Browsed by
Category: Magazines

Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

Comments 0 Comment

frank2Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, by Jane Frank
McFarland Publishing Co (534 pages, $148.00, February 2009)

My initial interest in amassing my collection of SF & Fantasy magazines began with the appeal of the cover art.

I jumped on Robert Weinberg’s Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists when it was published in 1988. This work has been virtually alone since then as a definitive coverage of the lives and work of most all of those whose art graced the genre pulps and digests. As with Mike Ashley’s work on the history and accounting of the magazines themselves, Weinberg’s book took front and center on my shelf of core reference books which explain so well to me what I have in my collection.

Reference books of this sort are few, and a work of passion, and as such become updated only with supreme will and dedication, as in the current case of Mike A’s updating of his original 4-volume history of the science fiction magazine. I really hadn’t expected a similar effort to come out of the Art segment of the field. Fortuitously it has now appeared.

…

Read More Read More

Short Fiction Roundup: The Year’s Best

Short Fiction Roundup: The Year’s Best

Comments 0 Comment

ed-al906_bkrvsc_dv_20100722175927Over at The Wall Street Journal, Martin Wooster has reviewed this year’s annual of Gardner Dozois picks so I don’t have to. What’s particularly interesting about this review is the contention that while most short fiction today is the output of navel gazing MFA candidates (and could not be possibly of interest to normal folks, like those who read The Wall Street Journal), genre magazines still publish quality traditional plot-driven stories once characteristic of mass circulation magazines that have long ago succumbed to short-attention reader spans and market vicissitudes.

As it happens, I stopped reading Asimov’s, which Dozois formerly edited, because I was coming across too many traditional plot-driven hard SF tales that are okay once in awhile, but, for my tastes, make for a kind of bland diet.  For largely the same reason, as well as for lack of time, I’ve become less obsessed with studying every iteration of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, though Wooster’s review may make me reconsider (even the ones he doesn’t like sound intriguing too me).  But as for whether genre magazines are the only home of short fiction that isn’t willfully obtuse in focusing on obsessions that matter only to a self-conscious elite (a charge frequently made of genre’s pulp forebears, funnily enough), I don’t know.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read much from the so-called literary magazines, and I probably haven’t read enough of them to know if this is more canard than truism.  I did use to get Glimmer Magazine, which, if I recall correctly, was the first place where I read anything by Junot Diaz, who wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Depending on what you thought of that book may either prove or disprove Wooster’s point.

Short Fiction Roundup

Short Fiction Roundup

Comments 1 comment

july2010Each week, Lightspeed features a short story from its current magazine, that is otherwise available for a $2.99 PDF download. The current one is “The Zeppelin Conductor Society’s Annual Gentleman’s Ball” by Genevieve Valentine. Next Tuesday (July 27) it will be “… for a single yesterday” by George R. R. Martin.

Theodora Goss is the new Folkroots editor for Realms of Fantasy.

Here’s another take on Gary MacMahon’s The Harm, which sees a lot more in it that my own lukewarm review.

The 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards winner in the short story category is “The Pelican Bar” by Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse 3).  Haven’t read it, nor any of the nominees (nor for that matter, any nominees any category, maybe I get out too much):

  • “The Crevasse,” Dale Bailey & Nathan Ballingrud (Lovecraft Unbound)
  • “Strappado,” Laird Barron (Poe)
  • “Faces,” Aimee Bender (The Paris Review, Winter ‘09)
  • “The Jacaranda Smile,” Gemma Files (Apparitions)
  • “Procedure in Plain Air,” Jonathan Lethem (The New Yorker 10/26/09)
SF writers as (or around) criminals: Homer Eon Flint

SF writers as (or around) criminals: Homer Eon Flint

Comments 0 Comment

blind-spot1Last night at dinner we were discussing (as one does) Homer Eon Flint.

Since my guests were working on ideas for the 2011 Potlatch convention, we can be forgiven this. Flint was a local author, having grown up in San Jose, and there was talk of doing a panel on him.

I had not known that Flint was working in a shoe repair shop in SJ, or that he was killed in a car crash (perhaps after stealing it from a local gangster, perhaps instead murdered by that local gangster).

It’s covered on his Wikipedia page, and in the article by his granddaughter Vella Munn, “Homer Eon Flint: A Legacy,” available on the Strange Horizons site.

Munn’s piece talks with great respect of the work of one Mike Ashley in ferreting out facts without disturbing the family’s peace. Munn mentions that there were other writers in the area, with whom Flint (actually, Flindt) used to hang out when he lived here in the teens and early 20’s.

Forry Ackerman talks about Austin Hall meeting Flint in his shoe shop, in his introduction to The Blind Spot, the 1921 novel the two wrote together.

…

Read More Read More

Apex Magazine re-opens to Submissions

Apex Magazine re-opens to Submissions

Comments 1 comment

apexmagApex publisher Jason Sizemore has announced that the magazine has re-opened to submissions.

This is great news for fans, since the magazine announced last May that it was temporarily suspending publication. It began as print edition Apex Digest in 2005, swtiching names to Apex Magazine when it became online-only in 2008. It resumed online publication in June 2009 and has published monthly since. 

Note that Apex has new Submission Guidelines. The pay rate is five cents a word, and the new fiction editor is Catherynne M. Valente. The magazine has added Dark Fantasy to their list of interests (originally focused on science fiction and horror), and their Guidelines are worth the read:

What we want is sheer, unvarnished awesomeness. We want the stories it scared you to write. We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful. We want science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three—the dark, weird stuff down at the bottom of your little literary heart. This magazine is not a publication credit, it is a place to put your secret places and dreams on display. Just so long as they have a dark speculative fiction element—we aren’t here for the quotidian.

The latest issue of Apex includes original fiction from Paul Jessup and Jerry Gordon, a reprint from Catheryyne M. Valente, Audio Fiction from Jerry Gordon, and a Dark Faith roundtable interview with Gary A. Braunbeck, Jay Lake, Nick Mamatas, and Catherynne M. Valente.

The complete magazine is also available in a downloadable, pay-what-you-want edition through Smashwords, and in a Kindle edition (for 99 cents).

Apex Book Company also recently published Dark Faith, reviewed right here at the Black Gate blog by David Soyka.

Realms of Fantasy on Realms of Fantasy

Realms of Fantasy on Realms of Fantasy

Comments 4 comments

realms-december-2008Following some of the recent discussion on the future of the magazine, including the Wednesday report here on the Black Gate blog that publisher Warren Lapine had written to warn subscribers that it might be shut down, Realms of Fantasy editor Douglas Cohen has weighed in with a State of the Union piece on the Realms website.

Creatively speaking, RoF’s future is looking bright and there is a lot to be excited about. Financially speaking… It’s fair to say we’re currently navigating some choppy waters. Behind the scenes, there has been some sacrifice involved in RoF reaching this point…. If we can get through this rough patch the magazine could be secure and stable for a very long time.

There’s been plenty of debate on both the announcement and just how fans should respond in other quarters as well, including a discussion kicked off by Nick Mamatas on how the magazine might have gotten the message out without appearing quite so doomed, some comments from long-time RoF (and Black Gate) author Richard Parks, a news story at Examiner.com, an exchange with editor Douglas Cohen at The Dreaded Sword, and of course ongoing discussion right here at Black Gate.

It’s tempting to treat this as just a news story and remain objective, but I’m not going to do that. Regardless of how you feel about how the message got out, Realms of Fantasy is a terrific magazine, one of the few professional fantasy publications that will publish and promote new writers, and it deserves your support. 

You can buy a subscription here for just $19.99 for a full year.

Goodbye Realms of Fantasy — Again?

Goodbye Realms of Fantasy — Again?

Comments 16 comments

realms-april2010Reports have surfaced that Realms of Fantasy publisher Warren Lapine has written to subscribers of the magazine, telling them that if they don’t renew their subscriptions he’s going to shut it down.

Warren rescued Realms just last year, when his Tir Na Nog Press purchased it with much fanfare from Sovereign Media, who had announced that April 2009 would be the final issue. Tir Na Nog’s first issue was July 2009, and the magazine has continued with renewed vigor ever since — publishing new fiction from Euan Harvey, Bruce Holland Rogers, Richard Parks, Harlan Ellison, Carrie Vaughn, and many more.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Warren’s complaints stem from his obvious disappointment that so many fans were highly vocal about the pending loss of the magazine last year, and yet so few are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

However, as author and subscriber Mishell Baker so eloquently puts it, “Why should I send my money to a guy who’s telling me there may not be a magazine by the time he cashes my check?”

Warren clarified his position to Baker in a follow up post at The Dreaded Sword:

I think your missing the point of the letter. The magazine isn’t quite making enough money to go on as things stand right now. It was close down the magazine now, or send the letter. So saying that I shouldn’t have sent the letter suggests that I should have just shut down the magazine and not given it’s readers a heads up before closing it. Fortunately, your reaction to our letter is not the norm. Many people have a larger sense of community than you are displaying here and I expect this to save the magazine.

Realms of Fantasy is one of the few remaining professional fantasy magazines, and well worth your support.  You can purchase a subscription here.

Short Fiction Review #27: Conjunctions 52

Short Fiction Review #27: Conjunctions 52

Comments 2 comments

conjunctionsThe Spring 2009  issue of Conjunctions (yeah, I know, my reading is way behind) edited by Bradford Morrow and Brian Evenson, the twice yearly literary magazine published by Bard College, is a follow-up to its New Wave Fabulists issue of about eight years ago. This time around there’s less effort expended in attempting to define a “new” subgenre. Instead, there’s a simple page-and-a-half introduction and a title, Betwixt the Between: Impossible Realism, that I find more concisely descriptive of this type of  fiction than the extensive critical commentary contained in its predecessor. Alas, I found the fiction selections overall less compelling than when the earlier volume was trying to prove something.

Part of the reason I didn’t connect with some of these stories may be the underlying premise of the objective here. I don’t have a problem with the premise. I just don’t think it was fulfilled. According to the editors,

Betwixt the Between investigates ways in which, on the one hand, works of fiction treat the impossible as if it were the solid groundwork of the real or, on the other hand how the ineffable can sometimes flash lightning-quick through the realms of the real, leaving everything the same and yet unaccountably changed. Worlds and concomitant models of logic are offered here that reveal something about our daily existence and yet turn away from it to forge disjointed realities that strike the reader simultaneously as familiar and anything but.

p. 7

I get that. But a number of these tales don’t strike me as weird for the purpose of explicating the wondrous underpinning of human existence that otherwise seems mundane, they strike me as weird just for the sake of being weird.

…

Read More Read More

A Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines

A Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines

Comments 3 comments

avon_fantasy_reader_17sI recently stumbled across G.W. Thomas’ marvelous Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines, which is well worth a look for short fiction readers interested in the history of the genre.

G.W. Thomas is editor and publisher of Dark Worlds,  the pulp-Descended magazine of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery and other genres.  Dark Worlds was nominated for the Harper’s Pen Award earlier this year for Michael Ehart’s original sword & sorcery tale “Tomb of the Amazon Queen.”

But back to the Reader’s Guide already. You should check it out, it’s cool.  There are more complete magazine guides out there, certainly — the amazing Coverpop site, for example, with scans of literally thousands of old SF magazines, and a truly fun all-in-one SF Cover Explorer, as well as the magazines section of The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide, and even Wikipedia’s Science Fiction Magazine entry is pretty darn comprehensive — but few assembled with such a  focus on, and devotion to, heroic fantasy.

Thomas’s guide covers all the magazines that were instrumental in shaping modern Sword & Sorcery, starting with Weird Tales and Strange Tales, and continuing through Unknown, The Avon Fantasy Reader, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantastic, Weirdbook, Dragon, and many more. In between he also highlights lesser known (but still fascinating) titles such as The Fantasy Fan (1933-1935) and Midnight Sun (1974-1979). Finally, he provides links to some of the best sources of online S&S today, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Silver Blade, and Sorcerous Signals.

Here’s what he says about Black Gate:

This recent publication is the hottest place to read new S&S today. With authors like Martin Owton, Howard Andrews Jones, Charles Coleman Finley, Darrell Schweitzer, Charles deLint , it delivers a mix of Sword & Sorcery and other forms of Fantasy.

The guide includes some magnificent cover art, commentary from G.W, and links. The commentary is very short, and you can read through the entire guide in a few moments.  But the fiction it will introduce you to will last a lifetime. 

If you enjoyed the Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery Magazines, you will likely also enjoy his broader and more ambitious Reader’s Guide to Sword & Sorcery, which also covers anthologies, short fiction, comics, TV/films, and much more.  I especially recommend his encyclopedic A-to-Z Guide to S&S authors, which covers virtually every major S&S writer of the last century, with copious cover scans of much of their major work. It’s still being updated, with links to work published as recently as last year. It’s like wandering though a well-stocked library.