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Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces eSsassins Electronic Anthologies

Rogue Blades Entertainment Announces eSsassins Electronic Anthologies

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assassins1Jason M. Waltz at Rogue Blades Entertainment tells us the distinguished heroic fantasy publishing house has added a series of electronic anthologies to its already-crammed slate of planned publications for the year:

RBE is proud to introduce not only four additional titles under the Clash of Steel series, but its first four e-only anthologies as well! Better yet, these four e-anthologies deliver even more of the eagerly desired Assassins: A Clash of Steel print anthology to be released later in 2011! These 4 eSsassins titles carry over the same steel-bearing protagonists in dangerous, powerful prose, and the same eye-catching cover art from Didier Normand that the print anthology pledges.

Each volume in the eSsassins line will contain four stories, totalling 15,000 – 18,000 words in length.  They will be sold in multiple electronic formats for $3.00 each.

The volumes will be released monthly, starting in February.  The RBE website lists the complete contents of each upcoming volume, including stories from Laura J. Underwood, Yeoryios Pantazis, Amy Sanderson, Charles Kyffhausen, and G.K. Hayes.

RBE’s previous Clash of Steel anthology was last summer’s Demons, which I’m currently reading and quite enjoying. Cover art for each of the upcoming volumes will be unveiled soon, so keep your eye on their website for updates.

Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Announced

Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Announced

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yarnThe nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award were announced by the Philadelphia SF Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust on Tuersday, January 18.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented “for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States.” It honors the legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick, many of whose classic early novels, including Eye in the Sky, Solar Lottery, Martian Time-Slip and The Game-Players of Titan, appeared originally in paperback.

This is a juried award, so don’t bother hunting online for a way to vote. The judges for 2010 are Andy Duncan (chair), William Barton, Bruce McAllister, Melinda Snodgrass, and David Walton. The award is administered by David G. Hartwell and Gordon Van Gelder. Previous winners include William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Richard Paul Russo’s Ship of Fools, Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount, and C. L. Anderson’s Bitter Angels.

Wikipedia has a complete list of the nominees and winners for each year. Nominees this year are:

Yarn by Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books)
Chill by Elizabeth Bear (Ballantine Books/Spectra)
The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell (Henry Holt & Co.)
Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (Eos)
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder (Pyr)
Harmony by Project Itoh, translated by Alexander O. Smith (Haikasoru)
State of Decay James Knapp (Roc)

Congratulations to all the nominees! The winner will be announced on Friday, April 22, 2010.

Cloning Mammoths — Will Neanderthals be Next? (We hope so)

Cloning Mammoths — Will Neanderthals be Next? (We hope so)

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hey-a-mammothCNN is reporting that a team of Japanese, Russian and American scientists are attempting to clone a mammoth, an extinct beast from the ice age. Apparently, they’ve achieved recent breakthroughs by combining the genetic code of an elephant with the DNA of a shag carpet. The researchers hope to produce their little cloned bundle of joy within six years, which is just about as long as it took my wife Alice and I to produce a baby (if you count the three years it took to convince her to go out with me).

Mammoths are big.  Big big big. Hence, the name “mammoth.” The word comes from the Russian mamont, meaning “humongous,” or something like that. Probably. Anyway, Wikipedia reports the largest known species reached heights of 16 feet at the shoulder, and may have exceeded 12 tons. That’s four times as much as my Uncle Phil’s Hummer. Wherever they’re doing the cloning, I hope it has vaulted ceilings.  And maybe a fenced yard, so the little tyke can go outside to do his business.

Incredibly, Wikipedia also reports an 11-foot long mammoth tusk was discovered north of Lincoln, Illinois in 2005, about three hours from where I live. Can you get enough DNA to clone something from a tusk? [Hey Alice — road trip!!]

Contrary to everything I learned in eighth grade, mammoths are not dinosaurs. They’re giant gorilla elephants. They’re also mammals, like that other famous extinct not-a-dinosaur, the saber-tooth tiger.  Scientists have chosen to clone the mammoth first, rather than the saber-tooth tiger or the Tyrannosaurus Rex, because they’re unimaginative losers.

As every well-read science fiction fan knows, cloning mammoths is just the first step on the slippery slope towards cloning people, cloning cats, Clone Wars, and the inevitable zombie apocalypse. I hope that in the interim, we get around to cloning Neanderthals. Because let’s face it — that’s what cloning is for.

C.S.E. Cooney promoted to Black Gate Website Editor

C.S.E. Cooney promoted to Black Gate Website Editor

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claire-254Effective January 1st,  blogger and contributor C.S.E. Cooney has been promoted to Black Gate website editor.

C.S.E. (Claire) Cooney is one of the most talented new writers we’ve had the pleasure to be associated with. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 3, Book of Dead Things, Subterranean magazine, Goblin Fruit, Ideomancer, Doorways, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, and Apex, among many others, and her novella The Big Bah-Ha was recently published by Drollerie Press.

She has sold several long connected pieces to Black Gate, the first of which, “Godmother Lizard,” will appear in BG 16. Her short story “Braiding the Ghosts” was selected for inclusion in Rich Horton’s upcoming The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition.

Claire’s first contribution to the BG blog was her review of Last of the Dragons in January, 2010. Since then her posts have been among the most popular features we’ve offered, including her 3-part examination of Fantasy in Metal, her detailed looks at Goblin Fruit and Ideomancer, and her lengthy interviews with S.J. Tucker, Gene Wolfe and Ysabeau Wilce.

For the last several months Claire has been coaxing and recruiting terrific new writers to the BG blog, including Mike Allen, Amal El-Mohtar, Magill Foote, Erik Amundsen, and others, and in October she assembled a crack team to create the first Epic Black Gate Trailer of AWESOMENESS! In between, she’s been editing behind the scenes, quietly helping other contributors get their articles posted, and generally cleaning up the place.

Claire’s enthusiasm and commitment have been infectious, and she’s brought a whole new level of energy to the Black Gate blog. We are pleased and extremely proud to have her as our new Website Editor.

For a complete list of the folks responsible for Black Gate, visit our Staff Page.

Rich Horton on Black Gate in 2010

Rich Horton on Black Gate in 2010

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blackgate-issue-14-cover-150Over at The Elephant Forgets, Rich Horton continues with his review of every science fiction and fantasy short story published in Engish in 2010 (I know — wow.) On December 30th, he reached Black Gate:

Once again, Black Gate managed only a single issue in 2010, though also once again one more is nearly ready and presumably will appear early in 2011. It remains a beautiful thick magazine — and 2010’s issue was particularly thick! — with a strong and successful focus on adventure fantasy, and with a welcome (to me) tropism towards longer stories. The magazine also has a tropism towards series stories, but this issue mostly avoided sequels. This year the one issue includes 19 new stories: 1 novella, 8 novelettes, and 10 shorts (1 short-short), for a total of almost 160,000 words.

I will mention again that I am on the masthead of Black Gate as a Contributing Editor, which means that I contribute a regular column and regular reviews, and also, I suppose, that I meet with Publisher/Editor John O’Neill occasionally and amidst eating and drinking and selling books we chat about the future of the SF industry and so on.

My favorite story this year was Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael”, which will appear in my Best of the Year book. It’s a first rate story that manages to both satirize numerous fantasy cliches and to celebrate them. Other strong stories include the novella, Robert J. Howe’s “The Natural History of Calamity”, which is basically Urban Fantasy, but with quite a clever central idea, a private detective with a difference: she detects what’s wrong with someone’s “karmic flow”, and restores the balance. Also strong was “Devil on the Wind”, by Michael Jasper and Jay Lake, concerning a group of magicians whose power arises from their own suicides (and revivals). Add strong work by James Enge, Pete Butler, Alex Kries, and Sylvia Volk — another very enjoyable issue of an always fun magazine.

5 of 19 stories (26%) are by women, a bit less than usual. Though they have published SF stories in the past, despite the Adventure Fantasy label, this year I don’t think any qualified.

Rich selected Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael” for his Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition. His assessment of Black Gate in 2009 is here.

Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

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super_8There are bits of wrapping paper static’d to the lamp shade and tendrils of curly ribbon hanging off the chandelier. Here I lay in a sugar and red meat coma under the pressing weight of one too many conversations with the essence of Christmas spirit, three times distilled. With New Years Eve still in front and a bacchanalia of epic proportions behind, what can I do but think happy thoughts about the coming year and a time when the little troll living between my ears will finally stop running in circles and shouting.

Trust me, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

But 2011 looms large and full of promise; that not all movies will be filmed in 3D, some remakes may be worth watching and some events will be worth waiting for. So for you I pull myself up off the sticky floor and shake the glitter off my Mr. Grinch flannel PJ’s to bring you the annual “Cool Stuff in 2011” list. I know you probably have some of your own things to add to it, but far be it from me to ask you to get up and try to type in your current state. Nope, leave it to me to take one for the team, and if you feel up to it later, go ahead and chime in.

Now that the room has stopped spinning, let’s start with the movies.

Super 8, a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams is the obvious place to begin, mainly due to the two gentlemen at the helm.  Until its release in June, you can content yourself by following along with the elaborate viral marketing campaign that has been teasing the crap out of those of us trying to determine the focus of this film.

…

Read More Read More

Jan/Feb Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

Jan/Feb Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Now on Sale

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fsf033The big January/February double issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction goes on sale today.

The issue features four novelettes by Matthew Corradi, Albert E. Cowdrey, Pat MacEwan, and “The Bird Cage,” by Kate Wilhelm. There are short stories from Alan Dean Foster, Rick Norwood, Chris Lawson, James Stoddard, Jim Young, Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, and Richard A. Lupoff.

Asked about the issue, Editor Gordon van Gelder had this comment:

I hope the presence of a Ghost Wind and a Whirlwind in the issue won’t lead anyone to conclude the issue is long-winded.

F&SF is published six times a year; issues are 258 pages.  It is the longest-running professional fantasy magazine in the country, and has been published continuously since 1949.

The new cover price is $7.50; cover artist this issue is Kristin Kest. The magazine’s website, where you can order subscriptions and browse their blog, is at www.sfsite.com/fsf/.

We covered the Nov/Dec issue of F&SF here.

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Now Available

C.S.E. Cooney’s The Big Bah-Ha Now Available

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bah-haBlack Gate‘s C.S.E. Cooney’s dark fantasy novella The Big Bah-Ha is finally available from Drollerie Press in a variety of electronic formats.

The Big Ba-Ha is a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, following a band of near-feral children who brave a plague-ridden landscape on a desperate quest to rescue one of their own:

Beatrice, who only moments before was the eldest member and leader of the Barka gang, wakes up dead. She was almost, probably, 12. Either the slap rash got her, as it gets everyone over the age of 12, or the Flabberghast got tired of waiting for her to drop dead and took her skin for a door and her bones for his stew. Who can say? What she can say is that she didn’t get to wake up in heaven. Instead, she’s in the Big Bah-Ha, a place that’s supposed to be a comfort to children after they pass on. Only something’s very, very wrong here and, despite all her bravery and cunning, she’s not quite sure how to fix it or if she’ll survive the afterlife long enough to try.

Gene Wolfe said:

It is deep and wise and fabulous, and will leave you shuddering and strangely at peace. You could found a religion on it — or it may found a religion without you. Or found some new thing that humankind has not yet seen. Only God knows what would happen after the founding. As someone (you’ll find out who) says deep in the story, ‘We’re all clowns now.’”

The Big Ba-Ha is available for just $4.25. You can also read an excerpt or pre-order the print (both trade paperback and signed and lettered hardcover) versions here.

Check it out!  You’ll thank us later.

The Top 100 Out of Print Books of 2010

The Top 100 Out of Print Books of 2010

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she-is-the-darknessTis the season for Top Ten lists (again), and there are plenty to be had. But Black Gate is all about the best in neglected fantasy and sadly, there aren’t nearly as many “Top Ten Most Neglected” book lists out there as there should be.

However, BookFinder.com recently published their list of the Top 100 in-demand out-of-print titles for 2010, and that’s pretty close. The list includes titles from Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Glen Cook, C.S. Lewis, Ray Garton, Ben Bova, Madeleine L’Engle, Cameron Crowe, and many others.

The Number One Out-of-print book for 2010 was Sex, Madonna’s 1992 collection of erotic photographs, good-condition copies of which still sell for $200 and up. I remember peeking at that book in Borders when it first came out; it’s not hard to understand why there aren’t a lot of copies that haven’t been pawed through.

Also on the list was Glen Cook, with the 1998  novel  She Is The Darkness, seventh in The Black Company series; Philip K. Dick’s early novel Gather Yourselves Together, first published posthumously in 1994; Ray Bradbury’s 1947 collection Dark Carnival, and two novels by Stephen King: Rage (by “Richard Bachman”) and the limited edition My Pretty Pony.

There are several surprises on the list, including a few books that aren’t widely known for being in hot demand.  For example, fan legend has it that Ben Bova’s The Star Conquerors (#23) is scarce because Bova has been gradually buying up all the copies on the market to remove it from circulation.

dark-carnivalSome of the titles of interest to fantasy fans on the list include:

2 – Ray Garton, In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting
9 – Stephen King (as Richard Bachman), Rage
22 – Stephen King, My Pretty Pony
23 – Ben Bova, The Star Conquerors
33 – Cameron Crowe, Fast Times at Ridgemont High
36 – Ray Bradbury, Dark Carnival
38 – Philip K. Dick, Gather Yourselves Together
40 – Glen Cook, She Is The Darkness
47 – Walt Kelly, I Go Pogo
56 – C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition
63 – Madeleine L’Engle, Ilsa

BookFinder.com’s  complete list of Top 100 out-of-print titles for 2010 is here.

Dark City Games Christmas Special

Dark City Games Christmas Special

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raid-on-cygnosaWe’re big fans of Dark City Games at Black Gate. Todd McAulty first reviewed their solitaire fantasy adventure The Island of Lost Spells  in Black Gate 10, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones picked up the thread with a look at Wolves on the Rhine (BG 11), and Void Station 57 (BG 13). Howard Andrew Jones carries on the tradition in the upcoming BG 15 with a review of one of their latest titles, The Oracle’s Breath.

We even included a complete solo adventure from Dark City Games in Black Gate 12, Orcs of the High Mountains, and posted a short solitaire SF adventure by Dark City here on the BG website, S.O.S, a prelude to their At Empire’s End.

Dark City have re-captured the spirit of the best solitaire adventures from the dawn of role-playing, particularly the classic Metagaming titles like Death Test. Their games are easy to learn, quick to play, and a lot of fun.

To celebrate their success during the year, Dark City Games is offering a buy 4 get 1 free special on their website — a 20% discount.

Select any four games from their extensive catalog of Ancient World (fantasy), Time and Space (science fiction), or Untamed West (western) titles, and receive a fifth game of your choice free. The sale even includes their newest titles, such as Raid on Cygnosa and At Empire’s End.

And tell them Black Gate sent you!