In my continuing effort to cover many of the classic comic runs, this spring, after much reluctance, I went to my public library and took out the first few trades of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, published by DC comics in the early 1980s and marking the beginning of the British Invasion of comics (which I discussed in a previous post here). I’ve talked about Alan Moore’s work a few times, like when I recently read Halo Jones for the first…
I think I earned a new crown, folks! It took a lot of effort and waiting, but I think my patience has finally paid off: I am now officially the slowest book-give-away-runner at Black Gate! *And the crowd cheers!* I would love to say that a trip to Egypt and two to China were the cause, but honestly, I was one hundred percent channelling Tree-Beard. Let’s not be hasty! Ho-hummmmm. All that being said, when ents decide to act, they…
A lot of my Black Gate posts lean into the realm of the fantastic in sequential art, but until now, I’ve primarily stuck to the traditional comic book format, with some occasional diversions into older magazine-sized editions. A few weeks ago, I tweeted out a request for people to recommend web comics to me, because I’d never tried any.
As a writer, I don’t usually suffer from imposter syndrome, but some wonderful moments can appear from nowhere and blindside me. My latest such moment came via The Future Affairs Administration, a new online Chinese SF magazine (imagine a Chinese Lightspeed or Clarkesworld). FAA partnered with Ant Financial to fly 9 scifi writers into Hangzhou to learn about Ant Financial’s high-tech financial operations and some of what they’re dreaming about for the future, in the hopes that we writers would each write…
Black Gate readers were very supportive when I reported the start of my 2-year experiment as a more present parent and as a full-time writer in June of 2015. I am happy to announce some of the fruits of that experiment 23 months into this leave from work. First of all, my son is now 12 years old and is a wonderful human being. He cares about others, listens more, has more self-possession and seems successful enough socially that girls keep calling…
Sheila Williams speaking at Asimov’s 40th Anniversary Celebration in Manhattan For those of you who don’t know, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine turns 40 years old this spring, and a celebration was held at a New York book store. Asimov’s invited its writers and I finally, finally used this as my excuse to visit New York! I’ve traveled lots of other places, but I’ve never been to the home of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Saturday Night Live, and *all* the crime shows…
September-October 2023 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, Tomislav Tikulin, and Marianne Plumridge There’s plenty of great stuff in this month’s print magazines, including a new Diving Universe novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, an homage to the 1958 classic The Blob by Eric Choi, a chilling story of the Dead Letter Office by David Erik Nelson, the gruesome secret of the alien Deviltree by…
The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection (Infinivox, November 21, 2021). Cover by Maurizio Manzieri I’ve been reading and writing about Year’s Best volumes for decades, and I’ve covered a lot of them, including anthologies by Terry Carr, Don Wollheim, Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Rich Horton, Neil Clarke, and many others. So I hope you can appreciate what a pleasure it was to receive a copy of Allan Kaster’s The Year’s Top…
Nophek Gloss and Azura Ghost (Orbit, 2020 and 2021). Covers by Mike Heath I seem to have increased the amount of space opera in my diet. I think it’s because there happen to be so many good series on the go — from Becky Chambers Wayfarers books to Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, from Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space to James S.A. Corey’s Expanse, Derek Künsken’s Quantum Evolution to Megan E. O’Keefe’s Protectorate trilogy. But the one I’m excited about at the…
I had the sense of recognition…here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn’t know it… English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams on discovering English folklore and folk music The late Robert Holdstock prefaced his 1984 novel, Mythago Wood with that quote, and that’s sort of how I feel about the book myself. Holdstock dug deeply into the idea of myth, how it might arise from a culture, and how, in turn, it might affect individuals. I have…