Black Gate – Page 621 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Strange Aeons 19 Now Available

Wednesday, August 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Seems to me I should be paying more attention to Strange Aeons, a magazine of horror and dark fantasy that mixes comics and graphic narratives with fiction, all in one attractive package. (The editors describe it as “the illegitimate love-child of a hot tryst between Heavy Metal magazine and Weird Tales” — and you must admit, that’s an evocative image.) They’ve produced 19 issues since the Spring of 2010, and yet we’ve somehow managed to overlook them in our regular magazine coverage here at Black Gate. Shameful.

Time to correct this egregious oversight. Issue 19 is now available, and it contains fiction by Kristi Demeester, CM Muller, and Michael Wehunt, and comics by Rob Corless, John Donald Carlucci, and Eric York. Here’s the issue description from the website.

Our magnificent Issue Nineteen is now available!

Our amazing cover is by artist Clint Langley, and it was originally commissioned for a film we were pitching called Sunset. The film never got made, but the cover sure is gorgeous!

52 pages of gorgeous B&W and Color Comics by Rob Corless, John Donald Carlucci, and Eric York! Three Fiction Stories by Kristi Demeester, CM Muller, and Michael Wehunt! Articles, Columns, Reviews and so much more can be found waiting inside, including an interview with the maniac behind the Dreams in the Witch House rock opera, Mike Dalager!

And as an added bonus, a collectible Art Card from the incredible Mohloco!

Check out the full details, including sample pages, below.

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Proceeding in the Pulp Tradition by Writing Five Novels a Year: A Conversation With Guy Haley

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Guy Haley is the author of The Emperor’s Railroad and The Ghoul King, the first two books in The Dreaming Cities from Tor.com Publishing. The tales of the fortified city-states that still stand a thousand years after global war devastated the environment and a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, they take place in a world of constant conflict, superstition, machine relics, mutant creatures, and strange resurrected prehistoric beasts that roam the land. Learn more on our recent contest page.

But as you’ll see in my conversation with Guy below, he’s written more than just these two books — a great deal more. His other works include two Richards and Klein robot detective novels from Angry Robot, the space opera Crash, and a wide assortment of popular books in the Warhammer setting, including Baneblade (2013), The Death of Integrity (2013), Valedor (2015), The Rise of the Horned Rat (2015), Throneworld (May 2016), Death of the Old World (June 2016; an omnibus collection also featuring BG author Josh Reynolds), and no less than five more scheduled for publication before the end of the year:

Pharos (August)
Crusaders of Dorn (September)
Shadowsword (October)
Realmgate Wars: Ghal Maraz (also with Josh, coming in November)
The Beheading (also in November)

Yes, you counted that right: that’s a total of nine books appearing between April and November of this year; seven from Black Library and two from Tor.com Publishing. How does he do it?? Let’s find out.

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B&N Points You to the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy in August

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jeff Somers has announced his picks for the most intriguing SF and fantasy books of the month, and it’s a terrific list.

It includes several books we’ve already showcased here at Black Gate — including The Indranan War by K.B. Wagers, The Forgetting Moon, by Brian Lee Durfee, and Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal — plus new books from Beth Cato, N.K. Jemisin, China Miéville, Faith Hunter, and many more.

He also recommends the latest book from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Spiderlight, on sale today from Tor.com Publishing.

Best-known for his remarkable, innovative, and expansive 10-book Shadows of the Apt series, which crafted an epic fantasy landscape modeled on the real-world characteristics of various types of insects, Tchaikovsky delivers this smart, standalone fantasy, which jumps off from what could be viewed as a clichéd and overdone premise: a standard-issue role-playing party (thief, ranger, wizard, cleric, etc.) following the complicated strictures of a prophecy in order to defeat a dark lord — a prophecy that involves stealing a fang from the Spider Queen and forcing her to lead them to his lair. But Tchaikovsky then pivots to introduce the true protagonist: a spider with an unpronounceable name who is transformed into human form to be the party’s guide. From there, the author brilliantly subverts, inverts, and toys with the common tropes of fantasy literature. The end result is one of the most unique and interesting new fantasies of the year.

See the complete list here.

New Treasures: The Fisherman by John Langan

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

John Langan has had a stellar career. His first collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008) was nominated for a Stoker Award, and his debut novel House of Windows (2010) was warmly received. But it was his second collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus Press, 2013), that really put him on the map, with plenty of folks praising it as one of the best collections of the year.

His second novel The Fisherman has all the markings of a breakout book. A novel of cosmic horror disguised as a tale of outdoor survival, The Fisherman looks like one of the strongest horror novels of the year. Laird Barron calls it “an epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard, and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs through It… Straight to hell.”

The Fisherman was published by Word Horde — who’ve been doing some exceptional work recently — on June 30, 2016. It is 282 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Albert Bierstadt. Check out the book video and more here.

Learning the Uncanny Arts: The Secrets of the Uncanny Magazine Covers

Monday, August 1, 2016 Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas Comments 2 comments

One of the things we’ve learned here at Uncanny Magazine is that people really like our covers. Which is awesome. It means our evil plans :ahem: I mean, our specific vision of what we want for the magazine is working! This is why many of the backer levels of our currently running Uncanny Magazine Year Three Kickstarter include postcards or prints of our art.

For example, Tran Nguyen’s “Traveling to a Distant Day” won a Spectrum 23 Gold Award and is a finalist for a 2016 Chesley Award for Best Cover Illustration. Galen Dara’s “Bubbles and Blast Off” was super popular on Twitter, to the point where people demanded prints. We worked with Galen to make them happen in our Uncanny Magazine store. (There may be something even cooler going on with the Kickstarter in relation to that. Stay tuned.)

Black Gate thought it would be interesting for us to explain how we select our Uncanny Magazine covers.

So, without further ado…

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Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft: Starspawn by Wendy N. Wagner

Monday, August 1, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Wendy N. Wagner is the Managing Editor for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, as well as an editor for the fabulous Destroy series of anthologies, including Women Destroy Science Fiction, Women Destroy Fantasy, and Queers Destroy Science Fiction. She’s also the author of one previous Pathfinder Tales novel, Skinwalkers.

The sequel to Skinwalkers, Starspawn, will be published next week by Tor Books, and follows the notorious pirate Jendara as she returns to the cold northern isles of her home to settle down and raise her young son. When a mysterious tsunami wracks her island’s shore, she and her fearless crew must sail out to explore the strange island that’s risen from the sea floor. The marketing copy describes the novel as follows:

From Hugo Award winner Wendy N. Wagner comes a sword-swinging adventure in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder meets Lovecraft? That’s definitely worth checking out.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Western Noir – Hell on Wheels

Monday, August 1, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

Back in November of 2011, AMC debuted a gritty new western, Hell on Wheels. Anson Mount played Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier out for revenge against the Union soldiers who had killed his wife and son and burned his farm. His pursuit takes him to the camp of the Union Pacific Railroad, which is headed across the central plains under the leadership of Thomas Durrant (Colm Meany: O’Brien of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame).

While the series starts out as a revenge tale, Bohannon abandons that quest after he kills the wrong man and instead focuses on helping build the Transcontinental Railroad. The series becomes the story of the various employees and camp followers who move along as the laying of track progresses: the mobile community is ‘Hell on wheels.’

I’m writing about this series, which wrapped up weekend before last, because it is a Western Noir: And a darn good one. I had never seen Mount in anything before, but I’m telling you, he was made for this part. He’s the protagonist, but he’s not a white-hatted cowboy. Roy Rogers need not apply. He develops his own code of honor as the series progresses, but he’s a ‘get it done guy’ who rises from swinging a pick to the most important person in the Transcontinental’s story. And as he demonstrates many times, he isn’t afraid to use a gun.

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Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek V – The Final Frontier (1989)

Sunday, July 31, 2016 William I. Lengeman III Comments 4 comments

Early on I was inclined to be charitable about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and I wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was about. As you may be aware, the consensus seems to be that it was one of the worst of all of the Star Trek movies.

But up until about the halfway mark I didn’t quite get it. Not that the first half of this movie is a masterpiece, mind you. But as the second half began to unfold I started to catch on.

The plot can be dispensed with in a few words. Spock’s half-brother — one of those free-spirited emotional Vulcan types — commandeers the Enterprise and sets off to the center of the galaxy to find God. Which doesn’t seem to be all that far removed from the premise of the first Star Trek movie. Which also featured an abundance of scenes of people trying to look awed but mostly looking dopey. Since there’s little drama or interest to be found in this premise there’s also some standard stuff about Klingons with bad intentions lurking about.

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BookRiot on Seven Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers

Sunday, July 31, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last week I stumbled on a copy of Yangsze Choo’s debut fantasy novel The Ghost Bride in a remainder bin at Barnes & Noble, and snatched it up. I first heard about it in Matthew David Surridge’s review here at Black Gate last year — and more recently, I saw it included in A.J. O’Connell’s entertaining article at BookRiot, 7 Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers, published back in March. It’s good to have a highly functional network that alerts you to the best new stuff.

The first thing I did after getting it home was to check the rest of A.J’s list though, to see what else I’ve missed. What’s so great about standalone novels? Here’s A.J. to explain it.

Stand-alone fantasy novels are beautiful things. You read one book, and get one complete story, with all the resolution you need. You can close the book with a satisfying thunk at the end, knowing that the characters have completed their journeys, and that all the ends are more or less tucked in neatly…

For this list, I stuck to two rules. The books had to be published more or less recently (the oldest book here is from 2008), and they had to be true stand-alones, not part of an author’s pre-existing fictional universe; just one perfect bubble of fiction, floating on its own.

Here’s what she said about The Ghost Bride:

Choo’s first novel is about the Chinese tradition of ghost marriage, a tradition in which one (or both) participants are dead. In this novel, the bride in question is Li Lan, a young woman whose family has fallen on hard times. Because her parents’ financial troubles have made it hard for her to find a husband, she is married off to the spirit of a wealthy young man who has recently died, and finds herself suddenly pulled into the world of the afterlife.

A.J. also discusses The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, and several other intriguing titles. Check out the complete list here .

July 2016 Locus Now on Sale

Sunday, July 31, 2016 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

The July 2016 issue of Locus is numbered #666… so naturally it’s the horror issue, with lengthy interviews with Peter Straub and Joe Hill, and a photo story on “Stephen King and George R.R. Martin in Conversation.” The magazine is also packed with the usual reviews, news and features — including a photo spread on the Nebula Awards weekend, held here in Chicago.

But the big news for me was the detailed results of the annual Locus Awards. Amongst all the vote counts for Best Novel, Best Collection, and Best Editor, were the surprising results for Best Magazine. Surprising to me, anyway. 27 magazines were ranked by the readers of Locus; here’s the Top Ten.

Asimov’s SF
Tor.com
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Clarkesworld
File 770
Lightspeed
Analog
Black Gate
Uncanny
Strange Horizons

I was surprised and pleased to see Black Gate ranked above such excellent magazines as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Nightmare, Shimmer, and Weird Tales. I want to thank everyone for their support — believe me, it means a lot.

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