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Weirdbook #37 Now Available

Weirdbook #37 Now Available

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Weirdbook 37-small Weirdbook 37 Table of Contents-small

Cover by João Florencio

Weirdbook published a total of five issues this year — that’s roughly 1,000 pages of brand new weird fantasy. That’s an accomplishment worth celebrating.

Issues continue to get better as well. Issue #37 was released this week, and just look at the awesome cover by João Florêncio. This issue is a special treat, as it features four Black Gate authors — Darrell Schweitzer, Michael Canfield, Jackson Kuhl, and John R. Fultz — and 20 other contributors. Click the image above right for the complete Table of Contents. John provides more detail on his story at his blog:

I’ve started a new story-cycle starring Magtone the Poet-Thief, a lyrical lowlife who inherits a gift of ancient sorcery along with a sentient flying carpet. These stories are high fantasy meets sword-and-sorcery, with an ancient-world flavor and a heavy dose of magical weirdness. The saga of Magtone’s wanderings will run mainly in the pages of Weirdbook, but he may show up in a few other publications as well. The first Magtone story is “The Veneration of Evil in the Kingdom of Ancient Lies.” It appears in Weirdbook #37… This inaugural tale introduces Magtone and the fantastic city-state of Karakutas, a metropolitan Babylon built by the power of ruthless wizard-kings. As the Doom of Karakutas approaches, Magtone strikes a deal with the only person that can save him from the coming apocalypse – the same wizard who is about to bring civilization crashing down.

Weirdbook is published by Wildside Press, and edited by Douglas Draa. Issues are 200+ pages, and priced $12 for the print edition, and $3.99 for the digital version. Subscriptions are currently not available, but you can buy individual issues at Amazon.com and Wildside Press. We last covered Weirdbook with issue #35. The magazine’s website is here. Our December Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.

The December Fantasy Magazine Rack

The December Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine December 2017-small Apex Magazine December 2017-small Clarkesworld December 2017-small Lightspeed December 2017-small
Beneath Ceaseless Skies December 7 2017-small The Dark December 2017-small Forever Magazine December 2017-small Pulp Literature Winter 2018-small

The latest crop of magazines includes brand new fiction by BG blogger and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editor Adrian Simmons, plus Natalia Theodoridou, Lettie Prell, Cassandra Khaw, Mari Ness, Stephen Case, Nin Harris, and many more. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in early December (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine — editor Tom Dullemond selects stories by Adrian Simmons, David Versace, Jennifer Hykes, Josh Pearce, DA Xiaolin Spires, Freya Marske, Rae White, and others
Apex Magazine — new stories from Daniela Tomova and Katharine E.K. Duckett, plus a reprint by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and a podcast
Clarkesworld — issue #135 has new fiction from Natalia Theodoridou, Lettie Prell, Josh Pearce, Eleanna Castroianni, and Cassandra Khaw, plus reprints by Ken Macleod and Ian Mcdonald
Lightspeed — the December issue has original fiction by Rachael K. Jones, Cadwell Turnbull, A. Merc Rustad and Mari Ness, plus reprints by Charlie Jane Anders, Robert Reed, Tim Pratt and Sonya Taaffe
Beneath Ceaseless Skies — issue #240 has short stories by Stephen Case and M. Bennardo, plus a reprint by Andrea Stewart
The Dark — stories by MP Johnson and Nin Harris, plus reprints by Robert Levy and Robert Shearman
Forever Magazine — issue #35 of this SF reprint magazine has a novella by Ken Liu (The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary) plus a novelette by Eleanor Arnason, and a story by Peter Watts.
Pulp Literature — issue 17, Winter 2018, has a Christmas ghost story by JJ Lee, a Frankenstein tale for the new world by AJ Odasso, plus Misha Handman, Spencer Stevens, Anat Rabkin, Soramimi Hanarajimi, and Susan Pieters, and the winners of the 2017 Hummingbird Prize for Flash Fiction

Click any of the thumbnail images above for bigger images. Our late November Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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Could Hitler Have Built the Bomb? Find Out in Against the Odds #50

Could Hitler Have Built the Bomb? Find Out in Against the Odds #50

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Against the Odds 50 Building the Bomb-smallAgainst the Odds magazine is a throwback to the great era of tabletop gaming, when magazines like Strategy & Tactics and the much-missed Ares contained complete games in each issue. Issues are expensive ($35, more than the cost of a hardcover book), but for gaming fans it’s well worth the price. The latest issue, #50, contains Building the Bomb, a chilling card game that simulates the Nazi efforts to build the first atomic bomb.

In late 1941 with senior officials across Germany becoming increasingly aware that Operation Barbarossa would fail somewhere short of Moscow… many worriedly began looking for an “out.” Some, like Ernst Udet, head of Luftwaffe Development, and Walter Borbet, a leading industrialist, shot themselves over the shock of the failure. Others, like General Fromm, in charge of the Army Weapons Office, turned their attention to an extraordinary proposal by Germany’s leading physicists to unlock the secrets of the atom and provide limitless power, and a possible war winning explosive device, the atomic bomb.

Building the Bomb is a card game for 2 to 5 players. Each player represents a faction inside German government, military or industrial circles, seeking to engage one of the Reich’s prestigious research institutes to start work on a nuclear program.

Acting through the Director of each center, players will need to size matters up, recruit other scientists, acquire scarce resources, (plus spy on their rivals, this is the Third Reich remember) and certainly go all out if they hope to develop atomic weapons…

Building the Bomb includes 108 colorful playing cards, 40 die-cut counters, and a 10-page rulebook. Playing time is 1 to 2 hours. It was designed by Steven Cunliffe and developed by Lembit Tohver, with graphic design by Mark Mahaffey.

Against the Odds: Journal of History and Simulation is edited by Andy Nunez and published by LPS, Inc. It appears four times per year, yearly subscriptions are $80 in the US. Individual issues are priced at $39.95; issue 50 is around 56 pages. Order copies or get more details at the website. We last covered Against the Odds with Issue #35, which contained the game Boudicca: The Warrior Queen.

See our late November Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

Old Empires and Armored Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Smasher by Edmond Hamilton and Starhaven by Ivar Jorgenson

Old Empires and Armored Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Smasher by Edmond Hamilton and Starhaven by Ivar Jorgenson

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The Sun Smasher Edmond Hamilton-small Starhaven Ivar Jorgenson-small

Rich Horton has been reading through the Ace Double library over at his blog Strange at Ecbatan. His last few selections have been duds, but I’m optimistic about Edmond Hamilton’s The Sun Smasher and Ivar Jorgenson’s Starhaven, Double #D351, published in 1959. Edmond Hamilton was my favorite pulp SF writer, and “Ivar Jorgenson” was a pen name for none other than Robert Silverberg.  Here’s Rich.

Each of these novels was published earlier in a single issue of a magazine, possibly (especially in the case of the Jorgenson novel) in shorter versions. The Sun Smasher appeared as “Starman Come Home” in the September 1954 Universe Science Fiction, while Starhaven appeared as “Thunder Over Starhaven” in Science Fiction Adventures for October 1957. (I suspect the Hamilton novel, which is the shorter of the two at about 30,000 words, probably is the same version as appeared in the magazine, but the “Jorgenson” story, some 40,000 words long or more, is expanded, as Silverberg discusses below.)

The covers of the magazine editions of these stories are something of a real delight, so I’ve reproduced them here.

I always enjoy Rich’s reviews of classic SF. But when he starts throwing in vintage magazine covers, you know he’s really speaking my language.

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Little Miss Martian

Little Miss Martian

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Other Worlds May 1951-small Other Worlds May 1951-back-small

Other Worlds, May 1951. Cover by Hannes Bok

Other Worlds Science Fiction launched in November 1949, part of the boom in f&sf magazines in a postwar world that retroactively realized their worth after real life rockets and atomic bombs made headlines. It was frankly third-tier, half written by Rog Phillips under pseudonyms and half by younger writers striving to make their mark. After a year or two, though, some bigger names like Ray Bradbury, A. E. van Vogt, and Robert Bloch were lured in and a few of the newcomers would develop into stars of equal rank. Even so, fans read it for fun and excitement, not literary quality. Issue after issue sated with a plenitude of humor stories, starting with the Hoka series by young Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, and robot stories, including ones by Bradbury, van Vogt, and Bloch, and humorous robot stories, many by authors nobody remembers (such as Hodge Winsell, whose two atrocities comprise his entire f&sf oeuvre).

One reason for the increase in quality was hidden from readers. The editor for the first issue was listed as Robert N. Webster, another pseudonym. Knowledgeable fans would have been tipped off by the presence of “The Fall of Lemuria” by Richard S. Shaver, a true screwball who might have believed in his stories about an alien civilization hidden within the Earth. Ray Palmer had pushed circulation at Amazing Stories to the  f&sf magazine peak with Shaver until his bosses grew tired of the slime on their fingers. Sure enough, Robert N. Webster was Ray Palmer and Other Worlds was headed down that same path.

And then the horribly unlucky Palmer, who grew up hunched and dwarfed after a car accident when he was seven, slipped, fell, and became temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. A 21-year-old fan, Bea Mahaffey, who was already on the payroll as Managing Editor, i.e. editor of scutwork, quietly took over, adding Marge Budwig Saunder to replace her hands-on jobs. Today it’s given that the sudden veer away from Shaver and toward solid second-tier status is attributable to Mahaffey.

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My All-Story Story, or, A Tale of Tarzan (Not Triumphant)

My All-Story Story, or, A Tale of Tarzan (Not Triumphant)

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all story 1912 10 uk edition modified-small

Those who know me well are aware that I’m not a morning person (to put it mildly). Accordingly, they’d be shocked to learn that not only did I get up on Saturday, November 25th morning at 5:00 a.m., I did so voluntarily and eagerly! As collectors will attest, however, no price – even missing hours of delightful sleep! – is too great to pay in the pursuit of one of your collecting grails. Of course, it’s much more gratifying when the pursuit pays off. Unfortunately for me, it did not. Even so, I’m glad I got up to give it a shot.

About a week ago, I learned that an auction house in England would be auctioning off a copy of the October 1912 issue of The All-Story, which features Edgar Rice Burroughs’ complete novel, Tarzan of the Apes. All other things being equal in terms of condition, that issue is the most valuable of all the pulp magazines (the nicest copy I’m aware of having sold at auction, in fine condition, sold over a decade ago for nearly $60,000). This auction house clearly had no idea of its value, as their pre-sale estimate was between 20 and 40 pounds! A decent copy of this pulp has been my number one pulp grail for decades, and I hoped that this one would slip through the collecting cracks on its way to me. The auction house only had one photo of it online, and I couldn’t obtain any other photos of it, so condition was a bit of a guess, which complicated bidding. The front cover had some overall wear, but generally looked decent, but I had no clue on the condition of the spine, back cover or paper. See the photo above.

What made this particularly interesting was that it was the British edition of The All-Story, rather than the American edition. For a period of time in the teens (and I think going back a little earlier than that), The All-Story was also published in Britain, with the same cover date as the American edition. The covers noted that the price was Six Pence, rather than Ten Cents, and I believe the ads were different, but the fiction content was the same. I assume that the British edition was published at least a few days later than the American edition (the October 1912 American edition actually went on sale on September 10, 1912), but I don’t know how much of a delay there was. My guess is that it was later than the American edition, so technically this was not the first printing of the story, unlike the American.

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December Short Story Roundup

December Short Story Roundup

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CaptureDecember’s here, so it’s time for another roundup. When the luminous Mrs. V. asked me about what I was reading this week, it turned into a conversation about short stories, then and now. At some point I said something along the lines of short stories have always been hit-and-miss, with most stories being satisfying, some terrific, and even a big name doesn’t always knock it out of the park. In fact, anyone might hit a home run, so a magazine like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, featuring unknown and lesser-known writers, is just as likely to contain excellent stories as any of Lin Carter’s anthologies. That’s why I persist in reviewing new short stories each month. There’s a chance each and every month that I’ll discover a story that measures up to the best of the past, and will be worthy of a place in some future anthology of great swords & sorcery tales.

That’s the sort of anticipation I have when I open up a new issue of HFQ each quarter. Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter, James Frederick William Rowe, and Barbara Barrett are the names on the masthead, and swords & sorcery fans should thank each one of them for consistently putting out the best new S&S and with far less attention than they deserve. I won’t say any of the latest volume, #34, is among the greats bound to last, but all three are very good. Can you really ask for more than that?

“Crazy Snake and the Demons of Ometepe,” by Eric Atkisson, brings to an end the multi-author tale begun last issue where alternate universes were at risk of domination by the Destroyer, a terrible trans-dimensional power. In “Between Sea and Flame” by Evan Dicken, Tenochtitlan fell to evil priests from the sea (not to Cortes) and the warrior Hummingbird found herself forced to back the lesser evil in order to save the word. Raphael Ordonez’s wandering ex-conquistador, Francisco Carvajal y Lopez, had to fight the Destroyer as well in “I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.”

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Exploring the Subterranean

Exploring the Subterranean

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Subterranean Magazine back issues-small

I founded Black Gate in 2000, and we published the first issue at the World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas in October of that year. We produced the print magazine for 11 years (the last issue, #15, was published in May 2011), and during that decade-plus I was keenly observant of other print magazines, especially new ones. A handful of new zines popped up during that period, but I think my favorite was William Schafer’s Subterranean magazine, which produced eight print issues between 2005-2011 before transitioning online.

I only managed to come across a handful of issues during the print era, but that’s okay. I keep an eye out for back issues at conventions, and occasionally snag one or two (as I did with Subterranean #2 at the 2015 Windy City Pulp & Paper convention). They’re hard to come by, but they’re generally not expensive. I have an eBay saved search that alerts me when new lots are listed, and a few months ago I got a ping about the set of three issues above.

Subterranean #4 – 2006
Subterranean #6 – January 2007
Subterranean #8 – October 2011 — the last print issue

They were in pristine, unread condition, and offered for $16 total. I was the only bidder, and took the whole set home for less than the original cover price. It’s lonely being an obsessive magazine collector, but sometimes it has its benefits.

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Vintage Treasures: The American Fantasy Tradition edited by Brian M. Thomsen

Vintage Treasures: The American Fantasy Tradition edited by Brian M. Thomsen

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The American Fantasy Tradition Brian M Thomsen-small

Brian Thomsen’s first anthology was Halflings, Hobbits, Warrows & Weefolk: A Collection of Tales of Heroes Short in Stature, a 1991 Questar paperback co-edited with Baird Searles. He followed that with more than a dozen more over the next 20 years — including The Reel Stuff (1998), Oceans of Magic (2001), and Masters of Fantasy (2004) — most co-edited with Martin H. Greenberg. He was the Senior Editor of SF and Fantasy at Warner Books and then Director of Books and Periodicals at TSR, where he wrote several Forgotten Realms novels, including Once Around the Realms (1995) and The Mage in the Iron Mask (1996).

He eventually became a Consulting Editor at Tor, where he produced in my opinion the most significant book of his career, and indeed one of the most important fantasy anthologies of the 90s: The American Fantasy Tradition, a massive 600-page hardcover surveying two centuries of American fantasy, containing stories by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Henry James, Ambrose Bierce, Kate Chopin, Stephen Vincent Benét, Edith Wharton, Robert W. Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft, Manly Wade Wellman, Charles Beaumont, Henry Kuttner, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, R. A. Lafferty, Alan Dean Foster, Shirley Jackson, Avram Davidson, Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, Gene Wolfe, Karl Edward Wagner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, and many others.

The American Fantasy Tradition is one of the finest survey anthologies of Western fantasy ever assembled, and it would serve as a splendid textbook for any introductory course to modern fantasy. It stands with David Hartwell’s The Dark Descent, Gardner Dozois’s Modern Classics of Fantasy, and Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s The Weird as one of the essential texts of the fantasy canon.

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The Late November Fantasy Magazine Rack

The Late November Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Albedo-One-Issue-47-Cover-Smaller Back Issue 101-small Lightspeed magazine November 2017-small Meeple Monthly November 2017-small
Apex Magazine November 2017-small Locus magazine November 2017-small Outposts-of-Beyond-18-Tyree-Campbell-small Skelos magazine 3-small

If you’re a magazine fan, November continues to be very, very good to you. The latest crop of magazines include brand new fiction by BG regulars John C. Hocking and John R. Fultz, plus Charlie Jane Anders, Ashok K. Banker, Bruce McAllister, Keith Taylor, Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, and many more. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in late November (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Albedo One — issue 47 is a bumper 88 pages, with stories by Teis Teng, Bruce McAllister, Karla Schmidt, and Michele Piccolino — plus the winners of the International Aeon Award Short Fiction Contest
Back Issue— issue #101 is 84 pages in full color,  featuring an interview with the star of Flash Gordon, Sam J. Jones
Lightspeed — issue #90 has original fiction from Ashok K. Banker, Charlie Jane Anders, Kathleen Kayembe, and Max Wynne
Meeple Monthly — with coverage of the newest board games, featuring Blue Orange Games, Galakta Games, Greenbrier Games, Pandasaurus Games, and Renegade Game Studios
Apex Magazine — with new fiction from S.B. Divya, K.A. Teryna, and “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt
Locus — interviews with David Marusek and Aliette de Bodard, a column by Cory Doctorow, obituaries and appreciations of Kit Reed, Julian May, and Yoji Kondo, and reviews of books by Victor LaValle, Jane Yolen, Tim Pratt, Sarah Gailey, and many others.
Outposts of Beyond — stories by Karen & Bill Otto, Pedro Iniguez, Vaughan Stanger, and editor Tyree Campbell
Skelos — issue #3 has contributions from two popular Black Gate authors, John C. Hocking and John R. Fultz, plus fiction from Keith Taylor, Chris Gruber, Ed Erdelac, Josh Rountree, and many others

Click any of the thumbnail images above for bigger images. Our early November Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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