Black Gate

We kicked off our coverage of John Joseph Adams’ excellent online magazine Lightspeed last month with #58, the March 2015 issue.

Lightspeed publishes fantasy and SF, both new fiction and reprints. Among other stories, the April issue contains a reprint from Ken Liu, author of the breakout fantasy novel The Grace of Kings, just released this month. Now’s your chance to get a taste of his short fiction, and see what all the fuss is about. Here’s the first two paragraphs of “The Ussuri Bear”:

By the time we arrived in the Manchu settlement of Tanbian, the Russian expedition had already left a day earlier.

For the last five days, we have been moving through deep snow and dense primeval forest in the Changbai Mountains, trying to catch up. The superiority of the mechanical horse is becoming clearer with each passing minute.

There’s also a free excerpt from The Grace of Kings in the ebook version.

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

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The newest issue of Clarkesworld, one of the most acclaimed fiction mags on the market, is now on sale. Issue 103 contains six short stories — including one by the source of that other big 2015 Hugo controversy, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, who also writes as the notorious blogger and book reviewer “Requires Hate.”

Sriduangkaew’s long-running campaign of intimidation and death threats against other genre writers was detailed in Laura J. Mixon’s exhaustive “A Report on Damage Done by One Individual Under Several Names,” for which Mixon was nominated for a 2015 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“The Empress in Her Glory” by Robert Reed
“Let Baser Things Devise” by Berrien C. Henderson
“The Petals Abide” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
“Postcards from Monster Island” by Emily Devenport
“Noble Mold” by Kage Baker
“Weep for Day” by Indrapramit Das

Non-fiction includes “Small Markets, Big Wonders” by Julie Novakova, a report on a roundtable on Spanish science fiction by Alvaro Zinos Amaro, “Another Word: The Precious Five-Star and the Reviewers of Mount Doom” by Alethea Kontis, and an editorial, “Danger! Radioactive!,” by Neil Clarke. This issue also includes three podcasts.

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Weird Fiction Review is a terrific little magazine. In fact, it has a lot in common with the print version of Black Gate — it comes out once a year, the issues are huge (300+ pages), it’s crammed with art and pictures, and it contains a nice mix of fantasy fiction and articles.

It’s also more expensive than it probably should be. It is limited to 500 copies, and is priced as a limited-edition collectible: $35 per copy. That seems a lot for a magazine (and speaking as a publisher who used to charge 18 bucks for a small press magazine, that’s saying something.) I’m not sure I understand the business model behind a limited print run on a magazine, but the Centipede Press folks clearly know what they’re doing.

In any event, the issue looks terrific, with brand new short fiction from Brian Stableford, Darrell Schweitzer, Jason V Brock, Robert H. Waugh, and many others — plus a reprint from James Branch Cabell. There are also poems from Chad Hensley, Wade German, Charles Lovecraft, and many others.

The non-fiction includes Dennis Etchison’s 16-page photo essay on the collection and work of collector extraordinaire Forrest J Ackerman, “Presenting! The Amazing! Ackermonster!” (originally published in 1967), a 10-page color gallery by cover artist Travis Louie, a look at James Branch Cabell’s “Machen” story by Darrell Schweitzer, an article on — and interview with — MAD magazine editor Al Feldstein, Dennis Etchison’s interview with Ray Bradbury, Fifty Essential Comics by Danel Olson, Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale by John Pelan, and tons more.

For whatever reason, the issue is not available through Amazon.com until September 15. But it’s for sale now at the Centipede Press website, and has been selling on eBay and other online outlets for a few months.

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I’m delighted to be talking about Asimov’s SF as part of Black Gate‘s new initiative to expand our coverage of fantasy and SF magazines. Asimov’s has been a favorite of mine since the first year it was published, in 1977. (If you’re interested in learning what’s so special about the magazine, I wrote a lengthy 3-part history, looking at it decade by decade, back when I was editing SF Site in 1998).

It took us this long to start covering it because Asimov’s is primarily a science fiction magazine. But the current editor, Sheila Williams — like her predecessor, Gardner Dozois — has shown an appreciation for good fantasy, and there’s plenty of evidence of that in the current issue. The big April/May double issue weighs in at a generous 192 pages, and contains fiction from Allen M. Steele, Tom Purdom, Michael Swanwick & Gregory Frost, Liz Williams, Robert Reed, and many others.

A fine example of that openness to fantasy is Michael Swanwick & Gregory Frost’s “Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters — H’ard and Andy Are Come to Town!” Here’s Bob Blough’s review at Tangent Online:

This is a light-hearted romp about two slightly magical con-men who go to great lengths to prove that a dust giant is causing the drought in some alternate version of the American Dust Bowl during the 1930s. Unfortunately they wake up something much more real than the con they plan to pull. As a lagniappe, if you know your short fiction you can tell who these two men are by what they talk about. It’s a fun if innocuous ride.

Read Bob’s complete review here, and the first half of Swanwick & Gregory Frost’s tale online here.

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Interzone has an interesting approach to cover art. It commissions a single artist to do its covers for a full year. The 2015 cover artist is Martin Hanford, and so far I’ve really been enjoying his work. This issue has an intriguing sword & sorcery feel… although the central figure is in a space suit and strapped to a duck, which is admittedly a fresh theme for S&S (or any other genre I’m familiar with). Click the image at right for a closer look. We’ve showcased Martin’s work at Black Gate previously, most recently on the cover of Swords of Steel.

Interzone is the sister magazine of Black Static, both are published by TTA Press in the UK. The distinguished Andy Cox is the editor of both.

Interzone contains chiefly science fiction but, like Asimov’s SF here in the states, does publish the occasional fantasy piece. Issue #257 is cover-dated March/April, and contains the following fiction:

“A Murmuration” by Alastair Reynolds
“Songbird” by Fadzlishah Johanabas
“Brainwhales Are Stoners, Too” by Rich Larson
“The Worshipful Company of Milliners” by Tendai Huchu
“Blossoms Falling Down” by Aliya Whiteley

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