Wait a minute — didn’t I just write about a new Jonathan Maberry novel last month? As a matter of fact I did — his new Joe Ledger novel, Dogs of War. And here he is again with Mars One, a brand new SF novel about a teen and his family colonizing Mars. You can say one thing about Maberry… the guy clearly doesn’t waste his time resting. Go on the adventure of a lifetime with a teen and his…
Joe Ledger is a Baltimore detective recruited to lead a secret rapid-response group called the Department of Military Sciences. His first case, Patient Zero (2009), involved stopping a group of terrorists from releasing a bio-weapon that could trigger a zombie apocalypse, and things have gone downhill for the poor guy ever since. In the seventh volume, Predator One (2015), Joe and the DMS battled killer drones and a computer virus that turns Air Force One into a flying death trap; in…
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…
The Heroes By Joe Abercrombie Orbit (592 pages, $11.46 paperback, October 2011) (This one is a little above 500 words because of an excerpt. Just roll with it.) The last time I discussed Joe Abercrombie in this column, my disappointment in Best Served Cold earned a few comments from the community. (Side note: I love getting comments, so keep them coming.) You might be happy to learn that, as promised, I gave the next First Law book a chance. And…
Good golly, we’re more than halfway through January already. How the heck did that happen? I still have over a dozen January new releases to cover! Well, no use complaining about it… especially when I could use that energy to cheat, instead. Rather than tell you about the best new books in January myself, I could just let the distinguished Andrew Liptak do it. Over at The Verge, Andrew has jotted down his thoughts on 16 science fiction and fantasy…
In January the latest issues of Analog and Asimov’s SF hit the shelves in their new bimonthly, double-issue format. But the big new this month was the announcement that one of the most promising of the new crop of genre publications, Fantasy Scroll Magazine, has gone on hiatus after only 13 issues. I guess 13 really is unlucky, at least for magazines. Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of great reading for fantasy fans every month. Have a look at Fletcher Vredenburgh’s…
Greetings, folks! As an addition to my reviews at Black Gate, I will be occasionally interviewing some of the authors and editors I talk about (if I’m lucky enough to know them, or they’re gracious enough to agree). I’m fascinated with the idea of getting into the mind of creative people, and some of the best conversations I have in my day-to-day are with other writers, so I’m hoping to capture some of that insight in this “Wordsmiths” series. My…
I’ve just returned from the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, where I got the chance to meet up with several of our talented and far-flung contributors, including Bob Byrne, Patty Templeton, C.S.E. Cooney, Matthew Wuertz, Sarah Avery, Fred Durbin, Ellen Klages, Amal El-Mohtar, Derek Künsken, Brandon Crilly, Marie Bilodeau, David B. Coe, Jeffrey Ford, and many others. But the highlight of the weekend — by a pretty wide margin — was receiving the World Fantasy Special Award in the Nonprofessional category….
PUBLISHER & EDITOR John O’Neill ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Patty Templeton ASSOCIATE EDITOR & COPY EDITOR Alice Dechene GAMES EDITOR Neil Baker EDITORS EMERITUS C.S.E. Cooney Michael Penkas CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Rich Horton, Andrew Zimmerman Jones, Bill Ward SUBMISSION READERS Howard Andrew Jones, Joseph McCullough, C.S.E. Cooney, Patty Templeton, Jason M. Waltz, Scott Taylor, Katie Redding REVIEWERS Charlene L. Brusso, John C. Hocking, Sue Granquist, Rich Horton, Andrew Zimmerman Jones, Howard Andrew Jones, E. E. Knight, Jackson Kuhl, Thomas M. MacKay, Todd Ruthman,…
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Cover design by Maria Spada Jembefola Press (358 pages, $6.99 eBook, Sept 28, 2021) So… it’s about freaking time we have one of these, right? Having already demonstrated impressive editing chops with Dominion (co-edited with Zelda Knight), Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has created an even greater anthology with this Year’s Best, distilling twenty-nine stories into one of the most cohesive anthologies I’ve ever read. Common threads make this feel like…