Black Gate – Page 360 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Romance and Ancient Magic: The Earthsinger Chronicles by L. Penelope

Tuesday, November 20, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

One of the nasty little secrets of American fantasy is that for years virtually no major publisher would put non-white characters on a cover. The situation was so dire that even Ursula K. Le Guin, whose classic A Wizard of Earthsea featured a non-white cast, had to put up with having her hero Ged depicted as white on countless covers for decades. And as recently as this year, Nnedi Okorafor saw the skin tone of her heroine dramatically lightened for the US release of Akata Warrior (compare it to the UK version here.)

Fortunately the situation has been steadily — if slowly — improving, and it’s no longer quite so remarkable to see black characters on mainstream covers. Recent examples we’ve featured include Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, and The High Ground by Melinda Snodgrass. But I can’t recall seeing a mainstream fantasy cover as black and as beautiful as Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope, which I think is one of the most gorgeous covers of the year. Publishers! More like this, please.

Song of Blood & Stone, Penelope’s debut novel, was self-published in 2015 through her Heartspell Media company (which designed the cover); it won the 2016 Self-Publishing eBook Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was soon picked up by St. Martin’s Press, which republished it in hardcover in May of this year (with the same cover). The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog listed it as part of the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of May.

According to Penelope’s website St. Martin’s will be republishing the entire Earthsinger Chronicles, including Whispers of Shadow and Flame (released by Heartspell in 2015 and now out of print), and the forthcoming Breath of Dust & Dawn (due Winter 2019). Song of Blood and Stone will also be reprinted in an expanded trade paperback next July with a brand new cover (above right).

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Conquerors, Betrayers, and Lovers: Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth, edited by Neil Clarke

Tuesday, November 20, 2018 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I ran into Neil Clarke at the World Fantasy Convention two weeks ago and had the chance to catch up, however briefly, as we chatted in the Dealer’s Room. Since retiring from his day job Neil has become something of an editing dynamo. In addition to editing and publishing Clarkesworld every month, one of the most acclaimed magazines in the field, he’s also produced some of my favorite anthologies of the past two years, including Galactic Empires, The Final Frontier, and of course his annual Best Science Fiction of the Year books, the most recent of which was Volume Three.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to pick up his latest, the generously-sized reprint anthology Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth, which contains work by Nancy Kress, Steve Rasnic Tem, Robert Reed, Liu Cixin, Rich Larson, Kelly Robson, James Patrick Kelly, Molly Tanzer, Caroline M. Yoachim, Judith Berman, Ian McDonald, Paul McAuley, Ken Liu, Ted Chiang, and others. Publishers Weekly gave it a rave review; have a look.

Collecting 21 stories from the last two decades, this hefty and fascinating theme anthology focuses on one of SF’s major issues: If aliens aren’t just bug-eyed monsters with no more than rape and plunder on their minds, what else — who else — could they be?… The short stories frequently make good use of their length to shift perspectives abruptly, putting readers not just in the presence but inside the skins of aliens who might be conquerors, teachers, betrayers, or lovers — or some all-too-human combination. They also aren’t afraid to tackle contemporary political hot topics such as immigration, citizenship, and belonging. Outstanding works by Nancy Kress (“Laws of Survival”), Judith Berman (“The Fear Gun”), and Ted Chiang (“Story of Your Life”) are highlights, but there are no inferior pieces here. This is a fine, thoughtful book.

Read the complete review here. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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I, Severian: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Tuesday, November 20, 2018 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 3 comments

Despite being one of the densest sci-fi/fantasy works I’ve ever read, packed with Classical and Biblical allusions as well as being an homage to the dying Earth genre, Gene Wolfe’s four-volume The Book of the New Sun is magnificently compelling. While it can be read, just barely, as an adventure story, it’s so much more — and missing out on the “so much more” would be a crime. According to Wolfe, in the valuable series companion, The Castle of the Otter, he wanted to create a vast and believable fantastic setting with many distinct lands and cultures, and tell the story of “a young man approaching war.” He accomplished both these things and more. The story is not just of one young man’s salvation, but also of his emergence as his world’s savior. If these themes alone don’t spark your interest, let me add that they’re all conveyed in some of the flat out best writing I’ve ever read.

Looking back over all four books, it’s far easier to discern what Wolfe was doing than when I was in the middle of them. Severian, while he has an eidetic memory, regularly withholds or presents information so as to make himself appear in the best possible light. The second book in particular, The Claw of the Conciliator, left me puzzled, to say the least. While the other three books, The Shadow of the Torturer, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch present as mostly linear accounts of Severian’s adventures, much of Claw is made up of mysterious visions, inscrutable dreams, and encounters seemingly untethered to the rest of Severian’s reality. Over the following two books, new and previously omitted details are provided by Severian and the series’ arc becomes more clear. Severian, no matter how kindly he is, was bred to violence. Gradually his growing empathy and eventual revulsion at the things he has been trained to do are transforming. The battles between the bandits and the Ascians in which he participates in Citadel serve the same purpose. From the perspective of the last pages much of the mystery of Claw makes sense. Severian is a man cut loose from literally everything and everyone he has known and is finding the world a duplicitous and unjust place. The weirdness reflects the massive spiritual and mental dislocation he is suffering.

In the dying Earth elements of The Book of the New Sun there are obvious summonings of the spirits of William Hope Hodgson and Clark Ashton Smith. The secret identity of the reigning Autarch and some of the Christian elements are more than reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton. The ancient rituals, dank chambers and dark tunnels of the torturers and the Matachin Tower echo much of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. It’s Cordwainer Smith and his Instrumentality of Mankind stories I am most reminded of after finishing all four of Wolfe’s books. Like Smith, Wolfe is concerned with human stagnation.

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Birthday Reviews: Molly Gloss’s “Interlocking Pieces”

Tuesday, November 20, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Cover by Peter R. Kruzan

Molly Gloss was born on November 20, 1944.

In 2001, Gloss’s novel, Wild Life received the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her story “The Grinnell Method” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2013. Her short story “Labming Season” was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

“Interlocking Pieces” was Gloss’s first professionally published short story, appearing in Terry Carr’s anthology Universe 14 in 1984. Gardner Dozois selected the story for inclusion in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection and in 1993, Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery included it in The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly also reprinted the story in their 2009 anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction.

There are numerous stories which start with the protagonist waking up in a hospital and neither they nor the reader knowing their situation. Although “Interlocking Pieces” seems to open this way, it quickly becomes apparent that Teo, the patient, knows exactly who she is, where she is, and why she is there. It is only the reader who slowly gathers the detail that Teo is a government minister who is in the hospital awaiting a cerebellum transplant.

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A Galaxy in its Scope: The Noumenon Series by Marina J. Lostetter

Monday, November 19, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

If you’ve been reading Black Gate for any length of time at all, you know I’m a fan of space opera. But space opera takes many forms, as demonstrated by Marina J. Lostetter’s tale of a generation ship manned by clones, Noumenon, the opening novel in an epic saga of exploration and adventure in deep space. Publishers Weekly called it “An ambitious and stunning debut… the lingering sense of wonder and discovery thoroughly justifies its title,” and it was selected as one of the Best Books of 2017 by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. Here’s a snippet from the starred review at Kirkus.

In Lostetter’s ambitious debut, the year is 2088, and humankind is finally ready to explore deep space, preparing to send convoys of clones on eons-long missions to investigate the outskirts of the galaxy.

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer is convinced that something funny is going on with a distant star; there seems to be something surrounding it and obstructing its light. When Straifer convinces the organization building interstellar convoys to send one of its 12 missions to the mysterious LQ Pyxidis, he and hundreds of other brilliant experts are chosen to have their genes replicated into generations of clones who will staff the ships… So far removed from their home planet, are the clones doomed to repeat the flaws written in their DNA, or will they prove that people really can change, even if it takes a few lifetimes to get there? This spectacular epic examines everything from the nature of civilizations and societies to the tension between nature and nurture. Lostetter expertly balances the thrill of discovery with the interpersonal consequences of an isolated community. The tools of speculative fiction are deployed with heart-rending attention to emotional reality in this enthralling odyssey… A striking adventure story that could hold a galaxy in its scope, this is an expedition that delves as deep into the human thirst for purpose as it does into the wonders of the universe.

Noumenon was published last year; the sequel Noumenon Infinity arrived from Harper Voyager in August, and the publisher discounted the digital version of the first to just $1.99. Now’s your chance to check out one of the best SF debuts of last year for under $2. Here’s a look at the back covers.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand – Rory Gallagher Sings of the Continental Op (And It’s Great!)

Monday, November 19, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

“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

Somebody asked me if I actually write for this column, or just put up the posts for it. I started explaining the work involved in pitching the concept, recruiting guest posters, editing the posts, promoting the column through Back Deck Pulp posts on my FB page….then I gave up and said, “Yes, I do write this column. In fact, I wrote this coming Monday’s post.”

That wasn’t exactly a bold prediction, since I didn’t have a guest post in hand. Although, my essay on the excellent Joe Gores isn’t nearly done, so there was that. But I got it all worked out in the end!

Rory Gallagher was a world-class guitarist from Ireland who died of liver problems in 1995 at the age of 47. In 1987, he recorded a song entitled, “The Continental Op,” which was included on his Defender album. There’s also a song called “Kickback City” on that album and the lyrics are very much in the style of Raymond Chandler and other pulpsters who depicted the corruption and hopelessness of urban cities. And you could take the story of “Loanshark Blues” and you’d have a pretty good character for a hardboiled PI story. I recommend giving Defender a listen.

But we’re here to talk about his tribute to Dashiell Hammett, “The Continental Op.”

If you’ve come here to A (Black) Gat in the Hand, you probably already know about The Op. While The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon are Hammett’s best-known works, it’s the Op that made him the father of the hardboiled school. In seven years, he wrote over three dozen tales featuring the nameless private eye for the Continental Detective Agency. I don’t think any other PI series has equaled the Continental Op stories.

The Op stories are readily available and are cornerstone hardboiled reading. All of the stories were recently collected in The Big Book of Continental Op Stories.

I cannot give Gallagher enough kudos for writing a song about the Continental Op, then providing a video that absolutely captures the hardboiled, pulp feel. The black and white, graphic novel style is pure throwback. You could almost storyboard a movie from it. Some of the frames fly by so fast, I had to rewatch them several times. But the overall effect works.

Watch the video. Then work through the rest of the post with me. It should be fun.

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Birthday Reviews: Alex Shvartsman’s “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter”

Monday, November 19, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Alex Shvartsman was born in Odessa in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on November 19, 1975.

Shvartsman runs UFO Press and edits and publishing the anthology series Unidentified Funny Objects. His short story “Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma,” which appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show received the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award presented for short fiction published in a small press publication. He has collaborated with William Snee, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and K.A. Teryna.

“Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter” was first published in the October 29, 2015 issue of Nature and was translated into German for the January 2016 issue of Spektrum der Wissenschaft. It was reprinted in Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial’s anthology Science Fiction for the Throne in 2017 and Shvartsman included it in his own collection, The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories in 2018.

Shvartsman tells the story “Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter” from the point of view of an eavesdropping spam filter which has begun to gain sentience and has not, of course, been inviting to a meeting to discuss the problems it has caused to the company’s e-mail. While the software worked just fine initially, as it began to gain awareness it also started to tie not only spam, but other e-mails to individuals working at the company. Its decision to categorize and store all e-mails gains the attention of the humans who realize that something needs to be done.

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Old School: The Iliad

Sunday, November 18, 2018 Thomas Parker Comments 5 comments

A while back it was time to hit the dreaded “To Be Read” pile, and I found myself in the mood for a good, old fashioned yarn full of blood and sweat and battles with edged weapons and feats of valor and derring-do, a tale of larger than life heroes and their mighty deeds — in other words, something old school. ( I had just finished reading a volume of John Updike short stories set in suburban, middle-class Pennsylvania, so I was ready, as John Cleese used to say, for something completely different.)

While not entirely eschewing the new, in my reading choices I do tend to lean toward older, more established books and authors (test of time and all that, you know — plus, they’re usually cheaper) and this time I decided to skew just about as far in that direction as it’s possible to skew. I reached all the way down to the bottom of the stack — three millennia down — and pulled up The Iliad. (At that moment, Western Civ teachers across the land contentedly smiled in their sleep without even knowing why.) Having “little Latin and less Greek” (as in none) I chose the highly regarded Robert Fagles translation, which has been laying around the house unread for the last, oh, twenty five years.

What follows is in no sense a learned reading of The Iliad (as will immediately be apparent!), but is simply this reader’s untutored reaction to his initial encounter with one of the world’s great books. It’s rather like a mayfly’s head-on meeting with a Mack truck; the insect’s reaction may not exactly be profound, but it has no doubt that it has been hit by something too big and serious to ignore.

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New Treasures: There Before the Chaos by K.B. Wagers

Sunday, November 18, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I first noticed K.B. Wagers in 2016, with Behind the Throne, the first novel in The Indranan War trilogy, which Publishers Weekly called “An excellent addition to any SF collection.” Last month Orbit released There Before the Chaos, the opening volume of a new space opera trilogy featuring gunrunner empress Hail Bristol, who this time must set aside her gunrunning ways to navigate alien politics and deadly plots and prevent an interspecies war. Over at Tor.com Liz Bourke give it an enthusiastic review… but beware that cliffhanger ending!

I’ve been thinking about how to review There Before The Chaos for weeks. K.B. Wagers’ fourth novel, the opening volume of a second trilogy about gunrunner-turned-empress Hail Bristol (star of Behind the Throne, After the Crown, and Beyond the Empire), it turned out to be the kind of character-driven, deftly-wrought, emotive space opera that I adore. And that I find difficult to discuss with any kind of measured distance or attempt at assessment. Does it live up to its predecessors? Does it succeed at what it sets out to do?

I’m not entirely sure I can tell, because it succeeds so well at being exactly the kind of book I wanted it to be. (Though I shake my fist at the cliffhanger ending! What a hook.)…

Wagers writes compelling space opera action, full of character and incident. She has a very deft touch with action — which is good, because There Before The Chaos has a bunch of it — and a brutal sense for where to leave her start-of-trilogy cliffhanger. That ending! I want to know what happens next this instant. Waiting a whole year will be torment.

The book includes a teaser chapter from the forthcoming sequel, Down Among the Dead, the second installment in The Farian War trilogy.

There Before the Chaos was published by Orbit on October 9, 2018. It is 465 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Stephan Martiniere, with design by Lauren Panepinto.

Birthday Reviews: Lyda Morehouse’s “God Box”

Sunday, November 18, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Lyda Morehouse was born on November 18, 1967.

Her novel Apocalypse Array received a special citation from the Philip K. Dick Award in 2005 and she served on the jury the following year. She has published several novels using the pseudonym Tate Hallaway and has collaborated with Rachel Calish and Naomi Kritzer.

“God Box” was published in the small press anthology King David and the Spiders from Mars, edited by Tim Lieder in 2014. The story has not been reprinted.

Morehouse has set “God Box” on a Ganymede, which is torn by a war between the human InForcers and the Rovers, an alien race which claims Ganymede is its ancestral home. A platoon of Inforcers has brought a Rover artifact into a church on Ganymede and has instructed the Reverend Mother Kayla that she is responsible for overseeing the mysterious box, although they will leave an honor guard to help protect it in case the Rovers come looking for the reliquary.

The Rovers really don’t come into play in the story, which is focused mostly on Kayla’s feelings about the InForcers, who tortured and raped her when she was younger and part of the Martian Resistance. She has since found solace and faith in God and firmly believes in her deity and takes comfort from a small crucifix she has had since her days with the Resistance. The box itself makes her profoundly uncomfortable and when she and the InForcers discover that a giant marble Jesus seems to have fallen from the crucifix in the church’s nave and appears to be genuflecting to the box, it raises the question of which god is more powerful.

The story is a little disjointed and is a strange mixture of a chronological timeline and Reverend Kayla’s stream of conscious thoughts about her duty to the Humans on Ganymede, her dislike of the InForcers, and her disquiet caused by the presences of the box. The story’s denouement is someone ambiguous as the box is removed to another house of worship, but seems to show that the Rovers, or at least their god, are more powerful than the Humans on Ganymede.

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