Search Results for: osprey

New Treasures: Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms and Weapons from the Age of Steam by Philip Smith and Joseph McCullough

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I’m a sucker for the Steampunk aesthetic — and especially the really creative fashion and fiction it’s helped create. It’s not often that a literary movement simultaneously spawns a fashion and cosplay movement, and I think that’s neat. The two have helped fuel each other, and how could they not? It’s easier to be creative when there are hundreds of artists, jewelers, seamstresses, and cosplayers out there coming up with ideas. There’s been some terrific Steampunk-related releases in the past…

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How Eilean Donan Castle Nearly Shrugged off the Age of Gunpowder (Then Got Blown up Anyway)

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AD 1719, the wild West Coast of Scotland, where nobody seems to realise that the Viking Age is over, and three government frigates close in on Eilean Donan Castle. How’s this going to go? Eilean Donan Castle — which was once famously defended by just two men, one a good archer — has a Spanish garrison of 46 soldiers. They’re here to guard a depot for munitions shipped in to support yet another Jacobite uprising. Jacobite means “supporters of James,” in…

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Art of the Genre: The Top 10 RPG Artists of the Past 40 Years

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The office here at Black Gate L.A. has never been quiet, it just isn’t who we are. But with the addition of new blogger James Maliszewski to the mix, it is downright loud. This change was made all the more punctuated today by the fact that our southern California drought was broken with a series of showers. As I didn’t want to get damp, I was forced to close the windows to my corner office, which usually provide some calming…

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Publishing and the Luck of Timing

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Although publishers don’t like to admit it, there is a large amount of luck involved in the sales of most books. No one really knows when (or even how) a book is going to catch fire in the public imagination and charge to the top of the bestsellers list. Publishers can help. They can advertise; they can push to get the book on the shelves, but they can’t make the public buy it. In many ways, Osprey Publishing relies less…

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In Defense of Fantasy Heroes

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It’s often said that Fantasy abounds with unrealistically heroic heroes and that it overstates the capacity for the individual to shape History. If that were true, I’m not sure it would be a Bad Thing, as long as victory is properly earned, since you can read the stories as allegory for more mundane real life and since the main function of most speculative fiction is escapism, anyway. However, I would argue that the Fantasy heroes are in fact realistic, both…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in June

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According to our badly-overheated traffic meter, you folks visited the Black Gate blog in record numbers last month (and you left a mess in the visitors lounge, too. Seriously, what’s with all the Taco Bell wrappers?) Still, we’re glad to see you. I was pleased to note that our most popular article in June was Fletcher Vredenburgh’s look at our distinguished competition, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and his assessment of the best new Sword and Sorcery of…

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New Treasures: Dragonslayers From Beowulf to St. George, by Joseph A. McCullough

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Joseph A. McCullough has been a behind-the-scenes contributor to Black Gate for over a decade. He has a superb story sense, and put it to work as a submissions reader for us for many years, sifting through hundreds of short stories and sending the most promising my way. That story sense has served him well in other arenas as well. A decade ago, Joe wrote what many consider the definitive modern essay on S&S, “The Demarcation of Sword and Sorcery,”…

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Exploring the Defenses of Tangier

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This past Christmas vacation, my wife and I headed down to Tangier so I could write a travel series for Gadling. While walking the labyrinthine alleyways of this Moroccan port, I took note of the defenses that had been built up over the years. Tangier has changed hands numerous times between the Moroccans, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Because of its strategic importance on the southern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, it’s always needed to protect itself. The old…

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The Best of Modern Arabian Fantasy, Part II: Judith Tarr and Alamut

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No series on the best of modern Arabian fantasy would be complete without going back to the book that many credit with starting the whole trend, Alamut by Judith Tarr. I had the privilege of talking with Judy about the book and her process for research and writing, and her answers are insightful and fascinating. In what follows, I ask how she took her strong academic background and applied it to building the world and characters that captured the fascination…

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Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part Two, Angus McBride [1931-2007]

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It’s the day after Christmas here in L.A. as I write this, the office quiet, but I felt like going in anyway and getting some work done. Perhaps it was because yesterday, after a wonderful feast of turkey, potatoes, and all the fixings, I took a walk with the family three miles from my home out onto the Palos Verdes peninsula. This walk, in seventy degree temperatures with a slight easterly breeze and done in shorts and a T-shirt, held…

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