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Category: Editor’s Blog

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

John Joseph Adams Interviews John R. Fultz

John Joseph Adams Interviews John R. Fultz

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wayofthewizardJohn Joseph Adams, editor of The Way of the Wizard anthology, has interviewed contributor — and Black Gate blogger and author — John R. Fultz in conjunction with the book launch:

In the cannon of classic fantasy, there are many examples of terrific wizardry, such as Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales, where Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face are the heroes’ patrons – mysterious inhuman wizards who watch over and protect Fafhrd and the Mouser, as well as giving them preposterous quests now and then. The tales of Clark Ashton Smith are rife with wizardry… Malygris of Susran, Namirrah of Zothique, and Evagh the Warlock, to name only a few. Nobody could build a rich, phantasmagoric world of dark wonders like Smith… Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone is one of my favorite wizards as well… Who knew a wizard could be such a bad-ass with a sword?

The Way of the Wizard was released on November 16th; the book’s website features seven “Free Reads,” including  John Joseph Adams’ introduction, stories from Adam-Troy Castro, Jeremiah Tolbert, David Barr Kirtley, and the complete  text of John R. Fultz’s “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria.”

John R. Fultz blogs here regularly; he’s also the author of “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine” (Black Gate 12), “Return of the Quill” (Black Gate 13), and the upcoming “The Vintages of Dream.”

The complete interview is here.

Great Gift Ideas For Geeks and Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

Great Gift Ideas For Geeks and Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

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honey-monthI love being interviewed.  Especially on weeks when Jack Nicholson isn’t talking to the press.  I tell my wife, “I was interviewed more often than Jack Nicholson this week.”

Alice is rarely impressed. “I don’t like Jack Nicholson,” she tells me. But I keep it up, in the hopes that it will win me some lovin’.

I was interviewed by SF Signal for their regular Mind Meld column, along with people less famous than me, like Jeff VanderMeer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick, Martha Wells, David B. Coe, Jaym Gates, Brenda Cooper, Mike Brotherton, A. Lee Martinez, and other international celebrities and rock stars like that.  The topic was Great Gift Ideas For Geeks and Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans, and here’s what that VanderMeer guy said about some book about honey by Amal El-Mohtar:

The Honey Month – This beautifully illustrated volume of short fictions and poems takes as its inspiration the author’s tasting of 28 different kinds of honey, one per day. Each tasting leads to a different literary creation, but she begins each entry by describing the honey in terms that will be familiar to wine connoisseurs. To top it all off, Oliver Hunter’s finely rendered color illustrations make encountering such rich, heady prose even more delightful…. The book’s a slim 73 pages for a reason: like the honey described, any more and it would be too rich for most readers. As it stands, however, The Honey Month is the perfect length, and the perfect gift.

I tried to buy a copy of The Honey Month from Amal at Wiscon, but she wouldn’t sell it to me (I think because I was more famous than her). Now that she’s had a book blurbed by VanderMeer and done, like, the most popular interview in the history of Black Gate, I expect all that to change. And maybe a brother can buy a simple book, know what I’m sayin’?

You can read the complete SF Signal article here.

Spaceships and Beautiful Women

Spaceships and Beautiful Women

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astronomy-pic21

As I’ve written previously, the cover art of pulp science fiction magazines had two prevelant themes: spaceships and beautiful women. Both appealed on a primal level to young teen boys, and together they created a seductive vision of a promised future. Most boys my age looked forward to graduation and their first car; I was waiting patiently for a ride to Alpha Centauri piloted by women in lingerie. Hey, it got me through high school.

So, as glorious and awe-inspiring as NASA’s Astronomy Pictures of the Day have been, with sweeping high-res images of distant galaxies and massive supernova remnants, I’ve always felt they were missing… a certain something.

So you can imagine my delight at the image above, posted this week, of astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson peering out from the Cupola window bay of the International Space Station. Science is at last catching up to the promise of generations of early SF, with beautiful women gazing down at the Earth with (oh please, God) wistful dreams of conquest.

Stay tuned for news on flying cars and jet packs.

Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces Winners of Challenge! Discovery 2010 Contest

Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces Winners of Challenge! Discovery 2010 Contest

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discoveryBack in May Rogue Blades Entertainment, publishers of  Rage of the Behemoth, Demons, Return of the Sword and other excellent fantasy anthologies, announced the first annual Challenge! writing contest. Open to fiction in a wide variety of genres (“Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy” and others), the Challenge! Discovery contest invited authors to submit works directly inspired by a single piece of art by V Shane, pictured at right.

The winners of the  Challenge! Discovery 2010 writinng contest are (in no particular order):

“A Fire in Shandria” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
“In the Ruins of the Panther People” ~ Daniel R. Robichaud
“The Serpent’s Root” ~ David J. West
“Fire Eye Gem” ~ Richard Berrigan Jr.
2nd PLACE: “Cat’s in the Cradle” ~ Nicholas Ozment
“Some Place Cool and Dark” ~ Frederic S. Durbin
“The Ash-Wood of Celestial Flame” ~ Gabe Dybing
“Witch with Bronze Teeth” ~ Keith J. Taylor
“Inner Nature” ~ John Kilian
1st PLACE: “Attabeira” ~ Henrik Ramsager

Honorable mentions go to Eric Magliozzi for “Songs of the Dead,” and Michael Navarro for “The Golden Maiden.”

The winning entries will be collected in the Challenge! Discovery anthology, to be published by Rogue Blades Entertainment around Christmas this year. More information on the contest results and the upcoming book is here.

Congratulations to all the winners!  I’m looking forward to reading the stories.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

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mark-twainMark Twain, the legendary American author and humorist, left behind perhaps the most famous unpublished autobiography in history.  Claiming the opinions and stories within were too strong to be received by his public, Twain left instructions that the book was not to be published until 100 years after his death.

Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain”) died on April 21, 1910. Accordingly, the University of California Press published Volume One of the Autobiography of Mark Twain this week, releasing the 760-page first installment of what will be a 3-book series on Monday, November 15.

Twain dictated his autobiography in 1906, four years before he died.  The text of those dictations, with explanatory editorial notes, have been gathered into these volumes.  While unpublished, the autobiography has not been secret — in fact, biographers have had access to it for the last century, so there are no bombshells waiting for us in its pages.

What there is is a stream-of-consciousness self-portrait created from anecdotes, stories, and portraits of America as it existed over a century ago, captured by one of this nation’s keenest writers and social critics.  Written with little regard for chronological order, Twain tells of his encounters with the fabulously wealthy (but “grotesque”) Rockefeller family, his troubles with bankruptcy, the tragic death of his daughter Susy, who died at 24 of meningitis, and much more. Over at Ambrose & Elsewhere, our main man James Enge has done a full review, saying in part:

Standout sections of this book include Twain’s discussion of his brother Orion, who seems to have been bipolar, and Twain’s account of how he patiently and gently corrected an overzealous editor… there is a lot else here, including a sort of 19th century Paris Hilton – a woman who was famous simply for being famous. That story made me feel better about our crappy media culture – apparently it’s always been crappy, ever since the invention of mass media.

Twain, author of The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and The Mysterious Stranger, was one of America’s finest fantasists.   The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume One, includes 66 photographs and is priced at $34.95.  More information is at the Amazon.com listing.

Weird Tales 356 Arrives

Weird Tales 356 Arrives

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wt356The latest issue of the Grand Old Lady of dark fantasy, Weird Tales, arrived at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters last week. This is issue 356, Summer 2010, of a magazine that’s been published semi-regularly since 1923.

This issue’s theme is “Uncanny Beauty: A celebration of the eerily sensuous.” Fittingly, it includes fiction from the eerily sensuous Catherynne M. Valente, as well as a tarot card riff on an eerily sensuous Lady Gaga video, written by the entirely sensuous Amal El-Mohtar.

Plus — there’s more fiction from Ian R. MacLeod, Kat Howard, L.L. Hannett, Mike Aronovitz, and poems by Natania Barron and the extremely cool F.J. Bergmann. Non-fiction includes an article on “Strange Faces” by Theodora Goss, a look at Weird Tales pulp cover artist Margaret Brundage by Paula Guran, a fine remembrance by Senior Editor Stephen H. Segal of long-time WT editor George H. Scithers, who recently passed away, a column about H.P. Lovecraft by Kenneth Hite, and the usual book reviews.

Editor Ann VanderMeer continues to collect sniffs from some of the old guard, who seem to find insufficient sword & sorcery in this incarnation of the new weird, but so far I find little to fault with the authors she has gathered around her banner. And the design and artwork remain top notch.

Cover price for the issue is $6.99. It is 80 pages; cover art is by Alberto Seveso. The website is here.

Harlan Ellison Struggles to Sell Early Typewriter

Harlan Ellison Struggles to Sell Early Typewriter

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ellisontypewriter2Harlan Ellison is selling his first typewriter.

Following the sale of Jack Kerouac’s typewriter for $22,500 at Christie’s in New York on June 22, interest in genre circles was high to see what kind of demand there would be for a similar relic from the famed science fiction writer. The item in question is a used Remington Rand “noiseless” portable dating from around 1936 to 1940, used by Ellison until he turned eighteen. Now David Silver, the man brokering the sale, reports at Harlan Ellison Webderland that he is having trouble attracting serious bids:

Way back in September, Harlan asked me to go forward and attempt to sell his extremely precious first typewriter…  but I met with virtually no success. There was a lot of “Harlan who?” or (gasp!) “You mean that Star Trek guy?” or similarly uninformed responses…. Everywhere I found mentions of the sale, I couldn’t help but feel they all lacked any real element of care…  I wasn’t expecting anybody to lie for Harlan, to invent anything, or to reinvent the wheel. I simply thought MANY of you would get excited… Stand up, spread your arms, and yell at the world, “C’mon, all you dumb asses with the money and the initiative to take ADVANTAGE of this opportunity, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! Are you STUPID?! Do I gotta spell it out for you?! SHOW HARLAN THE MONEY!!” … We’re talking about a first tier unique collectible item with an asking price of $40,000!!

Ellison, who announced he was leaving the internet on July 6 in a short Goodbye note (saying “I’ve finally had as much of the internet as I can bear”), returned to posting at Harlan Ellison Webderland on July 26. The home page of the Webderland has been replaced with detailed information on the typewriter.

No closing date for the sale has been announced.

Is The Bookish Owl the Worst Web Site Ever?

Is The Bookish Owl the Worst Web Site Ever?

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Well, no. Probably not. But it is currently the most personally irritating.

I recently discovered that the site’s admin is reprinting Black Gate material without our permission, and frequently without byline. The site isn’t merely quoting from us, or summarizing, or pointing interested readers here, which we appreciate and encourage, they are copying and pasting our complete articles onto their own web site. We’re not alone — they’re apparently doing this with a lot of other fantasy and science fiction web sites as well.

My first hope was that this plagiarism was some sort of amateurish mistake, and it may still be. Some people, even some literate, intelligent people, might not understand what’s wrong about taking someone else’s work without credit.

Upon digging further,  I realized that there is NO WAY to contact anyone involved in the site. No contact information for the administrator is listed anywhere on the pages of The Bookish Owl. I filled out a comments page and submitted it, but my comments were ignored. I tracked down to whom the site was registered (a company) only to discover that the company’s web site has not been updated since 2008 and that their voice mailbox is full. Their e-mail address bounces.

I can only conclude that theirs is a deliberate attempt to steal the work of others to boost traffic to their own site. As their admin seems to regularly cut and paste material from this site, perhaps he or she will read this note and realize their error, and correct it with an apology, in which case all will be well. Or perhaps it will simply reappear automatically at The Bookish Owl with the headline above and I’ll have a chuckle before I track down all the others from whom The Bookish Owl is stealing material and together we will contemplate appropriate action.

Today is Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day

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veteransToday is Veterans Day. For our readers and contributors in the United States, today is a federal holiday (no mail!).

Known around the world as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, Veterans Day commemorates the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. Major hostilities of that war were formally ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

In 1953, a shoe store owner named Alfred King lobbied residents of his small town of Emporia, Kansas, to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, rather than just those who’d served in World War I. The local Chamber of Commerce agreed, and Representative Ed Rees (also from Emporia) helped push a bill for the holiday through Congress. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law on May 26, 1954.

The Black Gate staff is an international group of writers who celebrate fantasy in all its forms. We’re particularly fond of tales of warriors, men and women of valor who struggle heroically against great odds, and we honor the writers who’ve paid tribute to those who fight the good fight, real and imagined, every day here on the Black Gate blog.

But today there are men and women around the world who have left their homes and families behind to take up arms and stand on guard for something they believe in. As most of us are painfully aware, often they pay for that dedication with their lives.

Today we’d like to take a moment to honor them. And we hope that all of you who enjoy fantastic tales of selfless heroism, as we do, will remember that our communities are filled with veterans who have made sacrifices on our behalf, and perhaps make the time to reach out to them. To let them know we honor the heroes in our midst just as much as — if not more than — the Aragorns, Arthurs, and Amazons who fire our imagination.

Realms of Fantasy Returns — Again

Realms of Fantasy Returns — Again

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rofLess than three weeks ago we reported that Realms of Fantasy magazine was being closed by Tir Na Nog Press and publisher Warren Lapine. (And Brian Murphy asked if the end of Realms of Fantasy begs the question: Too much fantasy on the market?)

At the time, Warren offered to sell the magazine for $1 to a responsible party who could continue publication. Now SF Scope is reporting that the magazine has been sold to Damnation Books.

Who the heck is Damnation Books? I admit I never heard of them either. According to their website, they’ve published electronic novels, novellas and short stories by Joshua Martyr, S. A. Bolich, Matthew S. Rotundo, and many others. Their CEO is Kim Richards, and their staff includes William Gilchrist, Tim Marquitz, and Lisa J. Jackson.

Damnation Books plans to release the December 2010 issue (previously only available electronically) in print form, and continue virtually immediately with the February 2011 issue, meaning the magazine’s bi-monthly schedule will suffer no gaps.

All subscriptions will be honored, and Damnation has announced plans for an extra-sized June 2011 volume, to coincide with the magazine’s 100th issue. The website remains at www.rofmag.com, and effective immediately the magazine has reopened to submissions.  No official word yet on whether any of the magazine’s current staff will remain.

This is great news for fantasy fans — and kudos to Warren and Damnation Books for orchestrating what looks like a smooth transition.  Here’s hoping Damnation finds the right formula to keep this grand lady of fantasy alive and thriving.