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Keep up on Fantasy Gaming with Kobold Quarterly

Keep up on Fantasy Gaming with Kobold Quarterly

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kobold-quarterly-fall-2012-smallIn the early days of the adventure gaming hobby, the field was pretty diverse, with a healthy assortment of successful RPGs and board games. Much like today, as a matter of fact.

One major difference, however, was that each of the major titles was supported with its own magazine: Dragon (for D&D and other TSR games), Different Worlds (Runequest, Call of Cthulhu), Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Tunnels and Trolls), White Dwarf (Warhammer), Space Gamer (The Fantasy Trip), The Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society (Traveller), and many others. Board gamers, too, weren’t overlooked on the magazine rack, with Nexus (Star Fleet Battles), Ares (SPI’s sci-fi games), The General (Avalon Hill), and others.

With the exception of White Dwarf, all those magazines are dead today.

And I miss them. Many were good, and a handful — including The Space Gamer and Different Worlds — were excellent. They kept us up-to-date on rapid market changes, talked-up overlooked games, and generally kept the level of excitement high around the whole industry.

I never expected the era of the specialized gaming magazine to return. For one thing, I know what it takes to keep a magazine alive these days (a series of miracles).

But Wolfgang Baur’s Kobold Quarterly has changed my mind.

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November/December Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

November/December Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

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fsf-nov-dec-2012-smallCory and Catska Ench provide the intriguing cover to the Nov/Dec cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction, on sale this week. Lois Tilton reviews Robert Reed’s cover novella, “Katabasis,” set in his posthuman “Great Ship” universe, at Locus Online:

Inside the vast body of the ship, high-gravity beings once built a wheel-shaped habitat that is now used by tourists as a test of endurance. The high-gravity environment is so arduous that beings like humans can hardly bear their own weight, so they must employ porters to carry their food and water – and their bodies if they fail during the attempt. Katabasis works as a porter; she is a survivor of the arduous journey her own people once took to reach the ship…

The Great Ship is essentially a stage where different adventures can be set… knowledge of the previous stories is by no means required to enjoy the present one. What makes it different from other stages is time. The voyage is near-infinite in duration. Lifespans are measured in millennia. And as the author reminds us, death in this universe is no longer a permanent consideration. Xenophon was a student of Socrates, who would say that all humans are mortal. Reed makes us ask what, then, are the passengers on the Great Ship?

–RECOMMENDED

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Apex Magazine Subscription Drive

Apex Magazine Subscription Drive

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Apex Magazine is having a subscription drive from now until November 15th. Featuring the work of folks such as Catherynne M. Valente, Mary Robinette Kowal, Sarah Monette, Ken Liu, Elizabeth Bear, Rachel Swirsky, Jennifer Pelland,  Kij Johnson, Geoff Ryman, and Maureen McHugh, Apex Magazine earned a Hugo Nomination for Best Semiprozine in 2012. Here’s the pitch:

image012_largeYearly subscriptions are available through the Apex website and Weightless Books. For $17.95, $2.00 off the normal subscription rate, you can have 12 months of Apex Magazine delivered to you in the file format of your choice: ePub, mobi, or PDF.  That’s at least 24 brand new short stories dropped into your eager little hands for the price of an anthology. Plus, you get the reprints, poetry, nonfiction and interviews. Quite a deal, right?

Subscribe via Weightless Books
Subscribe via Kindle
Subscribe via Apex

Not convinced you want to commit to a whole year or (I like this scenario better) don’t want the hassle of having to renew your subscription each year, Amazon can help you out.  For only a $1.99 a month, Apex Magazine will be auto-delivered straight to your Kindle. You never have to think about it again. On the first Tuesday of every month the new issue will be right there waiting for you, ready to go with you wherever you want to take it, no more need for a clunky computer or an internet connection once it’s downloaded.

Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950: A Retro-Review

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galaxy-october-1950-smallContinuing in my discovery of Galaxy magazine, I began reading the first issue, dated October 1950. I knew what I’d never see in Galaxy, and but what fiction would I discover within?

“Time Quarry” by Clifford D. Simak is the first of a three-part serial. I don’t see this done often with modern magazines, but it seems like back in the Fifties, novel serializations were part of the norm. I wonder how the rights and payment worked out for that, but I digress.

In Part 1, Asher Sutton returns to Earth after disappearing for twenty years on a space exploration mission to 61 Cygni. Little is known of the planet he landed on; no other ship can get near it due to unexplained anomalies. Since his return, Sutton has drawn attention, both from those who want information and those who want him dead.

“Third From the Sun” by Richard Matheson – A family plans to escape from a world on the brink of war. All they need to do is to take a spaceship for themselves and leave everyone but their closest neighbors behind.

Third From the Sun became the title of Matheson’s first paperback short story collection, published by Bantam Books in 1955.

“The Stars are the Styx” by Theodore Sturgeon – Mankind has the tools for creating vast inter-galactic travel, but it will take 6,000 years to set up the framework. Volunteers are sent (usually as married pairs) out to distant points within the galaxy, and when all are in place, they will create a connected network for instant transportation to each location.

Each person’s choice to go out or return to Earth is made at Curbstone, an Earth satellite run by a man sometimes referred to as Charon. Of the latest arrivals, Charon takes interest in Judson, a young man who seems certain to become Outbounder, provided he doesn’t get too distracted by those who are still undecided.

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Weird Tales 360 Arrives This Week

Weird Tales 360 Arrives This Week

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weird-tales-360-smallWeird Tales 360,  the first issue helmed by new editor Marvin Kaye, is scheduled to ship this Friday, October 19.

It’s an auspicious and entirely appropriate number, I think. After changing direction several times over the last few years, Weird Tales has now turned 360-degrees and returned to where it started: publishing classic weird fiction.

The theme of the first Kaye issue is “The Elder Gods,” and the table of contents makes it clear that he is whole-heartedly embracing the Lovecraftian fiction that helped make Weird Tales one of the most sought-after magazines of the pulp era:

FICTION: THE ELDER GODS

  • “The Long Last Night” by Brian Lumley
  • “Momma Durtt” by Michael Shea
  • “The Darkness at Table Rock Road” by Michael Reyes
  • “The Runners Beyond the Wall” by Darrell Schweitzer
  • “Drain” by Matthew Jackson
  • “The Thing in the Cellar” by William Blake-Smith
  • “Found in a Bus Shelter at 3:00 am, Under a Mostly Empty Sky” by Stephen Gracia

FICTION: UNTHEMED

  • “To Be a Star” by Parke Godwin
  • “The Empty City” by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
  • “Abbey at the Edge of the Earth” by Collin B. Greenwood
  • “Alien Abduction” by M. A. Brines

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Smaller is Better

Smaller is Better

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interzone-242Arriving in the mail the other day was not one, but two small parcels from TTA Press, mini versions of Black Static and Interzone, now both in a more compact, dare I say it, iPad-ish, format, with spine and laminated color cover. Sort of like a book (or, if you prefer, the aforementioned  iPad).

Kinda cool. The rationale seems to be a way to pack more content at what I assume is a more inexpensive way to print it (which may also be why both issues will now come out at the same time, six times yearly,  instead of alternate months.) Even if it isn’t completely a cost issue, the new versions are quite handsome and, even better, more handy.

black-static-30A definite updagrade. Kudos to Andy Cox and crew for trying to preserve the magazine in print format.

Hey, maybe it’s like vinyl records in a digital age: it may be a minority format, but there are people who still want to buy it (I’m one of those in both camps).

The September–October issue of Interzone has new stories by Ken Liu, Debbie Urbanski, Lavie Tidhar, Priya Sharma, CW Johnson, and Karl Bunker. Black Static has stories from James Cooper, Ray Cluley, Daniel Mills, Susan Kim, Carole Johnstone, and David Kotok.

Click either cover to see a full-size version.

You can subscribe to one or both here.

Why I Stopped Reading Granta

Why I Stopped Reading Granta

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granta-117-smallI used to subscribe to Granta when I was in grad school. It’s a literary magazine published in the UK, originally produced by students at Cambridge University (where it offered early work by Ted Hughes, A. A. Milne, Sylvia Plath, and many others). It was relaunched as a wider journal of “New Writing” in 1979; since then it’s published work by Mario Vargas Llosa, Richard Ford, Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Gabriel García Márquez, and lots more.

But while Granta showcased some terrific writing — when it wasn’t focused on an odd mix of memoir and photojournalism — too often the fiction left me cold. On their website the editorial team writes convincingly of their “belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real.” But what I frequently read in Granta weren’t so much stories as brief literary fireworks: dazzling to watch, but ultimately empty. For someone looking for love in the crowded literary scene, Granta seemed a bit too smitten with beauty and a bit too scornful of personality.

So I let my subscription lapse. But I did pick up the odd issue now and then. Not because of all that beauty or anything. Just, you know, for the articles.

Granta’s changed management a few times since we hung out together in grad school. The owner of The New York Review of Books took a controlling stake in 1994; in 2005 it changed hands again. I’ve lost track of how many editors it’s had over the same period. But it still does themed issues, and not very predictable themes, either. Granta #69 was The Assassin issue, and #74, Summer 2001, was Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater (“Perhaps no truth is more momentous, as none more difficult to face, than the blackest, most abject one about oneself. My son supplies me with drugs, with Ecstasy.”)

In tune with that unpredictability, the theme of last year’s Autumn issue was Horror. This was intriguing enough for me to buy a copy, just to see what happened when Granta wandered into my neighborhood. The issue has an impressive table of contents, featuring original fiction by Don DeLillo, Sarah Hall, Rajesh Parameswaran, and Stephen King, and others. Of course there’s also the usual mix of non-fiction, from Will Self, Paul Auster, and Santiago Roncagliolo, among others.

And as a perfect metaphor for this awkward meeting of literature and genre, Mark Doty’s memoir-slash-essay “Insatiable” opens with the odd assertion, from a 2003 Walt Whitman bio, that “Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on Walt Whitman.”

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September/October Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

September/October Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine now on Sale

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fantasy-and-science-fiction-sept-oct-2012Andy Duncan gets the cover this issue for “Close Encounters,” a rural tale of alien abduction. Here’s what Lois Tilton says about it in her review at Locus Online:

Old Buck Nelson claims he doesn’t want to be bothered by reporters, even pretty girl reporters, sniffing around after the stories he used to tell about the alien who took him up to Mars and Venus and the dog he brought back with him. No one cares anymore, no one believes him. But now they’re making a movie and people are interested…

A really strong character, a narrative voice with strong authenticity, a strongly-realized setting. And a perfect ending to it all – RECOMMENDED.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents:

NOVELETS

  • “Close Encounters” – Andy Duncan
  • “The Sheriff”  – Chet Arthur
  • “12:03 P.M.” – Richard A. Lupoff
  • “The Goddess” – Albert E. Cowdrey
  • “Arc” – Ken Liu
  • “Troll Blood” – Peter Dickinson

SHORT STORIES

  • “Give Up” – Richard Butner
  • “A Diary from Deimos” – Michael Alexander
  • “Where the Summer Dwells” – Lynda E. Rucker
  • “Theobroma Valentine” – Rand B. Lee

POEMS

  • “Contact – Sophie M. White

The cover price is $7.50, for a generous 258 pages. Additional free content at the F&SF website includes book and film reviews by Charles de Lint, Chris Moriarty, and Kathi Maio; Paul Di Filippo’s Plumage From Pegasus column, “Call Me Ishmael”; and the “Curiosities” column by Chris De Vito. Cover artist this issue is Kent Bash. We last covered F&SF here with the July/August issue.

Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego looks at Sword & Sorcery in the Comics

Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego looks at Sword & Sorcery in the Comics

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alter-ego-80Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego is a terrific magazine — packed with articles, interviews, and loads of art from vintage comics. So packed, in fact, that I can’t remember the last time I read one cover-to-cover. These days when a new issue arrives, I flip though it joyfully, then add it to the teetering stack to be enjoyed later.

That stack finally toppled, spilling all over the floor, and while I was cleaning it up and carting it to the basement (excuse me, to the Cave of Wonders), I found a handful of issues from 2008 and 2009 I’d been meaning to blog about. Specifically, those containing a massive three-part investigation of, and tribute to, Sword & Sorcery in the Comics.

Better late than never, I thought, and brought them back up out of the subterranean vault. Let’s start with the first one, Alter Ego #80, dated August 2008. It is wrapped in a new cover by Rafael Kayanan and contains John Wells’s fabulously detailed 34-page article “Sword & Sorcery in the Comics: Part I of a Study of Robert E. Howard’s Legacy in Four Colors — and in Black-&-White.” As Thomas says in his editorial:

You’d have thought I’d have done this a long time before now, wouldn’t you? Devote an issue of Alter Ego to sword-and-sorcery in comics, I mean… I just kept putting it off. It’s a big subject, after all, because, much as I’d like to think otherwise, comic book S&S didn’t begin with Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #1 in 1970 — or even with the couple of forerunners at DC (“Nightmaster”) and Marvel (“Starr the Slayer”) in the previous twelvemonth…

“Sword & Sorcery in the Comics” proved way too big a subject to cover in one issue… in the end, because we wanted to illustrate nearly every one of the examples of the game we were discussing, we found ourselves with only room for the S&S overview I talked John Wells into writing especially for this magazine… in Alter Ego #83, Part Two will be slashing its way toward you. After that, we’ll keep the S&S segments coming, every few issues, till we’ve covered the genre the way we’ve always intended to! We figured it’s high time.

Appropriately enough, Wells begins his article with a look at Robert E. Howard and his profound influence on the entire field.

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Jolly Blackburn’s Knights of the Dinner Table #191 Shipping Next Week

Jolly Blackburn’s Knights of the Dinner Table #191 Shipping Next Week

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kodt-191Time to remind all you people that you should be reading Knights of the Dinner Table.

Why? Because it’s one of the best comics on the market. And for gamers it’s a lot more than that — it’s one of the finest magazines out there, packed with articles, reviews, and ads for the best new games.

Knights of the Dinner Table follows the misadventures of a group of misfits from Muncie, Indiana, whose love of gaming routinely trumps normal social conventions, and occasionally even their sense of self preservation. If you’re a Black Gate reader you’re already familiar with the Knights: the Java Joint strip in the back of every issue draws from the same cast of characters. Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint, collecting the complete Black Gate strips, is now available in print and PDF.

You can try KODT for free online with the weekly Knights of the Dinner Table web comic. The current “Celebrity Hack” strip, featuring Seinfeld characters playing Hackmaster, is more than worth the trip.

In addition to a great cover by artist George Vrbanic, spoofing the original Unearthed Arcana art by Jeff Easley, issue 191 features 8 complete comic strips, plus feature articles including “Siftings of a Hoarder’s Lair: An inventory of things found in a Kobold’s Lair,” by Barbara Blackburn. This issue’s GameMaster’s Workshop looks at Bait and Tackle: Adventure Hooks on the Fly, Denizens of Tellene: Shazahn Ghanim, and Gaming the Movies covers the film Outpost.

All that plus regular columns Tales from the Table, Web Scryer: the Best of the RPG Web, and reviews of Masque of the Red Death, The Drifter’s Escape, The Tempus novels, Ugg-Tect, Flapjacks & Sasquatches, and Decktet. See this complete list of contents here

Knights of the Dinner Table is published monthly by Kenzer & Company. Issues are 64 pages, black & white, and priced at $5.99. It gets my highest recommendation.