Search Results for: Poison Apple

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

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Sword and Sorcery dominated the stage at Black Gate last month. The most popular topic in October was the new S&S magazine from industry pioneers Joseph Goodman and Howard Andrew Jones, Tales From the Magician’s Skull, which showed up twice in the Top Ten, first with a far-ranging interview with Joseph and Howard (and their undead overlord, the Talking Skull), followed by a report on the blockbuster Kickstarter that funded the first two issues. Gaming and game news were definitely popular as well….

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

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The top articles at Black Gate in July and August were both features on Conan, and last month Bob Byrne managed to nab the top slot with his look at a strange mash-up of police procedural and sword & sorcery, the Conan tale “The God in the Bowl.” Conan was created by Robert E. Howard in the pages of Weird Tales in 1932; 85 years later, he’s still the most popular character among our readers. That’s durability. The second most popular article at…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

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Our most popular blog post in July was M. Harold Page’s “Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?” Last month continued the Conan love: our top article for August was Bob Byrne’s survey of Tor’s years as a Conan pastiche publisher, including the popular series from Robert Jordan. Above — the first of multiple Jordan omnibus volumes from Tor, The Conan Chronicles (1995, art by Gary Ruddell). Coming in second was our report on the Hugo Award winners, followed by Dominik…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

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Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Photo by Liz Duffy Adams June was a big month for interviews at Black Gate. Our top articles were interviews, and our roving reporter Joe Bonadonna placed two in the Top Ten — a lengthy conversation with Author T.C. Rypel (the Gonji series) at #2, and a free-wheeling conversation with two editors of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Adrian Simmons and David Farney, at #8. And the #1 article for the month was Elizabeth Crowens’s enchanting conversation with the…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in March

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There were lots of new faces in the Top Ten last month, including the #1 slot, which featured a cover comparison between John Scalzi’s new Tor bestseller The Collapsing Empire, and a hurriedly-packaged cover rip-off, The Corroding Empire, by “Johan Kalsi.” Coming in at #2 was our coverage of the third Literary Wonder and Adventure Podcast, a conversation with Scott Oden, followed by Sean McLachlan’s fascinating photo-essay on the items you don’t usually see from King Tut’s legendary treasure trove. Rounding…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in January

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Well, this is a little recursive. As I draft the list of Top Ten BG articles last month, I learn that our most posts in January were… Top Ten lists. That includes Brandon Crilly’s Top Ten Books I Read in 2016, sitting right at the top of the heap, as well as GeekDad‘s Best Tabletop Games of 2016 (at #2), John DeNardo’s Best of the Best: The Definitive List of 2016’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (#3), and even the…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

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The top article at Black Gate in December was Foz Meadows’ “Unempathic Bipeds of Failure,” a look at the relationship between fiction and politics, which was read over 4,000 times in a scant handful of days here, before moving to its permanent home at Amazing Stories. The second most popular blog post last month was Derek Kunsken’s enthusiastic film review for Star Wars: Rogue One, “I Am One With the Force and the Force Is With Me,” which I edited and…

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Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Snow White and the Huntsman

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Summer movies, like boxes of Crackerjacks (does anyone still eat those? I never see them for sale any more), come packed with surprises. And, like Crackerjacks toys, often they are lame surprises. Let-downs. Occasionally — and it usually happens only once per summer — the toy you dig out of the same-old same-old caramel and peanut glop is a Hot Wheels car with flame details and killer sci-fi spoilers that somebody in the Crackerjack plant accidentally dropped into the box…

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Disease Collectors, Sea Worms, and Alien Ghost Ships: November-December 2023 Print SF Magazines

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November-December 2023 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by 123RF, Shutterstock, and Alan M. Clark This is another great batch of print magazines, with a tale of a failing space colony by Jeff Reynolds (in Analog), an exciting new Quiet War novella by Paul McAuley (in Asimov’s), and a tale of mysterious AIs on a moon of Saturn by Geoff Ryman and David Jeffrey (in F&SF)….

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: William Patrick Murray on Cross-Genre Confusion, and Supernatural Westerns

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) Last week was part two of  fellow Robert E Howard Foundation Award-winner John Bullard’s look at Robert E. Howard’s humorous Westerns. Earlier this summer, Pulp maven (and fellow Sherlock Holmes afficionado) William Murray revealed right…

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