Black Gate

David Zindell was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1986. His space opera trilogy A Requiem for Homo Sapiens (The Broken God, The Wild, and War in Heaven) received plenty of attention in the mid-90s, including a Clarke Award nomination for the opening novel. He also produced a six-book fantasy series, the EA Cycle, but it was not as well received, and only three volumes were ever released in the US.

Much of his reputation today, in fact, comes from his debut novel Neverness, which won instant and wide acclaim. Edward Bryant called it a “Feat of universe crafting [that] propels him instantly into the big leagues with the likes of Frank Herbert and Ursula K. Le Guin.” Kirkus Reviews said “Zindell succeeds brilliantly… in his convincing portrayal of what a super-intelligent being might be like…. Vastly promising work.” And on the basis of this single novel, Gene Wolfe proclaimed Zindell “One of the finest talents to appear since Kim Stanley Robinson and William Gibson — perhaps the finest.”

Zindell has not published a book in the US since The Silver Sword in 2007. His literary career has prospered far better in the UK, however, and his most recent novel, The Idiot Gods, was released across the pond by HarperVoyager in July 2017. It does not yet have a US release date.

Neverness was published by Bantam Spectra in July 1989. It is 552 pages, priced at $4.95. It was reprinted multiple times in the UK by Grafton and HarperCollins, but only once in the US, in a self-published edition in 2015. The wraparound cover of the Spectra version is by Don Dixon.

Some of the most rewarding books I’ve read in the past few years have been anthologies edited by Terry Carr. Even though he died 30 years ago, in April 1987, his books remain splendid reading for modern audiences, and I think it’s very possible Carr may have been the most gifted editor our field has ever seen. The sixteen volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year (1972-1987) he edited may well be the high water mark for Year’s Best anthologies.

In 1979 and 1980, Carr convinced Lester del Del at Del Rey Books to allow him to try an experiment. In effect, to see if the market would bear an additional Terry Carr Best SF, this one showcasing the best SF novellas of the year. It was a noble ambition, and a great idea, but that didn’t mean the market was ready for it. The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year died after two volumes, and Carr went back to the frustrating task of trying to fit as many novellas as he could into his slender Best SF paperbacks every year.

I’ve never read either of his Best Novellas books before. But, like his regular Best SF series, both volumes are packed with classic fiction that has stood the test of time, as well as genuine finds. I recently came across the first one in a collection I bought on eBay. I was expecting greatness, and I was not disappointed.

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Peter S. Beagle burst on the scene in 1960 with A Fine and Private Place, the tale of a man quietly living in a cemetery for decades. Written while he was still a teenager, the novel established Beagle immediately as a major American fantasist. He followed it with The Last Unicorn (1968), which placed fifth in the 1987 Locus Poll for All-Time Best Fantasy Novel, sold more than five million copies, and was made into a popular animated film by Rankin/Bass in 1982.

In 1969 Beagle wrote one of his most popular short stories, “Lila the Werewolf” (first published in Guabi #1, and in Terry Carr’s New Worlds of Fantasy #3), featuring the character Sam Farrell. Two decades later Farrell returned in Beagle’s third novel The Folk of the Air, which won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and was called “Peter Beagle’s Silmarillion” in the Mythopoeic Society review.

The publication of The Folk of the Air is an Event, no doubt about it… it is easily the best new fantasy novel I read last year… The main character is Joe Farrell, who first appeared as the hero of a short story called “Lila the Werewolf” (which may be found in the omnibus volume The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle). It’s several years after “Lila”, and Farrell is making his first visit in a long time to his old stomping grounds in Avicenna, California…

If The Folk of the Air had been published five years ago, it would by now be seen as a foundation stone in the currently flourishing subgenre of contemporary urban fantasy — books like Moonheart by Charles de Lint, Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, and Brisingamen by Diana Paxson… Beagle has captured the style of the subgenre perfectly. From the beginning, where the sense of something magical and uncanny is in the air nearly from the start, long before the supernatural actually rears its head, to the end, which features a bang-up magical battle between two of the principal characters while the others look on in dazed wonder, this book has everything to capture the interest of fantasy readers who like a magical tale in the here and now.

The book has held up very well over the decades (SF Reviews recently called it “top-drawer, comparable to the best of Tim Powers”), although Beagle has reportedly been working on a revised edition, to be called Avicenna, for some time. Whatever the case, the book has been out of print in the US since the 1988 Del Rey paperback, pictured above. I found this copy at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show here in Chicago earlier this year, where I paid $2 for it. It is 375 pages, with a cover price of $4.50. The cover is by Romas. There is no digital edition. See our previous coverage of Peter Beagle here.