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Category: Editor’s Blog

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

Prime Books Reveals the Contents of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2017, edited by Rich Horton

Prime Books Reveals the Contents of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2017, edited by Rich Horton

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the-years-best-science-fiction-and-fantasy-2017-smallYesterday Prime Book publisher Sean Wallace announced the Table of Contents for the ninth (ninth!) volume of Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, one of the very best of the Year’s Best volumes. Rich said this about it:

I am excited as I am every year to be able to publicly share the contents of my Best of the Year anthology. Thrilled to share the riches of our field — honored that so many wonderful writers allow me to publish their stories.

The book will be available next summer from Prime Books. And without further ado, here’s the compete TOC, sorted alphabetically by original venue.

“Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan” by Maggie Clark, Analog
“All that Robot Shit” by Rich Larson, Asimov’s
“Project Empathy” by Dominica Phetteplace, Asimov’s
“Lazy Dog Out” by Suzanne Palmer, Asimov’s
“The Visitor from Taured” by Ian R. MacLeod, Asimov’s
“Openness” by Alexander Weinstein, Beloit Fiction Journal
“In Skander, for a Boy” by Chaz Brenchley, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“Laws of Night and Silk” by Seth Dickinson, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“Blood Grains Speak Through Memories” by Jason Sanford, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“Rager in Space” by Charlie Jane Anders, Bridging Infinity
“Ozymandias” by Karin Lowachee, Bridging Infinity

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

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captive-of-gor-smallHere at Black Gate, we take great pride in our meticulous research, passionate reporting, and thoughtful analysis, especially on fantasy writers who are being criminally overlooked.

None of that stuff gets read, of course. What does get read? Articles like Nick Ozment’s “An Experiment in Gor: What Are John Norman’s Books About, Really?”, the runaway most popular post at Black Gate last month — by a wide margin. We love our readers, but boy, are you ever predictable. (Also: Ozment! Five more Gor articles, on my desk by Friday. Chop chop!)

Those of you who weren’t reading Nick’s Gor piece were enjoying Sean McLachlan’s ghost writing expose, “The New Pulp Era: Ghostwriting, Ebooks, and the Economics of Now,” and Fletcher Vredenburgh’s essay on “Horror and Swords & Sorcery.” Rounding out the Top Five were Violette Malan’s “My Top Ten Novel-to-Movie Adaptations,” and Bob Byrne’s gaming post “Modular: Eye of the Beholder – The Art of Dungeons & Dragons.”

Our report on winning our first World Fantasy Award came in at #6, followed by Bob’s Modular piece on the new Swords & Wizardry Kickstarter. Coming in at #8 was Harold Page’s review of Jason Thompson’s graphic novel The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories.

Closing out the Top Ten were John DeNardo and his Savory Selection of Science Fiction and Fantasy for October, and an entry in Bob Byrne’s other popular column series, “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Milton F. Perry’s ‘Harry S. Truman, Sherlockian’.”

The complete list of Top Articles for October follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

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At Long Last, the World Begins to Appreciate Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney

At Long Last, the World Begins to Appreciate Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney

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Claire Cooney, who writes under the name CSE Cooney, was Black Gate‘s first website editor, and we published two of her short stories, “Godmother Lizard” and “Life on the Sun,” as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction library. I was sitting next to Claire three weeks ago when she won the World Fantasy Award for her groundbreaking debut collection Bone Swans, and I watched in pleasant surprise as the crowd around us exploded in cheers. It seems that, at long last, the world is starting to appreciate what those of us in the BG community have long known: CSE Cooney is one of the genre’s most gifted writers.

Today The Westerly Sun published a fine feature on Claire, titled “World award is no fantasy for Westerly author Claire Cooney.” Here’s a snippet.

“I had no expectation of winning so I didn’t prepare any comments,” said Cooney, whose stories take readers on fantastical journeys through reimagined fairy tales and myths. “I just sat there saying ‘No way’ … until my friends started screaming.”

Cooney describes her writing as secondary world fantasy, similar in genre to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Her writing features flying carpets, strange clowns and pied pipers, she said, with strong female characters and people who turn into things. “Swords and sorcery,” said the writer who has been influenced by such fairy tales as the The Pied Piper and Rumpelstilskin…

The World Fantasy Award is one of the three big awards given in her fantasy genre, and Cooney faced stiff competition in a category that included a Pulitzer Prize finalist and two career retrospectives from well-established international writers.

Read the complete article, written by Nancy Burns-Fusaro, here, and read the Nebula-nominated title story “The Bone Swans of Amandale” online here.

Asimov’s SF and Analog Magazine Switch to Bi-Monthly Publication

Asimov’s SF and Analog Magazine Switch to Bi-Monthly Publication

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asimovs-science-fiction-april-1993-smallWay back in January 2009, F&SF edition Gordon Van Gelder announced that his magazine would be switching to bimonthly publication. Instead of 11 issues a year, including a special double-sized issue every October, F&SF would publish six double issues a year, in an attempt to reduce mailing costs and other overhead. At the time there were ominous rumblings and dire prophecies, but it seems to have worked out nicely for the magazine, which has been been publishing regularly every since.

Since then I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop — meaning, when would the two remaining print SF magazines, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction, follow suit? And on Wednesday Locus Online broke the news that both magazines would be switching to bimonthly publication starting in January 2017.

Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams explains in a forthcoming editorial that the magazines will now publish “six 208-page double issues” per year, a 16-page increase over current double issues. She expects the change will allow her to publish more novellas and a higher percentage of original cover art. Despite the change in publication schedule, she says readers “will receive the same number of pages of fiction as in the past,” and subscribers will “receive the same number of issue months” they purchased. Publishing bimonthly will allow them “to hold the current subscription prices a bit longer.” Both periodicals are published by Dell Magazines.

Speaking as someone who enjoys the big double issues, I view this as a positive development — and anything that helps the magazines save costs is a good thing. The current double-issue size is 192 pages, so the increase to 208 pages is another welcome change. However, it is a rather historic milestone for the genre. As Jonathan Strahan puts it:

Moving to a point where we have no monthly print fiction magazines left seems like some sort of turning point, though I don’t know towards what.

Visit the Asimov’s website here, and Analog here. See our November Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

Seeking Solace

Seeking Solace

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howard-zebras-smallWhen assembling the first round of Black Gate bloggers one of the few rules I laid down was that we keep our personal politics and religion out of our posts. John and I both wanted to create a safe and welcoming space where people of all stripes could come together to discuss the genres we love.

Over the last week I’ve never found that admonition more of a challenge. You see, I’ve been grieving. Not for any one person’s loss, or even because the side I backed lost, but because it feels to me that an ideal has vanished. That ideal may not have been flawless, but I shudder at the manner in which the leading proponent of a replacement movement conducts himself. And for the first time in my life I’m not just disheartened by an election result contrary to my own wishes, I’m a little frightened.

I believe I’m in the letter of my own law still because I’m not here to proselytize. The preceding paragraph is solely for context so you’ll understand what it is that’s upset me. If, like me, the depth of your own grief and your anger and fear surprise you, you’ve probably been wondering how to cope. I wish I could give you a good answer. I can tell you that one of the things I’ve done is distract myself with the genres I love. The other was to create some art. That is one (and not the only) way I mean to act.

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Sarah Avery on “The War of the Wheat Berry Year”

Sarah Avery on “The War of the Wheat Berry Year”

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Sarah Avery’s story “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” first appeared in the Black Gate 15, our last print issue. Since then, Sarah has had a stellar career — winning the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for her novel Tales from Rugosa Coven, editing an anthology with David Sklar, and successfully Kickstarting The Imlen Brat, a novella featuring the heroine of “War of the Wheat Berry Year,” when she was a child adopted into a perilous royal court. Now Great Jones Street has reprinted a revised version of “The War of the Wheat Berry Year.” Here’s Sarah.

In 2003, I wrote a fantasy short story about.. a turncoat. I gave her many of the attributes we see so often — an army of followers who are Other to her, a homeland with blatant unresolved injustices, an offstage villain who is suitably repellent. But I gave her a few other things, too, that the usual turncoats don’t have.

She faces someone she loves on the battlefield. Someone she owes, who has done her lifesaving kindnesses she can never forget or repay. He’s angry, and his anger has its reasons. Quite apart from her betrayal of their nation, she has betrayed him, humiliated him, endangered him, put him in the position of having to make choices he finds unbearable. Worst of all, she has put him in the position of having to kill her or to die trying…

A few years later, “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” was my first professional sale. I sold the story to John O’Neill at Black Gate  —  he put me through three rounds of revisions for clarity, and I’ll always be grateful for his patience. In 2009, when the magazine was about to transition from print to online publication, my story appeared in the last print issue. Some things about the first published version of the story hold up pretty well, well enough that Great Jones Street picked it up for reprint this year.

Read Sarah’s complete article on the reasons for her revisions, “Conscientious Turncoats, Or Why I Stopped the Virtual Presses on “The War of the Wheat Berry Year,” at Great Jones Street.

Black Gate Wins World Fantasy Award

Black Gate Wins World Fantasy Award

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I’ve just returned from the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, where I got the chance to meet up with several of our talented and far-flung contributors, including Bob Byrne, Patty Templeton, C.S.E. Cooney, Matthew Wuertz, Sarah Avery, Fred Durbin, Ellen Klages, Amal El-Mohtar, Derek Künsken, Brandon Crilly, Marie Bilodeau, David B. Coe, Jeffrey Ford, and many others.

But the highlight of the weekend — by a pretty wide margin — was receiving the World Fantasy Special Award in the Nonprofessional category. Here’s the text of the brief acceptance speech I hastily sketched out on my cell phone, just before the banquet ended.

Wow.

In 1996, I started SF Site, one of the first genre websites. It quickly grew to over 150,000 readers per month. By 1998, as the most innovative and forward-thinking publications in the genre were creating the first ground-breaking websites, we decided to do something REALLY forward-thinking: Launch a print magazine.

Black Gate lasted for 15 print issues, until 2011. In November 2008 our Managing Editor, Howard Andrew Jones, said we should revamp the magazine’s website. I was the voice of reason. “Seriously, who wants to read more than one article a month, Jones?”

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The Best British Fantasy & Horror from Salt Publishing

The Best British Fantasy & Horror from Salt Publishing

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With the surprising number of Years Best anthologies on the market these days — nearly a dozen, by my count — it takes something pretty darn special to get me to pry open my wallet for another one.

Salt Publishing has accomplished exactly that with their dual series, The Best British Fantasy, edited by Steve Haynes. and Best British Horror, edited by Johnny Mains. Where the other Years Best series mine the same American magazines and anthologies for the same batch of writers year after year, these books have the compelling advantage of drawing from a wholly different market. Featuring top-notch authors like Lavie Tidhar, Mark Morris, Ramsey Campbell, Sam Stone, Steph Swainston, Nina Allan, Guy Hayley, V.H. Leslie, Robert Shearman, Michael Marshall Smith, Helen Marshall, and many others, these books offer a refreshing change of pace for jaded SF and fantasy readers.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

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hall-of-bones-frog-god-smallThe most widely-read article last month — by a wide margin — was Bob Byrne’s look at classic role playing, “Why I Went Old School — or Swords & Wizardry vs. Pathfinder.” In fact, Bob’s piece is the most popular feature we’ve had at Black Gate all year (with the exception of our May announcement that we declined a Hugo nomination). He’s posted three recent updates to it so far, re-capping his group’s exploits in Matt Finch’s Hall of Bones adventure module, so check back if you haven’t recently.

Coming in at #2 was another gaming article, Carlos Hernandez’s “What No Man’s Sky Can Learn from SFF Worldbuilding.” Sometimes I wonder why we bother doing anything other than gaming pieces?

Rounding out the Top Five were our examination of Michael McDowell’s Blackwater serial novel from the 1980s, Thomas Parker’s fond look at the 1960s Batman, and Sean McLachlan’s writing confession, “When Researching Your Novel Scares You: Daily Life in the Third Reich.”

Violette Malan’s thoughtful look at one of the great 20th Century SF writers, “Andre Norton: Are Her Men Really Women?”, came in at number six, followed by Bob Byrne’s second gaming article for the month, “RPGing is Story Telling.” Next up was William Patrick Maynard’s review of his fellow Black Gate author, Josh Reynolds, who recently released two direct sequels to Philip Jose Farmer’s The Other Log of Phileas Fogg for Meteor House.

Bob continued to hog the Top 10 list, coming in at #9 with “The Master Plot Formula (per Lester Dent).” And Barbara Barrett wrapped up the list with her look back at a neglected fantasy classic from 1991, HBO’s Cast a Deadly Spell.

The complete list of Top Articles for September follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

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The Wonders of Fairwood Press

The Wonders of Fairwood Press

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I first met Patrick Swenson, publisher and editorial mastermind at Fairwood Press, back in the late 90s. I think it might have been James Van Pelt who introduced us, after I wrote a review of Patrick’s magazine, TaleBones. I helped Patrick negotiate with a squatter who was sitting on the address he wanted for his website (unsuccessfully, as I recall.) At the time, Fairwood Press was a small press underdog, with only a handful of titles to its name, but a fast-growing reputation.

Fastforward about 17 years, to Worldcon in 2016. I was walking through the sprawling dealer’s room when I spotted Patrick sitting behind a table groaning under the weight of dozens and dozens of eye-catching science fiction and fantasy books, from some of the biggest names in the industry — including Robert Silverberg, Michael Bishop, Jay Lake, Carrie Vaughn, Devon Monk, Tom Piccirilli, Tina Connolly, James Van Pelt, and many others. Could this possibly be the same Fairwood Press?

Yes, as it turned out.

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