News – Page 55 – Black Gate

The Desert of Souls is One of the Best Fantasy Novels of 2011

Tuesday, December 27, 2011 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

the-desert-of-souls Howard Andrew Jones’ first novel The Desert of Souls has been named one of the best fantasy novels of the year by Barnes & Noble.

Paul Goat Allen, a full-time genre book reviewer who’s reviewed thousands of titles over the past 20 years, posted his choices for the Best Fantasy Releases of 2011 at Explorations, the highly respected Barnes & Noble science fiction and fantasy Blog. In addition to Desert of Souls (#4), the list also includes Prince of Thorns by Black Gate blogger and author Mark Lawrence (at #5), and our good friend James L. Sutter’s first novel, Death’s Heretic (#3).

The top two books in the list were The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss and Farlander by Col Buchanan. Allen writes:

The sheer amount of noteworthy fantasy debuts in 2011 was remarkable. Besides Buchanan and Sutter’s stellar first novels, this year gave us The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones, Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns, Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey, Courtney Schafer’s The Whitefire Crossing, Paula Brandon’s The Traitor’s Daughter, The Emperor’s Knife by Mazarkis Williams, Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick, Michael J. Sullivan’s Theft of Swords, and Teresa Frohock’s Miserere.

You can read an exclusive excerpt from Prince of Thorns, Brian Murphy’s recent review of The Desert of Souls, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones’ review of Death’s Heretic, all right here at Black Gate. Don’t tell us we don’t point you to the best fantasy.

Congratulations to Howard, Mark and James!

Updated Blood and Thunder Portends Good Start to 2012 for Robert E. Howard Fans

Thursday, December 22, 2011 Brian Murphy Comments 3 comments

blood-and-thunder-2nd-edition 2011 hasn’t been the kindest year for fans of Robert E. Howard. January saw the end of the fine Del Rey series of Howard originals with the publication of the 11th and final volume Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (sigh). In August we got a crummy new film purporting to be REH’s Conan that resembles no story the Texan ever wrote, and is currently sporting a woeful 22% “rotten” rating over at Rotten Tomatoes (still think you can tell a better story than REH, Marcus Nispel?)

But the waning days of 2011 have brought a bit of good cheer to brighten the day of Howard fans everywhere: News of the publication of a new and improved second edition of the REH biography Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard by Mark Finn.

Monkeybrain books published the first edition of the Blood and Thunder in 2006 in paperback; the second edition is being published in a limited run of 150 hardcover copies by the Robert E. Howard Foundation at a cost of $50 ($45 for members of the foundation). You can pre-order it now and it’s expected to ship by the end of January 2012. Here’s a description from the REH Foundation webpage:

Alongside the success of “Conan the Barbarian” was a neatly packaged, sound byte biography of a tortured young man, full of volcanic rages, playing at war inside his head, while the citizens in the small town of Cross Plains laughed at him behind his back—a man so undone by his circumstances and so strangely devoted to his mother that, on her deathbed, he pre-empted seeing her die by committing suicide.

In Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, author Mark Finn dispels many of those old, outdated myths that have grown up around Howard and his fictional creations. Armed with twenty-five years of research and a wealth of historical documents, Finn paints a very different picture from the one that millions of fans of Conan have been sold throughout the years.

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21 Questions for Ty Franck

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 Emily Mah Comments 6 comments

jentaylor1 — Ty Franck being hugged by Jen Taylor

I first met Ty Franck online, then in person at LosCon, and we’ve been friends ever since. He blames me for a lot of things that have happened in his life, but the truth is he warps the forces of space, time, and luck to create his own mini-universe with its own rules, as you’ll see from the interview below. My story of Ty that I think gives the most accurate impression of the kind of guy he is, is one he’s probably tired of hearing me tell. But it bears retelling.

Years ago he was held up at gunpoint at his workplace, after hours. Gangsters broke in, cut the phone lines, and tied up both him and another woman who was working late. Ty managed to keep talking to get the gangsters off guard, and then when they left the room, his coworker untied him and he used the company’s internet (which wasn’t connected to the phone lines) to message another office, who in turn called 911.

Yes, this is a true story, but I haven’t gotten to the most unbelievable part yet. After the police arrived and sat Ty down for questioning. The dialogue went something like this:

“What can you tell us about your attackers?”

“Well, they were armed with a Glock 40.”

“So you know guns, then?”

“No, not really.”

“But you know Glocks?”

“No.”

“So how do you know it was a Glock 40?”

“Because they were holding it about here-” Ty mimes having a gun held to his forehead “-and you could read it on the side. It said, Glock 40.”

Ty would be my first choice of friend to have around during the zombie apocalypse. I call dibs.

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Black Gate 15 Now Available for Kindle

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Our latest issue, Black Gate 15, is now available for the Amazon Kindle for just $9.95. That’s roughly half the cost of the print version.

The Kindle version comes with new content, color art, hundreds of striking color images, and every word of the print version.

Originally published at $18.95 in May 2011, the massive Black Gate 15 is 384 print pages of the best in modern adventure fantasy, with 22 new stories, 23 pages of art, and a generous excerpt from The Desert of Souls, the blockbuster new novel by Howard Andrew Jones featuring the intrepid explorers Dabir and Asim in 8th Century Arabia.

The theme of the issue is Warrior Women, and behind Donato Giancola’s striking cover eight authors contribute delightful tales of female warriors, wizards, weather witches, thieves, and other brave women as they face deadly tombs, sinister gods, unquiet ghosts, and much more. Frederic S. Durbin takes us to a far land where two dueling gods pit their champions against each other in a deadly race to the World’s End. Brian Dolton offers us a tale of Ancient China, a beautiful occult investigator, and a very peculiar haunting. And Jonathan L. Howard returns to our pages with “The Shuttered Temple,” the sequel to “The Beautiful Corridor” from Black Gate 13, in which the resourceful thief Kyth must penetrate the secrets of a mysterious and very lethal temple. Plus other tales of female fighters from Maria V. Snyder, Sarah Avery, Paula R. Stiles, Emily Mah, and S. Hutson Blount.

What else is in BG 15? Harry Connolly returns after too long an absence with “Eating Venom,” in which a desperate soldier faces a basilisk’s poison — and the treachery it brings. John C. Hocking begins a terrific new series with “A River Through Darkness & Light,” featuring a dedicated Archivist who leads a small band into a deadly desert tomb; John Fultz shares the twisted fate of a thief who dares fantastic dangers to steal rare spirits indeed in “The Vintages of Dream,” and Vaughn Heppner kicks off an exciting new sword & sorcery series as a young warrior flees the spawn of a terrible god through the streets of an ancient city in “The Oracle of Gog.” Plus fiction from Darrell Schweitzer, Jamie McEwan, Michael Livingston, Chris Willrich, Fraser Ronald, Derek Künsken, Jeremiah Tolbert, Nye Joell Hardy, and Rosamund Hodge!

Buy the complete issue for the Kindle at Amazon.com, or buy the print version at our online store. The complete table of contents is here.

Long Live the Physical Book–at least for now

Saturday, December 17, 2011 Soyka Comments 10 comments

jp-holiday-articleinline So it would seem that the death of the physical book and the physical bookstore is greatly exaggerated. According to The New York Times, bookstores are having a banner year. In part this is because some of the competition (i.e., Borders) is no longer a factor in brick-and-mortar retailing, a number of popular books (ironically including the biography of Steve Jobs, the very guy who sought to digitize and commodify the object in question) and a desire among consumers in a slowly recovering economy to give gifts that are attractive in a way that bits on a screen don’t quite emulate.

Also, content owners are, as they are prone to do, shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to digital retailing. Despite the fact the e-book readers are more affordable than ever with a growing proliferation of titles in e-book format, pricing strategies are frequently rendering physical books as less expensive than their digital counterparts, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Long live the dog-eared book, if only for another few years.

On another note, and though it has nothing to do with the normal realm of Black Gate matters, I’m sad to note the passing of Christopher Hitchens. Right up to the end, he was one gutsy bastard. Here’s what I presume was his last piece of Vanity Fair.

The New York Review of Science Fiction drops Print Version

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

One of the best critical magazines for fans of science fiction and fantasy is The New York Review of Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kevin J. Maroney. It has been published monthly since 1988, and it’s been nominated for a Hugo Award virtually every year. Famous for its in-depth reviews, serious tone, and critical excellence, NYRSF also has deep ties to the fan community, with plenty of news and interesting commentary on both fiction and the folks who create it.

I’ve been a subscriber for roughly a decade and I find that while NYRSF is rarely a quick read, I can always count on it to point me towards the best in modern SF & fantasy, as well as bringing plenty of neglected classics to my attention. I rarely get a third of the way through an issue before rising from my big green chair to go dig through my library for some obscure 1970s paperback or pulp story they’ve referenced. The staff writers have excellent taste and very long memories, and they know their stuff. NYRSF: it’s entertaining, and it’s good for you.

For the past few years the editors have been bemoaning the bleak outlook for the genre’s print fiction magazines. And on December 4, NYRSF became part of the news: they announced they would switch to a PDF-only format with the August 2012 issue:

We will continue to publish print issues through the end of the current volume in July 2012. It does not appear that we will continue in print past then but will switch to PDFs of entire issues. These may be emailed to subscribers, or we may decide not to have subscribers and just make each issue available online, either for a nominal charge or for free. We will almost certainly also offer a print-on-demand option as well…

We have offered a PDF subscription to overseas and non-US subscribers for the last couple of years, but we are now, this minute, offering this option to all subscribers. If it is time for you to renew your subscription, we want you to know that you can switch immediately to all-electronic for the reduced price of $3.00/issue.

Read the complete announcement here.

John Joseph Adams merges Fantasy and Lightspeed

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Last month we reported that John Joseph Adams, editor of Fantasy and Lightspeed, had acquired both magazines from publisher Prime Books.

I think I also said “Adams has not announced if he’ll make any changes to the magazines.” Well, strike that.

After publishing the December issues of both magazines, Adams made this announcement on his blog:

We’ll be merging Fantasy and Lightspeed. But never fear: We won’t be doing away with any of Fantasy‘s fiction; each issue of the combined magazine will contain four science fiction stories and four fantasy stories. We won’t be reducing the number of stories, or replacing any Fantasy content with Lightspeed content; this will be a true merger…

Since we’re doubling the amount of fiction in each issue, we’re going to raise the price of our ebooks — but not by double: We’ll be raising the price to just $3.99. So you’ll be getting twice as much fiction, for just a dollar more per issue; plus, from here on out, each ebook edition of Lightspeed will feature exclusive content that you won’t find on our website — namely, in addition to the eight short stories you’ll also find [on] our website, each ebook issue will now feature a novella-length story.

We’ll be keeping the www.fantasy-magazine.com website up as an archive, but all future Fantasy content will appear as part of Lightspeed, at www.lightspeedmagazine.com, so be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!

Adams also announced that they’ll be eliminating the non-fiction articles that accompany each story, in order to focus more on fiction. However, they will continue to publish feature interviews and author spotlights each issue.

While I’ll miss the separate identity Fantasy had as a standalone magazine, overall I think the changes are positive. And $3.99 per issue is a real bargain for that much fiction.

We last covered Fantasy Magazine in April with issue #49.

You can read the complete announcement here, and purchase the Kindle editions of Lightspeed and the final issue of Fantasy — featuring stories from Joe R. Lansdale, Seanan McGuire, Alasdair Stuart, Naomi Novik, and Nike Sulway — for just $2.99 each.

Anne McCaffrey, April 1, 1926 – November 21, 2011

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Anne McCaffrey, one of the most loved SF and fantasy writers of the 20th Century, died yesterday at her home in Ireland.

McCaffrey is probably best known for her Dragonriders of Pern novels, which began with the novella “Weyr Search” in Analog in October, 1967.

“Weyr Search” won the Hugo Award for Best Novella; its sequel “Dragonrider” (published in two parts in Analog in December 1967 and January 1968) was awarded the Nebula. The two stories were collected as the first Pern novel Dragonflight, first published by Ballantine Books in July, 1968.

That was followed by an incredible 22 novels and two collections of short stories (some co-written with her son Todd), including The White Dragon (1978), the first hardcover SF novel to become a New York Times bestseller.

McCaffrey was a very prolific writer, with more than 100 books to her credit. Her first novel was Restoree (1967), and she had a real talent for series — including the Crystal Singer series, Freedom, Doona, Dinosaur Planet, Brain & Brawn Ship, Acorna, and many others. [I know — crazy, right? The only comparable modern author I can think of who has nearly this many popular series is L. E. Modesitt.]

I recently bought a collection of vintage Analog magazines, and came across the one above, with the “Weyr Search” cover by John Schoenherr. It reminded me that those were the days when genre magazines could catapult you to the very peak of the profession, something far more rare today. McCaffrey had published only a handful of stories and her first novel (barely) when “Weyr Search” appeared… within a year she had won both the Hugo and Nebula, and published the first novel of a series that would make her a bestselling writer.

In addition to stellar sales, Anne McCaffrey was highly honored by fans and her fellow writers. She won the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2007, became a SFWA Grand Master in 2005, and was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame in 2006.

Weird Fiction Review, and its Doppelganger

Monday, November 21, 2011 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Back in August we reported that Wildside Press sold Weird Tales magazine to Marvin Kaye, leaving editor Ann VanderMeer out in the cold.

But it didn’t take long for Ann and her husband Jeff VanderMeer, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Finch and City of Saints and Madmen, to bounce back with a new enterprise: Weird Fiction Review, an online journal of fact and fiction:

WeirdFictionReview.com is an ongoing exploration into all facets of the weird, from the classics to the next generation of weird writers and international weird. Reviews, interviews, short essays, comics, and occasional fiction.

Cool. Ann and Jeff are a creative force to be reckoned with, and together they have co-edited several fine fantasy anthologies, including The New Weird and the monumental The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories, a four pound, 1,152-page exploration of weird fiction over the last century. The new website looks extremely promising as well, featuring fiction by Jeffrey Thomas, Jean Ray, and Michal Ajvaz, non-fiction from Jeffrey Ford, Scott Nicolay, António Monteiro, and others, and a web comic by Leah Thomas.

Astute genre readers will note there’s already a fine periodical with the name Weird Fiction Review, a critical journal edited by the distinguished S.T. Joshi (see right). Published annually by Centipede Press, the first issue was released in Fall 2010. According to Ann & Jeff,

This site exists in a symbiotic relationship with S.T. Joshi’s print journal The Weird Fiction Review but does not share staff.

Whatever that means. But hey, we’re just happy to have Ann back at the helm of a new fantasy magazine, doing what she does best: discovering and promoting new talent. More power to her.

Latest The Hobbit Production Video: A Deep Delve Into 3D

Thursday, November 10, 2011 Brian Murphy Comments 1 comment

lee-and-howe-3d-glasses I still haven’t quite come to grips with The Hobbit in 3D. I’ve got a few 3D films under my belt—Avatar, Captain America, Green Lantern, and Jaws 3—and to be honest, the added dimension hasn’t done much for me. Avatar made the most of it with its rich images of Pandora; the other films felt like they were trying to capitalize on a fad (hey, look, there’s a shield coming at me!) in order to take in a few extra bucks at the gate.

In short, I still prefer good old fashioned 2D, even after watching the latest The Hobbit production video on Peter Jackson’s Facebook page . Judging by the mixed feelings in the comments, others prefer 2D, too. “Love your work Peter, the technology is fascinating, and I can’t wait for 2012. But this 3d stuff is an absolutely horrid and wretched fad which adds zero value to any movie which incorporates it,” writes one commenter. But there were many more positives than negatives amongst the comments, and having viewed the video I’m a bit more optimistic with the thought of donning a pair of uncomfortable plastic glasses and settling in to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D next December.

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