Black Gate – Page 630 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Steve Russell of Rite Publishing – RIP

Wednesday, August 24, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 1 comment

Steve Russell was the CEO and man behind Rite Publishing, a third party RPG publisher that was quite active with Pathfinder, including the very cool magazine, Adventure Quarterly. Pathways, Rite’s free e-zine, is one of the best Pathfinder periodicals you’ll find.

Steve and his pregnant wife, Miranda, had just moved back to his hometown of Dayton, OH, in late June. They were embarking on a new phase in their life when, sadly, Steve was killed in an auto accident.

I backed his Adventure Quarterly kickstarter. We exchanged a few emails about it, but I don’t claim to know him. But he was friendly to me and he was very earnest about Rite’s deliverables.

You can read Steve’s obituary here (with almost two dozen comments from friends and fans) and also tributes from Matt McElroy and Boric Glanduum.

We here at Black Gate send our prayers and condolences to Steve’s family.

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Future Treasures: Ninth City Burning, by J. Patrick Black

Tuesday, August 23, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Here’s a promising debut SF novel of alien invasion…. or, perhaps, post-apocalyptic alien dystopia? Whatever. It has aliens, desperate battles, and mutant powers. Bring it.

We never saw them coming.

Entire cities disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but dust and rubble. When an alien race came to make Earth theirs, they brought with them a weapon we had no way to fight, a universe-altering force known as thelemity. It seemed nothing could stop it — until we discovered we could wield the power too.

Five hundred years later, the Earth is locked in a grinding war of attrition. The talented few capable of bending thelemity to their will are trained in elite military academies, destined for the front lines. Those who refused to support the war have been exiled to the wilds of a ruined Earth.

But the enemy’s tactics are changing, and Earth’s defenders are about to discover this centuries-old war has only just begun. As a terrible new onslaught looms, heroes will rise from unlikely quarters, and fight back.

Ninth City Burning will be published by Ace Books on September 6, 2016. It is 496 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Matthew Griffin. Read an excerpt at Entertainment Weekly.

See all our coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.

An Epic Finale for Ancient Opar

Tuesday, August 23, 2016 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

Over forty years ago, Philip Jose Farmer published a pair of officially sanctioned books recounting the history of ancient Opar, the lost civilization familiar to readers of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels. Opar was the first of the author’s lost cities that survived undiscovered in the African jungle until the noble apeman came along. Burroughs’ lost civilizations, like his alien worlds, were fantastic places of adventure that allowed the author to sharpen his satiric blade and skewer organized religion and politics alike.

Farmer, in notable contrast, was interested in using Burroughs’ concepts as a springboard for more realistic and decidedly more adult adventures. Farmer’s histories are peopled with conquerors and king-makers who are not just noble savages, but also savage rapists and murderers. His Opar novels opened Tarzan fans’ eyes to the antediluvian kingdom of Khokarsa. While the sword & sorcery boom of the 1960s and 1970s flooded bookshelves with immoral and amoral barbarians, Farmer set his work apart by treating the material as realistically as possible. His characters die tragically and sometimes prematurely. Sexual intercourse leads to unplanned pregnancies that alter people’s lives as it changes the course of a kingdom’s destiny.

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Summer Short Story Roundup: Part Two

Tuesday, August 23, 2016 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 4 comments

It turns out there were lots and lots of really good horror and science fiction short stories published this summer. Not as much swords & sorcery as I would have liked, but a bunch of good stories nonetheless. This week I’m going to give you a glance at roundup regular, Grimdark Magazine. I’m also going to take a look at two mags new to the roundup: the recently revived Weirdbook (read about the relaunch here), and newcomer Red Sun Magazine. You can read last week’s reviews of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, and Cirsova at this link.

Right from the gitgo, I knew Grimdark Magazine #8 was going to be a “disappointment.” In the foreword, Editor Adrian Collins wrote “Issue #8 has a focus on sci-fi fiction, something I feel has been a bit lacking from GdM over the first two years (can you believe it’s been two years?).” It’s not like I hate sci-fi (though I find myself reading practically none at all anymore), it’s just that after last week’s thunderous blast of adrenaline-pumping, sword-swinging, monster-killing action, that’s what I was hoping for more of.

In its short life, Collins has made GdM a consistently exciting publication, and GdM #8‘s two sci-fi stories are not bad at all. The first, “Viva Longevicus” by Brandon Daubs, is about genetically engineered pets going very, very wrong. It’s told by a colonel in the U.S.S. AeroCorps sent to investigate an infestation on a colonial world. A monster hunt on an alien world just isn’t the most original plot, but if it’s told with verve and intensity (and just the right amount of crazy), it can be a blast to happily while away a few minutes on. This is one of those.

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Fantastic, August and September 1964: A Retro-Review

Monday, August 22, 2016 Rich Horton Comments 3 comments

Fantastic Stories of Imagination August 1964-small

Fantastic Stories of Imagination September 1964-small

My most recent forays into Cele Goldsmith Lalli’s editing career have concentrated on Amazing, so here’s a look at a couple of issues of Fantastic. These two issues include a complete John Jakes serial, so I’ll consider them together.

During this period Fantastic was subtitled “Stories of Imagination,” and though it concentrated on fantasy it also published some SF. (The letter column, when one existed, occasionally included complaints about this, to which the response was “sometimes there just isn’t enough good fantasy.”) Fantastic was also thin on features, usually the only one being an editorial from Norman Lobsenz and a brief Coming Next Month blurb. The August editorial is about psychic research, particularly that of the Greek scientist Angelos Tanagras. I thought Lobsenz was a bit too credulous. The September issue’s editorial complains about the quality of SF on TV: instead of adaptations of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories we got Living Doll, and instead of The Martian Chronicles we got My Favorite Martian.

August’s cover is by Ed Emshwiller, with interiors by Emsh, Virgil Finlay, and George Schelling. Robert Adragna does the September cover, and the interiors are by Adragna, Finlay, Emsh, and Schelling.

The stories, then.

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Alaric’s Biggest Secret: “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” by Phyllis Eisenstein

Monday, August 22, 2016 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Phyllis Eisenstein’s wandering minstrel Alaric, one of the most beloved characters in modern fantasy, appeared in eight short stories in Fantasy & Science Fiction between 1978-1998, and in two novels: Born to Exile (1978) and In the Red Lord’s Reach (1989). He recently made a long-overdue reappearance in George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’ massive 2014 anthology Rogues, in the novelette “The Caravan to Nowhere.”

He’s reappeared again, this time in the new novelette “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” in the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science, still on sale at better bookshops. In honor of the occasion, F&SF has interviewed Phyllis on their website, and Phyllis reveals several secrets about the magical world she’s been nurturing for nearly four decades.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dungeon! – A New Kind of Board Game

Monday, August 22, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 7 comments

TSR’s Dungeon! came out in 1975, just one year after Gary Gygax revolutionized gaming with Dungeons and Dragons.

The ground-breaking board game is still an excellent introduction to fantasy gaming over forty years later. The board represents a dungeon, divided into six areas (representing levels) of varying difficulty, differentiated by color. There are monster and treasure cards for level and the harder the level, the tougher the monsters and of course, the greater the treasures.

The character classes have been changed over the years, but the player chooses from a Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and Wizard and each class needs to collect a certain amount of gold pieces (earned from treasure cards), ranging from 10,000 to 30,000. Also, each hero class performs at its best in certain levels. So you don’t want to take a Cleric to level six, but your Wizard is never going to win by traipsing around level one.

When a hero enters a room or a chamber, they draw a monster card (which might also be a trap). Every monster has a value assigned to each hero (as well as two spell values for the Wizard). The player rolls two six-sided dice and wins on a tie or greater. The monster is dead and the player gets a treasure card. If the Hero loses the fight, one of five things happens, ranging from nothing to dying and losing all of their treasure. The monster and any treasures remain in the room, waiting for another hero to enter.

Heroes explore until they gain the required amount of treasure for their class. The first Hero to make it back to the starting chamber with the requisite treasure wins the game. Bad things can happen on the way back to the starting chamber and the Hero may no longer have enough treasure. And once in awhile, it becomes a race to the finish.

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New Treasures: The Lure of Devouring Light by Michael Griffin

Sunday, August 21, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Ross E. Lockhart’s Word Horde press has done some darned impressive horror volumes. Just counting the ones we’ve covered recently:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Mr. Suicide, Nicole Cushing
Cthulhu Fhtagn!, edited by Ross E. Lockhart
Vermilion by Molly Tanzer
The Children of Old Leech, edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele

Yeah, that’s a pretty good list. A list like that wins you some serious credibility. So when Word Horde offers us an intriguing new debut collection from someone I’ve never heard of, I think it behooves us to pay attention. Michael Griffin’s The Lure of Devouring Light has been called “A solid outing from a rising star in horror and dark fantasy” by Publishers Weekly, and Hellnotes says “It doesn’t get more recommended than this.”

The Lure of Devouring Light was published by Word Horde on April 30, 2016. It is 336 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Jarek Kubicki. Read more at the Word Horde website.

The 2016 Hugo Award Winners

Sunday, August 21, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

It was a delight to be in the audience in Kansas City for the 2016 Hugo Awards. I was sitting next to Rich and MaryAnne Horton, and we thoroughly enjoyed both the pre-show and the presentations.

There’s a lengthy list of winners, so let’s get to it. The complete list follows.

Best Novel

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US)

Best Novella

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

Best Novelette

“Folding Beijing”, Hao Jingfang (Uncanny 1-2/15)

Best Short Story

“Cat Pictures Please”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, 1/15)

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Black Gate Receives an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin

Sunday, August 21, 2016 John ONeill Comments 19 comments

George RR Martin and John O’Neill

Yesterday, while I was walking through the crowded halls of Worldcon in the Kansas City Convention Center, I was given an invitation to the Hugo Losers party, courtesy of the party’s distinguished host, George RR Martin. I was quite flattered, as Black Gate was not even up for a Hugo (we declined the nomination, as we did last year, to make room for another nominee on the ballot), but didn’t think much more about it.

The Hugo Losers party is the hottest ticket of the convention, as I soon discovered. George personally hands out the Alfie Awards to those Hugo losers whom he feels (quite rightly, I think) were unjustly robbed of an award by slate shenanigans. And this year he spared no expense to do it in style, renting out the Midland Theater, hiring a band, and plying hundreds of guests with fabulous food and drink. The Awards themselves are gorgeous, constructed of vintage hood ornaments, in honor of the design inspiration for the first Hugo Awards.

George funds and hosts the awards, but the Alfie’s are in truth a fan award… the winners are determined by the results of the Hugo voting. But after the first few were awarded, George announced that the Alfie committee had the right to give out special awards. And as the sole member of the committee, he’d decided to give a special award this year to recognize one publication “for integrity” in declining a Hugo nomination two years in a row. Without further ado, George announced the award was to be given to Black Gate, and I was called to the stage to accept it.

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