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Category: Editor’s Blog

The blog posts of Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones and Editor John O’Neill

Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces eSsassins Electronic Anthologies

Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces eSsassins Electronic Anthologies

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assassins1Jason M. Waltz at Rogue Blades Entertainment tells us the distinguished heroic fantasy publishing house has added a series of electronic anthologies to its already-crammed slate of planned publications for the year:

RBE is proud to introduce not only four additional titles under the Clash of Steel series, but its first four e-only anthologies as well! Better yet, these four e-anthologies deliver even more of the eagerly desired Assassins: A Clash of Steel print anthology to be released later in 2011! These 4 eSsassins titles carry over the same steel-bearing protagonists in dangerous, powerful prose, and the same eye-catching cover art from Didier Normand that the print anthology pledges.

Each volume in the eSsassins line will contain four stories, totalling 15,000 – 18,000 words in length.  They will be sold in multiple electronic formats for $3.00 each.

The volumes will be released monthly, starting in February.  The RBE website lists the complete contents of each upcoming volume, including stories from Laura J. Underwood, Yeoryios Pantazis, Amy Sanderson, Charles Kyffhausen, and G.K. Hayes.

RBE’s previous Clash of Steel anthology was last summer’s Demons, which I’m currently reading and quite enjoying. Cover art for each of the upcoming volumes will be unveiled soon, so keep your eye on their website for updates.

Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Announced

Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Announced

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yarnThe nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award were announced by the Philadelphia SF Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust on Tuersday, January 18.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented “for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States.” It honors the legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick, many of whose classic early novels, including Eye in the Sky, Solar Lottery, Martian Time-Slip and The Game-Players of Titan, appeared originally in paperback.

This is a juried award, so don’t bother hunting online for a way to vote. The judges for 2010 are Andy Duncan (chair), William Barton, Bruce McAllister, Melinda Snodgrass, and David Walton. The award is administered by David G. Hartwell and Gordon Van Gelder. Previous winners include William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Richard Paul Russo’s Ship of Fools, Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount, and C. L. Anderson’s Bitter Angels.

Wikipedia has a complete list of the nominees and winners for each year. Nominees this year are:

Yarn by Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books)
Chill by Elizabeth Bear (Ballantine Books/Spectra)
The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell (Henry Holt & Co.)
Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (Eos)
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder (Pyr)
Harmony by Project Itoh, translated by Alexander O. Smith (Haikasoru)
State of Decay James Knapp (Roc)

Congratulations to all the nominees! The winner will be announced on Friday, April 22, 2010.

Cloning Mammoths — Will Neanderthals be Next? (We hope so)

Cloning Mammoths — Will Neanderthals be Next? (We hope so)

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hey-a-mammothCNN is reporting that a team of Japanese, Russian and American scientists are attempting to clone a mammoth, an extinct beast from the ice age. Apparently, they’ve achieved recent breakthroughs by combining the genetic code of an elephant with the DNA of a shag carpet. The researchers hope to produce their little cloned bundle of joy within six years, which is just about as long as it took my wife Alice and I to produce a baby (if you count the three years it took to convince her to go out with me).

Mammoths are big.  Big big big. Hence, the name “mammoth.” The word comes from the Russian mamont, meaning “humongous,” or something like that. Probably. Anyway, Wikipedia reports the largest known species reached heights of 16 feet at the shoulder, and may have exceeded 12 tons. That’s four times as much as my Uncle Phil’s Hummer. Wherever they’re doing the cloning, I hope it has vaulted ceilings.  And maybe a fenced yard, so the little tyke can go outside to do his business.

Incredibly, Wikipedia also reports an 11-foot long mammoth tusk was discovered north of Lincoln, Illinois in 2005, about three hours from where I live. Can you get enough DNA to clone something from a tusk? [Hey Alice — road trip!!]

Contrary to everything I learned in eighth grade, mammoths are not dinosaurs. They’re giant gorilla elephants. They’re also mammals, like that other famous extinct not-a-dinosaur, the saber-tooth tiger.  Scientists have chosen to clone the mammoth first, rather than the saber-tooth tiger or the Tyrannosaurus Rex, because they’re unimaginative losers.

As every well-read science fiction fan knows, cloning mammoths is just the first step on the slippery slope towards cloning people, cloning cats, Clone Wars, and the inevitable zombie apocalypse. I hope that in the interim, we get around to cloning Neanderthals. Because let’s face it — that’s what cloning is for.

Feature Excerpt: Rich Horton’s “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy”

Feature Excerpt: Rich Horton’s “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy”

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centaurideviceContributing Editor and SF historian Rich Horton’s article for Black Gate 14 was on modern reprints of the best in classic fantasy and science fiction:

Orion, via their imprints Millennium and later Gollancz, took a different tack in keeping important SF in print. The SF Masterworks series, beginning in 1999, undertook to reprint the very best science fiction novels of the past century or so… a couple of story collections slipped in, including most significantly (to my mind) The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith, the complete stories of one of the oddest and most intriguing SF writers ever. Other interesting works… include what may be Jack Vance’s best singleton novel, Emphyrio; M. John Harrison’s cynical take on Space Opera, The Centauri Device; Michael Moorock’s colorful and louche science fantasy, The Dancers at the End of Time (always my personal favorite among his works); one of the most significant works from Russia: Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; and the complete “Roderick” novels by John Sladek, brilliant satire from one of the field’s best and darkest satirists.

As we wrap up the Sneak Preview of the massive 14th issue of Black Gate we’ve posted a lengthy excerpt from Rich’s article, in which he covers titles from Baen Books, the SF and Fantasy Masterworks lines from Orion, the Science Fiction Book Club, Wildside Press, and NESFA Press.

Rich’s previous feature articles for us include “Fictional Losses: Neglected Stories From the SF Magazines,” (Black Gate 11) “The Big Little SF Magazines of the 1970s,” (BG 10) and  “Building the Fantasy Canon: the Classic Anthologies of Genre Fantasy” (BG 2).

The complete “Back to the Future: Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy” appears in Black Gate 14.

New Treasures: Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40K: Horus Rising on Audio CD

New Treasures: Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40K: Horus Rising on Audio CD

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horus-cdI have a 3-hour commute to my job in Champaign, Illinois, and I exhausted the excellent Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s major works months ago. What’s a bored commuter to do?

Rejoice when the latest Black Library Audio CD arrives, that’s what. I thoroughly enjoyed Nick Kyme’s Thunder From Fenris — a tale of desperate battles against a zombie plague (and worse) on a frozen planet — last year, and have been looking forward to the next release. Nothing helps the miles (and miles) of cornfields of  Illinois slip by like a fast-paced tale set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, lemme tell you.

As entertaining as it was, Fenris was only 70 minutes, and it fit on a single CD. This week’s mail brought the much more imposing Horus Rising: a 6-hour, 5 CD audio extravaganza adapting one of the central works in the Warhammer 40K canon – the tale of the epic betrayal of the immortal Emperor by his Warmaster, Horus:

It is the 31st millennium. Under the benevolent leadership of the Immortal Emperor, the Imperium of Man has stretched out across the galaxy. It is a golden age of discovery and conquest. But now, on the eve of victory, the Emperor leaves the front lines, entrusting the great crusade to his favourite son, Horus. Promoted to Warmaster, can the idealistic Horus carry out the Emperor’s grand plan, or will this promotion sow the seeds of heresy amongst his brothers? Horus Rising is the first chapter in the epic tale of the Horus Heresy, a galactic civil war that threatened to bring about the extinction of humanity.

Abridged from the best selling novel by Dan Abnett and read by award winning star of stage and screen Martyn Eliis, Horus Rising comes to life in this almost 6 hour reading.

Six hours!  Just long enough to occupy me all the way to work, and back.  Champaign, here I come!

C.S.E. Cooney promoted to Black Gate Website Editor

C.S.E. Cooney promoted to Black Gate Website Editor

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claire-254Effective January 1st,  blogger and contributor C.S.E. Cooney has been promoted to Black Gate website editor.

C.S.E. (Claire) Cooney is one of the most talented new writers we’ve had the pleasure to be associated with. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 3, Book of Dead Things, Subterranean magazine, Goblin Fruit, Ideomancer, Doorways, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, and Apex, among many others, and her novella The Big Bah-Ha was recently published by Drollerie Press.

She has sold several long connected pieces to Black Gate, the first of which, “Godmother Lizard,” will appear in BG 16. Her short story “Braiding the Ghosts” was selected for inclusion in Rich Horton’s upcoming The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition.

Claire’s first contribution to the BG blog was her review of Last of the Dragons in January, 2010. Since then her posts have been among the most popular features we’ve offered, including her 3-part examination of Fantasy in Metal, her detailed looks at Goblin Fruit and Ideomancer, and her lengthy interviews with S.J. Tucker, Gene Wolfe and Ysabeau Wilce.

For the last several months Claire has been coaxing and recruiting terrific new writers to the BG blog, including Mike Allen, Amal El-Mohtar, Magill Foote, Erik Amundsen, and others, and in October she assembled a crack team to create the first Epic Black Gate Trailer of AWESOMENESS! In between, she’s been editing behind the scenes, quietly helping other contributors get their articles posted, and generally cleaning up the place.

Claire’s enthusiasm and commitment have been infectious, and she’s brought a whole new level of energy to the Black Gate blog. We are pleased and extremely proud to have her as our new Website Editor.

For a complete list of the folks responsible for Black Gate, visit our Staff Page.

Rich Horton on Black Gate in 2010

Rich Horton on Black Gate in 2010

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blackgate-issue-14-cover-150Over at The Elephant Forgets, Rich Horton continues with his review of every science fiction and fantasy short story published in Engish in 2010 (I know — wow.) On December 30th, he reached Black Gate:

Once again, Black Gate managed only a single issue in 2010, though also once again one more is nearly ready and presumably will appear early in 2011. It remains a beautiful thick magazine — and 2010’s issue was particularly thick! — with a strong and successful focus on adventure fantasy, and with a welcome (to me) tropism towards longer stories. The magazine also has a tropism towards series stories, but this issue mostly avoided sequels. This year the one issue includes 19 new stories: 1 novella, 8 novelettes, and 10 shorts (1 short-short), for a total of almost 160,000 words.

I will mention again that I am on the masthead of Black Gate as a Contributing Editor, which means that I contribute a regular column and regular reviews, and also, I suppose, that I meet with Publisher/Editor John O’Neill occasionally and amidst eating and drinking and selling books we chat about the future of the SF industry and so on.

My favorite story this year was Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael”, which will appear in my Best of the Year book. It’s a first rate story that manages to both satirize numerous fantasy cliches and to celebrate them. Other strong stories include the novella, Robert J. Howe’s “The Natural History of Calamity”, which is basically Urban Fantasy, but with quite a clever central idea, a private detective with a difference: she detects what’s wrong with someone’s “karmic flow”, and restores the balance. Also strong was “Devil on the Wind”, by Michael Jasper and Jay Lake, concerning a group of magicians whose power arises from their own suicides (and revivals). Add strong work by James Enge, Pete Butler, Alex Kries, and Sylvia Volk — another very enjoyable issue of an always fun magazine.

5 of 19 stories (26%) are by women, a bit less than usual. Though they have published SF stories in the past, despite the Adventure Fantasy label, this year I don’t think any qualified.

Rich selected Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael” for his Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition. His assessment of Black Gate in 2009 is here.

John Klima on Swords and Sorcery

John Klima on Swords and Sorcery

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torOver at Tor.com, John Klima, editor of the ubercool magazine Electric Velocipede, reflects on a year filled with Swords and Sorcery — including Black Gate magazine:

Everywhere I looked I saw sword-and-sorcery, sort of a mini renaissance of the genre. Now, maybe this was a weird confluence of circumstance on my part. I did meet three people this year who I feel are players in this renaissance.

First, I met John O’Neill, editor of the fantastic Black Gate magazine, who published a gigantic, 384-page issue this year. Black Gate has been one of the few consistent places over the past several years to find good, quality fantasy short fiction. And even rarer, a place to find straightforward sword-and-sorcery action.

Aw, shucks.  Thanks for the kind words, John.  It was a pleasure to meet you at Odyssey Con 2010 as well (it was the best Indian food I had all year, too).

The man who introduced us, Jason M. Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment, also makes the honor roll of S&S renaissance men.  The third is Scott H. Andrews, editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which John calls “probably my favorite new magazine.”

You can read the complete article here.

John Joseph Adams Interviews Jonathan L. Howard

John Joseph Adams Interviews Jonathan L. Howard

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cabalJonathan L. Howard, author of the Johannes Cabal novels (Johannes Cabal the Necromancer and Johannes Cabal the Detective), had the lead story in Black Gate 13, the popular tale “The Beautiful Corridor.” It followed the exploits of the master thief Kyth, as she took on a commission from the jovial lich Maten Shal to explore an impossibly deadly tomb (read an excerpt here.)

Now Jonathan’s story “The Ereshkigal Working,” also featuring Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, appears in the new anthology The Way of the Wizard. Editor John Joseph Adams has interviewed Jonathan  in conjunction with the book launch:

A necromancer’s lot is not a happy one… Horrible things befall him on a regular basis, although this story is the first time his experimental subjects have reanimated before he’s done anything necromantic to them at all. The story came from wondering how Cabal would handle a full-on zombie outbreak.

Adams: Most authors say all their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, in what way was this story personal to you?

That’s a very true statement. I myself halted a zombie apocalypse a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking at the time, “This would make a good story.”

The Way of the Wizard looks like a terrific book, with both classic tales of wizards from some of the best names in fantasy, and new fiction from a lot of hot new talent. The book’s website features seven “Free Reads” from Adam-Troy Castro, Jeremiah Tolbert, David Barr Kirtley, and John R. Fultz’s “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria.” We reported on John Joseph Adams’ interview with John Fultz last month.

Jonathan’s next story featuring Kyth, “The Shuttered Temple,” in which Kyth attempts to solve the mystery of a sealed and very deadly temple, appears in the upcoming Black Gate 15.

The complete interview with Jonathan L. Howard is here.

Jan/Feb Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

Jan/Feb Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

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fsf033The big January/February double issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction goes on sale today.

The issue features four novelettes by Matthew Corradi, Albert E. Cowdrey, Pat MacEwan, and “The Bird Cage,” by Kate Wilhelm. There are short stories from Alan Dean Foster, Rick Norwood, Chris Lawson, James Stoddard, Jim Young, Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, and Richard A. Lupoff.

Asked about the issue, Editor Gordon van Gelder had this comment:

I hope the presence of a Ghost Wind and a Whirlwind in the issue won’t lead anyone to conclude the issue is long-winded.

F&SF is published six times a year; issues are 258 pages.  It is the longest-running professional fantasy magazine in the country, and has been published continuously since 1949.

The new cover price is $7.50; cover artist this issue is Kristin Kest. The magazine’s website, where you can order subscriptions and browse their blog, is at www.sfsite.com/fsf/.

We covered the Nov/Dec issue of F&SF here.