Black Gate – Page 413 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Can a Trilogy Have Six Books? The Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

Thursday, June 28, 2018 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

Every time an author wraps up a trilogy, we bake a cake at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters.

Of course, this sometimes leads to anxiety. Is the series really wrapped up? Are there going to be more books? It’s not like the publisher slaps a sticker on the book saying Finito!, exactly. What if we bake a cake, and it turns out there’s four more books? Won’t we look stupid.

Ah, the hell with it. It’s cake! We’ll be forgiven. Probably. In that spirit, we were all dressed up to celebrate the arrival of Age of War, the third and (final? maybe?) book in Michael J. Sullivan’s The Legends of the First Empire series, when one of Goth Chick’s interns did some actual research (i.e. spent five minutes on Sullivan’s website). Turns out there’s a whopping six books planned for the series. Who knew?

Fortunately for those of us on staff who love cake (meaning, like, everybody), the first three books in the series will be the only ones published by Del Rey, so Age of War is an ending, of sorts. Good enough for us. Cake for everyone!

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Lynn Asprin’s “No Glad in Gladiator”

Thursday, June 28, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

Robert Lynn Asprin was born on June 28, 1946. He died on May 22, 2008.

Asprin won the coveted Balrog Award for the Thieves’ World anthologies Shadows of Sanctuary and Storm Season. The first anthology in the series, Thieves’ World, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. In addition to his work on the shared world series, Asprin is also known for his long-running Myth series, featuring Skeeve and Aahz. Other series, often written with co-authors, include Phule’s Company, Time Scout, and The Cold Cash War. For a time, Asprin was married to Lynn Abbey, who co-edited several of the Thieves’ World anthologies and eventually resurrected the series in the 2000s.

“No Glad in Gladiator” was published in the ninth volume of the Thieves’ World series, Blood Ties, edited by Asprin and Lynn Abbey in 1986. Its only reprinting was in the third Thieves’ World omnibus edition which included volumes 7-9, The Shattered Sphere.

The gladiator slave Jubal was one of the first characters introduced in the Thieves’ World shared world series, conceived by the series creator, Robert Lynn Asprin. By the time the ninth volume rolled around, Jubal had enjoyed his triumphs and suffered his set backs. In “No Glad in Gladiator,” Asprin has cast him in the role of eminent grise, showing a meeting between Jubal and Chenaya, a Rankene noblewoman and gladiator who is trying to make her way in Sanctuary.

Despite both characters’ background as gladiators, “No Glad in Gladiators” is a relatively static story. Asprin has the two characters sitting in a room talking, Chenaya’s looking for an alliance with Jubal and Jubal, after explaining why he isn’t interested in an alliance, explains to Chenaya all of her shortcomings. The story doesn’t fully work without its larger context. Jubal provides enough information about himself for the reader to understand who he was, and is, but Chenaya’s history is only painted in broad strokes, making her something of an enigma.

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Origins Game Fair: Games Galore

Thursday, June 28, 2018 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 0 Comment

Two weekends ago, I trekked out to Columbus, OH, from my home gaming grounds of central Indiana, in order to experience my first Origins Game Fair. I’ve covered it in a couple of previous posts, the Origins Awards and my talk with the folks at Paizo about their upcoming Pathfinder Playtest and organized play options. But, of course, when you’re at a convention like this, one of the nice things is to walk around the exhibit hall and get exposed to new games.

Origins is different from GenCon, in that many companies build their entire annual release schedule around having big GenCon releases and announcements of upcoming releases. Origins, on the other hand, is more about playing games, and there seemed far less of an emphasis on having the early release of brand new, never-before-seen games. Still, there were some new treasures there … either ones that were completely new, or ones that I was exposed to for the first time, at least.

One of the big new releases being shown off at Origins was Catalyst Game Labs’ new expansion for the Dungeons & Dragons deck-building game Dragonfire. The new “campaign box” expansion, Moonshae Storms (Amazon), was available. Moonshae Storms adds new adventure cards and continues the “An Ancient Evil Arises” campaign storyline from the Dragonfire base game, and also expands the options with a Mountain setting, various new monsters to fight (including lycanthropes and fomorians) and market cards and magic items for players to acquire as part of their decks, as well as 8 new character cards. Dragonfire has had a couple of smaller Adventure Packs released over the last year, and a couple more on the horizon, but Moonshae Storms is a much more substantial increase in the game options than presented by those smaller adventures.

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The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of June 2018

Wednesday, June 27, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

June has been a fantastic month for new books. My TBR (to-be-read) pile is reaching structurally unsound heights already, and Jeff Somers at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog isn’t helping matters any by showcasing nearly two dozen of the best new releases. Here’s a few of his more interesting selections.

Brief Cases, by Jim Butcher (Ace Books, 448 pages, $28 hardcover/$14.99 digital, June 5, 2018)

Butcher offers up 12 stories set in the world of Harry Dresden, wizard and private investigator working an alternate, magic-filled Chicago. Several stories follow Harry’s adventures with River Shoulders, a smart sasquatch with a half-human son. Others involve Harry’s apprentice Molly Carpenter, crime boss John Marcone, and even Wyatt Earp. The novella “Zoo Day” follows Harry as he takes his young daughter Maggie to the zoo — and since this is Harry Dresden, you know there’s more in store than daddy/daughter bonding. Dresden fans may have encountered some of these stories before, but rereading them in this collection, alongside one all-new tale, should help ease the pain for waiting for Harry’s next novel-length adventure.

Our previous coverage of Harry Dresden includes Barbara Barrett 2014 article “A Wizard is a Wizard is a Wizard — Except When He’s Harry Dresden.”

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Fourth Discussion

Wednesday, June 27, 2018 Adrian Simmons Comments 6 comments

Welcome back to the Black Gate Book Club! We are rapidly closing in on C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station (DbS). You can get to speed with the first, second, and third rounds.

Adrian S.

Fourth round!

Okay, page 285 and Fletcher, you are right that things are (finally) happening quick. The Union Fleet has dropped into the system, and the Company Fleet and the militia go out to meet them. I like the idea that all the ships look the same on scan, whether they are jump-capable merchanters or in-system merchanters, or Fleet Carriers or whatever—they all look the same until they maneuver or start to fire.

Jon Lukas has become the bad guy that he was hinted at with a full murderous take-over of Downbelow Station. Of course, he’s made a choice on which side he’s on, gambling that the Union is going to win, and from there getting roped into helping Union win. This puts him with a lot of targets on his back.

Kressich is in the exact same boat, but with more targets on his back, he’s terrified of his people in Q, and terrified of his own security, but once the shooting starts, he is one of the few people who has security and has people.

The relationship of the “leaders” to their armies/militias is interesting.

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The Wonderful Adventures of “Mr. Jones,” the Electric Man

Wednesday, June 27, 2018 Steve Carper Comments 0 Comment

A special treat this time: a lost robot story that nobody has seen for more than a century.

Supernatural tales, ghost stories, odd occurrences, mysterious disappearances, and bizarre inventions all found a home in The Black Cat, a magazine founded in 1895, a year before the first pulp magazine appeared. Mike Ashley calls it “a spiritual ancestor to Weird Tales.” The stories were proto-genre, a mixture of what then got called “unusual” stories, a term that must have had more currency in the 19th century. It was founded by 44-year-old Herman Daniel Umbstaetter, who went by the initials H. D. Not content with being editor and publisher, he seeded the magazine with his own stories, some under pseudonyms, until it took off on its own. Covers were illustrated by his much younger wife Nelly, usually with some variation of the stylized black cat staring spookily out at the reader that appeared from from the first issue.

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Birthday Reviews: Mary Rosenblum’s “Night Wind”

Wednesday, June 27, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Mary Rosenblum was born on June 27, 1952. She was killed when the small plane she was flying crashed on March 11, 2018. She wrote mystery novels under her maiden name, Mary Freeman.

Rosenblum’s 1994 novel The Drylands won the Compton Brook Stephen Tall Memorial Award for best first novel. In 2009 her short story “Sacrifice” received the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Her novella “Gas Fish” was a Hugo Award nominee and “One Good Juror” made the shortlist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Two of her stories, “Rat” and “The Eye of God” were considered for the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award.

Rosenblum sold “Night Wind” to Deborah J. Ross for inclusion in the anthology Lace and Blade. The story has never been reprinted, although Rosenblum’s “Dragon Wind” appeared in the second Lace and Blade anthology. “Night Wind” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2009.

“Night Wind” is set in a Renaissance period Spain where magic can be passed down from father to son. Alvaro is the scion of a noble line, but his father’s magical power has been taken from him and Alvaro does not have any magic of his own, a situation the family is trying to hide. Having studied at university with the great scholar Delarentario, Alvaro has returned to his ancestral estates where his mother is trying to forge a marriage alliance with the merchant Salvaria. Along the way, Alvaro is accosted by the brigand Night Wind.

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Experience the Terrors of the Mythos in the Old West in Down Darker Trails

Tuesday, June 26, 2018 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

One of the many things I love about the Call of Cthulhu RPG — besides the prospect of gathering with close friends to cheerfully go insane together — is the rich array of settings. The core game is set in 1930s America, where Lovecraft (who died in 1937) set virtually all of his fiction, and that serves the pulp horror aesthetic nicely. But over the years Chaosium, and other publishers, have produced several top-notch supplements giving players the option to adventure in a wide range of times and places.

These include Cthulhu Now (1987), Terror Australis (1987), King of Chicago (1992), The Cairo Guidebook (1995), Atomic-Age Cthulhu (2013), and many, many more. The Dreamlands, Victorian London, Scotland, even the Orient Express… no other game invites you to go stark, raving mad in such finely detailed surroundings.

However, CoC has been sorely lacking a weird western sourcebook, so I was very pleased to see Kevin Ross and his friends at Chaosium release Down Darker Trails, a massive full-color 256-page hardcover which lovingly brings Mythos horror to the old west. The book is an excellent addition to Chaosium’s catalog, and contains a splendid historical re-telling of the American Territories, plenty of famous individuals, two complete towns, four western-themed Lost Worlds (including the weird subterranean world of K’n-yan, and the eerie Shadow Desert), and two complete introductory adventures.

Down Darker Trails invites you to play American Indian heroes and famous gunslingers, visit famous sites, and discover just how deeply the terror and mystery of the Great Old Ones has seeped into the West.

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A Decadal Review of Science Fiction from November 1969: Wrap-up

Tuesday, June 26, 2018 Adrian Simmons Comments 0 Comment

America, 1969

For the initial round of the quatro-decadal review, I read and reviewed six periodicals, in the following order:

Amazing Stories, November 1969
Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1969
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1969
Worlds of If, November 1969
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, November 1969
Venture Science Fiction, November 1969

All of the magazines had fiction and review sections, but not all had artwork, editorials, or letter sections or science articles. A table is called for!

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Birthday Reviews: James Van Pelt’s “The Inn at Mount Either”

Tuesday, June 26, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 2 comments

James Van Pelt was born on June 26, 1954.

In 1999 Van Pelt was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Van Pelt received a Nebula Award nomination for his Short Story “The Last of the O-Forms.”

“The Inn at Mount Either” originally appeared in the May 2005 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, edited by Stanley Schmidt. Rich Horton included it in Science Fiction The Best of the Year 2006 Edition. Van Pelt selected the story for his own collection The Radio Magician and Other Stories, published by Fairwood Press in 2009. The story finished second in the Analog Readers’ Poll and was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

“The Inn at Mount Either” is a sprawling resort with doorways that provide access to alternative worlds, a complex arrangement which means that the resort employees dissuade their guests from exploring on their own. Despite that, the security at the facility seems farcical and the guests are not actually warned of the resort’s true nature.

Dorian Wallace approaches the concierge because his wife, Stephanie, has been missing for a full day. Despite the oddities and dangers of the lodge, the concierge is neither concerned nor helpful, indicating that they don’t consider someone missing until they’ve been gone for 48 hours, although later developments should indicate that concern should happen immediately, or after two hours at the outside.

Unable to get help, Dorian goes off in search of his wife, remembering how taken she was by the doorway to Polynesia they had seen earlier. Naturally enough, he gets lost in the convoluted structure and passes through some of the doorways, experiencing a variety of alternatives the lodge looks out upon.

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