Adrian Cole is hardly a stranger to fantasy fiction. Born in Plymouth, Devonshire in 1949, Adrian first read The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s while working in a public library in Birmingham, and was inspired by the book to write an epic entitled “The Barbarians,” which was eventually revised into The Dream Lords trilogy, published by Zebra Books in the early 1970s. He has been writing various ghost, horror, and fantasy tales, in both short-story and novel-length,…
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Christian Cameron as a Hoplite Christian Cameron, a well-known historical fiction author who writes espionage novels under the pen name Gordon Kent and fantasy under Miles Cameron, is a Canadian novelist who was educated and trained as both an historian and a former career officer in the US Navy. His best-known work is the ongoing historical fiction series Tyrant, set in Classical Greece, which by 2009 had sold over 100,000 copies. But in recent years he’s not only chronicled ancient…
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Corgi editions of Six of Swords (1985) and Exiles of the Rynth (1986); art by Steve Crisp I started reading fantasy as a teenager during the second half of the 1980s. A friend recommended Anne McCafferey’s Pern books, readily available at the public library. Another friend whom I had recently started playing D&D with was very much taken with David Eddings’ Belgeriad and advised me to give them a bash. I have since grown out of Eddings, but at the…
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Embers of Wars, the opening volume in Gareth L. Powell’s new space opera series, was selected as one of the Best of 2018 (So Far) by both the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog and Tor.com. The New York Journal of Books called it “Deep and juicy in the details,” Morning Star labeled it “Top class space fiction,” and The Guardian proclaimed it “Compulsively readable, expansive space opera.” But we all know it’s not a real space opera until the second…
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To round out the calendar year, I decided it’s high time I wrote up another Short Fiction Roundup. I will freely admit I read way more novels than short fiction, but here are some of my recent reads that I want to spotlight: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 Edition Yes, I realize we’re at the end of 2018, and yes, this edition means stories from 2016. Best Of anthologies are always hit or miss with me, since…
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By Joe Bonadonna This is an excerpt from The MechMen of Canis-9 by Joe Bonadonna. It is presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Joe Bonadonna, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2018 by Joe Bonadonna. This time out, Sergeants Seamus O’Hara, Claudia Akira, Fernando Cortez and a platoon of Marines are deployed to Canis-9 — Devoora, the Ocean Planet. Their mission: find seven indestructible robot warriors hidden…
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The Earthsea Trilogy (Bantam, 1975). Covers by Pauline Ellison Early last year, I began a column here at Black Gate that I call “Books and Craft.” The idea was to shine a light on the writing elements that contribute to the greatness of classic works in our genre. (You might care to read my previous pieces on Nicola Griffith’s Slow River, and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana .) I intended to write these on a regular basis, but life and work…
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Cover by Chris Foss While perusing the shelves of Bookdealers of Rosebank, in Johannesburg, an excellent shop that sadly closed its doors a while back, I came across a nondescript book with an unbent spine. Finding a used paperback of any age with a good-as-new spine is a rarity, and I was drawn to it. I slipped it from its recess and took a closer look. It was a Ballantine paperback with an intriguing space ship on a wrap around cover. The title…
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Will Eisner We are all in the habit of communicating in shorthand (perhaps now more than ever, in this era of emojis and tweets and texting) and often toss out clichés and smooth-worn phrases without pausing to consider what they might actually mean. It can hardly be otherwise, seeing that we are all in such a damnable hurry. (To ask where, exactly, we are hurrying to can make people uncomfortable, so I won’t ask.) For this reason it might be…
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Wyman Guin was born on March 1, 1915 and died on February 19, 1989. Guin only published seven stories and one novel, The Standing Joy during his career. His most famous stories may have been “Beyond Bedlam” and “Volpla,” the latter of which was adapted for the radio show X Minus 1 in August 1957. Guin was declared the winner of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2013. Guin’s first story was “Trigger Tide.” When it was first published in…
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