Black Gate

The September-October issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine is now on sale. The cover, by Martin Hanford, is titled “All Change.” (Click the image at right for a bigger version.)

This issue has fiction from John Shirley, Priya Sharma, Jeff Noon, C.A. Hawksmoor, and Christien Gholson. Here’s Lois Tilton at Locus Online on Jeff Noon’s “No Rez”:

An experimental piece in terms of typography and page layout, with several sections that resemble lines of verse… I don’t see much of this sort of thing these days, but I’m not surprised to find it coming from IZ, a zine that doesn’t stand still. This is a cyber future with the motto: “You are what you see.” Or, As you see the world, so you think about the world. But the only way everyone can see the world is pixelated, through implants, and in higher or lower resolution, with or without more vision-pops and ads, depending on how they can pay. Because Aiden is limited, when not on work-time, to low-rez, sometimes even when he closes his eyes, the dark starts breaking up. He has to wonder what he really looks like in the unmediated world, the zero-rez world, whether a girl might find him attractive. Then one day he happens on a mysterious black box that he isn’t supposed to have.

This sort of virtual world isn’t so new, but I’ve rarely seen it expressed with such insight and verve. There are genuinely poetic moments here, not simply apparent versification. This text would have been just about as effective if laid out on the page in a more conventional manner. – RECOMMENDED

Read Lois’ complete comments on the issue here.

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Grimdark is a quarterly magazine of dark fantasy. Editor Adrian Collins summarizes the latest for us nicely in his Issue #5 Line Up post:

Grimdark Magazine issue #5 is chock full of grimdark goodness. We’ve pushed the genre boundaries of grimdark a bit more in this issue, with zombie apocalypses and cold-hearted near-future sci-fi to go with the three fantasy pieces, which include a Dominion of the Fallen short story by Aliette de Bodard.

The Line Up post even has a nifty teaser trailer. Check it out. In his review of the first few issues, Fletcher Vredenburgh seems to like what he sees:

From a swords & sorcery perspective, the biggest — and potentially most interesting — new publication out there is Grimdark Magazine… grimdark fantasy is nihlistic/realistic storytelling that moves the genre forward/destroys the genre, and features characters with realistic motives/who are utterly vile. Whether you like or hate the fiction coming out under the rubric, Grimdark Magazine, by its very nature, is going to feature S&S… At only $2.99 a pop, I’ll be keeping up with Grimdark Magazine…

The latest issue went on sale in October, and contains new fiction by Aliette de Bodard, Chadwick Ginther, Sean Patrick Hazlett, David Annandale, and T.C. Powell, as well as an excerpt from Victor Milan’s new novel The Dinosaur Lords, book reviews, interviews with James A. Moore and Peter Orullian, and an article titled ‘Who is the Grimdark Hero?’ by C.T. Phipps.

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D.M. Ritzlin, editor of Swords of Steel, is a man who knows sword & sorcery. His latest venture is an intriguing little magazine devoted to reviewing overlooked heroic fantasy, horror, and weird fantasy of all kinds. Here he is in the editorial for the first issue:

Scrolls of Legendry is for the overlooked and forgotten, whether they’re lost classics or things that would be better off undiscovered. We’re only going to review old, out of print books, with a few exceptions for reprints or other works of interest to us. Some of these titles probably haven’t been reviewed in decades… or in some cases, at all.

As you may have inferred from the title, the main focus in the pages of Scrolls of Legendry is fantasy (especially of the sword & sorcery variety), because that’s what we’re most passionate about. But we’ll also include related genres such as horror, historical adventures, and science fiction. If you’re a fan of the great authors of Weird Tales like Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith, Scrolls is for you.

In addition to reviews, each issue we’ll have a story or article. For our debut, Jeff Black presents us with “The Heaviest Sword.” It takes place in Japan, an underused setting for sword and sorcery.

The first issue proved to be surprisingly packed for such a slender little zine, crammed with articles on long out-of print texts by H. Bedford-Jones, John Christopher, Tanith Lee, Robert Lory, F. Van Wyck Mason, Thomas Burnett Swann, Karl Edward Wagner, and others.

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In his editorial this month, John Joseph Adams takes a few minutes to highlight a few of his accomplishments in the past month. It’s an impressive list.

In case you missed the news last month, we won another Hugo!… Lightspeed took home the rocket for Best Semiprozine, but also, just as exciting, there were two other Lightspeed Hugo victories: Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s story from Lightspeed, “The Day the World Turned Upside Down,” won the Hugo for Best Novelette, and one of our illustrators, Elizabeth Leggett, won the Hugo for Best Fan Artist. Congrats to them both, and thanks to everyone who voted for all of us… We won the Hugo for Best Semiprozine last year as well, but most of our team wasn’t able to be in London to accept the award in person (none of us except for our podcast producer, Stefan Rudnicki, were able to make it), so having all of us there in person this year made it extra special for us.

In related news, I also personally won an Alfie Award (for Best Editor, Short Form), a new, possibly one-off award presented by George R.R. Martin. It was created in response to controversy this year over the Hugo nominations… (They’re made out of vintage car hood ornaments, which closely resemble the original shape of the first Hugo Awards.)

This month is the debut of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, part of the prestigious Best American series. In it, guest editor Joe Hill and I present the top twenty stories of 2014 (ten science fiction, ten fantasy).

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Emil Ostrovski and Nike Sulway, and fantasy reprints by Kevin Brockmeier and Delia Sherman, and original SF by Maria Dahvana Headley and Adrian Tchaikovsky, plus SF reprints by An Owomoyela and Gregory Benford. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with security expert and futurist Marc Goodman, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus novella reprint of James Tiptree Jr.’s “Slow Music,” and a pair of novel excerpts.

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The October issue of the Newsmagazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field features a long interview with author Elizabeth Hand, reports on Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention — including the complete Hugo voting results, a new column by Kameron Hurley, short fiction reviews from Gardner Dozois and Rich Horton, and reviews of new books from Gene Wolfe, Christopher Moore, Ian McDonald, Michael Swanwick, Mercedes Lackey, Paul Tremblay, and many others.

There’s also detailed reporting on Stephen King’s National Medal of Arts, the 2015 Chesley Awards Winners, the National Book Awards Longlists, and the Ness Fundraiser.

In addition to all the news, features, and regular columns, there’s also the indispensable Listings of Magazines Received, Books Received, British Books Received, and Bestsellers. Plus obituaries for Wes Craven and Ned Brooks, and Letters from John Helfers and Michael Bishop. See the complete contents here.

We last covered Locus with the May 2015 issue. Locus is edited by Liza Groen Trombi, and published monthly by Locus Publications. The issue is 62 pages, priced at $7.50. Subscriptions are $63 for 12 issues in the US. Subscribe online here. The magazine’s website, run as a separate publication by Mark R. Kelly, is a superb online resource. It is here.

Our mid-September Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.