If you’re a pen-and-paper RPGer who has never explored the wonders of online gaming, take a short trip into the eye of that storm with Black Gate‘s Mac Denier. Mac reviews the massively multiplayer online extravaganza Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, and gives you a taste of what to expect when your gaming universe goes digital.
This time out, The Virginia Quarterly Review and the new online version of Subterranean Magazine are both caught in the eagle-eyed glare of Black Gate‘s resident short fiction critic, David Soyka.
Find out what’s hot and what’s not among their latest genre offerings — including stories from Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, John Scalzi, R. Andrew Heidel, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, and many others.
Black Gate Contributing Editor Rich Horton presents his annual look back at the finest genre short fiction of last year, selected from a reading list of nearly 2000 stories appearing in well over a hundred magazines, e-zines and anthologies — from Aeon to Zoetrope.
Join one of the most accomplished reviewers in the field for a fond look back at 2006, and a preview of the contents of three major upcoming anthologies containing the very best it had to offer: Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007, Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2007, and the new Space Opera, showcasing the finest in modern space adventure.
Rich also unveils his choices for the Best Online SF/F of 2007, and finally his picks for Hugo nominations for short story, novelette, and novella.
Ace correspondent David Soyka, high above the fiction landscape in the Black Gate chopper, checks in with a live report on which lanes are open and which to avoid. There’s routine traffic crawling on many of your regular morning routes, but on the Interzone and Fantasy expressways things seem to be moving splendidly.
Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews: Don’t leave home without ’em.
Black Gate correspondent David Soyka continues his search for the best in new fantasy — and has some real success in the pages of the impressive new Fantasy Magazine:
The issues I’ve seen feature wistful-looking young women gazing at something presumably magical, leading you to think the contents concern themselves with faery land kind of stuff. Not quite. . . [Some of these stories] could just as easily have appeared in a literary magazine, as Toni Morrison-styled magic realism. None strike me as mere “escapism.”
Join David as he looks at new work from Theodora Goss, Stewart O’Nan, Darrell Schweitzer, Midori Snyder, K. D. Wentworth and many others, in recent issues of Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and Heliotrope.
Joe Lansdale, auhor of the Hap Collins novels, brings his unique brand of mojo storytelling to Dark Horse Comics to tell a brand new tale of Conan the Cimmerian in a five-issue limited series illustrated by the brilliant Timothy Truman.
“Lansdale’s Conan is rough-hewn, with an earthy sense of humor that may surprise longtime fans… There’s enough action in the first two issues to warm the heart of any sword & sorcery fan.”
Join Charles Rutledge as he talks with Lansdale about this exciting new series, which follows Conan and his old comrade Alvazar into the Stygian desert in a rolicking adventure that begins with the theft of a holy artifact, and soon involves priests of the snake god Set, a quest to a strange temple, a seductive female ghost, and a horde of flesh-hungry zombies!
Captivating… sophisticated… This is complex, emotional fantasy at its finest.
Horrorscope, the Australian webzine of Dark Fiction, has posted a feature review of Black Gate 9 by Shane Jiraiya Cummings.
I was immediately struck by the excellent embellishments and illustrations… Editor John O’Neill has lavishly added side-features like extended author bios with book covers. Black Gate also has a healthy complement of non-fiction including book and role-playing game reviews and an exhaustive feature on the awarding of retro-Hugo awards.
Read the complete review to see why Black Gate continues to gather acclaim as one of the best fantasy magazines on the market!
What? You’ve finished reading all of Black Gate‘s back issues, and you’re still hungry for good short fiction?
Don’t despair. Last month we dispatched seasoned Black Gate fiction correspondent David Soyka to the outer reaches of the strange and mysterious magazine marketplace (a dimly-lit Barnes and Noble in Charlottesville, VA) and, just when we thought we were going to have to send Don Bassingthwaite on a rescue mission, he returned — with fresh scars, and tales of wondrous things.
Join David as he reports on the exciting sightings on the frontiers of genre fiction, including Interzone, H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and the strange and mythical thing (once thought extinct) known as Sword-and-Sorcery, found thriving in the pages of Howard Andrew Jones’ Flashing Swords.
For years Rich Horton, Contributing Editor to Locus and Black Gate and one of the most accomplished reviewers in the genre, has been preparing exhaustive summaries of the Year in Short Fiction, complete with his choices for the Best of the Year in a wide variety of categories.
This year Black Gate is pleased to present Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005, a retrospective of the very best the field had to offer in the last twelve months. From a reading list of over 100 different sources and 1750 stories — the collected output of the finest print and online magazines, collections and anthologies, from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to Electric Velocipede to The New Yorker — Rich selects the fiction that really matters.
Join us for a fond look back at 2005 from one of the genre’s most respected critics.
This is a beautiful magazine. I admired and enjoyed the dedication to adventure literature as…a field of depth and history. The emphasis on how the past of the field relates to the present is presented with love and care.
There’s been some discussion from time to time about how to encourage readers to be better readers, more thoughtful and with a greater knowledge of the depth of the field. Black Gate is already doing it.
— Tangent Online
As we go to press with issue #7, let’s pause for a minute to catch up on the latest Black Gate coverage. Visit our Review Page to see the most current reviews and commentary on our recent issues.