Black Gate 10

Black Gate 10

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Black Gate returns with a bang — and an extra 16 pages — with a jam-packed issue filled with the very best in adventure fantasy. Martha Wells graces our pages for the first time with a chilling tale of pursuit into a deadly wood in “Reflections,” the first in a series of new Giliead and Ilias stories. Morlock the Maker returns to investigate a deadly tome in a new adventure from fan favorite James Enge, and Iain Rowan’s Dao Shi the exorcist continues his escape from the forces of empire in “Welcome to the Underworld.”

Judith Berman brings us a mini-epic of dark necromancy, haunted ruins, centuries-spanning intrigue, and unquiet dead in “Awakening,” the sequel to “The Poison Well” (BG 7), and Mark Sumner kicks off a new series of chilling monster tales with “The Naturalist: Going to Applewash.”

All this plus Harry James Connolly, a Dabir & Asim story from Howard Andrew Jones, a lengthy feature on ’70s SF from Rich Horton, and much more. Subscribe Now to make sure you don’t miss out!

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

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Ace correspondent David Soyka, high above the fiction landscape in the Black Gate chopper, checks in with a live report on which lanes are open and which to avoid. There’s routine traffic crawling on many of your regular morning routes, but on the Interzone and Fantasy expressways things seem to be moving splendidly.

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews: Don’t leave home without ’em.

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David Gemmell: An Appreciation

David Gemmell: An Appreciation

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The prolific David Gemmell, who died July 28, 2006, left behind a profound contribution to heroic fantasy, starting with the novel Legend and continuing with Knights of Dark Renown, Dark Moon, the recent Troy series, and literally dozens of others.

Wayne MacLaurin and Steve Tompkins offer a fresh new look at a legacy that spans thirty novels over twenty-two years. This in-depth tribute offers new understanding for his fans, and plenty of enticement for those who have not yet read Gemmell’s work.

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Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

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Black Gate correspondent David Soyka continues his search for the best in new fantasy — and has some real success in the pages of the impressive new Fantasy Magazine:

The issues I’ve seen feature wistful-looking young women gazing at something presumably magical, leading you to think the contents concern themselves with faery land kind of stuff. Not quite. . . [Some of these stories] could just as easily have appeared in a literary magazine, as Toni Morrison-styled magic realism. None strike me as mere “escapism.”

Join David as he looks at new work from Theodora Goss, Stewart O’Nan, Darrell Schweitzer, Midori Snyder, K. D. Wentworth and many others, in recent issues of Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and Heliotrope.

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Conan: Songs of the Dead

Conan: Songs of the Dead

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Joe Lansdale, auhor of the Hap Collins novels, brings his unique brand of mojo storytelling to Dark Horse Comics to tell a brand new tale of Conan the Cimmerian in a five-issue limited series illustrated by the brilliant Timothy Truman.

“Lansdale’s Conan is rough-hewn, with an earthy sense of humor that may surprise longtime fans… There’s enough action in the first two issues to warm the heart of any sword & sorcery fan.”

Join Charles Rutledge as he talks with Lansdale about this exciting new series, which follows Conan and his old comrade Alvazar into the Stygian desert in a rolicking adventure that begins with the theft of a holy artifact, and soon involves priests of the snake god Set, a quest to a strange temple, a seductive female ghost, and a horde of flesh-hungry zombies!

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Horrorscope Review: Black Gate 9

Horrorscope Review: Black Gate 9

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Captivating… sophisticated… This is complex, emotional fantasy at its finest.

Horrorscope, the Australian webzine of Dark Fiction, has posted a feature review of Black Gate 9 by Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

I was immediately struck by the excellent embellishments and illustrations… Editor John O’Neill has lavishly added side-features like extended author bios with book covers. Black Gate also has a healthy complement of non-fiction including book and role-playing game reviews and an exhaustive feature on the awarding of retro-Hugo awards.

Read the complete review to see why Black Gate continues to gather acclaim as one of the best fantasy magazines on the market!

The Fantasy Cycles of Clark Ashton Smith Part III: Tales of Zothique

The Fantasy Cycles of Clark Ashton Smith Part III: Tales of Zothique

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Clark Ashton Smith was one of the most influential authors in modern American fantasy. Along with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, his early contributions to Weird Tales virtually created Sword-and-Sorcery, and his tales are still considered among the very best the genre has to offer.

In 1932 Smith found the ideal setting for his poetic and dark imagination: the last continent of dying Zothique. The sixteen stories, a poem, and one-act play that constitute the Zothique cycle contain some of the most superb examples of Smith’s fiction. The far future continent, which Smith imagined “will arise millions of years hence and will witness the intrusions of things from galaxies not yet visible,” is the final stage of life on Earth.

In his third article on Smith’s fiction, Ryan Harvey examines the Zothique cycle in detail. Join him in a tour of the last human civilization, a land where “New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had drawn closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man. . . And the elder demons had also returned, battering on the fumes of evil sacrifices, and fostering again the primordial sorceries.”

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Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

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What? You’ve finished reading all of Black Gate‘s back issues, and you’re still hungry for good short fiction?

Don’t despair. Last month we dispatched seasoned Black Gate fiction correspondent David Soyka to the outer reaches of the strange and mysterious magazine marketplace (a dimly-lit Barnes and Noble in Charlottesville, VA) and, just when we thought we were going to have to send Don Bassingthwaite on a rescue mission, he returned — with fresh scars, and tales of wondrous things.

Join David as he reports on the exciting sightings on the frontiers of genre fiction, including Interzone, H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and the strange and mythical thing (once thought extinct) known as Sword-and-Sorcery, found thriving in the pages of Howard Andrew Jones’ Flashing Swords.

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Twilight Tales Interview with John O’Neill

Twilight Tales Interview with John O’Neill

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Twilight Tales is a Chicago institution. For over a decade it’s brought hundreds of authors from around the world to perform their stories live at Chicago’s Red Lion Pub as part of its weekly fiction reading series.

Over the years Black Gate editor and publisher John O’Neill has participated in Twilight Tales editors’ panels, and been a judge for its “Authors in the Hot Seat” critique shows.

Now David Munger interviews John as part of the Twilight Tales Interview series, covering such topics as the magazine’s beginnings, his editorial vision, the future of short fiction, and the three novels every Black Gate reader — and aspiring fantasy writer — should read.

The Sorcery of Storytelling: The Imaginary Worlds of Darrell Schweitzer

The Sorcery of Storytelling: The Imaginary Worlds of Darrell Schweitzer

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Darrell Schweitzer is one of fantasy’s true renaissance men. As co-editor of Weird Tales he’s kept alive the field’s most venerated and historic magazine, while simultaneously helping guide and shape the next generation of fantasy authors. As a literary critic he’s illuminated the careers of many modern masters with his Discovering Modern Horror Fiction series, The Thomas Ligotti Reader, the upcoming Neil Gaiman Reader, and many other fine works.

But it’s with his fiction that he’s made his most important contributions. The author of over three hundred published short stories and three novels, including Mask of the Sorcerer and The White Isle, Darrell Schweitzer has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award three times.

Black Gate author John R. Fultz examines the career of this celebrated author with a look at his most influential novels and collections, and a lengthy interview with the man the critic Mike Ashley labels “today’s supreme stylist.”

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