Browsed by
Category: Editor’s Blog

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

A Mecca for Book Hunters: The Chicago Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention, 2022

A Mecca for Book Hunters: The Chicago Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention, 2022

Comments 10 comments

A few $1 magazines in near-mint condition I purchased today at Windy City Pulp & Paper

I just returned from Doug Ellis’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention, exhausted but happy.

I’ve been attending Windy City here in Chicago for nearly 20 years. It’s the premier show in the country for pulp and paperback collectors, and the main Exhibit Hall is an inexhaustible Cave of Wonders for anyone who loves vintage books, comics, artwork, pulps, science fiction and fantasy, new pulp, old DVDs, collectibles of all kinds — or just hanging out and talking with like-minded collectors and enthusiasts.

Over the years Windy City has become my favorite local convention. It’s a wonderful place to connect with friends and fellow Black Gate contributors, folks like Rich Horton, Howard Andrew Jones, Steven H. Silver, Bob Byrne, Doug Ellis. E.E. Knight, John C. Hocking, Barbara Barrett, and many others. But the main draw is that marvelous Exhibit Hall, where you can find almost anything you want, no matter how rare or unusual. And if what you love is book bargains (or to, say, literally carpet your entire kitchen floor with dollar books), then you are definitely in luck.

…

Read More Read More

Solo Adventures on Grim Worlds: Modiphius’ Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands

Solo Adventures on Grim Worlds: Modiphius’ Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands

Comments 3 comments


Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands (Modiphius, 2021 and 2022). Covers by Christian Quinot

Modiphius Entertainment was launched in 2012 by husband and wife gamers Rita and Chris Birch to publish Achtung! Cthulhu, a game that remains near and dear to my heart (you know anything featuring Nazi supervillains, Cthulhu, and roleplaying is going to get some love in these quarters). But in the decade since they founded their unassuming little gaming company it’s captured the attention of the entire industry with a litany of innovative and exciting titles, including Coriolis: The Third Horizon, Alien RPG, Forbidden Lands, Star Trek Adventures, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, and much, much more.

Their newest releases, Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues From the Borderlands, may be their best yet — at least for product-staved solitaire gamers like me. These are finely crafted solo adventures games with rich narrative campaigns that allow you to explore exotic locales, earn experience and level up your team, find exotic gear, trade, and even upgrade your starship or hideout. They’re the most exciting solitaire gaming releases of the last few years, and that’s saying something.

…

Read More Read More

Join Martha Wells, James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, Zig Zag Claybourne, and Sarah Avery to Celebrate C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Daughter

Join Martha Wells, James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, Zig Zag Claybourne, and Sarah Avery to Celebrate C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Daughter

Comments 8 comments

C.S.E. Cooney reads from her debut novel Saint Death’s Daughter, out this week from Solaris Books

It’s a week of celebration here at Black Gate! Tomorrow sees the long-awaited publication of SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER, the debut novel by the uber-talented C.S.E. Cooney, our first website editor. How exciting is this book? Amal El-Mohtar said, “I have never read anything so utterly alive,” Publishers Weekly proclaimed it “remarkable and… worth savoring,” and Locus called it a work of “Twisted genius!” It’s about time the world caught on to the extraordinary — and extraordinarily twisted — genius of Claire Cooney.

An all-star cast of Black Gate writers and bloggers gathered together to celebrate this past weekend, and we managed to record it all — including one of the most entertaining reading sessions we’ve seen in many years. Martha Wells read an excerpt from her multi-award winning Murderbot series, James Enge shared a Morlock story, Howard Andrew Jones delighted us with a tale of Hanuvar, Sarah Avery read a creepy fae story, and Zig Zag Claybourne shared an exciting fragment from his new novel.

To kick it all off, C.S.E. Cooney read from her new novel, the tale of a young necromancer with an allergy to violence who must navigate sinister intrigues to avenge the murder of her parents. Watch it all right here. Enjoy – -and be sure to check out Saint Death’s Daughter, on sale tomorrow at better bookstores everywhere!

A Master With a Keen Eye: Robert Silverberg’s Original Anthologies of the 1970s

A Master With a Keen Eye: Robert Silverberg’s Original Anthologies of the 1970s

Comments 11 comments

Paperback editions of Silverberg 70s original anthologies. Published by (left to right, from top left):
Dell, Manor Books, Dell, Manor Books, Dell, Dell, Fontana, Warner Books, Pinnacle

In 1966 Robert Silverberg published his first anthology, an unassuming volume titled Earthmen and Strangers from staid New York press Duell, Sloan and Pearce, known mostly for the infamous U.S. Camera 1941 annual that was banned in Boston for daring to include nudes. Earthmen and Strangers was hugely successful, remaining in print for an astonishing two decades, with paperback reprints from Dell, Manor Books, and Bart Books, and Silverberg was off to the races as an editor. Over the next five decades he published dozens of science fiction anthologies, including a handful of bestsellers like the seminal Legends (1998) and its science-fictional sequel Far Horizons (1999).

Beginning in the late 60s and all through the 70s Silverberg produced a steady stream of original anthologies, most of which had a signature format: each contained three novellas from the biggest names in the industry, including major award nominees by James Blish, Gordon R. Dickson, Jack Vance, Clifford D. Simak, Norman Spinrad, Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and James Tiptree, Jr. — plus novellas by Roger Zelazny, R. A. Lafferty, Harry Harrison, Alexei Panshin, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, John Brunner, George Alec Effinger, Gardner Dozois, Gregory Benford, Joan D. Vinge, Vonda N. McIntyre, Keith Roberts, James Gunn, Phyllis Gotlieb, and many others.

Like Terry Carr’s Universe, Damon Knight’s Orbit, and Silverberg’s own New Dimensions, these anthologies were prestige fiction markets, appearing in hardcover and distributed to libraries, and getting a lot of attention when awards season rolled around. As a result they attracted a lot of talent. Silverberg was a master with a keen eye for emerging talent, and an uncanny ability to coax top-notch work of out his contributors. The books still make entertaining reading today.

…

Read More Read More

One From the Bucket List: The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection edited by Allan Kaster

One From the Bucket List: The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection edited by Allan Kaster

Comments 0 Comment


The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection (Infinivox, November 21, 2021). Cover by Maurizio Manzieri

I’ve been reading and writing about Year’s Best volumes for decades, and I’ve covered a lot of them, including anthologies by Terry Carr, Don Wollheim, Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Rich Horton, Neil Clarke, and many others.

So I hope you can appreciate what a pleasure it was to receive a copy of Allan Kaster’s The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection in the mail in December, a book that fulfilled a long-held dream. It’s the first Year’s Best to include a story of mine: “The Ambient Intelligence,” originally published in the October 2020 issue of John Joseph Adams’ Lightspeed magazine.

…

Read More Read More

The Triumphant Return of Fantasy Magazine

The Triumphant Return of Fantasy Magazine

Comments 1 comment


The September, December and January issues of Fantasy Magazine (Adamant Press).
Covers by Thana Wong, OopsPixel, and Warmtail

Fantasy Magazine has a long and storied history. It was founded as a print mag by Sean Wallace in 2005, and edited by Wallace and Paul Tremblay. In 2007 it shifted to digital format, and Tremblay was replaced by Cat Rambo. In 2011 the magazine was acquired by John Joseph Adams’ Adamant Press; Adams became the new editor, and in 2012 he merged it with Lightspeed.

In November 2020 we covered the news that Fantasy was returning as an independent magazine, with new editors Christie Yant and Arley Sorg at the helm. The new regime has now produced sixteen issues, every one on time, publishing popular writers like Dominica Phetteplace, Beth Cato, Marissa Lingen, Bogi Takács, and many others. I’ve been very impressed with the timeliness, top notch art direction, and overall contents of the new edition of Fantasy. It deserves your attention.

…

Read More Read More

A Hearty Library of Genre Fiction: The Arbor House Treasuries edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Bill Pronzini, Robert Silverberg, and Others

A Hearty Library of Genre Fiction: The Arbor House Treasuries edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Bill Pronzini, Robert Silverberg, and Others

Comments 8 comments


The Arbor House library. Cover designs by Antler & Baldwin, Inc.

Last week I ordered a copy of The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels, a thick anthology from 1980 edited by  Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg, and when it arrived I was astounded by the rich assortment of treasures within. Novellas both classic and long overlooked (even by 1980), including “By His Bootstraps” by Robert A. Heinlein, “The Golden Helix” by Theodore Sturgeon, “Born With the Dead” by Robert Silverberg, “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany, “Giant Killer” by A. Bertram Chandler, “A Case of Conscience” by James Blish, “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” by James Tiptree, Jr, “On the Storm Planet” by Cordwainer Smith, “The Miracle Workers” by Jack Vance, and many more.

It made me wonder how I’d managed to miss this book for four decades, and sparked an interest in other Arbor House Treasuries. I knew there were a couple others… a mystery volume, and one on noir, or something? Twenty minutes on Amazon, eBay, and ISFDB (my research triumvirate these days) yielded at lot more than I thought — no less than eleven. I keep hoping a little more digging will yield a clean dozen.

…

Read More Read More

Support Bernie Mireault’s The Jam Non Starter Campaign

Support Bernie Mireault’s The Jam Non Starter Campaign

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been following Bernie Mireault since his career began in Montreal in the mid-80s with the quirky and hilarious comic MacKenzie Queen, which he wrote and drew. When the chance came to recruit him to draw for Black Gate a decade later I jumped at it, and he soon became one of our most valuable and prolific contributors. His art appeared in virtually every issue — starting with our very first, when he illustrated Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion story “The Dreamthief’s Daughter.”

These days Bernie is best known as the creator of The Jam, aka Gordon Kirby, a normal guy whose unorthodox hobby (patrolling rooftops in costume, on the hunt for evildoers) has unexpected consequences. His adventures have been published by the top publishers in the industry. This year Bernie joined with Nat Gertler’s About Comics imprint to release a brand new Jam comic, The Jam Super-Cool Color-Injected Turbo Adventure From Hell issue 2, financed by an independent cloud-funding effort, The Jam Non Starter Campaign. Here’s what Bernie told me when I asked about it:

The Jam non-starter campaign is meant to be a humorous imitation of a Kickstarter thing except the book is already done and ready to order through the aboutcomics.com portal. Also available is a recent Jam-related graphic novel and by the end of January, a trade paperback collection of the first five issues from the original fourteen issue series. I’m thrilled to be back in print, even on a small scale.

I’m very excited to see The Jam return to print. Check out the promo video above, have a look at the campaign here — and help one of the most creative comic artists in the industry return his legendary creation to print. The world will thank you.

Merry Christmas from Black Gate

Merry Christmas from Black Gate

Comments 14 comments

It’s evening in the O’Neill household, the sounds of Christmas music and video games have finally subsided (a little), and it’s almost… quiet. I’m finally in front of my computer, looking out over our backyard, with a peaceful minute to compose my annual Christmas message.

It’s been a helluva year. Plagues and pandemics. Economic uncertainty. Climate change. Endless political rancor. I suppose this is what being an adult is all about: seeing the world as it truly is, with all its dangers and uncertainties. I can see why so many people my age yearn for “a simpler time” — meaning the years when the world’s problems seemed vastly smaller, because they were too young to pay attention.

The world has always has problems, and I guess they’ve always seemed unsurmountable. When we first launched this site over two decades ago, I was consumed with traffic numbers, page views, and deadlines. In the intervening years we’ve achieved the kind of success I never dreamed of, easily surpassing two million pages views a month at our peak. But running Black Gate has taught me that true success isn’t captured in traffic metrics.

…

Read More Read More

It’s Good to be Back

It’s Good to be Back

Comments 30 comments

It’s good to be back.

If you visited Black Gate between May 19th and May 31st, you may have noticed something odd. As in, it was completely missing. For the first time since the website went live in late 1999, Black Gate was off the air for more than a few hours. We were, in fact, dead for a dozen long days.

Our fault entirely. As our traffic continued to grow significantly in 2021, we started to notice some equally significant slowdown in the site in February and March. (You may have noticed it too. Lots of you did.) We’d outgrown our shared server, and desperately needed an upgrade. After a few months of tuning and planning, led chiefly by the stalwart Martin Page, we migrated to a much more powerful server on May 18. It passed all the preliminary tests, and on May 19th I ordered the DNS switchover.

Too soon, as it turned out. The new server crashed almost immediately, and never came back. We gave up after nine fruitless days of panicked effort, configured and migrated to another server with a lot more memory and, after a few error-filled days, here were are.

We apologize for the long absence, and thank you very much for your patience with us. As Tony Stark says so well, it’s good to be back. We missed you.