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Black Gate Online Fiction: Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong

Black Gate Online Fiction: Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong

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Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong, published in deluxe trade paperback and digital formats this month by Perseid Press. Here’s Janet Morris, publisher of Perseid.

Is Truck Struck Earth a memoir? Science fiction? New Pulp? Paranormal (or paranoid) fantasy? Noir in the Shaver tradition? UFOlogy? Magical realism? Social Commentary? Black humor? We dunno. But we’re proud to bring you this tough, dangerous book that breaks every rule you thought separated true from false, good from bad, and literature from trash.

Michael A. Armstrong’s first novel was After the Zap. His short fiction has been published in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Science Fiction, Fiction Quarterly, and various anthologies, including Not of Woman Born, a Philip K. Dick award nominee, and several Heroes In Hell anthologies. His other novels include Agviq, The Hidden War, and Bridge Over Hell, part of the Perseid Press Heroes in Hell universe.

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The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

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The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Berkley 1967-small Astounding Tales of Space and Time Berkley 1967-small

The lifecycle of a modern anthology ain’t that complicated. It comes out in hardcover or trade paperback from a small press, stays in print for 5-6 years or so — or until the small press suffers a horrible death, whichever comes first — and then vanishes, popping up thereafter only on eBay and at SF conventions, like a Star Trek action figure.

It didn’t always used to be this way. Used to be that anthologies would appear originally in hardcover, just like real books, and then get reprinted in paperback (also, just like real books). And sometimes those paperbacks would get multiple editions over the decades. (No, I’m not joking. And yes, I know we’re talking about anthologies.)

But go back father than that, to the beginnings of American publishing itself — scholars of this dark and mysterious period are conflicted about actual dates, but in general we’re talking about the 1940s and 50s — and we enter a time when paperbacks had a fixed upper page limit. So how did these primitive cave-dwelling publishers reprint popular volumes, like for example John Campbell’s 600-page beast The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (Simon & Schuster, 1952), when the typical paperback of the era contained barely 100 pages?

No easy task, but our intrepid publishing forefathers found a way. They broke the book up into two volumes and, because giving them similar names would have been just too easy, gave the paperback editions completely different titles. Thus the groundbreaking hardcover edition of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology spawned two paperbacks: The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology  and Astounding Tales of Space and Time, both of which remained in print in various editions for years, confusing collectors like yours truly for decades. Let’s have a closer look, because I ended up buying all seven of the damn things before I figured out they were all the same book, and they might as well be useful for something.

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New Treasures: In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, edited by Stephen Jones

New Treasures: In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, edited by Stephen Jones

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In the Shadow of Frankenstein Tales of the Modern Prometheus-smallMary W. Shelley’s gothic horror masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was published in 1818, shortly after the author turned 20. As we approach the 200th anniversary of one of the greatest horror novels in history, we can expect to see plenty of tribute volumes. But for my money, the only one you need is Stephen Jones’ massive In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus, a 712-page tome which collects pulp stories from Astounding and Weird Tales, modern riffs on the legend of Frankenstein, and three complete novels.

Frankenstein… His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments, and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world’s most famous creature lives again.

Here are collected together for the first time twenty-four electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest — with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow, and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and new contributions from Graham Masterson, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton. Plus, you’re sure to get a charge from three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and Mary W. Shelley’s original masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it’s time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know.

In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus is a revised an updated edition of The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Carroll & Graf, 1994), and if you have that volume, you probably don’t need this one. This new hardcover edition adds a new Foreword by Neil Gaiman and one new story, Stephen Volk’s “Celebrity Frankenstein,” from Postscripts 28/29 (2012), bringing the total to 24 stories. Diabolique Magazine calls the new edition “a stunning array of stories;” check out their complete review here. In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus was published by Pegasus Books on July 5, 2016. It is 712 pages, priced at $27.95 in hardcover and $26.23 for the digital edition.

To Ride a Rathorn by P. C. Hodgell

To Ride a Rathorn by P. C. Hodgell

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oie_11225225XvvToolIt’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally returned to P. C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath Cycle, with the fourth book, To Ride a Rathorn. A rathorn is a deadly, carnivorous, horned, horse-like animal covered in heavy plates of ivory. For the Kencyrath, to ride a rathorn is to try to do something insane, and our heroine Jame is about to do just that. She has accepted her destiny as a crucial element of the final showdown with Perimal Darkling, a world-devouring force of chaos and evil. At the same time, several forces are arrayed against her: the enemies of her family, the weight of millennia of traditions, and terrible agents of utter darkness. Instead of just crawling away and hiding, Jame has decided to take on all comers, and figuratively — and perhaps literally — ride a rathorn.

Four books in, to say the series is complicated is like saying the sun is hot or the oceans wet. Hodgell has created one of the densest and tremendously detailed fantasy settings, and to even look at this book without having read its predecessors just might make a reader’s brain explode. But as I often ask: have you taken my advice and read the other books yet? Because you should have by now. To get a better understanding of what’s gone on before, you can read my reviews of the first three — God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, and Seeker’s Mask — right here at Black Gate. If you don’t have time, though, here’s a relatively brief synopsis:

Thirty thousand years ago, Perimal Darkling began to devour the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. To fight against it, the Three-Faced God forged three separate races into one; feline-like Arrin-Ken to serve as judges, the heavily muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen, and the fine-featured humanoid Highborn to rule them. For 27,000 years, the Kencyrath fought a losing battle, one universe after another falling to the darkness. Three thousand years ago, the High Lord Gerridon, fearful of death, betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. Fleeing yet again, the Kencyrath landed on the world of Rathilien. Since then, they haven’t heard from their god, and Perimal Darkling has seemed satisfied to lurk at the edges of their new home. Monotheists trapped on an alien world with many gods, the Kencyrath have had to struggle to find their own place and survive on Rathilien.

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Future Treasures: Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer

Future Treasures: Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer

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Swords v Cthulhu-smallAre you a Lovecraft fan? Are you just a little bit tired of nodding to yourself at the 5-page mark at every tale, thinking, “Well, this is going to end horribly.” And are you tired of being right every single time?

If you are, you’re not alone. And editors Jesse Bullington (The Enterprise of Death) and Molly Tanzer (Vermilion) have the answer: Swords v Cthulhu, a collection of brand new sword & sorcery Mythos fiction by a stellar list of contributors — including Black Gate authors Jonathan L. Howard and Jeremiah Tolbert, plus Michael Cisco, John Hornor Jacobs, John Langan, E. Catherine Tobler, Carrie Vaughn, and many others — featuring stalwart adventurers squaring off against the greatest horrors of the Lovecraftian pantheon. Okay, sure, most of the tales within probably still end horribly. By at least the protagonists go down swinging!

What hope has a humble adventurer when faced with a fight against Cthulhu himself? No matter; the true swordsperson cares not for hope — only for the bite of steel against flesh, whether that flesh be eldritch or more conventional. So, grab your khukuri knife, your iklwa spear, or a legendary blade and journey with us from ancient Rome to feudal Japan, from the Dreamlands to lands there are no names for in any of the tongues of men.

If you have any doubts, inside this tome you can consult ask some of Lovecraftiana’s hottest voices, be they seasoned veterans or relative newcomers… Hope be damned. Glory awaits!

Relentlessly hurtling you into madness and danger are: Natania Barron, Eneasz Brodski, Nathan Carson, Michael Cisco, Andrew S. Fuller, A. Scott Glancy, Orrin Grey, Jason Heller, Jonathan L. Howard, John Hornor Jacobs , John Langan, L. Lark, Remy Nakamura, Carlos Orsi, M. K. Sauer, Ben Stewart, E. Catherine Tobler, Jeremiah Tolbert, Laurie Tom, Carrie Vaughn, Wendy N. Wagner, and Caleb Wilson.

Swords v. Cthulhu: Swift Bladed Action in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft will be published by Stone Skin Press on August 1, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $13.99 in paperback. No news yet on a separate digital edition. See more details at the Stone Skin website, including teaser excerpts from many of the stories.

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. Also Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, and a Tangent on Modernism

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. Also Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, and a Tangent on Modernism

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Astro_City_A_Visitors_Guide_Vol_1_1This is mostly an homage to Kurt Busiek and Astro City, and to one story in particular, but buckle in because we’re going to cover a lot of rambling ground getting there in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way, taking in stuff by random association — sort of like the streets of Astro City itself…

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is one of my favorite superhero comics. It consistently delivers brilliant, funny, poignant, human stories in a colorful, wonderfully idiosyncratic comic-book world. It is Busiek’s magnum opus — like Bendis’s Powers, it towers above his other work for the big publishers using their branded characters. He brings the sensibilities he honed in the groundbreaking Marvel miniseries Marvels to his own universe and, beneath all the ZAP! BANG! POW!, weaves tales you will never forget.

What Marvels did that was so fresh in 1994 is it “lowered the camera” from the god-like supers knocking each other through buildings and focused in on the ordinary humans down here at street level, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, watching it happen. What impact did the existence of such powers have on their day-to-day lives?

In Astro City the camera is completely unfettered, ranging to the heights to reveal very human dramas among people who have the power to level cities and then zooming down to the alleys to follow a day in the life of a two-bit petty thief who is really a pretty ordinary, decent human being (with the exception that his skin is covered with a steel alloy). Through the course of following Carl Donewicz, aka Steeljack — in the classic story “The Tarnished Angel” — we come to sympathize with and like him, and even find ourselves rooting for him: just once, could one of his heists go off without a hitch and not be foiled by The Jack-in-the-Box? And in Astro City, where narratives don’t always follow the comic-book formula, he does have his day. A fun, feel-good story, that one.

And then there are Astro City stories that rip your heart out. “The Nearness of You,” I contend, is among the great American short stories of the late twentieth century, and I think it could be anthologized as such. (Wizard Magazine does rank it number 6 on their list of “100 Greatest Single Issue Comic Books Since You Were Born.”) Publishers these days would have no problem formatting a four-color comic story into their prose collections. But should they? It is, after all, a comic book.

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New Treasures: Invaders edited by Jacob Weisman

New Treasures: Invaders edited by Jacob Weisman

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Invaders Jacob Weisman-small Invaders Jacob Weisman-back-small

When I was at the Nebula Awards weekend I had a chance to catch up with my friend Jacob Weisman, publisher of Tachyon Books, and I asked him about his upcoming anthology Invaders: 22 Tales From the Outer Limits of Literature. I had assumed it was a collection of alien invasion tales but, as he patiently explained to me, that’s not it at all. Jacob has gathered a superb batch of stories by literary authors who have invaded science fiction — and left distinct footprints behind. Here’s the Publishers Weekly review.

In this very fine reprint anthology, Weisman has brought together 22 SF stories by authors who, although not generally associated with the genre, are clearly fellow travelers (not the ominous invaders suggested by the title). Among the major names are Pulitzer Prize–winner Junot Díaz, George Saunders, Katherine Dunn, Jonathan Lethem, Amiri Baraka, W.P. Kinsella, Steven Millhauser, Robert Olen Butler, and Molly Gloss. Among the best of the consistently strong stories are Díaz’s “Monstro,” the horrifying tale of a disease outbreak in Haiti; Gloss’s near-perfect first-contact story, “Lambing Season”; Kinsella’s totally bizarre “Reports Concerning the Death of the Seattle Albatross Are Somewhat Exaggerated”; Ben Loory’s fable-like “The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun”; and Saunders’s “Escape from Spiderhead,” a deeply sexy tale of wild experimental science. In general, the stories tend toward satire and emphasize fine writing more than hitting genre beats — technology is usually a means to an end rather than the center of the story — but most of them could easily have found homes in SF magazines. This volume is a treasure trove of stories that draw equally from SF and literary fiction, and they are superlative in either context.

Here’s the complete table of contents.

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Future Treasures: The Race by Nina Allen

Future Treasures: The Race by Nina Allen

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The Race Nina Allen-smallI quite enjoy Nina Allen’s regular column in Interzone magazine. Which I guess is kind of an odd way to introduce her, but it’s true. She’s also a fine short story writer who’s earned a lot of accolades in a short period of time — including the British Science Fiction BSFA Award, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and the Aeon Award. She’s been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award four times, and was a finalist for the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award.

The Race is her first novel. It was first published in the UK by NewCon, a small press. Tor.com described it as “a progressive sci-fi novel set in a future Great Britain scarred by fracking and ecological collapse,” and Kirkus Reviews praised it as “a brilliantly weird world that’s utterly riveting.” Titan Books is re-issuing it in trade paperback in the UK and the US this month, with a knockout new cover designed by Julia Lloyd. Here’s the description.

A child is kidnapped with consequences that extend across worlds… A writer reaches into the past to discover the truth about a possible murder… Far away a young woman prepares for her mysterious future…

In a future scarred by fracking and ecological collapse, Jenna Hoolman’s world is dominated by illegal smartdog racing: greyhounds genetically modified with human DNA. When her young niece goes missing that world implodes… Christy’s life is dominated by fear of her brother, a man she knows capable of monstrous acts and suspects of hiding even darker ones. Desperate to learn the truth she contacts Alex, who has his own demons to fight… And Maree, a young woman undertaking a journey that will change her world forever.

The Race will be published by Titan Books on July 19, 2016. It is 400 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd. Read a brief excerpt from Chapter One at Tor.com.

John DeNardo: In Defense of Media Tie-Ins (Part 1)

John DeNardo: In Defense of Media Tie-Ins (Part 1)

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Dan Abnett Eisenhorn-smallJohn DeNardo has closed up shop at his Hugo Award-winning blog SF Signal, but he continues to write about SF and fantasy in his regular column at Kirkus Reviews. One of his best recent articles — indeed, one of the most enjoyable blog posts I’ve read in a long time — was his passionate and articulate defense of Media Tie-ins, published on June 15.

As much as I bemoan the poor public of image of science fiction by mainstream readers, there’s an even worse injustice going on. Some people in those very same slighted genre circles are often quick to dismiss a certain type of book: media tie-ins. These are the books that are based on a story most often found in another media (like film, television, and games) but could be sourced from other literary properties as well. These are the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dungeons and Dragons prose novels that the bookstores like to relegate to the end of the science fiction and fantasy bookshelf section. They are positioned like an appendix in a non-fiction book “in case you’re interested in more reading.” You know, if you’ve run out of other things to read…

So, yes, media tie-ins are worth your time. I’ll even back that up: one of the best set of books I’ve ever read — in any genre — was the Eisenhorn trilogy by Dan Abnett. The books are set in the richly-imagined Warhammer 40K universe, which is based on the popular role playing game. (Even WH40K itself is an offshoot of the fantasy RPG Warhammer, for which there are even more prose novels.)  Abnett is a one of the most skilled master storytellers you’ve never heard of.  This is the series that I point to when anyone is quick to dismiss tie-in fiction. The fact that it is set in the Warhammer 40K universe is incidental, though if you are familiar with the games, that would be an added bonus when you read them. I don’t play the game, but that didn’t stop me from losing sleep because I couldn’t stop turning page after action-packed page, or cheering when a bad guy finally got his comeuppance.

Read John’s complete article here.

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