Black Gate

For those who enjoy Sword&Sorcery.org and the quarterly fiction magazine Flashing Swords, there’s a new anthology to pick up. The Return of the Sword, edited by Jason M. Waltz, trumpets “Flashing Swords presents” on the cover, and among its contributors are many veterans of the that venerable enterprise.

Black Gate correspondent Ryan Harvey has explored the entire book, and gives you the lowdown on pieces by Stacey Berg, Bill Ward, Phil Emery, Jeff Draper, Nicholas Ian Hawkins, David Pitchford, Ty Johnston, Jeff Stewart, Angeline Hawkes, Robert Rhodes, E. E. Knight, James Enge, Michael Ehart, Thomas M. MacKay, Christopher Heath, Nathan Meyer, S. C. Bryce, Allen B. Lloyd, William Clunie, Steve Goble, Bruce Durham, and Harold Lamb. There’s something for everyone, so click on he link below and let Ryan be your guide.

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Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review and called it “evocative of fantasy legend Fritz Leiber’s classic tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” and “Raymond Chandler meets Raymond E. Feist.” It’s the genre-warping debut novel from Alex Bledsoe, mixing sword-and-sorcery and noir into something funny, stylish, and original.

Join Black Gate correspondent Jeff Mejia for an inside look at one of the more audacious fantasy novels to appear in recent years.

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The man is back!

Charles R. Saunders rocked Sword-and-Sorcery in the ’70s and ’80s with his African fantasy hero Imaro, a compelling character who tore through the pages of numerous magazines and whose exploits were ultimately collected in three volumes from DAW. Over the last few years two of those were generously updated and republished by Nightshade Books, causing fans of Saunders’ unforgettable heroes to rejoice at the return of one of the masters of the field.

Now, via Brother Uraeus’ newly created Sword & Soul Media imprint, Saunders brings us the tales of Dossouye, a warrior woman from an alternate Africa that — while not the same as Imaro’s Nyumbani — nevertheless brims with all of the jeweled kingdoms, scheming sorcerers, doomed quests, and death-defying heroes ravenous fantasy fans have come to expect. It’s epic storytelling immersed in a feat of enchanting world-building that at its best rivals Tolkien, and this week at Black Gate reviewer Bill Ward brings you all of the exciting details.

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If there has been a single dominant trend in fantasy over the last thirty years, it has been the glacier-like migration and expansion of the genre from fiction into other media. Movies, video games, RPGs — all have taken the essence of sword-and-sorcery creations set forth in prose and carried them in novel directions that have shaped the genre in unforeseen ways.

This week, Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones kicks off a new column that will explore some of the many fresh gaming systems and products out there, giving you the lowdown on what’s brewing in the fantasy RPG field. His first installment reviews the hot 1PG from the mind of Jeff Mejia and his cohorts, Broadsword, along with the system’s first major supplement, The World of Broadsword. Have you drifted away from RPGs over the years, frustrated by the steep time and rules-learning commitment? If so, the simplicity and ease of Broadsword might be just what you’ve been waiting for.

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Most of us remember John Steinbeck (1902–1968) for classic novels such as Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, The Pearl, East of Eden, and of course his Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath. But how many of us knew that at his death he left an unfinished adaptation of Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, a labor of love he had been tinkering with for over ten years?

Mark Rigney, a longtime fan of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King and all things Arthurian, has perused the fine new edition of this book released last fall by Viking Press, with a foreword by Eragon author Christopher Paolini.

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OK, so you’re an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy, and you’re always on the lookout for new material. Trouble is, in a field as diverse and prolific as this, where do you start searching? The list of books and other publications released last year is a daunting one. With hundreds — thousands? — of novels, novelettes, and short stories to choose from, it’s tougher than ever to winnow them all down to a manageable selection of the very best stories.

Black Gate correspondent Dave Truesdale is here to help. He has done all of the groundwork for you, scouring a vast array of books, anthologies, magazines, and small-press items for the cream of the 2007 crop. The result is a select list of 214 of the top tales printed last year, all of them sorted and arranged right here at your greedy fingertips. All the standouts are here, stories culled from anthologies such as The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Future Weapons of War, Alien Crimes, Logorrhea, The New Space Opera, Coyote Road, Eclipse One, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, Man vs. Machine, Writers of the Future XXIII, and Thrilling Wonder Stories, along with magazines like Asimov’s, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Paradox, Weird Tales, H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, Talebones, Apex, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and of course Black Gate. It’s a massive list that will keep you enmeshed in the best that sci-fi and fantasy has to offer for a long time, and it’s only available here at Black Gate. Dive in!

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