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The Black Gate Christmas Gift List

The Black Gate Christmas Gift List

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a-guile-of-dragons[Apologies in advance for not being politically correct enough to call this the Black Gate Holiday Gift List. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, kindly ignore this post. Or use our suggestions to buy something for yourself, we won’t tell anyone.]

If you’re a Black Gate fan, we already know a lot about you. You’re almost certainly a fantasy devotee, well-read, with impeccable taste, and accustomed to the natural adoration of your peers. Pretty close, right? And you’re probably also a procrastinator who puts off Christmas shopping until the last minute, and ends up buying Wal-Mart gift certificates on December 24.

You can do better than that. In fact, we’re here to help you. Here’s a handy list of the best fantasy books, movies, games and comics of the season, with a link to a recent review, courtesy of the editors and staff of Black Gate magazine. We have gifts for every price range, from $5 to $150. Good luck, and happy shopping!

  1. A Guile of Dragons, James Enge ($17.95)
  2. The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones ($25.99)
  3. American Science Fiction: 9 Classic Novels, edited by Gary K. Wolfe ($70)
  4. Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection ($149.98)
  5. Lords of Waterdeep, Wizards of the Coast ($49.99)
  6. The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer ($39.99)
  7. Epic: Legends of Fantasy, edited by John Joseph Adams ($17.95)
  8. A Throne of Bones, Vox Day ($4.99)
  9. Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone ($24.99)
  10. Books To Die For, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke ($29.99)

    11. …

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New Treasures: Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard

New Treasures: Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard

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obsidian-blood-smallAs a reader over 40, I have a certain responsibility to gripe about modern fantasy. To point out how things were better in my day, complain how “kids today” just don’t appreciate good writing, and dismiss current trends as crass commercialism. It’s a thankless job, but it’s been handed down to me by countless generations of grumpy old readers, and I take it seriously.

It ain’t easy, either. For one thing, I have to ignore a lot of really excellent work by Jeff VanderMeer, Neil Gaiman, Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, John Fultz, and dozens of others, just to have any kind of credibility at all. And when a trend comes along that I really like, I have to shut the hell up about it. And trust me when I tell you, it’s hard for me to shut the hell up about anything.

For example: when I was a kid, fantasy novels went out of print all the time. If you missed ’em, too bad for you — that was the price you paid for not getting hip to the best writers fast enough. You had to sit around and listen to all your friends talk about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, nodding along and gritting your teeth. (At least, that’s what I imagine it would have been like, if I’d had friends).

Not any more. These days when a popular paperback dies, it just returns months later in a new, improved format, like Gandalf the White. Or the Priceline Negotiator.

Case in point: Aliette de Bodard’s Acatl novels. The first, Servant of the Underworld, published in paperback by Angry Robot in October 2010, was a fascinating murder mystery set in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, where the end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice.

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Zenna Henderson’s The Anything Box

Zenna Henderson’s The Anything Box

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The Anything BoxAs so often happens, I was at a book fair the other week when, again as so often happens, I stumbled on a book by a writer I’d heard of at some point and about whose work I was vaguely curious. In this case, the writer was Zenna Henderson and the book was a collection of sf and fantasy short stories called The Anything Box. Which, upon reading, I found to be quite intriguing.

Henderson was born in 1917 and died in 1983. Most writing I’ve found about her online (including her homepage, her SF Encyclopedia entry, and this excellent appreciation by Bud Webster) mention some or all of the following things: that she was a Mormon, that she taught Japanese-Americans in an internment camp during World War Two, and that she was one of the few women writing sf in the 1950s under an obviously female first name. Her work has influenced Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Connie Willis.

Henderson seems to be best known for her stories about the People, refugee aliens trying to make lives for themselves on Earth. None of those pieces are in The Anything Box. These stories stand alone; most, but not all, focus on teachers, children, and domestic life. Their technique is mainly simple and direct: straight-ahead narrative prose, eschewing tricks of chronology or unreliable narrators. “Things” uses alien vocabulary extensively, and “Turn the Page” borders on a Bradbury-like expressionistic lyricism, but on the whole the book is good solid 50s commercial prose. Which does some unexpected things.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Bones of the Old Ones by Howard Andrew Jones

Black Gate Online Fiction: The Bones of the Old Ones by Howard Andrew Jones

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bones-of-the-old-ones-contest-win11

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive first look at the latest Dabir and Asim novel by Howard Andrew Jones, the acclaimed author of The Desert of Souls and Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows.

As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

To stop the cabal and save Najya, Dabir and Asim venture into the worst winter in human memory, hunted by a shape-changing assassin. The stalwart Asim is drawn irresistibly toward the beautiful Persian even as Dabir realizes she may be far more dangerous a threat than anyone who pursues them, for her enchantment worsens with the winter. As their opposition grows, Dabir and Asim have no choice but to ally with their deadliest enemy, the treacherous Greek necromancer, Lydia. But even if they can trust one another long enough to escape their foes, it may be too late for Najya, whose soul is bound up with a vengeful spirit intent on sheathing the world in ice for a thousand years….

Howard is also the author of The Desert of Souls, Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, and the short collection The Waters of Eternity. His stories of Dabir and Asim have appeared in a variety of publications over the last ten years, and led to his invitation to join the editorial staff of Black Gate magazine in 2004, where he has served as Managing Editor ever since. He blogs regularly at the Black Gate web site and maintains a web outpost of his own at www.howardandrewjones.com.

Dabir and Asim first appeared here in “Sight of Vengeance” (from Black Gate 10), and “Whispers From the Stone,” (Black Gate 12). They are some of the most popular stories to appear in our pages.

The Bones of the Old Ones is published by Thomas Dunne Books. It is a 307-page hardcover available for $25.99 ($12.99 ePub and PDF), and will be released on December 11. Learn more at Macmillan.com.

Read the first two chapters of The Bones of the Old Ones here.

Dive Into a Bleak Future with Anomaly

Dive Into a Bleak Future with Anomaly

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anomalyReviewing a cool new book or game for Black Gate used to be easy. Sit down in my big green chair for a few hours, type up my thoughts, and then I’m free to spend the rest of the day polishing my Bone action figures.

That was before Anomaly, the massive 370-page graphic novel from Spawn artist Brian Haberlin and Pixar board member Skip Brittenham. Anomaly is a groundbreaking glimpse into the future, in more way than one.

First off, this thing is massive. The huge 7-pound hardcover is a full 15 inches by 10 inches, just slightly smaller than a Buick. Make sure you sit in a sturdy chair to read it (and maybe do some wrist exercises to limber up first). It’s so big they had to create a new publishing company just to get it out the door: Anomaly Publishing.

Second, it comes with something called Ultimate Augmented RealityTM, which means that to thoroughly experience the book I had to have the right gadgets. Following the instructions, I innocently pointed my iPhone at page 7. A 3-D image of a clicking alien popped up on my screen, moving around and making alien-guy sounds. When my son tried to flip the page, alien dude fell over.

“It’s a 3D representation that obeys the laws of gravity,” Tim noted. “Boggles the mind,” his brother Drew agreed.

Finally, Anomaly offers a more traditional glimpse into the future through its story, a space opera set in 2717, when humanity has conquered the stars and is in turn controlled by The Conglomerate, a profit-focused corporation that rules with an iron fist. Jon is a disgraced ex-enforcer for The Conglomerate, doing menial jobs in high orbit over a poisoned planet Earth, when he’s given a second chance: to protect the daughter of a high-ranking executive on a daring first contact mission. There’s more going on than meets the eye, however, and the high-stakes mission quickly goes off the rails as the explorers encounter lethal terrain, deadly mutants, strange magic, and corporate intrigue and betrayal on a mysterious world.

Anomaly is 370 pages (314 of story and another 56 of appendices) from Anomaly Publishing. It will be published December 1, 2012, with a cover price of $75. Check out the cool YouTube promo video here.

Speaking in Tongues: Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire

Speaking in Tongues: Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire

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Voice of the FireTypically in these blog posts, I write about some work of fantasy, science fiction, or horror; of fantastika. I’m not sure whether the book I want to write about this time round can be described as any of those things. It’s not always, in fact, easy to distinguish what is fantastic and what is not. Does the distinction lie in what the writer has in mind, or in how the reader interprets the text? If a man who believes himself to be a magician writes about magic, is that fantasy or mimetic fiction? The author describes the world as the author understands it. The reader, reading, then sees the world as the author does: so writing is perhaps inherently magical, a possession. All words are magic words. All stories are true.

“All stories are true”: that’s a quote from Alan Moore, writer of classic comics like Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and From Hell. Writer also of a prose novel called Voice of the Fire. Except technically it’s not a novel, unless really it is. Moore’s Voice tells twelve tales set in his home city of Northumberland, stretching across six millennia. Each in a different era, each a different first-person narrator. Language and style shift with the passing years. But imagery and motifs bind the thing together. Repeated actions echo across centuries. Spirits, or things like spirits, are perceived; also ghosts of times past or to come. Moments of inspiration, fires in the heads, reveal distorted visions like shadows cast against the far side of a movie screen. Stories are told, all one, but sure interpretation eludes the consciousness of the Platonic audience, sitting in the dark and throwing cold popcorn between their jaws. One must resignedly surrender linearity, rationality, understanding, and submit to the flashes of language that rush on and double back, making a lattice of meaning too large to hold in consciousness.

If the book works. I go back and forth on whether the thing succeeds as well as it might. But even to wonder is perhaps a sign of success. It is a maddening work of language: change caught in language, language as agent of change, change worked on language over time.

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New Treasures: Crown of Vengeance by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

New Treasures: Crown of Vengeance by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

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crown-of-vengeance-smallHere’s an uncomfortable admission: I’ve never read anything by Mercedes Lackey. I know that seems improbable, just statistically speaking — she’s written, by my count, somewhere around 100 fantasy novels. If you’re a fantasy fan, you’re bound to read one sooner or later.

I have no excuse. If it helps, I’m a Canadian, and the traditions and culture of your America are strange to me. But I’m coming up to speed.

There’s no better way to try a new author than when she launches a new series, and that’s exactly what Lackey has done this month with Crown of Vengeance, the first novel in The Dragon Prophecy, co-authored with James Mallory.

Mallory isn’t as well known as Mercedes Lackey, but he’s no slouch. He’s the author of the Merlin trilogy, based on the Sam Neill mini-series, and in collaboration with Lackey he’s written both the Eternal Flame trilogy — including the New York Times bestseller, The Phoenix Transformed — and the Obsidian trilogy. If you like trilogies, Mallory’s your guy.

Although the flap copy is a little coy about it, anybody who pays attention to Amazon reviews will learn that Crown is a prequel to both the Eternal Flame and Obsidian trilogies. Okay by me, I’m still trying to come up to speed here. Besides, the marketing copy included with the book tells me “No previous knowledge of Lackey and Mallory’s collaborations is necessary to enjoy this fast-paced, action packed novel.”

Between the Mercedes Lackey connection, marketing copy that includes the words “action packed,” and the late-stage melee on the cover, I’m pretty much sold. And I don’t even know what the book is about yet. I read the front jacket, and it said something about elves, demons, legends, astonishing magics, forces of Light, and the Endarkened. Got it. Bring on the archers and the leaping horses.

Crown of Vengeance was published by Tor Books on November 13. It is 605 pages in hardcover priced at $27.99, or $13.49 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: The Beast with Five Fingers by W.F. Harvey

Vintage Treasures: The Beast with Five Fingers by W.F. Harvey

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the-beast-with-five-fingersTwo weeks ago, I mentioned The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror, by Edith Nesbit, a volume in the Wordsworth Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural (or, as we prefer to call it, TOMAToS).

I first discovered Wordsworth’s excellent Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural line, believe it or not, wandering the floor at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in Chicago with fellow pulp aficionados Howard Andrew Jones and John C. Hocking. We’d just passed a dealer selling omnibus collections of Ki-Gor reprints — which heartily tempted Howard, let me tell you — when Hocking became distracted by a thick volume on display amidst a vast sea of books: The Beast With Five Fingers, by W.F. Harvey.

I’d never heard of Harvey, although he’s fairly well-known in pulp circles for the short story that became The Beast With Five Fingers, a 1946 creeping-hand horror flick starring Peter Lorre. Hocking’s excitement had nothing to do with the cover story however, and everything to do with “The Clock,” which he described as one of the finest horror stories ever written. That was enough for me, and I took home a copy.

Hocking is not alone in his admiration. In Gahan Wilson’s anthology Favorite Tales of Horror, which includes “The Clock,” Wilson famously wrote:

I think that for sheer menace this is the most powerful story I have ever read, though exactly what it is that is menacing, and exactly what it is menacing to do are entirely mysterious.

I’m happy to say that the story lives up to its reputation. It’s a tiny marvel, splendidly written, about a mysterious and macabre encounter in an abandoned home. Or is it? Like much of the best gothic fiction, exactly what happened is open to interpretation.

But there’s more to The Beast with Five Fingers than just “The Clock” — much more — and I’m happy to say I’ve been enjoying the entire book. (If you’re not the patient sort, however, the complete text of “The Clock” is available online.)

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Fools in the Hotzone: Saruman as the Bold but Incompetent Firefighter

Fools in the Hotzone: Saruman as the Bold but Incompetent Firefighter

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unfinished-talesEvery year the Man sends me to Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response class. These HAZWOPER classes are almost always taught by firefighters because they routinely deal with emergency responses to hazardous materials.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a trend in the way they teach the course — that most of the examples of what not to do when knee-deep in an emergency dealing with hazardous materials comes from the hard lessons of other firefighters. More specifically, they come from the gung-ho firefighters who charge into a dangerous situation, make said situation worse, and other firefighters have to spend time and energy rescuing them instead of dealing with the main problem.

Because I’m a nerd, and I’ve taken this class a lot over the years and my mind wanders, I immediately saw a parallel to the wizards of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

Background? Surely:

So at the end of the Second Age, Sauron has completely corrupted the men of Númenor, causing their destruction and his own. Because you can’t keep a good Miaiar down, and especially an extremely bad one like Sauron, he’ll be back. Which is why the Valar of the Utermost West decided to select three of their number to go to middle earth and “deal” with the problem of Sauron’s inevitable return.

From The Return of the King:

They came therefore in the shape of Men, though they were never young and aged only slowly, and they had many powers of mind and hand. The two highest of this order (of whom it is said there were five) were called by the Eldar (elves) Curunir ‘the Man of Skill’, and Mithrandir, ‘the Grey Pilgrim’, but by Men in the North Saruman and Gandalf.

Notice how the original number of three swelled to five? That’s what happens when divine beings make decisions by committee. However, the details of those proceedings are important — nay crucial — in understanding Saruman’s supreme arrogance and the depth of his magnificent solution to the Sauron problem.

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A Weird Fiction Kindle Story Giveaway

A Weird Fiction Kindle Story Giveaway

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She Who RunsSleepless, Burning LifeStolen Souls

Hello, Black Gate denizens. Mike Allen here of the Monstrous Posts on Monsters and the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies.

John O’Neill has asked me to write you folks a follow up on how the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter I told you about earlier this year turned out (SPOILER ALERT: it was a smashing success) and share tips on some of the tricks I learned. I’ve got something laden with all sorts of graphics that I’ll post for you later in the week.

However, this is not that post!

John has also given me permission to plug the Kindle story promotion that I’m in the midst of. (John is a generous guy. Charming, too!) There is some topical relevance, as there’s an excerpt from my weird fantasy novel The Black Fire Concerto slated to appear in the Black Gate online fiction lineup in the not-too-distant future, so here’s a way to get a sample of what I do.

So here’s how it goes: through Tuesday night, I’m offering my weird science fiction novelette “Stolen Souls,” my weird fantasy story “She Who Runs” and my even weirder clockpunk novelette “Sleepless, Burning Life” free to all through Amazon Kindle. Just click on the story titles or the cover art above to nab them. (And if you’re interested but don’t have a Kindle, e-mail me and we’ll work something out.)

And if you’re an aspiring author curious what insights I might have on the freebie Kindle experience, I have an entry sharing my thoughts so far. But feel free to ask me questions, too.