Search Results for: Soyka

Merry Christmas from Black Gate

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This has been a milestone year for our little website. In 1999 my friend Wayne MacLaurin helped me register the blackgate.com domain, and we launched the site to support our ambitious fantasy magazine. This year we quietly celebrated a quarter-century of continuous operation and quality fantasy coverage, and in the process added several talented newcomers to our small staff of regular bloggers, including Neil Baker, Jeffrey Talanian, Charles Gramlich, William H. Stoddard, and Ian McDowell. We also welcomed back David…

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Play’s the Thing: Playground by Richard Powers

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Playground (W. W. Norton & Company, September 24, 2024) The ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth’s surface. It’s the largest livable space on our planet, and there’s more life there than anywhere else on Earth…Despite its importance, the majority of our ocean is largely unknown…Scientists estimate there may be between 700,000 and 1 million species in the ocean (mostly animals and excluding most microorganisms, of which there are millions). Roughly two-thirds of these species, possibly more, have yet to be…

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Gothic Noir: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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The Shadow of the Wind (Penguin Books, February 1, 2005). Cover by Tal Goretsky Shadow of the Wind is the English rendering of  La sombra del viento, the 2001 novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and the first (though a standalone story sans cliffhangers) in his five book Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, translated by Lucia Graves (a serendipitously appropriate last name and, as it happens, the daughter of poet and historical novelist Robert Graves, he of I Claudius and The…

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Everyone Knows This is Nowhere: The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

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The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey, July 23, 2024). Jacket design by Drusilla Adeline Can someone who has been alive for 80,000 years find wonder and meaning in every day life? Would such an immortal still be capable of surprise, still uncertain about his own motivations, still unable to come to grips with the meaning of it all? After experiencing centuries upon centuries of the death of others, and frequently inflicting those deaths, do you become oblivious to the fate…

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Not Fade Away: The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

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The Cemetery of Untold Stories (Algonquin Books, April 2, 2024). Cover artist unknown We live our life telling a story Of what we’ve said and done But lately you caused me to worry That you’re spinning fiction — Amanda Fish, “The Hard Way,” Kingdom What perhaps separates humans from our fellow creatures is the capacity, indeed the compulsion, of storytelling. Hardly an original observation on my part (cf., The Stortelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall), though for all we know the…

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The Great Escapes: James, Kindred, The Reformatory by Percival Everett, Octavia Butler, and Tananarive Due

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James (Doubleday, March 19, 2024), Kindred (Doubleday,July 1979), and The Reformatory (S&S/Saga Press, October 31, 2023 Percival Everett’s James is receiving a lot of well-deserved critical praise. As the title indicates (and the choice of the formal name a key trope), this reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn elevates the escaped slave Jim from supporting stereotypical character to leading man status. Fearing he is about to be sold by his owner and separated from his family, James becomes a runaway…

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We Are All Time Traveling Together: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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The Ministry of Time (Avid Reader Press, May 7, 2024) Perhaps second only to space travel, science fiction is obsessed with time travel and in particular the paradox that if we go back to the past, how do we affect the future; can we inadvertently or purposely alter our “present”? Sometimes the answer is that your somehow being in the past is essential to determining your present (e.g., Kindred by Octavia Butler where the protagonist travels back to antebellum South…

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Frankly Frankenstein

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My guess is that even people who’ve never read the novel or seen the Boris Karloff version likely recognize that “Frankenstein” signifies a human-made scientific creation that bites back. (Though they probably do confuse which is the creator and which is the actual monster.) Here in the 21st century, what Mary Shelley depicted way back at the start of the 19th is embedded in our cultural collective consciousness, even for those people who don’t pay attention to the culture unless…

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My Three Problems with the Three-Body Problem

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The Three-Body Problem (Tor Books, November 11, 2014). Cover by Stephan Martiniere In the middle of trying to explain quantum mechanics to me, my physicist friend stopped in frustration and said, “This would all make a lot more sense if you understood math.” Alas, I am one of those recovering English majors who never could wrap their heads around anything more basic than simple arithmetic (and not so good at even that). Intellectually, I can intuit how mathematical prowess unleashes…

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The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

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The Strange (Saga Press, March 21, 2023). Cover uncredited I wish I could take credit for the headline of The Martian Chronicles Meet True Grit for Nathan Ballingrud’s terrific novel, but according to the author, Karen Jay Fowler came up with it. I hope she won’t mine me stealing it because it is as spot on as any description I could come up with. The more prosaic version is that The Strange is a Western riff on Ray Bradbury’s vision…

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