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Category: Editor’s Blog

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

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

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Robert Jordan The Conan Chronicles-back-small Robert Jordan The Conan Chronicles-small

Our most popular blog post in July was M. Harold Page’s “Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?” Last month continued the Conan love: our top article for August was Bob Byrne’s survey of Tor’s years as a Conan pastiche publisher, including the popular series from Robert Jordan. Above — the first of multiple Jordan omnibus volumes from Tor, The Conan Chronicles (1995, art by Gary Ruddell).

Coming in second was our report on the Hugo Award winners, followed by Dominik Parisien’s announcement of the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Kickstarter. Fourth was Fletcher Vredenburgh’s look back at Frank Herbert’s classic Dune.

Rounding out the Top Five was our Future Treasures piece on Grady Hendrix’s upcoming Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction. Close on its heels was Sean McLachlan’s photo essay on his visit to Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, England. Ryan Harvey’s obituary for Haruo Nakajima, The Man Who Was Godzilla, was number seven.

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In Alone Against the Flames You Face the Horror of Cthulhu the Way the Universe Intended: By Yourself

In Alone Against the Flames You Face the Horror of Cthulhu the Way the Universe Intended: By Yourself

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Alone Against the Flames-small Alone Against the Flames-back-small

I’m a huge fan of solitaire role playing adventures. They’re a great way to exercise your imagination and sample an immersive RPG experience when you can’t find any other players — or just can’t convince them to try out a new game with you.

Of course, the biggest drawback of solo RPGs (aside from the fact that they’re relatively thin on the ground these days) is that most expect you to be fully conversant with the system. That’s why I’m so delighted with Alone Against the Flames, the newest solo adventure for Call of Cthulhu. You don’t need to read the (rather daunting) rulebook before you start playing. Just settle in a comfy chair with some lucky dice, open the book, and follow the instructions. It dumps you right into the story and teaches you the game as you go.

Call of Cthulhu is a horror RPG based on the work of HP Lovecraft, and Alone Against the Flames is a complete tale set in the 1920s in which you are the main character, and your choices determine the outcome. Although it’s designed to walk you through the basics of the game as you go, a copy of the Call of Cthulhu Seventh Edition QuickStart Rules (which you can download for free here) is required to play.

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Celebrate the Optimism of Old-School Science Fiction, With a Twist: The Stars at my Door, edited by George Ilett Anderson and Neil Baker

Celebrate the Optimism of Old-School Science Fiction, With a Twist: The Stars at my Door, edited by George Ilett Anderson and Neil Baker

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The Stas at my Door-back-small The Stas at my Door-small

The Stars at my Door is the latest (and last) original anthology in Neil Baker’s Short Sharp Shocks line. Here’s co-editor George Ilett Anderson, from his excellent intro:

The Stars at my Door harkens back to an age where science fiction was about the limitless possibilities of space and the pioneering spirit burnt bright and clear; a time of inquisitiveness, exploration and endeavor where the impossible seems possible and adventure lies in wait for the intrepid soul but also rewards the foolish and unwary.

I think we have a fantastic selection of stories for your reading pleasure, from tales of exploration to more intimate tales of challenging boundaries with excursions and side trips into space opera and the more practical side of life amongst the stars. I’m certain there will be something to tantalize your taste buds.

Publisher and co-editor Neil Baker adds a brief intro of his own, wrapping up his impressive anthology series.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

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Conan-Rogues-in-the-House-miedium

Conan, and his creator Robert E. Howard, are perpetually popular topics at Black Gate. Our top blog post last month was M. Harold Page’s “Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?” followed by James McGlothlin’s review of two Howard biographies. Freelancers looking for topic suggestions: you can’t go wrong with Robert E. Howard!

The third most popular article last month was our report on the best readings at the Wiscon science fiction convention in May, followed by Ryan Harvey’s review of the 1985 film The Return of Godzilla. Rounding out the Top Five was an update on the second issue of the excellent new magazine Occult Detective Quarterly.

Sixth was our look at the Bantam Spectra Omnibus editions of Robert Silverberg, followed by Derek Kunsken’s list of the best hard science fiction he’s read in the past decade, “Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology…” Coming in at #7 was Matt Drought’s breakdown of the differences between Microsoft’s Xbox One and the PS4 Pro, followed by an examination of one of Gardner Dozois’s best anthologies, Modern Classics of Fantasy. Closing out the Top Ten for the month was our survey of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series.

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The 2017 Hugo Award Winners

The 2017 Hugo Award Winners

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The Obelisk Gate-medium Every-Heart-a-Doorway_Seanan-McGuire-small Words Are My Matter Writings About Life and Books Ursula K. Le Guin-small

The winners of the 2017 Hugo Awards were announced on Friday at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland. I wish I had been there! But since I wasn’t, let’s just get this over with. Here’s the complete list of winners. Congratulations, all you cool people. In Helsinki, eating pickled herring. I don’t want to hear about it.

Best Novel

The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Best Novella

Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)

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Swing Into Action With Your Very Own Spider-Man Hoodie from USAJacket

Swing Into Action With Your Very Own Spider-Man Hoodie from USAJacket

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Drew models a USAJacket Spider-Man Homecoming Red Hoodie-small Drew models a Spider-Man Homecoming Red Hoodie 3-small

It’s a tough gig being an editor. It’s not enough to just keep a steady drumbeat of content — you also need to mix it up a bit. That’s one reason every article at Black Gate is tagged with at least one category…. makes it easier to tell at a glance when we’re over-saturated on New Releases, Magazines, and Reviews, and it’s time to commission a News piece, or something on Comics, maybe. Or Music, or RPGs.

Of course, some categories get less attention than others. Fashion, for example, is probably the most neglected category we have. Patty Templeton asked me to add it five years ago so she could do a brief feature on Crisiswear, and we’ve had maybe half a dozen reasons to use it since. Let’s just say that fashion is not my beat.

So I’m very pleased that, after producing some 4,000 blog posts here at Black Gate, today I’m writing my first fashion article. It’s because of a gift I ordered for my son’s 20th birthday: a Spider-Man Homecoming Red Hoodie from USAJacket, which Drew is so kindly modeling for us above. Once it arrived and I saw how it looked on him, I knew other members of the Black Gate community would be interested.

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No Slimy Monsters, No Princesses: The Bantam Spectra Omnibus Robert Silverberg

No Slimy Monsters, No Princesses: The Bantam Spectra Omnibus Robert Silverberg

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Robert Silverberg The Masks of Time Born With the Dead Dying Inside-small Robert Silverberg Three Novels The World Inside Thorns Downward to the Earth-small

Robert Silverberg practically introduced me to science fiction. His novel Collision Course was one of the first SF novels I ever read, and he’s one of the first authors I collected. Like a lot of Campbell-era SF, Collision Course is about humans thrusting out into space in an aggressive age of empire-building, and our first encounter with an equally aggressive alien race with the same dreams. The copy I read was the 1977 Ace edition with a cover (by an uncredited artist) that casually gave away the ending.

Ace Books, run by Jim Baen and publisher Tom Doherty, was Silverberg’s paperback publisher in the US for many years. By the 80s, however, Silverberg had been lured over to the Bantam Spectra line under Lou Aronica. Bantam pulled out all the stops for Silverberg, reprinting much of his vast backlist with gorgeous new artwork by Welsh artist Jim Burns. My collection includes over a dozen Bantam Silverberg’s, including his Majipoor novels, Gilgamesh the King (1984), To Open the Sky (1984), and many others,

But it was only a few months ago that I discovered that Bantam produced two omnibus Silverberg collections in 1988. It was purely by luck, as I was hunting down a copy of Downward to the Earth, and instead found a seller offering something called Three Novels: The World Inside, Thorns, Downward to the Earth for just $3. I quickly searched around and found there was a least one earlier volume, collecting The Masks of Time, Born With the Dead, and Dying Inside. I expect they had very low circulation, because I’ve never seen them before.

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Apex Magazine on the Best Short Fiction Reviews

Apex Magazine on the Best Short Fiction Reviews

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Apex Magazine June 2017-smallIn his editorial in last month’s Apex Magazine, Jason Sizemore salutes some of the best short fiction reviewers out there.

There are some reviewers that stand head and shoulders above the rest, and I want to direct our readers to them.

Charles Payseur (Quick Sip Reviews) writes entertaining and smart reviews. His pairing of alcoholic drinks with his favorite stories of the month is amusing. If a reviewer can have “heart,” then Charles has it.

Maria Haskins is incredibly well-read and she takes the time to write a list of her favorite stories along with capsule reviews on her blog. She’s a great advocate for short fiction and short fiction publications.

A.C. Wise contributes a monthly review column to the Apex Magazine website titled “Words for Thought” with some of the smartest analysis you’ll find.

Paula Guran regularly reviews work outside her comfort zone and adds much needed life and variety to the short fiction reviews in Locus Magazine.

There are others (though not as many as there should be). If you have a favorite reviewer let me know!

To that list I would add the hard-working team at Tangent Online, the Hugo-nominated Rocket Stack Rank, the excellent short fiction reviews by Gardner Dozois and Rich Horton in Locus… and of course our very own Fletcher Vredenburgh, Adrian Simmons, and Michael Penkas.

The June issue of Apex also contains brand new fiction by Aimee Ogden, Pip Coen, K.A. Teryna (trans. by Alex Shvartsman), and Tobias S. Buckell, plus an excerpt from Mary Turzillo’s new novel Mars Girls, and a reprint by Maureen McHugh. The cover art is by Irina Kovalova. Read the complete issue for free here. We last covered Apex with the May issue.

B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2017 So Far

B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2017 So Far

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All Systems Red-small The Last Good Man Linda Nagata-small Borne Jeff VanderMeer-small

Over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Joel Cunningham has taken on the big job of cataloging the best books of the year so far. His list includes a whopping 25 titles… which may be more books than I’ve read this year. There’s some terrific stuff on his list, so let’s get to it.

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells

Veteran fantasist Wells proves her sure hand at sci-fi as she imagines a future dominated by corporations, in which the twin imperatives of bureaucratic adherence to policies and the need to award all contracts to the lowest bidder result in every planetary mission being required to be accompanied by a company-supplied SecUnit, an artificially intelligent android built from cheap parts, and as likely to malfunction as all of the other shoddy equipment the expeditions are counting on to, oh, keep them breathing. The SecUnit narrating the story has hacked its own Governor Module, attaining sentience and free will; it would despise the humans it protects if it didn’t find them so boring, but it nevertheless refers to itself as Murderbot. When its humans are attacked by something outside of the experience provided by its data banks, however, Murderbot must turn its prickly, near-omniscient mind towards not just the survival of its humans, but itself. This slim read is both surprisingly funny and packed with intriguing future worldbuilding — all the more reason to celebrate the three planned sequels that will continue Murderbot’s adventures. Read our review.

All Systems Red was published by Tor.com on May 2, 2017. It is 160 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jamie Jones. Read an excerpt at Tor.com.

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A Wiscon Reading Report: The Best in Upcoming Fantasy – 2017 Edition

A Wiscon Reading Report: The Best in Upcoming Fantasy – 2017 Edition

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CSE Cooney and Amal El-Mohtar reading at Wiscon 2017-small CSE Cooney and Amal El-Mohtar reading at Wiscon 2017 2-small CSE Cooney and Amal El-Mohtar reading at Wiscon 2017 3-small

CSE Cooney and Guest of Honor Amal El-Mohtar perform Music & Miscellania at Wiscon 2017

Just a few days ago I wrote about Kay Kenyon’s upcoming novel At the Table of Wolves, the tale of a young woman forced to use her budding superpowers to spy on Nazi Germany and prevent the immanent invasion of England. It’s pretty clear to me that this is one of 2017’s breakout novels, and I was thrilled to get a sneak peek at it last year.

How did that happen? By attending a small, intimate reading at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, convention readings have tipped me off to countless breakout books over the years, including works from Guy Gavriel Kay, N.K. Jemisin, Ian Tregillis, Bradley P. Beaulieu, Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, Cory Doctorow, and many others. I even attended a reading by George R.R. Martin many years ago, in which he read from an unpublished novel titled A Game of Thrones — and then stuck around afterwards to chat to the small audience, and sign my advance copy of the book.

Any convention worth its salt will have a decent reading program. But the best conventions showcase a wide range of writers, and have multiple reading tracks. And after decades of attending cons, I can say without hesitation that the one with the best record for introducing me to stellar new talent — and tipping me off to fantastic new books — through its reading program is Wiscon, held every May in Madison, Wisconsin. And this year’s con was no exception.

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