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Black Gate 15 Complete Table of Contents

Black Gate 15 Complete Table of Contents

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bg-15-cover2The theme of our massive 15th issue, captured beautifully by Donato Giancola’s striking cover, is Warrior Women. Eight authors — Jonathan L. Howard, Maria V. Snyder, Frederic S. Durbin, Sarah Avery, Paula R. Stiles, Emily Mah, S. Hutson Blount, and Brian Dolton — 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.

What else is in BG 15? Howard Andrew Jones bring us a lengthy excerpt from his blockbuster novel The Desert of Souls, featuring the popular characters Dabir & Asim. 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 saga 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!

In our generous non-fiction section, Mike Resnick educates us on the best in black & white fantasy cinema, Bud Webster turns his attention to the brilliant Tom Reamy in his Who? column on 20th Century fantasy authors, Scott Taylor challenges ten famous fantasy artists to share their vision of a single character in Art Evolution, and Rich Horton looks at the finest fantasy anthologies of the last 25 years. Plus over 30 pages of book, game, and DVD reviews, edited by Bill Ward, Howard Andrew Jones, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones — and a brand new Knights of the Dinner Table strip.

Buy this issue for only $18.95, or as part of bundle of back issues — any two for just $25 plus shipping!

Buy this issue in PDF for only $8.95!

Buy the Kindle version at Amazon.com for just $9.95!

Black Gate 15 is another huge issue: 384 pages of fiction, reviews, and articles. It contains 22 stories, totaling nearly 152,000 words of adventure fantasy. Complete details on all the contents after the jump.

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2011 Hugo Award Nominations Announced

2011 Hugo Award Nominations Announced

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hundred-thousandThe nominees for the 2011 Hugo and Campbell awards for best science fiction and fantasy of the year have been announced. The nominees for best novel are:

  • Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
  • Feed, Mira Grant (Orbit)
  • The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
  • The Dervish House, Ian McDonald (Pyr; Gollancz)
  • Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

I was particularly pleased to see The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on the list. I heard N.K. Jemisin read at Wiscon last year, and was extremely impressed. She’s one of the best new fantasy writers we have, and no mistake.

The nominees for Best Semiprozine were Clarkesworld, Interzone, Lightspeed, Locus, and Weird Tales — deserving titles, all. It was also a great year for Asimov’s Science Fiction, which had no less than five nominations in the short fiction categories:

  • “The Sultan of the Clouds,” Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s 9/10) – Best Novella
  • “The Jaguar House, in Shadow,” Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s 7/10) – Best Novelette
  • “Plus or Minus,” James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s 12/10) – Best Novelette
  • “The Emperor of Mars,” Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s 6/10) – Best Novelette
  • “For Want of a Nail,” Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s 12/10) – Best Short Story

As well as a nod to editor Sheila Williams as Best Professional Editor (Short Form). Special congratulations to Pyr editor Lou Anders on his nomination for Best Professional Editor Long Form (go Lou!), and to Black Gate contributor Steven H Silver, on his ninth nomination for Best Fan Writer.

And of course, special commendation to Hugo voters for nominating “F**k Me, Ray Bradbury” in the Best Dramatic Presentation – Short. You folks are classy.

The winners will be announced at the World Science Fiction convention in Reno, Nevada, on August 20, 2011. You can find the complete list of nominees at Locus Online. Congratulations to all the nominees!  Except maybe “F**k Me, Ray Bradbury.”

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

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gnomesThis morning on my walk to work, I spotted a man crossing a lawn. His arms were very full. Of garden gnomes.

You know, gnomes? With the blue coats and the red hats? The Rien Poortvliet kind?

“Morning!” I said.

“Morning,” he said. “I got a delivery. Gnome delivery.”

After we’d passed each other, and I’d spent a good while grinning, I thought to myself, “I know why that just happened. That happened because I started reading Welcome to Bordertown on the train today.”

(Hey! Heads up! If  you follow the above link to the Bordertown website, then click through the fancy links there to Amazon to purchase any of the new books on that page, then Terri Windling’s Endicott Studio gets a small kick-back from Amazon.com. And all of that money is donated to a shelter for homeless kids. More info here.)

Now, I’m only half a story in — the first one. But half a story in means I’ve already read the two introductions, by Terri Windling and Holly Black respectively, and also the “Bordertown Basics” which is sort of like a mix of the Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago, and Wolfe and Gaiman’s wicked little chapbook, A Walking Tour of the Shambles. It includes a weekly advisory about gang movement, monster sightings, pickpockets and missing gargoyles.

This bit made me chortle:

“The Mock Avenue street association would like to apologize to everyone for fixing the church tower clock last week, which caused widespread confusion. It has now been restored to its usual wrong time.”

But let me back up a little. Reading the introductions, I started to get a strange feeling. Gene Wolfe described a poem once as giving him “that fairy tale feeling.” He may have been quoting someone famous, like Dunsany or something. He does that. This was like that feeling, but it was also another feeling mixed in. …

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Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

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clarkesworld-55The 55th issue of the Hugo Award-winning online magazine Clarkesworld has now been posted.

Clarkesworld is the brainchild of publisher/editor Neil Clarke, who conceived of the magazine while running his excellent (and sadly now defunct) online bookshop, Clarkesworld Books. The first issue was published in October 2006; since then it has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2009 and 2010, the World Fantasy Award (in 2010), and was a finalist for the 2010 Locus Award for Best Magazine. In 2010 it won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Every issue contains two complete short stories. This issue features “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (also available as a podcast, read by Kate Baker), and “Matchmaker” by Erin M. Hartshorn.

Non-Fiction this issue is Linguistics for the World-Builder by Brit Mandelo, and an interview with science fiction author John Scalzi by Jeremy L. C. Jones.

Clarkesworld is edited by Neil Clarke. The non-fiction editor is Cheryl Morgan. Cover art this issue, “Post-apocalyptic Fisherman,” is by Georgi Markov.

Ebook editions of Clarkesworld are available for $1.99 from Wyrm Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble (scroll to the bottom of the page). This month only the Clarkesworld #54 ebook is only 99 cents at Amazon and B&N.com. Try it out and support one of the finest magazines in the genre!

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #9.

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Like Remaking Gone With the Wind

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Like Remaking Gone With the Wind

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image001It’s difficult to believe that I’m about to type this, but here goes.

Someone is trying to remake the 1981 masterpiece, Time Bandits.

There are almost more things wrong with that statement than I can fit in one post. But I’ll run down the obvious ones, and you can debate the rest amongst yourselves.

I’m just too distraught.

First, I’m struggling with the concept of this classic being given what Hollywood is euphemistically terming a “reboot.” Let’s be honest, Time Bandits is perfect precisely the way it is. It doesn’t need updating, CGI’ing, or God-forbid, 3D’ing.

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Fantasy Magazine April 2011 Arrives — Including Peter S. Beagle, Jonathan L. Howard, and Carrie Vaughn

Fantasy Magazine April 2011 Arrives — Including Peter S. Beagle, Jonathan L. Howard, and Carrie Vaughn

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fantasy-april2011The April issue of Fantasy magazine, issue 49, has been posted online.

New content is posted weekly at the magazine’s website. There’s plenty to interest Black Gate readers this month, including Kat Howard’s tribute to Choose Your Own Adventure books, the short story “Choose Your Own Adventure” (also available as a podcast) — in which the stakes are literally life and death. In an accompanying non-fiction piece Molly Tanzer talks to Ellen Kushner about her experiences creating the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and Matt Staggs, Jeremiah Tolbert, Esther Inglis-Arkell and others about their experiences reading them.

This issue also includes a reprint by Peter S. Beagle, “The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon;” “House of Gears” by Jonathan L. Howard, author of the Kyth the Taker stories in Black Gate, “The Beautiful Corridor” (BG 13) and “The Shuttered Temple” (BG 15); short story “A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait” by Carrie Vaughn; an interview with N. K. Jemisin; Author Profiles; and articles by Genevieve Valentine and Helen Pilinovsky.

These features will all appear online as the month unfolds; you can also purchase the entire issue immediately as an eBook for just $2.99.

Fantasy is edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Sean Wallace. Their webmaster is Jeremiah Tolbert, whose story “Groob’s Stupid Grubs” appears in Black Gate 15. The cover artist is Max Bertolini.

We last profiled Fantasy in March with issue 48.

Apex Magazine 23 Released

Apex Magazine 23 Released

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apexmag04pubitThe April edition of Apex Magazine boasts what publisher Jason Sizemore terms “the first of our new expanded editions.”

Editor Catherynne M. Valente’s fiction selections include Eugie Foster’s “Biba Jibun” and Michael J. Deluca marks his first Apex debut with “The Eater.” The reprints are Mike Allen’s Nebula Award-nominated “The Button Bin”  and Jennifer Pelland’s Nebula Award-nominated story “Ghosts of New York” from Dark Faith, about which I said:

The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given  our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.

Also included are Rose Lemberg’s poem “Thirteen Principles of Faith”and the history of the Nebula Awards by Michael A. Burstein.

Apex Magazine 23 is sold online for $2.99; it’s also available in Kindle, Nook, and a downloadable format through Smashwords. Previous issues are available through their back issue page. We last profiled Apex with Issue 22.

You can subscribe and get 12 issues for just $19.99.

James Enge to do Morlock Trilogy: Tournament of Shadows

James Enge to do Morlock Trilogy: Tournament of Shadows

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morlock41I can’t help it! I must speak, and I must speak now, for I just found out about it. John O’Neill will probably glare at me, because once he hears, he’ll immediately want to post about it, and then he’ll discovered that I already have!!!

*cue maniacal laughter, canned music of doom*

But! But! So, I was cruising LiveJournal, you know, like you do, and there was a James Enge post, so I stopped by (which I always must, compulsively strewing comments like candy wrappers, and then suffering a guilty conscience about the inevitable litter of exclamation points), and there it was…

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

I’ve signed with Lou Anders at Pyr to do three more Morlock books. The contracts were dated March 25–Fall of Sauron Day! Coincidence, or destiny?

This will actually be a trilogy, not three standalone books. Each book will have its own story (because I believe in plot resolution) but each book will depend on its predecessor(s) more than the three books of Morlock in exile did. It’s not a prequel trilogy, though. It’s an origin story. The trilogy as a whole is titled Tournament of Shadows. The first book, which should be out next year, is called A Guile of Dragons. Which is about as much as I should say, since I’m not done with it yet…

There. Did that not just make your day???

For those of you who don’t know, Morlock Ambrosius rocks my world, your world, the Sea of Worlds, and any other world you can think of. He is a Maker, a son of Merlin, a Crooked Man, a crow-talker, a sometime drunk, a dragonslayer, a friend to werewolves and the bane of things that want to kill him. Novels thus far featuring him? Why, they are Blood of Ambrose (nominated last year for the World Fantasy award), This Crooked Way and The Wolf Age.

All of which, may I add, are worthy of your time: at the cost of meals, sleep and possibly your dignity as you find yourself trawling Enge’s LiveJournal and leaving a slew of capital letters in your wake…

Black Gate Back Issue Sale!

Black Gate Back Issue Sale!

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bg_1_coverWe’re going to press this week with the long-awaited Black Gate 15 — and you know what that means.  It means I won’t be able to get my car in the garage unless I clear out some of the back issue stock first.

My unnatural love for my 2006 Audi is your gain. Starting today, and continuing until I can fit my beloved automobile in the garage, we’re having a sale on back issues of Black Gate magazine. Any two are $25 (plus shipping and handling). Any three are just $35, and any four just $45.

This offer even includes our rare first issue (price just reduced to $18.95), and our double-sized issue 14 (also $18.95). You can buy a complete set of the first four issues  — totaling 896 pages of the best in modern fantasy, a $65.80 value — for just $45.

But hurry. Quantities are limited. Yes, we know. Everyone says that. (Try it yourself, and you’ll understand. “Quantities are Limited!” It just trips off the tongue somehow.) But really. There’s not many copies left, and once I can squeeze a compact car into the garage and shut the door, the sale is over.

Just use the form on our subscription page to select any two issues for $25, any three for $35, or any four for $45, and we’ll apply the discount. It’s that easy.

Want a PDF copy instead? They’re just $8.95, even for big double issues.  Why not try a 4-issue PDF subscription for just $29.95, or a 2-issue print sub for $32.95? You can order print versions of both of our 384-page double issues, BG 14 and 15 (combined cover price $37.90, plus $4.50 shipping) for $32.95, shipping included.  We’ll ship BG 14 this week, and send the massive BG 15 right to your door hot-off-the-press later this month.

Subterranean Magazine Spring 2011 Now Available

Subterranean Magazine Spring 2011 Now Available

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subterr-spring2011The 18th online issue — and 25th issue overall — of one of the genre’s leading publications, Subterranean Magazine, is now available.

Subterranean is published quarterly. It appeared in print for seven issues before switching to the current online format in Winter 2007. It is presented free online by Subterranean Press, and is edited by William Schafer.

The contents of each issue are unveiled gradually. So far available in the Spring 2011 issue are:

  • “The Crawling Sky”, a weird western by Joe R. Lansdale (originally published in Deadman’s Road)
  • “Show Trial”, a post-WWII fantasy novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • “The Crane Method”, by Ian R. MacLeod
  • “The Fall of Alacan”, by Tobias S. Buckell, which returns to the setting of his novella The Executioness (which also shares a setting with Paolo Bacigalupi’s Nebula-nominated novella The Alchemist).
  • “Water to Wine” by Mary Robinette Kowal, the prose version of a long novelette originally written for the audio anthology Metatropolis.

Coming up: Mike Resnick’s latest escapade featuring Lucifer Jones, plus the usual reviews and non-fiction.

The cover this issue is by Edward Miller. The complete issue is here.