Fantasy Literature Reviews Black Gate 14
Terry Weyna at the Fantasy Literature blog has posted a detailed and embarrassingly complimentary review of our latest issue:
I’ve only just discovered [Black Gate]. And what a time to do so! The Winter 2010 edition, Number 14, is 385 pages long, the size of a hefty book. The price reflects that; few magazines will run you $15.95 in the print edition… But then, few magazines will give you as much great fantasy as this one, including first stories by four promising new authors. There are a very great many stories in this issue – 16 short stories and three novellas… More than a few of the pieces are exceptional, real standouts in a day when fantasy stories are as numerous as stars.
She was particularly struck by “Devil on the Wind” by Michael Jasper and Jay Lake:
It reminds you how what is old can be made new. This story is about Lena, one of the Killaster Witches, a woman who has just committed suicide – and been reborn – for the fifth time. There are eight witches, led by Black Mattieu, and they demand obeisance from the kingdoms that surround their hold. When Prince Falloe of Ironkeep fails to send the proper tribute, substituting instead two coppers (symbols of the pennies laid on a dead man’s eyes), Black Mattieu sends Lena to teach the kingdom a harsh lesson. To say that Lena is not saintly hardly begins to tell the tale… The language used to describe her doings is rich and graphic, and the twists and turns of the tale unpredictable. “Devil on the Wind” is a marvelous story.
And Pete Butler’s novella “The Price of Two Blades:”
Equally original and refreshing. A bard who is heading into a village notices the sizable cemetery outlying it, and notices that a great many of the tombstones all show the same date of death. He theorizes that the deaths could somehow be connected to the disappearance of the noted bandit gang led by King Kruthas. Soon, the villagers reveal that this, in fact, the case, and they sit him down to tell him the tale of how they were rescued from that dreaded army. The method of their rescue is one completely unique to fantasy, so far as I know, and the lesson one learns is sad and necessary. This novella is a small masterpiece, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it grace an awards ballot or two.
Unquenchable Fire, by Rachel Pollack
It’s a great week for lovers of fantasy fiction!
These past two weeks I’ve found myself writing here about science fiction, or speculative fiction, as the literature of ideas. It seems to me that ‘the literature of ideas’ implies something other than what we normally find in sf; I feel that it suggests writing that uses ideas to establish the structure of a work, instead of relying on traditional narrative. I’ve found a couple of early examples in Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker and Jack London’s The Iron Heel. As a way to wrap up the discussion, I thought this week I’d look at a more recent example of what I mean by the literature of ideas: Ursula Le Guin’s Always Coming Home.
Here is how this morsel describes himself: 
