Black Gate – Page 447 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

A Worthy Successor to an Award-Winning Tradition: Provenance by Ann Leckie

Saturday, March 10, 2018 Elizabeth Galewski Comments 3 comments

Ingray Aughskold hasn’t just risked her life’s savings for this moment. If she fails, she’ll have to work for years to make up the debt. Her reputation will be ruined, and she’ll lose her job. Worse, her adoptive mother will never choose her to inherit over her vile foster-brother Danach. But just when the deal’s supposed to come together, everything’s falling apart.

Sitting in a holographic room, Ingray can see the Facilitator clearly, and the Facilitator can see her. The Facilitator can also see the opposing party. To Ingray, however, he’s just a gray blur.

The blur cites “unexpected difficulties” in fulfilling the contract. “The package will not be delivered unless the payment is increased.”

But Ingray doesn’t have any more money. If this deal goes through, she won’t even be able to afford her next meal. She’ll have to wait to eat until she’s on board the ship home to Hwae. She really should’ve forced herself to eat breakfast that morning, no matter how nervous she may have been. “Then do not deliver it,” she says.

She’d probably be better off if the anonymous procurer didn’t cave. All she’d suffer would be a dent to her savings for the Facilitator’s fee and her travel expenses. She could go home and hatch some new scheme to outdo Danach. But she doesn’t get that lucky.

“Very well, then,” the blur says. “The deal goes forward.”

“Very well,” she answers. At which point, she takes custody of a large shipping crate. Which wasn’t what she was expecting at all.

Arriving at the small cargo ship she’s booked passage on, she runs into a new problem in the form of Captain Tic Uisine. Taking one look at the size and shape of her shipping container, he suspects human trafficking and insists on opening it.

…

Read More Read More

Modular: Conan’s Adventuring in an Age Undreamed of

Saturday, March 10, 2018 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

And so begins a Play by Post in the world of Conan!

OPENING SCENE

Vultures spiral above the battlefield. Blood soaks into the rocky ground from hundreds of dying men and their horses, a grim reminder from the desperate hours prior.

For those who fought and died, the battle was as purposeless as any. Prince Satabus of Khoraja was tricked into bringing an army to aid King Ulam-Khala of Akbitana in a war against his cousin, King Nezurab of Shumir, another of Shem’s eastern city-states. So confident of the outcome was Satabus that… he brought with him his bride-to-be, a Stygian noblewoman named Neferet, along with her closest handmaiden.

With them also was a small delegation — envoys and court officials. They bore princely gifts to cement the deep and everlasting friendship with Khoraja and Akbitana: a chest containing fistfuls of gems; urns of precious oil; bolts of Turanian and Khitan silks and other fine cloth; ingots of precious metal; and measures of rare and fragrant wood… a sumptuous collection of finery befitting a royal visit.

The battle was over before it could even begin. In the days prior to Satabus’s arrival, Ulam-Khala and Nezurab had made peace with one another, messages traveling via messenger bird. The two Shemitish kings agreed to unite and destroy Satabus’s army as a show of solidarity, an act of betrayal that would serve to weaken Khorajan resolve against further incursions into Shem.

Seeing that the day was lost, Satabus sounded the order to flee, and as horns echoed across the desert, his mercenary army scattered across the dry plains and into the nearby foothills and hard-baked gullies. They were pursued by the asshuri, picked off one-by-one. Satabus and his cadre of knights fought valiantly to protect his beloved Neferet, but the caravan with her litter was cut off in the retreat. Their fates are unknown.

Each of you was part of Satabus’s army. You’re here now. Somehow, the last wave of Asshuri and footmen missed you. Everyone else is dead.

WHAT ROLE DID YOU PLAY IN THE BATTLE, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW?

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Theodore Cogswell’s “The Wall Around the World”

Saturday, March 10, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 6 comments

Theodore R. Cogswell was born on March 10, 1918 and died on February 3, 1987.

Cogswell received a Hugo nomination for his book PITFCS: The Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, which has been described as a “fanzine for pros.” His story “The Wall Around the World” was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award for Best Novelette. In 2000, he was posthumously inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

“The Wall Around the World” first appeared in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, edited by Horace L. Gold, in the September 1953 issue. It was included in the British version of the magazine the following year and Judith Merril included it in the anthology Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time. The story was included in, and provided the name for, Cogswell’s collection The Wall Around the World in 1962. Subsequent reprintings occurred in Brian W. Aldiss’s Yet More Penguin Science Fiction and The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus, in Harry Harrison’s Worlds of Wonder (a.k.a. Blast Off), and in Wizards, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. Asimov and Greenberg also included the story in The Great SF Stories #15 (1953) and Susan Morris titled the 1990 Cambridge University Press anthology after the story, The Wall Around the World and Other Science Fiction Stories. Mike Ashley reprinted it in The Mammoth Book of Fantasy. The story was translation into German in 1963, Dutch in 1978, and Italian in 1987.

Cogswell’s “The Wall Around the World” has some strong similarities to another story set in a world of magic. Porgie is at a school for wizards and lives with his abusive aunt, uncle, and cousin because his aunt’s sibling was killed due to magic. Unfortunately, his teachers are not much more supportive than his family.

Porgie’s “problem” is that he has questions. Their world is surrounded by an insurmountable wall and Porgie wants to know what’s on the other side. Unfortunately, the state of magic isn’t enough to allow him to fly over the wall and when he tries to figure out how, he only hears that essentially, magic is the only way, he shouldn’t ask questions, and their knowledge of magic gets stronger all the time as they focus on the approved texts. There is also the ominous hints that when Porgie’s father questioned the status quo, a supernatural being known as the Black Man did something to him.

…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

Friday, March 9, 2018 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault-back-small

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault-small

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault
By James Alan Gardner
Tor (384 pages, $17.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, November 2017)

Imagine a world where vampires, werewolves and demons all exist in public, courtesy of rich people making pacts with dark entities for immortality and power. Got that? Okay, now imagine a world where people can become superheroes by being exposed to the right (or wrong) kind of powerful energies, with as wide an assortment of powers as any comic book. Good? Take another pocket of your mind and add in things like wizard magic and weird science like opening rifts to other dimensions. And then combine all of this together into a single world.

Still with me?

If you’re not, I’d understand – but nonetheless, all of the above is present in James Alan Gardner’s All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault. I’m sure some of you are sitting back and thinking that sounds insane. But the X-Files/Cops crossover episode or establishing Bones and Sleepy Hollow in the same universe came with an expectation of a certain amount of ridiculousness, and the world Jim has created definitely has that flair. It’s interesting in that there’s a fast-paced and arguably straightforward narrative, even when the narrative pauses again and again with moments of “okay, I’d better explain this before we move on,” where this might be were-bats, rifts to other worlds that spew telepathic fireflies, university buildings named after rich vampires, or why a cascade of superpowers like force fields and telescopic vision and encyclopedic knowledge and whatever you would call Ant-Man (which is all in the first five chapters) makes logical sense.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Pat Murphy’s “On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away”

Friday, March 9, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Pat Murphy was born on March 9, 1955.

In 1988, Murphy won a Nebula Award for her story “Rachel in Love” and her novel The Falling Woman. “Rachel in Love” was also nominated for a Hugo Award and won the Theodore Sturrgeon Memorial Award. She won a World Fantasy Award for her novella “Bones,” and a Philip K. Dick Award for Points of Departure. Murphy’s There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell, a science fictional retelling of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, received the Seiun Award in 2002.

“On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away” was first published by Shawny McCarthy in the May 1985 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. It was included by Murphy’s collection Points of Departure. The Women’s Press included the story in the anthology Letters from Home, which reprinted six stories each by Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Cadigan. The story appeared in Mike Resnick’s Future Earths: Under South American Skies. It was translated for the German edition of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Murphy’s story “On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away” is set Merida, Mexico where Gregorio sells hammocks to the tourists. He lives there because after his divorce, his wife remarried and he no longer feels welcome in his home village. When a strange looking American tourist rejects both his advances and his sales pitch, he determines that he will both sell her a hammock and find his way into her bed.

He is only marginally successful, selling her an hammock, but only managing to talk to her. He learns that just as he is living in exile from his home village, having made a home for himself in Merida, but without roots, so, too, she is living in exile, looking forward to the day she is able to return to her home, which she claims is among the stars. Although she makes him forget the details of the conversation, Gregorio manages to bring her some relief from her homesickness as she waits to be returned to the stars.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: The Satanic Nuns of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl Rejoice! Good Omens is Drawing Closer

Thursday, March 8, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

David Tennant and Michael Sheen as lead characters of Crowley and Aziraphale

A little over a year ago I brought you the nice and accurate prophecy that Amazon was adapting one of my favorite books of all time, Good Omens, into a mini-series.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s novel stands as the only book that ever made me laugh out loud the first time I read it, and still gets me every time. I only recently delved into the audio book narrated by Martin Javis, and nearly drove off the road when I snorted my coffee out of my nose.

In my humble opinion, the story is sheer genius.

Good Omens takes place when the Apocalypse is near and Final Judgment is set to descend upon humanity. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, and tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan — except a somewhat fussy angel, and a fast-living demon are not looking forward to the coming war, and someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

This week we have new casting news in addition to Michael Sheen and David Tennant playing the lead characters Aziraphale (the angel) and Crowley (the demon) respectively, and John Hamm as Aziraphale’s jerk of a boss, the angel Gabriel. Plus we have some new production stills to share.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Hyperspace Trap by Christopher G. Nuttall

Thursday, March 8, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

47North, the science fiction publishing imprint of Amazon.com, has taken a lot of chances on new authors, with considerable success. Jeff Wheeler (the Legends of Muirwood trilogy, The Kingfountain Series) has become a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and Meg Elison’s The Book of Etta was a 2018 Philip K. Dick Award nominee, just as a few examples.

Christopher G. Nuttall is another example of a 47North author who’s a little outside the mainstream. Nuttall has published over fifty novels through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, as well as 16 volumes in the Schooled in Magic series through Timeless Books. His latest, The Hyperspace Trap, is a deep-space thriller set in the set in the world of his Angel in the Whirlwind series. It’s a creepy tale of a shipwreck in a floating graveyard, in a war-ravaged galaxy beset by pirates. Sounds like a winning combo to me.

The Hyperspace Trap was published by 47North on February 27, 2018. It is 397 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition. Read an excerpt here.

The Origin Stories of Tempus, Niko and the Sacred Band: Tempus With His Right-Side Companion Niko, by Janet Morris

Thursday, March 8, 2018 Joe Bonadonna Comments 4 comments

Tempus with his right-side companion Niko-small

Tempus with his right-side companion Niko-back-small

Relive the iconic adventures of Tempus the Black and his Sacred Band through the eyes of Nikodemos, his right-side companion, as Niko seeks his spirit’s balance on Bandara’s misty isles. Five early tales of the Stepsons in a world of thieves, novelized with additional stories available nowhere else. Ride with Tempus and his Sacred Band once again, or for the first time. PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Parts of this work have been published in substantially similar form in several volumes of the Shared Universe Series, Thieves World.

This book contains the original stories first written about the Sacred Band of Stepsons, as well as some new stories that expand on their adventures, and Niko’s quest to regain his spiritual and mystical balance. Meet the characters who made the Sacred Band famous: Abarsis, the Slaughter Priest Abarsis, who first formed the Sacred Band and from whom Tempus took over the Band; Niko, Critias, Straton, hazard-class and allergy prone mage Randal “Witchy Ears.” Meet Roxane the witch and her death squads, Ischade the Necromant and her cadre of undead servants, and Cime, Tempus’ wizard-slaying sister. Witness the might of the storm god Vashanka and his immortal god-ridden avatar, Tempus as they battle against sorcery, betrayal and corruption, alongside his Sacred Band of Stepsons. Meet legendary immortals Askelon, the Dream Lord of Meridian, and Jihan the Froth Daughter of Lord Storm.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Body Party by Jeff Noon

Thursday, March 8, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Jeff Noon, author of the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Vurt (1993), returned after too long an absence with A Man of Shadow last year, which Warren Ellis called “superb… one of our few true visionaries,” and Adrian Tchaikovsky said was “A disturbing and bizarre journey by one of the great masters of weird fiction.” The sequel, The Body Party, arrives next month from Angry Robot, continuing the tale of a P.I. in an weird and inverted city.

Jeff Noon returns with a staggering hallucinogenic sequel to A Man of Shadows, taking hapless investigator John Nyquist into a city where reality is contaminated by the imagination of its citizens

In a city dissolving into an infected sprawl of ideas, where words come to life and reality is contaminated by stories, John Nyquist wakes up in a room with a dead body… The dead man’s impossible whispers plunge him into a murder investigation like no other. Clues point him deeper into an unfolding story infesting its participants as reality blurs between place and genre.

Only one man can hope to put it all back together into some kind of order, enough that lives can be saved… That man is Nyquist, and he is lost.

The Body Party will be published by Angry Robot on April 3, 2018. It is 384 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover design is by Amazing15. Read Part One here.

STRANGE! WEIRD! EERIE! The Odd, Unusual, and Uncanny Biography of Lionel Fanthorpe

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 5 comments

Some writers agonize over every line. Some are prolific like Andre Norton. Others are hyperprolific like Isaac Asimov.

But Lionel Fanthorpe stands alone. He isn’t the most prolific author out there, having written “only” about 200 books, but he had the distinction of having written 168 books in less than a decade. Many he wrote in a week. Some he wrote over a three-day weekend.

This fervid output was the result of his association with Badger Books, a cheap-as-they-come UK publisher that emphasized quantity over quality. The publisher would commission the cover art first (or steal it from some old American paperback), send it to the author, and have them write a 45,000 word novel, usually with a deadline of one week.

Fanthorpe wrote 168 books for Badger between 1961 and 1967, dictating his tales into a reel-to-reel recorder and sending the tapes into the publisher’s typist. Often he’d stay up late into the night, covering his head with a blanket so he could concentrate. The results were overwritten, padded, and compellingly bad.

The only biography of Lionel Fanthorpe, Down the Badger Hole by Debbie Cross, has long been out of print but has now been revised, expanded, and released as a free ebook on the TAFF website.

And what a book it is! Cross gives us generous helpings of Fanthorpe’s prose, including masterful examples of padding through repetition.

…

Read More Read More