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New Treasures: Infinite Stars, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

New Treasures: Infinite Stars, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

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Infinite Stars-smallBryan Thomas Schmidt is probably best known as the guy who loudly stormed out of the 2015 Hugo Awards when he lost in the Best Editor, Short Form category (he lost to No Award, since all the nominees were dictated by Vox Day as part of his Rabid Puppy slate). Black Gate was part of the same slate, but we withdrew our nomination (and Bryan unfriended me immediately thereafter).

That’s an unfortunate thing to be known for, especially since Bryan has done some really excellent work before and since. His other anthologies include Shattered Shields, Little Green Men―Attack!, Mission: Tomorrow, Galactic Games, and many others. His latest book, the massive Infinite Stars, is the most ambitious project of his career to date: a 674-page anthology of space opera tales featuring some of the biggest names in the industry. Here’s Rich Horton’s take, from the October issue of Locus.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s new anthology Infinite Stars is a big collection of space opera stories, split roughly evenly between reprints and originals. The reprints serve to some extent as an introduction to the subgenre, with examples from such classic series as Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality of Mankind, Anne McCaffrey’s Ship Who Sang books, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, A.C. Crispin’s Starbridge, and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Codominium… These serve their purpose very well — they are a set of significant stories and showcase space opera from the ’50s to the present day nicely…

Most of the other stories in this book are also parts of series… these series include some really major SF landmarks: Orson Scott Card’s Ender universe, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson continuing Frank Herbert’s Dune series, David Weber’s Honorverse. There are stories from some more recent series that I’ve really enjoyed — Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War, for example (which she has just returned to), and David Drake’s Leary/Mundy (or RCN) series. It was nice also to be introduced to some work new to me, such as Linda Nagata’s Red stories, Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet, and Charles R. Gannon’s Caine Riardon stories…

All in all, Infinite Stars is a strong celebration of the variety and power of the space opera subgenre, both in its history and its ongoing vitality.

As Rich points out, there’s a great deal to enjoy in this book for any fan of space opera, old and new.

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The Future is Global Micro-Democracy: Malka Older’s The Centenal Cycle

The Future is Global Micro-Democracy: Malka Older’s The Centenal Cycle

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Malka Older’s debut novel Infomocracy made a huge splash last year — The Huffington Post called it “one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history,” and it was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, The Verge, Flavorwire, Kirkus, and Book Riot. In the SF community, it was a Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the sequel, Null States, is one of the most anticipated novels of the year. It arrived in hardcover in September, and has been widely praised. Here’s Liz Bourke at Tor.com.

This is a story about governance and governing, about power and systems, and the edges of both — the parts where they break, and warp, and potentially break down. Older’s gift is to make those systems fascinating and human: relevant, and easy to grasp. Well, one of her gifts: she has great skill with evoking place and its complicated histories… Null States is a complex, sprawling novel, but one that nonetheless has the tight control and pacing of a really good thriller…

Science fiction is frequently about power and revolution, seldom about the technical stuff that makes power possible — seldom about governing, as opposed to governments in crisis. Null States, like Infomocracy, feels refreshingly new and strange — wondrously strange, in fact — because of its focus on the nitty-gritty of how things get done, and how things can be done, and whether or not this is a stable system or one whose equilibrium has reached a tipping point of some kind.

Read Liz’s complete review here.

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The Best of the Dark: Fall Releases from Penguin Classics

The Best of the Dark: Fall Releases from Penguin Classics

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The Best of Richard Matheson-small Dark Tales Shirley Jackson-small

October is over, but that doesn’t mean that all the good creepy reading is behind us. Penguin Classics released two fine collections on October 10th that should keep you busy at least through early December.

The first is The Best of Richard Matheson, a long-overdue collection from one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th Century. It’s a 432-page treasure trove from the man whom Stephen King said called “the author who influenced me most as a writer.” The author of I Am Legend and sixteen Twilight Zone episodes modernized horror by taking it out of Gothic castles and setting it in darkened streets and suburbs much closer to home. This volume gathers his greatest stories as chosen by Victor LaValle. It’s $17 in paperback ($11.99 digital).

Dark Tales collects classic and newly reprinted stories from the author of “The Lottery,” including the “The Possibility of Evil,” “The Summer People,” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” first published in 2014. Collecting 17 pieces published between 1950 and 2015, Dark Tales features stories in which a daily commute turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, and a concerned citizen might just be an infamous serial killer. It’s 208 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback ($11.99 digital).

New Treasures: Deadlands: Boneyard by Seanan McGuire

New Treasures: Deadlands: Boneyard by Seanan McGuire

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I must admit that my first thought on laying eyes on Deadlands: Boneyard was, “What the heck is Seanan McGuire doing writing a gaming tie-in?”

After all (as the cover of Boneyard proudly boasts) McGuire is a New York Times bestselling author all on her own, for her zombie Newflesh series (published under the name Mira Grant). It’s not often you see bestselling writers dabbling with game books. But who knows? Maybe she’s always wanted to write a Weird Western. Maybe she loves the Deadlands setting. Or maybe she promised Jay Lake she’d do it. (The dedicated to Boneyard reads, “For Jay Lake. Didn’t I always promise you a midway?”, whatever that means.)

But whatever the reason, I’m glad to have it. It went right to the top of my Halloween reading pile this year.

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New Treasures: Necessary Monsters by Richard A. Kirk

New Treasures: Necessary Monsters by Richard A. Kirk

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Necessary Monsters Richard A. Kirk-smallRichard A. Kirk (not to be confused with Richard Kirk, which was the pseudonym Robert Holdstock used to write sword & sorcery novels in the Raven series) is an artist with a number of covers to his credit. His short novel The Lost Machine, a tale of “deadly plagues, witches, and artificial intelligence in a dark fantastical setting,” was serialized at Weird Fiction Review (check out their interview with him here).

In his first latest book, Necessary Monsters, he delivers a caper novel set in a dark and wondrous world. It’s available now in trade paperback from Arche Press.

Lumsden Moss is an escaped thief and an unrepentant bibliophile with a long-suffering desire to foist some karmic retribution on those who have wronged him. But when the opportunity to steal a rare book from the man who sentenced him to prison puts him on the wrong side of the wrong people, Moss finds himself on the run. And it’s not just the book he stole that these people want, it’s also the secrets of a long-forgotten location on Nightjar Island, a place cursed and abandoned since the Purge.

When Moss falls in with Imogen, a nimble-fingered thief who has taken a traveling bookcase filled with many secrets, he starts to realize how much of his unsavory past is indelibly tied to a frightening witch-child and her nightmarish pet monster.

In a fantastic world, still recovering from a war where magic and technology were fused together, Moss and Imogen must decipher the mystery of their mutual pasts in order to illuminate the dark heart that still lurks on Nightjar Island.

Necessary Monsters was published by Arche Press on June 6, 2017. It is 384 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Richard A. Kirk. Buy copies right from the website.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

New Treasures: Swords Against Darkness edited by Paula Guran

New Treasures: Swords Against Darkness edited by Paula Guran

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I’ve been anticipating Paula Guran’s monumental Swords Against Darkness anthology for over a year, ever since word started to leak out about the massive amount of research she was doing to make her selections (including reading every issue of Black Gate). The book was finally released this summer, but it wasn’t until last weekend that I was able to settle in with it.

And so far, it’s been a delight. It’s divided into three sections: Forging and Shaping, covering the canonical works that first defined the genre in the pulps (Howard, Vance, Leiber, Moorcock, and others); Normalizing and Annealing, those writers who followed in their footsteps (Tanith Lee, C. J. Cherryh, Karl Edward Wagner, James Enge, etc.); and Tempering and Sharpening, the modern writers who’ve brought something brand new (Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Saladin Ahmed, Scott Lynch). Paula offers a paragraph or two to introduce the authors and put each story in context.

As you’d expect, the pages contain tales of Conan, Jirel of Joiry, Eric John Stark, the Dying Earth, Zothique, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric, Kane, and Nifft the Lean. But there’s also stories of Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, Samuel R. Delany’s Nevèrÿon, Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion, James Enge’s Morlock, and Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky. There’s even one original tale, by John Balestra, a name I’m unfamiliar with.

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Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors — October Edition

Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Black Gate Authors — October Edition

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The Harbors of the Sun-small After the End of the World Jonathan L. Howard-small The Robots of Gotham-small

As we head into fall, the list of upcoming novels, stories and features from Black Gate‘s authors and bloggers continues to expand — and grow more and more impressive. Here’s a partial list of the current and upcoming releases from some of your favorite BG writers.

The Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells, the last in the Books of the Raksura series, came out in July from Night Shade Books
After the End of the World by Jonathan L. Howard, Volume 2 in the Carter & Lovecraft series, will be published in hardcover by Thomas Dunne on November 14
Todd McAulty’s debut novel The Robots of Gotham arrives in hardcover from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 19
Howard Andrew Jones’ For the Killing of Kings, the opening novel in a brand new epic fantasy series, arrives in hardcover from Thomas Dunne in July 2018
Derek Kunsken’s debut novel The Quantum Magician will be published by Solaris in 2018, and serialized in Analog starting with the January/February issue

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A Tale of Three Covers: The Mammoth Book of Dracula / In the Footsteps of Dracula, edited by Stephen Jones

A Tale of Three Covers: The Mammoth Book of Dracula / In the Footsteps of Dracula, edited by Stephen Jones

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The Mammoth Book of Dracula 1977-small The Mamoth Book of Dracula-small In the Footsteps of Dracula-small

One of the most interesting books I received in the mail the last few months was In the Footsteps of Dracula: Tales of the Un-dead Count, edited by Stephen Jones, a fat 679-page hardcover from Pegasus Books that contains 33 stories and a poem, all building on the legend of Dracula, whom Stephen King calls “still literature’s greatest villain.” It’s a true feast for vampire lovers of all kinds, with stories by Thomas Ligotti, Manly Wade Wellman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul J. McAuley, Charlaine Harris, Brian Stableford, Michael Marshall Smith, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper, Nancy Kilpatrick, and many others.

As I was researching the book for this article, I discovered a brief Facebook post from Stephen Jones that noted that it was a “revised and updated edition of [an] older Mammoth book,” The Mammoth Book of Dracula, originally published in the UK by Robinson in 1997 with a cover by Paul Aston (above left). The book appeared in a revised edition in 2011 with a more modern cover (above middle, uncredited) and containing one additional story, the Sookie Stackhouse tale “Dracula Night.” The new hardcover edition (above right, cover by Derek Thornton) adds a new title, an “About the Editor” page, and Acknowledgement and Credits, but otherwise looks identical to the 2011 edition. It arrived in bookstores on October 3.

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Weird Sea Adventures: A Review of the Archipelago Kickstarter Reward Magazine

Weird Sea Adventures: A Review of the Archipelago Kickstarter Reward Magazine

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First there was the Weird Tale, which hit the mark. Then there was the Weird Western, which hit the mark for many, but not all. Now there is the Weird Sea…

The advent of Archipelago came to my attention on Black Gate via Brandon Crilly’s post post earlier this year, which included some cool art and a teaser story – “The Ur-Ring” by Charlotte Ashley.

As a longstanding fan of maritime literature, specifically the Richard Bolitho stories by Alexander Kent (pseudonym of Douglas Reeman) and C.S. Forrester’s Hornblower stories, my ears figuratively pricked up when I saw Brandon’s article. Maritime adventure combined with fantasy… what more could one ask? Hmm, a Cylon Base Star perhaps, but we won’t go there…

For those who haven’t read Brandon’s original post, the basic premise of Archipelago is that of a Shared World, where people from earth’s 17th century have come across various ocean based portals to another world. To quote the Kickstarter:

Four hundred years ago, when control of the world came to depend on naval power as never before, a courageous few set off on journeys of discovery and conquest that would alter the fates of nations in ways no-one could imagine.

But once they’d sailed the seven seas, what if they found another?

ARCHIPELAGO is a historical fantasy serial with multiple new episodes appearing every month. Imagine a blend of Moby Dick, Pirates of the Caribbean, Master & Commander and Game of Thrones — with Lovecraftian monsters lurking beneath the surface!

Looking at the Archipelago Kickstarter it became evident that they did not require a massive contribution, more just seed funding to get their project going. The rewards were interesting, insofar as one could — as was a common practice way back in the British military establishment — purchase a commission. The difference being that instead of buying a rank in the navy, one could purchase a custom mention in a future story, which I thought was pretty cool. As they state it:

Archipelago isn’t just about storytelling, though. Readers will have the opportunity to influence events as the adventure develops, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes devastating.

I was hooked and proceeded to participate in the Kickstarter.

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Future Treasures: Ka by John Crowley

Future Treasures: Ka by John Crowley

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Ka John Crowley-smallMatthew David Surridge says John Crowley’s World Fantasy Award-winning Little, Big is “the best post-Tolkien novel of the fantastic I’ve read,” and Mark Rigney calls it “among the best and most endearing fantasy novels ever written… If there’s another book I’ve encountered in my adult life that calls louder to be re-read, and which reveals an even richer experience on doing so, I cannot imagine what it is.” Crowley’s thirteenth novel Ka, a fable about the first crow in history with a name of his own, arrives in hardcover from Saga Press next week.

A Crow alone is no Crow.

Dar Oakley — the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own — was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned. Through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, and around the world, he found secrets that could change the humans’ entire way of life — and now may be the time to finally reveal them.

Our previous coverage of John Crowley includes:

In Praise of Little, Big by Mark Rigney
John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle, Books One and Two by Mark Rigney
The Deep

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr will be published by Saga Press on October 24, 2017. It is 442 pages, priced at $28.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Melody Newcomb.