-book editions.

As a collector and purveyor of vintage sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks, I happen to have several Gor books sitting in a pile here beside my office desk. I will be posting them to eBay soon. I have, on occasion, picked one up and opened it at random to read a paragraph or two.

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Go Ahead. Judge The Starlit Wood by its Cover

Go Ahead. Judge The Starlit Wood by its Cover

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We know not to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes it’s just so hard. You look at a book and think, Wow, I need to take a look at that. As a writer or an editor, you dream of that perfect match, of that gripping cover that perfectly conveys the story you’re eager to share, that makes people want to pick up your book. With The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, we feel we’ve been fortunate enough to get just that. We’re so thrilled with every element of the packaging of The Starlit Wood, so we wanted to share a bit about the process of creating such a lovely book.

The Starlit Wood is our love letter to fairy tales. The book is a cross-genre anthology of fairy tale retellings, featuring everything from science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic, to traditional fantasy and contemporary horror. Retellings of lesser-known fairy tales takes place alongside traditional ones, which makes for a really unique experience where the familiar and the unfamiliar co-exist. The book features established authors like Naomi Novik, Garth Nix, Seanan McGuire, and Margo Lanagan, as well as rising stars like Charlie Jane Anders, Sofia Samatar, and Daryl Gregory. The full table of contents is here.

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New Treasures: The Apothecary’s Curse by Barbara Barnett

New Treasures: The Apothecary’s Curse by Barbara Barnett

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the-apothecarys-curse-smallDo you like the TV show House? So does Barbara Barnett. In 2010 she wrote Chasing Zebras: The Unofficial Guide to House, M.D., and in 2014 she released House, M.D.: The Unofficial Guide to Season Seven.

In 2016, she channeled her love for the show into her first novel The Apothecary’s Curse, which publisher Pyr describes as “Penny Dreadful meets House, M.D. in this genre-bending urban fantasy mixes alchemy and genetics as a doctor and an apothecary try to prevent a pharmaceutical company from exploiting the book that made them immortal centuries ago.” It’s an unusual take on urban fantasy to be sure, but an intriguing one. The Apothecary’s Curse is available now in trade paperback.

In Victorian London, the fates of physician Simon Bell and apothecary Gaelan Erceldoune entwine when Simon gives his wife an elixir created by Gaelan from an ancient manuscript. Meant to cure her cancer, it kills her. Suicidal, Simon swallows the remainder — only to find he cannot die. Five years later, hearing rumors of a Bedlam inmate with regenerative powers like his own, Simon is shocked to discover it’s Gaelan. The two men conceal their immortality, but the only hope of reversing their condition rests with Gaelan’s missing manuscript.

When modern-day pharmaceutical company Transdiff Genomics unearths diaries describing the torture of Bedlam inmates, the company’s scientists suspect a link between Gaelan and an unnamed inmate. Gaelan and Transdiff Genomics geneticist Anne Shawe are powerfully drawn to each other, and her family connection to his manuscript leads to a stunning revelation. Will it bring ruin or redemption?

The Apothecary’s Curse was published by Pyr on October 11, 2016. It is 345 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital format. The cover was designed by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Invaders of Pluto, and Brain Stealers of Mars: Rich Horton on The Ultimate Weapon and The Planeteers by John W. Campbell

Invaders of Pluto, and Brain Stealers of Mars: Rich Horton on The Ultimate Weapon and The Planeteers by John W. Campbell

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When I was twelve years old I read a book that changed my life. It was Before the Golden Age, a collection of Isaac Asimov’s favorite pulp tales from his own early teen years, and it inspired in me a love of the pulps that endures to this day.

One of the most captivating stories was John W. Campbell’s “The Brain Stealers of Mars,” from the December 1936 Thrilling Wonder Stories. The intrepid explorers Penton and Blake use an atomic-powered craft to visit Mars, where they find a sinister race of shapeshifters, eager to hitch a ride back to Earth. Sort of a prototype for “Who Goes There?”, the far more famous tale which Campbell published two years later in Astounding, “Brain Stealers” is more a science fiction puzzler than a true horror story, as our blaster-wielding heroes must find a way to outsmart an entire race of scheming telepathic shapeshifters with designs on conquest.

The Planeteers is a collection of five Penton & Blake tales published in Thrilling Wonder between 1936-38, following their adventures as they explore the solar system in their gleaming atomic spacecraft, discovering the double-minded aliens of Callisto, a benign race on Europa, and the super-intelligent energy eater out beyond Pluto. It appeared as half of an Ace Double in 1966, paired with The Ultimate Weapon, a standalone tale of the desperate race against time to create super-weapons on the Moon to thwart an alien invasion.

Rich Horton reviewed both books on his blog Strange at Ecbatan back in June. Here’s what he thought.

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Future Treasures: Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Future Treasures: Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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bridging-infinity-smallJonathan Strahan’s Infinity books have gradually earned a reputation as the finest ongoing anthology series in the genre — and perhaps, one of the finest in the history of the genre. In my June article The Most Successful Anthology of 2015, I pointed out that over half of the contents of the fourth book in the series had been selected for Year’s Best volumes. If that’s not a record, it has to be close.  In just two weeks the fifth volume in the series, Bridging Infinity, arrives in trade paperback from Solaris, and I am very much looking forward to it.

BUILDING TOWARDS TOMORROW

Sense of wonder is the lifeblood of science fiction. When we encounter something on a truly staggering scale – metal spheres wrapped around stars, planets rebuilt and repurposed, landscapes re-engineered, starships bigger than worlds – the only response we have is reverence, admiration, and possibly fear at something that is grand, sublime, and extremely powerful.

Bridging Infinity puts humanity at the heart of that experience, as builder, as engineer, as adventurer, reimagining and rebuilding the world, the solar system, the galaxy and possibly the entire universe in some of the best science fiction stories you will experience.

Bridging Infinity continues the award-winning Infinity Project series of anthologies with new stories from Alastair Reynolds, Pat Cadigan, Stephen Baxter, Charlie Jane Anders, Tobias S.Buckell, Karen Lord, Karin Lowachee, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Gregory Benford, Larry Liven, Robert Reed, Pamela Sargent, Allen Steele, Pat Murphy, Paul Doherty, An Owomoyela, Thoraiya Dyer and Ken Liu.

The previous volumes in the series are:

Engineering Infinity (2010)
Edge of Infinity (2012)
Reach For Infinity (2014)
Meeting Infinity (2015)

And here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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