Dave Truesdale’s 2007 SF and Fantasy Recommended Reading List
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!
When an unabashed work of fantasy gets shortlisted for a National Book Award, Black Gate‘s Rich Horton sits up and takes notice. The volume in question is titled Skin Hunger, Book One of a series called A Resurrection of Magic. Penned by talented writer Kathleen Duey, it’s filled with witches, magic, ove and loss. Horton judges it an intriguing page-turner that acts as a promising introduction to Duey’s fictional world.
To start off the new year, Black Gate‘s Robert Rhodes reviews the first volume in a new trilogy of novels penned by a fresh voice on the fantasy scene, Wisconsin’s Patrick Rothfuss. This story was seven years in the making, and it shows. Click inside to discover how Rothfuss’ world of fantasy and magic differs in intriguing ways from the work of past masters like Lewis, Tolkien, and Rowling.
Black Gate‘s David Soyka examines two new offerings from Apex SF & Horror Digest and Subterranean Magazine, in the process delineating the modern boundaries of horror. In tales by notables with names like Shepard, Creasey, Tuttle, Priest, Bisson, Tidhar, and Ford, there’s a wide swath cut between subtle creeping dread and rank gratuitous gore. Which is more effective in a literary sense? Or as pure visceral terror? Come inside to find out…if you dare.
