… Not to mention Matthew David Surridge and C.S.E. Cooney

… Not to mention Matthew David Surridge and C.S.E. Cooney

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bg-14-cover3Congratulations to James Enge on the inclusion of his latest novel The Wolf Age in the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List!

This is the second time on the list for James — his first novel, Blood of Ambrose, made the list in 2009.

Both novels feature Morlock the Maker, who appeared in Black Gate 8 in James’ first published story, “Turn Up This Crooked Way.”

Since that first appearance Morlock has been in our pages a half-dozen times. We’re practically his second home — he doesn’t even knock when he drops by anymore.

But that’s not the only reason we’re celebrating the Locus list. Also on the list is Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael“, from Black Gate 14, which was recently selected for the upcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Richard Horton.

And although she was too modest to mention it in her post below, C.S.E. Cooney’s own story “Braiding the Ghosts“, from the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 3, made the list as well.

[While we’re on the topic, C.S.E. made the list last year too, with “Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden“, from Subterranean magazine, Winter ’09. “Braiding the Ghosts” will also be in Rich’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy volume, coming this summer.]

Congratulations to all!

Locus Magazine Recommends The Wolf Age

Locus Magazine Recommends The Wolf Age

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thewolfageAs a growing number of people rightly come to the conclusion that reading James Enge’s The Wolf Age will probably be the most fun they’ll have since the invention of soul-sucking swords and the new Olympian-approved “rubber grip” thunderbolts, Black Gate has been pelting to keep up with the praise.

Now, panting from the effort but grinning widely withal, we call your attention to the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List, under the sub-heading “Novels.” See anything familiar? Yup! That’s our man James, and we’re so dang proud of him we could bust.

Congratulations!

Goth Chick News: Get That Raven an Agent

Goth Chick News: Get That Raven an Agent

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image002Here is definitive proof there is life after death.

Over the last couple years, the lovely Ms. Betty White has been blogged, tweeted and Facebooked back into the Hollywood limelight at the age of 89. She is “cute” and “sweet” and now apparently even “hot” by the standards of an entertainment industry which generally saves its highest praise and adoration for the youthful (or at least the youthful appearing).

Betty White’s resurgence of popularity is nothing short of miraculous when taken in this context.

However, relatively speaking, Ms. White is jail bait beside Mr. Edgar Allen Poe, who last month turned 202 and seems to be enjoying a second public life of his own.

And the one thing he is which Betty White definitely is not (as far as we know) is dead; a state Poe has been in for 162 years but which is not stopping him from recently getting his name in the press, or starring in several upcoming Hollywood projects.

Of course it doesn’t hurt to be terminally interesting as well.

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Twilight Sector & Astra Titanus

Twilight Sector & Astra Titanus

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astraWith Black Gate 15 just around the corner I thought I’d start devoting some time to some products that arrived too late for us to cover, or that just didn’t fit into an issue nearly as large as issue 14.

I was particularly taken by two science fiction titles. The first is a campaign setting, and while it utilizes the Mongoose Traveller rules, it’s in a completely different universe from Traveller itself.

The other is a solo tactical board game. If, like me, you name “The Doomsday Machine” as one of your favorite classic Star Trek episodes, it’s a must have, but it’s pretty darned cool even if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

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Chris Braak Reviews Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11)

Chris Braak Reviews Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11)

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turn-coatTurn Coat
Jim Butcher
Roc (576 pp, $9.99, April 2009 – March 2010 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Private-eye wizard Harry Dresden returns in Jim Butcher’s Turn Coat though, in point of fact, he hasn’t been doing altogether that much investigating lately. Between wars with vampire courts and secret enemies finally getting the Black Council on the move, it doesn’t seem like Harry is going to have the opportunity to track down a missing person or provide evidence in a divorce dispute any time soon.

Butcher jumps right in with his trademark wit. The characters in Turn Coat are, by now, so familiar that they provide a little thrill of recognition just by being mentioned. Waldo Butters, for example, has next to nothing to do with the story, but I can’t help but be pleased to see him again because I like Waldo Butters. That is something that plays to Butcher’s strong suit: the dialogue and relationships are so easy and natural that they cannot help but be compelling, even when no one is doing anything.

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Art Evolution 20: Keith Parkinson [1958-2005]

Art Evolution 20: Keith Parkinson [1958-2005]

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Art Evolution turns twenty, and in so doing fades from this prestigious stage provided by Black Gate, but as the name contends, art is ever changing, and so I will never say never where the process and these articles are concerned. Still, if you’ve missed any of these wonderful works, the journey’s beginning can be found here.

After the addition of last week’s ‘Demented Lyssa’, I’ll take a step back to the place where the true power of this article first struck me.

dragon-mag-106-254In late 2009 I’d just signed Larry Elmore and Wayne Reynolds, my spirits flying high as I spent my nights searching the web for artwork that might also apply to art evolution. It was during this process that a distinct sorrow assailed me in regards to the passing of Keith Parkinson.

To me, Keith represented my youth, so many of his images galvanized in my mind along the way it was difficult to think of this article without him. For the first time I regarded this journey as a thing not involving me, but instead the artists, and the lives they’d touched along the way.

Having heard so much about Keith from his fellows, I couldn’t help but feel that it would be selfish not to include him in the article because he couldn’t do a rendition of Lyssa. Lyssa was secondary to the art, after all, and the mission statement I now followed pushed for a thing greater than my ego.

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New Treasures: Engineering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

New Treasures: Engineering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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engineerOriginal science fiction and fantasy anthologies have had a tough time of it over the past few years, with some of the most promising and rewarding series — including Lou Ander’s excellent Fast Foward, and George Mann’s ambitious and highly readable Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and Solaris Book of New Fantasy — being discontinued.

One of the best of the new anthologists is Jonathan Strahan, whose acclaimed Eclipse series returns this May with Volume 4.  While we wait, Strahan treats us to a terrific standalone volume of original short stories:

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with a sense of wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it’s coming up hard against the speed of light and, with it, the enormity of the universe, realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you’d ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it’s hard science-fiction where sense of wonder is most often found and where science-fiction’s true heart lies.

This exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field including Stephen Baxter, Charles Stross and Greg Bear.

Engineering Infinity was published in paperback by Solaris for just $7.99; my copy arrived in early January.

As a raging blizzard  turns St. Charles, Illinois into a winter wonderland around me, this is the book I choose to cuddle down with for the evening.  Check it out when you get a chance.

The Mystical Viking: Valhalla Rising

The Mystical Viking: Valhalla Rising

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valhalla_rising_poster_dkValhalla Rising (2009)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Starring Mads Mikkelson, Jamie Sives, Gary Lewis, Ewan Stewart, Maarten Stevenson.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn went into his film Valhalla Rising right as he was wrapping up post-production on Bronson, the bizarre biopic about British prisoner Charlie Bronson that turned into his biggest success and pushed star Tom Hardy into the front lines. But Bronson surprised many viewers, going against expectations of what a biopic about Charlie Bronson would be like. In the same way, Valhalla Rising flips around the conceptual idea of “Viking movie” and is unlike anything viewers might expect from an historical epic about skull-crushers like the medieval Norsemen. Valhalla Rising had its festival premiere in 2009 and a theatrical release in mid-2010, but it sits defiantly outside the mainstream. If El Topo is an “Acid Western,” then consider Valhalla Rising an “Acid Viking Movie.”

Although it clocks in at a lean 92 minutes with credits, Refn’s film moves at a slow pace and contains vast silences within a harsh landscape. The first twelve minutes contain only a single line of dialogue, and this sparse style remains consistent throughout the running time. Red-hued violence occasionally breaks out, done with no modern stylization, but there are no “action set-pieces.” This is a movie concerned with its tone and texture, telling an oblique story through implication. And for what it attempts to do, it succeeds: this is a transcendent film that creates an authentic sense of what Nordic life in the eleventh century must have felt like. Its taciturn introspection says an enormous amount about early Christian and late Pagan mysticism.

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The Scar-Crow Men, Faustus, and Wizards: Three Posts

The Scar-Crow Men, Faustus, and Wizards: Three Posts

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Marlowe's FaustThis week I read an advance copy of the second book in Mark Chadbourn’s series of espionage-fantasy-adventure novels, Swords of Albion. The Scar-Crow Men begins with the first performance of Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, and the story of the novel and the story of Faust end up connecting in a number of ways. It got me thinking about Faust, and why the story of Faust has flourished in the centuries since Marlowe wrote, and how many different ideas about wizards there really are.

So this post breaks down into three posts, offering ruminations on the book, on Faust, and on wizards.

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“My Firefly Atonement” or “Get Cheap RPG Books Today Only!”

“My Firefly Atonement” or “Get Cheap RPG Books Today Only!”

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When a show with a large fan base – especially a large SF fan base – ends, the fans have some small amount of solace, because there’s usually a rich bounty of “extended universe” materials to keep the fix going for a while. Often the avid fan, deprived of new episodes of the show, can enjoy exploring the novels, comic books, and, yes, even role-playing game supplements which are created through license with the show … but all good things must end.

Last Chance to Buy Serenity & Battlestar Galactica RPGs

In recent years, one of the publishers that’s been dominant in the field of licensed RPG materials from such show – including Smallville, Supernatural, Serenity, Leverage, and Battlestar Galactica – is Margaret Weiss Productions, founded by (and named after) the legendary co-creator of the Dragonlance D&D setting and co-author of most of the relevant novels that established that setting, notably the Chronicles and Legends trilogies. These have been some great games, all built around MWP’s proprietary Cortex Rule System (reviewed in Black Gate 14). Serenity RPG was reviewed back in Black Gate 10 and my own review of the Supernatural RPG is slated to come out in Black Gate 15.

The problem, of course, is that both Serenity and Battlestar Galactica are based on franchises that have been over for quite some time. The licenses may have expired or MWP may have just decided it wasn’t profitable to keep the lines going, but the result was the following message in my e-mail today:

You have one day left to purchase The Serenity and Battlestar Galactica RPGs from Margaret Weiss Productions!

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