You’re from what newspaper? You want to write the story of my life? Oh. No, no, it’s not a problem at all. Come in. Here let me take your coat. Go into the sitting room. There’s a fire going and it’s much warmer. I have to admit that I’m a little surprised that you’re interested in me. I’m not as famous as some of the other characters my Creator brought to life. I admit that honestly. You wouldn’t know it…
My first experience with 4x gaming (“eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate”) was a 1989 fantasy game called Warlords. I have many fond memories of the Orcs of Kor and super-mobile wizards and played the bits out of it for about a year, in fact the game probably holds some kind of personal record for cost per hour in gaming in fractions of pennies. I’ve played them off and on ever since, and settled into being a solid Sid Meier fan…
Back in 1980, on my last day of my first year at secondary school in the UK, an 11-year old me saw a kid with a copy of the paperback Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook. I’d discovered Tolkien a year or two earlier, and, leafing through the book, the pictures of dragons and swords and — most particularly — the dungeon map and diagram of the Planes of Existence at the back both enchanted and fascinated me. But as…
Saga Press is the brand new fantasy and science fiction imprint of Simon & Schuster. I met Navah Wolfe, the editor for Saga Press, at the World Fantasy convention last November, and she really impressed me with her enthusiasm and knowledge of the field. Their first book, Ken Liu’s debut novel The Grace of Kings, hits the stands in two weeks, and it looks like a major new heroic fantasy. In his short career Liu has won the Hugo, Nebula…
After DAW killed the fourth Imaro novel, for nearly twenty years Charles R. Saunders’s published swords & sorcery output was limited to only a few short stories. Since 2006, starting with the reprinting of Imaro, new books from him have been appearing at a furious rate. In addition to new novels starring his established S&S characters, Imaro and Dossouye, he introduced a new pulp hero, Damballa. Abengoni: First Calling (A:FC) is the first book in Charles R. Saunders’s foray into epic…
Woe betide the soul who loves too much, wants too much, dares too much. I finish my reviews of the 5-star, Author’s Cut editions of Janet Morris’s classic of Homeric Heroic Fantasy, the Beyond Sanctuary Trilogy, with the third and final book, Beyond Wizardwall. This was the toughest of the three to review because there is so much that happens and so much ground to cover. This is also the most dramatic, tense and emotionally powerful of the three books….
More than once on Black Gate, I’ve heard that the seventies were a dead zone for science fiction and fantasy. For teens in search of readily available genre “gateway drugs,” I suppose this might have been true for many, but my particular experience of growing up managed, against all odds, to be different. Ohio was my home base, a vanilla environment for “culture” of the fantastical sort, but luckily I had a smorgasbord of British relatives. One especially perceptive and…
By Aaron Bradford Starr This is a complete work of fiction presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Aaron Bradford Starr and New Epoch Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by New Epoch Press. Art by Aaron Bradford Starr This is Part II. Read Part I here. The Descent I continue this account by the light of the lantern in our cabin, although the glow of…
There’s an amazing Kickstarter running at the moment. If you’re a fan of world-building, if you want to check out a world that’s been built over more than 40 years of group endeavour, with deep myths, histories, and cultures, one of the most compelling worlds in fantasy and certainly in fantasy roleplaying, you may want to take a look. I’ve written previously at Black Gate about Glorantha, the fantasy world invented by Greg Stafford which lies behind the roleplaying games…
The Winds of Khalakovo Bradley P. Beaulieu Nightshade Books (Trade Paperback $14.99, 312pp) Reivewed by Chris Braak It’s a little daunting, when you pick up Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo. Before the story even starts there are three pages of maps, and a list of characters that’s extensive, and full of names that enjoy that horrifically Chekhovian similarity – the kind that makes you wonder how you’re ever going to tell any of these people apart. The setting…