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Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2020, edited by Rich Horton

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2020, edited by Rich Horton

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The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2020,
edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, June 2021). Cover by Argus

The print version of Rich Horton’s 12th Year’s Best volume was delayed roughly six months by the pandemic, and it finally arrives next week. The delay was a little frustrating for those of us who look forward to this book every year, but considering how deeply the pandemic impacted the publishing world overall, I figure it could have been a lot worse. (The digital version has been available since December, but I remain stubbornly a print guy.)

Rich’s introductions to the early volumes belonged to the get-out-of-the-way-and let-the-fiction-do-the-talking school, but over the years they’ve loosened up a bit, and this year’s is one of his best, a lively and thoughtful look at the impact of this very eventful year on science fiction, and some thoughts on famous genre pandemic fiction. Here’s part of his comments on the tales within.

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Sword & Planet is Back! Scott Oden Presents: The Lost Empire of Sol, edited by Jason M Waltz and Fletcher Vredenburgh

Sword & Planet is Back! Scott Oden Presents: The Lost Empire of Sol, edited by Jason M Waltz and Fletcher Vredenburgh

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Cover art by M. D. Jackson

This reviews Scott Oden Presents: The Lost Empire of Sol brought to you by the Rogue Blades Foundation. This is a fine collection that certainly achieved its mission of inserting a jolt into Sword & Planet offerings. With its interesting premise and cast of authors, The Lost Empire of Sol is destined to become a historic Sword & Planet anthology.

It is edited by two who are well known to the Black Gate community. Firstly, Jason M. Waltz, champion of Rogue Blades Entertainment and the Rogue Blades Foundation, is notorious for rounding up contemporary authors in themed anthologies (perhaps most well known for the 2008 Sword & Sorcery classic Return of the Sword …. and most currently known for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life releasing ~now (appropriately on June 11th, REH’s anniversary of passing). And we also have Fletcher Vredenburgh, well known for his outstanding reviews, who provides the “Foreword”: he explains how discussions on Facebook with Scott Oden (adored author of historical fiction, Conan pastiche, and the Grimnir series) escalated into this collection.  Also, to dimension the genre and set the stage for a revival is the esteemed John O’Neill (our esteemed chief editor of Black Gate Magazine) provides an introductory essay “Sword & Planet is the Genre We Need.” 

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Vintage Treasures: Stellar Fist by Geo. W. Proctor

Vintage Treasures: Stellar Fist by Geo. W. Proctor

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Stellar Fist (Ace, 1989). Cover by Martin Andrews

George Wyatt Proctor (1946 – 2008) was an prolific Texas author who produced some two dozen novels and collections after he retired from The Dallas Morning News in 1976. He wrote both science fiction and westerns, and collaborated with a host of well known writers, including Arthur C. Clarke, Howard Waldrop, and Steven Utley. With Robert E. Vardeman he produced nine Swords of Raemllyn sword & sorcery novels in the 80s and 90s, and with Andrew J. Offutt he contributed two novels to the Spaceways series (as John Cleve). In 1985 he wrote two novels in the long-running series V, based on the hit NBC series.

Stellar Fist was his last standalone science fiction novel, following Fire at the Center (1981) and Starwings (1984). From a modern perspective, it’s pretty much exactly what you expect from an 80s military SF novel. But that may not be a bad thing, as put so eloquently in this 2-star Goodreads review by Mark.

This book was pretty much awful, but I found myself really enjoying it — from the ridiculous interstellar-sexpot-spy-turned-time-traveling-lounge-singer-returned-interstellar-spy to the last 20 pages of complete story- and character-breaking chaos. Would highly recommend reading it if you’ve got a sense of humor and nothing better lying around.

That reads like a solid recommendation in my book.

Stellar Fist was published by Ace Books in January 1989. It’s 229 pages, priced $3.50. The cover is by Martin Andrews. It has never been reprinted, which really isn’t very surprising.

See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

New Treasures: Hooting Grange by Jeffrey E. Barlough

New Treasures: Hooting Grange by Jeffrey E. Barlough

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Hooting Grange, eleventh volume in Jeffrey E. Barlough’s Northern Lights series,
published March 2021 by Gresham & Doyle. Cover “The Close Gate” by Ernest William Haslehust.

One of the most popular fantasy series in the Black Gate offices these days doesn’t come from a major Manhattan publisher. In fact, it doesn’t come from traditional publishing at all. For the last 23 years Jeffrey E. Barlough has quietly been writing one of the strongest and most unusual fantasy epics on the market, put out by tiny California publishing house Gresham and Doyle.

Jackson Kuhl describes the eleven volume Northern Lights series as “kinda-sorta gaslamp fantasy, except there doesn’t seem to be any natural gas. Barlough’s creation is best described as a Victorian Dying Earth — gothic and claustrophobic… mastodons and mylodons mixed with ghosts and gorgons.”

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Goth Chick News: Sharpen Your Pencils, Here Comes Your Summer Reading List

Goth Chick News: Sharpen Your Pencils, Here Comes Your Summer Reading List

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The Bram Stoker Awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the winners are selected by ballot from the active members of the Horror Writers Association (HWA). Several members of the HWA were originally reluctant to endorse such writing awards, fearing it would incite competitiveness rather than friendly admiration. The HWA has therefore gone to great lengths to avoid mean-spirited competition by specifically seeking out new or overlooked writers and works, and officially issuing awards not based on “best of the year” criteria but for “superior achievement,” which allows for ties.

Any work of horror first published in the English language may be considered for an award during the year of its publication. The categories for which a Bram Stoker Award may be presented have varied over the years, reflecting the state of the publishing industry and the horror genre and the twelve current award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, and Short Nonfiction.

On May 24th the HWA announced the winners for the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards.

Black Gate and Goth Chick News would like to congratulate the following authors and editors for their superior achievements and suggest you start loading up your Amazon wish list immediately.

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What Makes Us Human, the Challenges of Writing Cultures in Deep Time, and Important Skills Learned as a Party Clown: An Interview with Benjamin Rosenbaum

What Makes Us Human, the Challenges of Writing Cultures in Deep Time, and Important Skills Learned as a Party Clown: An Interview with Benjamin Rosenbaum

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Benjamin Rosenbaum has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards and is the author of the short story collection The Ant King and Other Stories. (The Ant King was the first story of his I ever read.) He also created the Ennie-nominated Jewish historical fantasy tabletop roleplaying game Dream Apart and is the co-host of the podcast Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans. His stories have been translated into 25 languages.

He and I were in the Clarion West class hailed as the future of science fiction. Three Black women, three Asian women (including me), three Jewish men (including Ben), people from five different countries altogether: nowadays that may seem quaint, and that’s part of what we talk about in this interview. The world has changed a lot and as an author always exploring the limits of what it is to be human, Ben has gotten a front row seat to the challenge of asking questions that are relevant not just now, but ten years from now. Edgy questions about gender in one decade can become absurdly sexist by the next. Gender is one of the many concepts he explores in his upcoming novel, The Unraveling.

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Vintage Treasures: The Empire of Kaz by Leslie Gadallah

Vintage Treasures: The Empire of Kaz by Leslie Gadallah

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Cat’s Pawn and Cat’s Gambit (Del Rey, 1987 and 1990). Covers by Barclay Shaw

Canadian writer Leslie Gadallah isn’t well known today. She produced a handful of novels in the late 80s for Del Rey, including two books in a highly regarded space opera, Cat’s Pawn and its sequel Cat’s Gambit, the first volumes in what’s now called the Empire of Kaz trilogy. Here’s an excerpt from Delia Sherman’s enthusiastic coverage in the May 1987 issue of Fantasy Review.

Cat’s Pawn is a first novel in the aliens-befriends-human mode. The plotting is masterful. The novel is made up of three complexly interrelated stories, and Gadallah moves easily among them, revealing what we need to know just when we need to know it. Bill Anderson, a linguist. suffers a heart-attack after the starship he is on is captured by pirates. Taran, a cat-like Orian diplomat, keeps him alive, rescues him, heals him, and generally takes a disconcerting interest in his health and welfare. When Bill moves to the port city of Space Central, he is taken up by its villainous boss Steven Black, who blackmails him into agreeing to assassinate Taran. Woven into all this is a plot to take over the galaxy by a race of murderous bugs…

Cat’s Pawn is always exciting. It is smoothly written and deals forthrightly with the question of how basic xenophobia is to human nature. And toward the end there are a coupe of scenes in the deserts of Orion which are truly strange and wonderful

Gadallah, now in her 80s, is — according to recent interviews at least — still writing.

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A Calm Book for a Mad Time: Inherit The Stars by James P. Hogan

A Calm Book for a Mad Time: Inherit The Stars by James P. Hogan

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Inherit the Stars (Del Rey, 1990 reprint). Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet

James P. Hogan’s Giant’s Trilogy has been a presence at my parents’ house since the late 70s. Sometimes on the shelf, sometimes on the coffee table, sometimes on the end table. I had to move my mom into assisted living last year and in sorting the books (oh, the books!) into ‘take with her,’ ‘move on,’ and ‘keep for myself,’ I gently slipped them into the ‘keep for myself’ pile, and now, two years later, I have started to read them.

Inherit the Stars is very much a book of its time, and its time is 1976. My views are split: the ideas that make up the book are very good, but the actual story? Dull. There is no real tension, no villain (more on this later), no real action. Nobody’s spacesuit ruptures, nobody’s virgin-launch spaceship has a glitch. This is a book about ideas and that’s it. I sometimes got an image in my mind of Isaac Asimov reading Inherit the Stars and having to light up a post-idea cigarette.

As frequent readers of my reviews will know, I have very little desire to write spoiler-free reviews of 44-year-old books. New readers, be warned.

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Dinosaurs, Steampunk, and an Indiana Jones-style Adventure: Turn Over the Moon by Ryan Harvey

Dinosaurs, Steampunk, and an Indiana Jones-style Adventure: Turn Over the Moon by Ryan Harvey

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Sorrowful and Sorrowless Fear neither Moon nor Sun,

Side by side, we flip the stones…

…Until both can claim we’ve won.

Last October, Black Gate alerted folks to the Turn Over the Moon’s Kickstarter campaign which brought Ryan Harvey’s world of Ahn-Tarqa into novel form (with Dream Tower Media). That journey began a decade prior and we’ll cover the ancillary tales leading up to that. Although a prequel and side stories exist, be assured that the novel feels designed to be the gateway into this Sorrow-laden world. Have no fear (or Sorrow) and enter here (with Turn Over the Moon).

The subtitle “Saga of the Sorrowless Book #1” had me gearing up for an epic fantasy in which (a) most mysteries would resolve in subsequent books and (b) the pace may be slower than the short stories I typically read. That would have been fine, of course, but Harvey (who already has proven himself a master of the short form) pleasantly delivers a cross-breed of short-story style with typical novel form: there are mysteries, but you get to learn them speedily, and the pace is super-charged. The opening chapters will have you wondering (no worries, no spoilers here): (1) who are the Shapers, (2) how the heck does the prevailing Sorrow connect to the heroine, world, and conflict, and (3) who is the mystery woman? I won’t tell you here but rejoice in knowing that the revelations are engaging and explained satisfyingly within the covers.

“The Shapers can reach me in my dreams. I escaped their clutches once, but in the blackness of sleep they tear open the walls of my head and slither inside. In each nightmare they glare down on me as they once glared down on all the land, from the edge of the eastern desert to the dwindling tip of the western peninsula. As they once glared down on my father, bound across his own workbench for their tortures. Even though their eyes are drowned within the dark slits of their masks, I can feel their stares. The robes hiding their bodies flutter around me in a barrier. There is nothing beyond.” — the teenage heroine Belde

Abandon all Sorrow, all ye who enter here!

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Criminal Dragons and a Brotherhood of Thieves: The Broken God, Book 3 of The Black Iron Legacy by Gareth Hanrahan

Criminal Dragons and a Brotherhood of Thieves: The Broken God, Book 3 of The Black Iron Legacy by Gareth Hanrahan

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The Black Iron Legacy trilogy (Orbit Books). Cover art by Richard Anderson

Gareth Hanrahan first got my attention with his top-notch work in the RPG industry for Ashen Stars, Trail of Cthulhu, and Traveller. That served him well when he released his breakout debut novel The Gutter Prayer, which was roundly praised. Holly at GrimDark Magazine wrote:

To say that the hype surrounding this book is intense would be an understatement. Anticipation levels have been through the goddamn roof… Briefly, it features three friends, thieves, who get caught up in an ongoing magical battle. Shenanigans abound…. It’s evident that Hanrahan writes role-playing games, because he took all of the best things from RPG’s & made it into something even more mesmerizing within this fantasy epic. The world building is just wondrous.

The second volume in the series. The Shadow Saint, was released in January of last year; Fantasy Inn labeled it “brilliant” and Publishers Weekly called it “epic, surreal… mixes diplomacy, espionage, and religion to excellent effect.” Volume three, The Broken God, arrives this week, and it’s one of the most anticipated fantasy releases of the year in our offices. Here’s the publisher’s description.

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