Black Gate – Page 1133 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Electric Velocipede 25 Now Available

Monday, December 3, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

John Klima’s groundbreaking magazine Electric Velocipede continues to innovate in its new electronic format. John tells us:

This is one of our strongest issues to date. I’m very proud of the stories and poems (nine!) in it. The stories will be going up through bi-weekly through the end of the year, but we’re putting the entire issue on sale right away so that people can get it now and read it on their e-reader of choice… Our first story, “The Night We Drank Cold Wine” by Megan Kurashige has received incredible response from readers to date.

Many of you are already helping spread the word about the issue, but because I think it’s pretty special that we’re at our 25th issue (with four issues planned for next year!)

Let’s talk turkey for a moment. Electric Velocipede is one of the best independent genre magazines out today, period. It’s been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four times and won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine.

In September, it closed a successful Kickstarer round, funding the next four issues, and even reached the $7,500 stretch goal that allowed it to make electronic versions of all its past issues.

It’s an exciting time for the magazine and if you’re not paying attention, you’re missing out on some of the most exciting short fiction the field has to offer.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The Bones of the Old Ones by Howard Andrew Jones

Sunday, December 2, 2012 John ONeill Comments 13 comments

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Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive first look at the latest Dabir and Asim novel by Howard Andrew Jones, the acclaimed author of The Desert of Souls and Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows.

As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

To stop the cabal and save Najya, Dabir and Asim venture into the worst winter in human memory, hunted by a shape-changing assassin. The stalwart Asim is drawn irresistibly toward the beautiful Persian even as Dabir realizes she may be far more dangerous a threat than anyone who pursues them, for her enchantment worsens with the winter. As their opposition grows, Dabir and Asim have no choice but to ally with their deadliest enemy, the treacherous Greek necromancer, Lydia. But even if they can trust one another long enough to escape their foes, it may be too late for Najya, whose soul is bound up with a vengeful spirit intent on sheathing the world in ice for a thousand years….

Howard is also the author of The Desert of Souls, Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, and the short collection The Waters of Eternity. His stories of Dabir and Asim have appeared in a variety of publications over the last ten years, and led to his invitation to join the editorial staff of Black Gate magazine in 2004, where he has served as Managing Editor ever since. He blogs regularly at the Black Gate web site and maintains a web outpost of his own at www.howardandrewjones.com.

Dabir and Asim first appeared here in “Sight of Vengeance” (from Black Gate 10), and “Whispers From the Stone,” (Black Gate 12). They are some of the most popular stories to appear in our pages.

The Bones of the Old Ones is published by Thomas Dunne Books. It is a 307-page hardcover available for $25.99 ($12.99 ePub and PDF), and will be released on December 11. Learn more at Macmillan.com.

Read the first two chapters of The Bones of the Old Ones here.

Dive Into a Bleak Future with Anomaly

Sunday, December 2, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Reviewing a cool new book or game for Black Gate used to be easy. Sit down in my big green chair for a few hours, type up my thoughts, and then I’m free to spend the rest of the day polishing my Bone action figures.

That was before Anomaly, the massive 370-page graphic novel from Spawn artist Brian Haberlin and Pixar board member Skip Brittenham. Anomaly is a groundbreaking glimpse into the future, in more way than one.

First off, this thing is massive. The huge 7-pound hardcover is a full 15 inches by 10 inches, just slightly smaller than a Buick. Make sure you sit in a sturdy chair to read it (and maybe do some wrist exercises to limber up first). It’s so big they had to create a new publishing company just to get it out the door: Anomaly Publishing.

Second, it comes with something called Ultimate Augmented Reality^TM, which means that to thoroughly experience the book I had to have the right gadgets. Following the instructions, I innocently pointed my iPhone at page 7. A 3-D image of a clicking alien popped up on my screen, moving around and making alien-guy sounds. When my son tried to flip the page, alien dude fell over.

“It’s a 3D representation that obeys the laws of gravity,” Tim noted. “Boggles the mind,” his brother Drew agreed.

Finally, Anomaly offers a more traditional glimpse into the future through its story, a space opera set in 2717, when humanity has conquered the stars and is in turn controlled by The Conglomerate, a profit-focused corporation that rules with an iron fist. Jon is a disgraced ex-enforcer for The Conglomerate, doing menial jobs in high orbit over a poisoned planet Earth, when he’s given a second chance: to protect the daughter of a high-ranking executive on a daring first contact mission. There’s more going on than meets the eye, however, and the high-stakes mission quickly goes off the rails as the explorers encounter lethal terrain, deadly mutants, strange magic, and corporate intrigue and betrayal on a mysterious world.

Anomaly is 370 pages (314 of story and another 56 of appendices) from Anomaly Publishing. It will be published December 1, 2012, with a cover price of $75. Check out the cool YouTube promo video here.

The Top 45 Black Gate Posts in October

Saturday, December 1, 2012 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

October was the most active month in the history of the Black Gate blog, breaking every traffic record on the books. The month’s top articles were accessed some 10,000 times each, and our new line of weekly Black Gate Online Fiction kept our webserver working overtime.

The most popular fiction posted at Black Gate in October was:

“The Whoremaster of Pald” by Harry Connolly
“The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel
“The Quintessence of Absence” by Sean McLachlan
“A Phoenix in Darkness” by Donald S. Crankshaw
“The Daughter’s Dowry” by Aaron Bradford Starr

And the top articles of the month were:

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Speaking in Tongues: Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire

Saturday, December 1, 2012 Matthew David Surridge Comments 3 comments

Voice of the Fire Typically in these blog posts, I write about some work of fantasy, science fiction, or horror; of fantastika. I’m not sure whether the book I want to write about this time round can be described as any of those things. It’s not always, in fact, easy to distinguish what is fantastic and what is not. Does the distinction lie in what the writer has in mind, or in how the reader interprets the text? If a man who believes himself to be a magician writes about magic, is that fantasy or mimetic fiction? The author describes the world as the author understands it. The reader, reading, then sees the world as the author does: so writing is perhaps inherently magical, a possession. All words are magic words. All stories are true.

“All stories are true”: that’s a quote from Alan Moore, writer of classic comics like Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and From Hell. Writer also of a prose novel called Voice of the Fire. Except technically it’s not a novel, unless really it is. Moore’s Voice tells twelve tales set in his home city of Northumberland, stretching across six millennia. Each in a different era, each a different first-person narrator. Language and style shift with the passing years. But imagery and motifs bind the thing together. Repeated actions echo across centuries. Spirits, or things like spirits, are perceived; also ghosts of times past or to come. Moments of inspiration, fires in the heads, reveal distorted visions like shadows cast against the far side of a movie screen. Stories are told, all one, but sure interpretation eludes the consciousness of the Platonic audience, sitting in the dark and throwing cold popcorn between their jaws. One must resignedly surrender linearity, rationality, understanding, and submit to the flashes of language that rush on and double back, making a lattice of meaning too large to hold in consciousness.

If the book works. I go back and forth on whether the thing succeeds as well as it might. But even to wonder is perhaps a sign of success. It is a maddening work of language: change caught in language, language as agent of change, change worked on language over time.

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Interzone 243 and Black Static 31

Saturday, December 1, 2012 Soyka Comments 0 Comment

527 526 Together again, TTA Press releases Interzone and Black Static in the same month as part of its new publishing scheduling. (I understand the economic reasons why the publishers are doing this, but I liked the old way of alternating issues. Ah, well, if it’s the price to be paid for having a magazine that is actually printed instead of pixalated, it’s well worth it.)

The Nov–Dec issue of Interzone is the second in the new slightly more compact format, with novelettes by Jon Wallace, and Jason Sanford, plus stories by Chen Qiufan (translated by Ken Liu), Caroline M. Yoachim, and Priya Sharma. Cover art is ‘The Star’ by Ben Baldwin. Features include “Ansible Link” by David Langford (news and obits); “Mutant Popcorn” by Nick Lowe (film reviews); “Laser Fodder” by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); book reviews by Jim Steel and the team, including an interview with Adam Roberts conducted by Paul Kincaid.

Black Static features cover art by Richard Wagner; novelettes by Jackson Kuhl, Steven J. Dines, and Victoria Leslie; stories by Seán Padraic Birnie, Steven Pirie, and James Cooper; illustrations by Ben Baldwin, David Gentry, and Rik Rawling; comment columns by Stephen Volk and Christopher Fowler; book reviews by Peter Tennant; and DVD/Blu-ray reviews by Tony Lee.

Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon, Part Nine “The Isle of the Elvins”

Friday, November 30, 2012 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

“The Isle of the Elvins” was the ninth installment of Austin Briggs’ daily Flash Gordon comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between April 22, 1943 and March 25, 1944, “The Isle of the Elvins” follows on directly from “The Royal Hunt” with Queen Tigra of Forestia accidentally losing her way back to the capitol and leading Flash and Dale into Lost Lake, where a fabled treasure stolen from Forestia long ago is believed to be buried. The trio finds a rowboat and set out to cross the lake when the boat’s owner overtakes them and capsizes the boat. Flash is overcome by the stranger and nearly drowned and has to be rescued by Dale and Tigra. The stranger takes possession of Flash’s ray gun and takes them captive. He introduces himself as Doron, King of the Elvins who live on an island in Lost Lake. Soon they are joined by the diminutive form of the Elvin General Krom.

At long last with the introduction of the Elvins, Austin Briggs steps out of Alex Raymond’s shadow and produces a storyline with characters worthy of the strip, without seeming like pale imitations of what has gone before. Arriving on the island as slaves, they are surrounded by the Elvins, who hop up and down excitedly repeatedly shouting, “More girls!” Clearly, Briggs was enjoying himself with this strip. General Krom takes a shine to Tigra, calling her “curly-top” (one can’t help but think of Shirley Temple’s movie of the previous decade), while the indignant Queen of Forestia dismisses her captor as “monkey-face.” Flash comes to Tigra’s defense, but is quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of Elvins in a scene that recalls the Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels.

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New Treasures: Crown of Vengeance by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Friday, November 30, 2012 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Here’s an uncomfortable admission: I’ve never read anything by Mercedes Lackey. I know that seems improbable, just statistically speaking — she’s written, by my count, somewhere around 100 fantasy novels. If you’re a fantasy fan, you’re bound to read one sooner or later.

I have no excuse. If it helps, I’m a Canadian, and the traditions and culture of your America are strange to me. But I’m coming up to speed.

There’s no better way to try a new author than when she launches a new series, and that’s exactly what Lackey has done this month with Crown of Vengeance, the first novel in The Dragon Prophecy, co-authored with James Mallory.

Mallory isn’t as well known as Mercedes Lackey, but he’s no slouch. He’s the author of the Merlin trilogy, based on the Sam Neill mini-series, and in collaboration with Lackey he’s written both the Eternal Flame trilogy — including the New York Times bestseller, The Phoenix Transformed — and the Obsidian trilogy. If you like trilogies, Mallory’s your guy.

Although the flap copy is a little coy about it, anybody who pays attention to Amazon reviews will learn that Crown is a prequel to both the Eternal Flame and Obsidian trilogies. Okay by me, I’m still trying to come up to speed here. Besides, the marketing copy included with the book tells me “No previous knowledge of Lackey and Mallory’s collaborations is necessary to enjoy this fast-paced, action packed novel.”

Between the Mercedes Lackey connection, marketing copy that includes the words “action packed,” and the late-stage melee on the cover, I’m pretty much sold. And I don’t even know what the book is about yet. I read the front jacket, and it said something about elves, demons, legends, astonishing magics, forces of Light, and the Endarkened. Got it. Bring on the archers and the leaping horses.

Crown of Vengeance was published by Tor Books on November 13. It is 605 pages in hardcover priced at $27.99, or $13.49 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: The Beast with Five Fingers by W.F. Harvey

Thursday, November 29, 2012 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

Two weeks ago, I mentioned The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror, by Edith Nesbit, a volume in the Wordsworth Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural (or, as we prefer to call it, TOMAToS).

I first discovered Wordsworth’s excellent Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural line, believe it or not, wandering the floor at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in Chicago with fellow pulp aficionados Howard Andrew Jones and John C. Hocking. We’d just passed a dealer selling omnibus collections of Ki-Gor reprints — which heartily tempted Howard, let me tell you — when Hocking became distracted by a thick volume on display amidst a vast sea of books: The Beast With Five Fingers, by W.F. Harvey.

I’d never heard of Harvey, although he’s fairly well-known in pulp circles for the short story that became The Beast With Five Fingers, a 1946 creeping-hand horror flick starring Peter Lorre. Hocking’s excitement had nothing to do with the cover story however, and everything to do with “The Clock,” which he described as one of the finest horror stories ever written. That was enough for me, and I took home a copy.

Hocking is not alone in his admiration. In Gahan Wilson’s anthology Favorite Tales of Horror, which includes “The Clock,” Wilson famously wrote:

I think that for sheer menace this is the most powerful story I have ever read, though exactly what it is that is menacing, and exactly what it is menacing to do are entirely mysterious.

I’m happy to say that the story lives up to its reputation. It’s a tiny marvel, splendidly written, about a mysterious and macabre encounter in an abandoned home. Or is it? Like much of the best gothic fiction, exactly what happened is open to interpretation.

But there’s more to The Beast with Five Fingers than just “The Clock” — much more — and I’m happy to say I’ve been enjoying the entire book. (If you’re not the patient sort, however, the complete text of “The Clock” is available online.)

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Goth Chick News: Jerry Dandridge, Vampire Santa and the Best of Days of the Dead

Thursday, November 29, 2012 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

Being fully aware that my genre of choice tends to attract a rabid following that in some cases is actually rabid, I nonetheless underestimated what I would encounter when I was invited to a horror convention held in a very pedestrian suburb of Chicago.

I readily admit that Chicago isn’t Los Angeles or even New Orleans when it comes to sub-cultures, though the elements that do exist are certainly worth wading into — if you know where to look.

But the suburbs… seriously?

Two weeks ago, Schaumburg, IL was the launch city for the Days of the Dead convention tour. Schaumburg, whose primary claim to fame is being the home to the second largest quantity of retail square footage under one roof.

True, the walking dead can often be observed there dragging their ragged-flannel-wearing selves between Aeropostale and Abercrombie, but that hardly seemed reason enough to situate a horror convention a couple of blocks away – in a Marriot Hotel, no less.

Days of the Dead is in its second year; a self-termed “by the fans, for the fans,” convention which had its inaugural show in Indianapolis in July, 2011 and will be headed to Atlanta and LA, then ending in Indy in the coming months. The press kit explained:

Chock full of special events tailored just for the fans, an active after hours scene of horror themed parties, and a massive guest list of the hottest celebrity guests, artists, and up and coming independent film makers, Days of the Dead has already began rewriting the script and setting the bar for what a true horror convention weekend should look like.

And in this case, all located within walking distance of the USA’s second largest monument to consumerism. This could be fun.

And it certainly was…

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