Back in December, Derek Kunsken’s enthusiastic review of Star Wars: Rogue One, “I Am One With the Force and the Force Is With Me,” shot up to #2 on our monthly traffic chart. Last month he claimed the #1 slot, and he didn’t need a blockbuster film to make it happen — he did it the old fashioned way, with a book review. The book in question was Thrill-Power Overload: A History of the British Comic 2000 AD, a detailed history…
As we segue (stagger, stumble, reel, crawl, stop-drop-and roll) from winter into spring, we are faced as always with the never-ending question: “What in the world am I going to read next?” Everyone will solve this dilemma in their own way. Dart and ouija boards, animal entrails, tarot cards, various dice systems, and the blind recommendations of pimply, pasty complexioned clerks in chain bookstores have all been resorted to by readers desperate for guidance. For many people (Black Gate followers no…
Nine years, another novel, and ten short stories after the publication of The Pastel City (read last week’s piece on that here), M. John Harrison returned to the world of the city of Viriconium in A Storm of Wings (1980). Its title taken from a line in the previous book, A Storm of Wings largely recycles the plot of the that novel as well. Once again, alien forces are threatening the city of Virconium and only a ragtag band of…
M. John Harrison, like Joan Vinge or J.G. Ballard, hails from my terra incognita of the universe of sci-fi/fantasy authors. Over the years I’ve read praises of his fiction but have never read a word of it. Searching my shelves for something to review this week, I saw a copy of the Bantam omnibus of his novels and stories of Viriconium, a city in the twilight days of Earth. I have no memory of how, when, or where it came into my…
Matthew David Surridge is Black Gate‘s most successful blogger, both in terms of critical and popular success (his post “A Detailed Explanation,” on why he declined a Hugo nomination last year, is the most popular article in our history). He’s also one of our most prolific, with 270 articles to his credit, and he’s had more reprinted than anyone else on our staff. Of course, that’s mostly due to last year’s Reading Strange Matters, which collected 24 of his posts, chiefly…
Terri Windling is a superstar in the field of fantasy. She’s been awarded the World Fantasy Award nine times, and she’s also won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the 2010 SFWA Solstice Award. As an editor at Ace she discovered and promoted first novels by Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, and many other important authors; with Ellen Datlow she co-edited 16 volumes of the seminal Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror from 1986–2003. She’s also an author…
August 1980 May 1984 Last month I was delighted to find a brand new copy of Ellen Kushner’s first anthology Basilisk on eBay for the criminally low price of $1.50 — less than cover price! The copy I found was the original 1980 edition (above left), with the gorgeous Rowena cover. In fact, it wasn’t until I started researching it that I discovered it was re-issued in 1984, with a brand new cover by Stephen Hickman (above right). Well, here was a curious mystery….
This is going to come out at some point, so I might as well say it here and now: I declined a Hugo nomination for this year’s Best Fan Writer award. I think it’s only fair to the people who voted for me to say why. Be warned, this is going to take a while. (And long-time readers of mine around these parts know that coming from me, that really means something.) Firstly, given the nature of this post and…
Last Sunday, May 26, veteran genre writer Jack Vance died at the age of 96. John O’Neill posted a fine overview here of his career; testament to Vance’s influence on other writers can be seen in remembrances by Christopher Priest and George R.R. Martin. Prolific and talented, Vance was a significant figure. I thought I’d do my humble bit to mark his passing with a look at perhaps his best-known series, books which named a subgenre of speculative fiction: The…
I think we’ve finally deciphered what it is that Black Gate readers truly want: great fantasy novels, with lots of action and an enchanting cast of characters. And pirates. That would certainly explain how the brief announcement of David C. Smith and Joe Bonadonna’s first collaboration, Waters of Darkness, vaulted to the top of our traffic stats and stayed there for the entire month of March — edging out Emily Mah’s Ellen Datlow interview, Sean McLachlan’s examination of one of…