Black Gate

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, one of the most reliable sources of new adventure fantasy, arrives right in time with their 25th quarterly issue. This one contains short stories by Michael Liguori, Linda Donahue, and N.G. Lancaster, plus a special surprise from editor Adrian Simmons.

“Beast Hunter’s Song,” by Michael Liguori
In a land where terrible creatures once terrorized the landscape an aging hunter gets one more chance to face a one of a kind beast.

“White Elephants,” by Linda Donahue
Escorting the Indian bride of the Shah of Persia is a task fraught with danger. Bandits! A disagreeable elephant! But when a passing Roc decides the elephant would make a fine meal, Darius, chosen treasure guard, has to take some big risks to get it all back.

“Engines Rarely Seen,” by N.G. Lancaster
In the breath before the armies move out again, a vendetta brings a group of vagabond mercenaries into the docks outside of town.

“Ram Daskanyarda,” by Adrian Simmons About a year ago, HFQ editor Adrian Simmons got the idea of updating/re-booting/re-imagining the H.P. Lovecraft classic “Nyarlathotep” for our modern, troubled, age. Turns out, from a marketing standpoint, this was a poor investment of time. However! Although it isn’t quite S&S fiction, he considered posting the story here at HFQ, but thought better of it when he realized that he could have the re-animated corpse of H.P. himself take time off from dispensing advice on the internet to read it aloud!

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Neil Clarke’s editorial in the latest issue of Clarkesworld is entitled “The Sad Truth About Short Fiction Reviews.”

The sad truth about short fiction reviews is that the overwhelming majority of them have little-to-no impact on readership. After monitoring the incoming traffic for the online version of this magazine for nine years, I can say that the typical review has a statistically insignificant impact on the readership of a story or issue. The only notable exception to this has been reviews on high traffic sites, like io9 or Tor.com, that focus specifically on a single story. As the number of stories in a review increases, there’s a dramatic drop-off in story readership… Shouldn’t reviews of good stories have the effect of encouraging people to read the story?

In a discussion on his editorial here at Black Gate, Neil elaborated on his thoughts:

A review that doesn’t send new readers is functionally equivalent to emailing your thoughts to the author. Nothing wrong with that, but there are reviews that send the author a message and readers to the story. I’m saying that the we should all aspire to the former and that most reviewers aren’t. That’s the sad truth I was referring to in the title.

Issue #108 of Clarkesworld has seven stories — five new, and two reprints — from Robert Reed, Erica L. Satifka, Bao Shu, Elizabeth Bourne, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Tom Purdom, and Una McCormack.

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Black Gate blogger Derek Kunsken was the first to alert me to the birth of new online market Lackington’s last June. The Ottawa-based magazine is edited by Ranylt Richildis and appears four times a year; it publishes art and speculative fiction between 1,500 – 5,000 words in length. It has produced seven issues, like clockwork, which had me counting on my fingers… have there really been that many quarters since last June?

Anyway, it’s high time I started paying attention to this fine magazine, adding it to our regular magazine coverage, and answering some of your questions. Questions like, “Who the heck is Lackington?” That riddle is answered on their Donate page:

Once upon a time, a British bookseller named James Lackington made books affordable for nearly everyone. It was the late eighteenth century, literacy was on the rise, but books were still a luxury item for many Londoners. Lackington changed that by popularizing the cheap “remainder” and making a tidy profit for himself, in the bargain.

We’ll never make a profit at Lackington’s Magazine. Our principles, in fact, have us in a bind. We want to keep content accessible to everyone, the way Lackington did. But we also want to pay contributors, because we believe creative labour must be compensated. To do so, we rely on donations to buy stories and art. Help keep this project afloat, support creators, and ensure we remain open to anyone with an internet connection.

Lackington invented remaindered books? Seriously, that guy is totally my hero.

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One of the fun games you can play with F&SF these days is “Guess Which Editor Bought What?” New editor C. C. Finlay has been acquiring fiction at a good clip (and indeed, his very first issue, July-August 2014, produced a Nebula Award winner, Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i.”) But certainly outgoing editor Gordon van Gelder left him with a fair inventory of stories, so for at least his first year or so, the magazine will be a mix of his taste and Gordon’s. That’s the theory, anyway.

The September/October issue is only Finlay’s fourth, but fans are anxious to get a sense of his taste, so there’s lots of discussion and conjecture. But however you look at it, the magazine is packed with lots of great fiction, including tales from Paolo Bacigalupi, David Gerrold, Ron Goulart, Dennis Etchison, Elizabeth Bear, Richard Bowes, Albert E. Cowdrey, and others.

Jerard Bretts at Tangent Online has already reviewed the issue, with high praise for the contents:

Albert E. Cowdrey… always writes entertainingly. This time he contributes “The Lord of Ragnarök,” a fantasy novella in the grittily realistic Game of Thrones tradition, set in medieval Europe sometime after the Crusades. With some nice wordplay on the author’s name, it tells the story of slippery Sir Richard de Coudray and his rise from peasant boy to knight. One of Cowdrey’s major achievements here is to make us feel sympathy for this slippery and essentially Machiavellian character…

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Sheesh. Sometimes it feels I spend most of my day writing about John Joseph Adams. How does one guy manage it all? In the past few weeks alone, I’ve covered his new Hugo Award, the latest issues of his magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare. his new book Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction, and his (second) amazingly successful Kickstarter campaign.

And that’s only the stuff I have time to cover. That’s not even including his many other projects, like the upcoming Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, his just-released anthology Press Start to Play, and lord knows what else. Seriously. I survey everything this guy does, and then I need to have a bit of a lie down.

We’re very fortunate to have him, even if he is tough to keep up with. The field would be much poorer without John Joseph Adams. If you’re interested in sampling a little of his editorial genius, but don’t have the time or the money for one of his many fine anthologies, then check out his award-winning magazines: Lightspeed and Nightmare.

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Sean McMullen and Heather Lindsley, and fantasy reprints by Maurice Broaddus and Theodora Goss, and original SF by Caroline M. Yoachim and Megan Arkenberg, plus SF reprints by Daniel H. Wilson and Carrie Vaughn. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with Ken Liu, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus novella by Eliot Fintushel, and two novel excerpts.

Here’s the complete fiction contents of the September issue.

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Issue 43 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated August 2015, is now available.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett. Each issue contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue includes new fiction from Connor Perry and Sandra Unerman.

“Stragglers in the Cold,” by Connor Perry, is the tale of a skin changer faced with the choice of dying of starvation in the snow or breaking the rules of his kind and taking another person’s body. Perry is new to Swords & Sorcery but not to fantasy. His work can be seen on-line in his web serial, Monsters of Nottingham.

“Thorncandle House,” by Sandra Unerman, is the story of a man coming home against his will to a house that wants him more than he wants it. Unerman’s work has not previously appeared in Swords & Sorcery but she has been a fantasy writer for many years. She has recently published stories in Frostfire Worlds and in the Worms anthology from Knightwatch Press. She lives in London and is a member of the Clockhouse Writers’ Group.

Read the current issue here. We last covered Swords and Sorcery Magazine with Issue #42.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett, and is available free online. Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed issue #42 in his July Short Story Roundup.

Our September Fantasy Magazine Rack is here, and all of our recent magazine coverage here.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #181 has new stories by Fran Wilde and Suzanne Palmer, a podcast by Fran Wilde, and a reprint by Ferrett Steinmetz.

“Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” by Fran Wilde
In the sky behind, a group of children Calli’s age swooped and dove in unison, followed by one of the tower’s magisters. Calli heard scraps of song. A lesson about wind shifts. The students’ wings cut patches of bright color in the deep blue air. Calli knew each span and spar, even from this distance. She’d tested them all.

“Moogh and the Great Trench Kraken” by Suzanne Palmer
Moogh decided, with regret, that he would have to temporarily abandon his trek due west and instead walk alongside this water for a bit until either he outlasted or outpaced whatever curse made it seem to go on forever. He declared its true name to be the Tricksy River, and decided if he ever found the trickster responsible for it he might justifiably commit some minor violence upon their person.

Author Interview: Fran Wilde

Audio Fiction Podcast: “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” by Fran Wilde (51 minutes, 30 seconds)
Liras tried to remain at his workbench and finish the customer’s wings, but the pain grew too much.

From the Archives: “My Father’s Wounds” by Ferrett Steinmetz (from BCS #75)
Father guides my hand to the ruin of his belly. My fingers sink into the wound, touching something moist and pulsing —

Fran Wilde’s story “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” is set in the same world as her just-released debut novel from Tor, Updraft. And we recently reviewed Suzanne Palmer’s excellent story “Tuesdays,” from the March 2015 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

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