Rosarium, Diversity, and the Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

Rosarium, Diversity, and the Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

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Rosarium_Comix_Banner_tbjinlHello, there!

I just wanted to pop in to tell you about the Indiegogo campaign that Rosarium Publishing is currently running.

From the first two paragraphs of their campaign page:

Rosarium Publishing (distributed through IPG) was started in 2013 with one goal: to bring true diversity to publishing so that the books and comics we enjoy actually reflect the fascinating, multicultural world we truly live in today.

We publish science fiction, crime, steampunk, satire, comics and represent over 40 artists and writers from all over the world.  With the success of this campaign, we will be able to print thousands of books and continue our mission to further our quest for diversity in publishing with the high quality of work you deserve.

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New Treasures: Starflight by Melissa Landers

New Treasures: Starflight by Melissa Landers

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Starflight Melissa Landers-small Starflight Melissa Landers back-small

Black Gate is a fantasy site, and there’s more than enough fantasy releases to keep us busy every month. But sometimes adventure SF — especially off-world space opera — reads an awful lot like great fantasy. It’s too early to see if Melissa Landers’s latest novel Starflight will go down in the annals as classic space opera, but it’s sure got the ingredients… including a plucky heroine, lawless outer realms, long-buried secrets, and an eccentric crew on a fast ship.

Solara Brooks needs a fresh start, someplace where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. The outer realm may be lawless, but it’s not like the law has ever been on her side. Still, off-world travel doesn’t come cheap; Solara is left with no choice but to indenture herself in exchange for passage to the outer realm. She just wishes it could have been to anyone besides Doran Spaulding, the rich, pretty-boy quarterback who made her life miserable in school.

The tables suddenly turn when Doran is framed for conspiracy on Earth, and Solara cons him into playing the role of her servant on board the Banshee, a ship manned by an eccentric crew with their own secrets. Given the price on both Doran and Solara’s heads, it may just be the safest place in the universe. It’s been a long time since Solara has believed in anyone, and Doran is the last person she expected to trust. But when the Banshee‘s dangerous enemies catch up with them, Solara and Doran must come together to protect the ship that has become their home – and the eccentric crew that feels like family.

Starflight was published by Disney-Hyperion on February 2, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital version.

Goth Chick News: Again With That Damn Clown…

Goth Chick News: Again With That Damn Clown…

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Pennywise the Clown

In the spring of 2015, production was ready to begin on a brand new rebooted, two-film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT, with Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) in the director’s chair. Creative differences led Fukunaga to depart the project, creating an indefinite delay and uncertainty as to whether the two-film approach would remain.

However, last week it was announced that Andy Muschietti (Mama) has taken over the directorial reins, and we’ve now learned that the cameras will begin rolling in June; on both films.

Stephen King himself took to Facebook to share a link from Entertainment Weekly confirming a September 8, 2017 release date, and explaining why the approach isn’t really milking the potential audience.

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April 2016 Locus Now on Sale

April 2016 Locus Now on Sale

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Locus April 2016-smallI let my subscription to Locus lapse last year as a cost-savings measure (I subscribe to too many magazines), and that proved to be a big mistake. I told myself I could still buy the occasional issue when they caught my eye on newsstands. Turns out Locus is pretty eye-catching. I’ve spent far more than what a subscription would have cost me buying up individual issues. This year, I won’t make that mistake. I’m signing up for a subscription this month.

The April Locus is packed with great stuff, including interviews with Paolo Bacigalupi and Tim Pratt, a column by Kameron Hurley, a report on SF in Cuba, and reviews of short fiction and books by Eleanor Arnason, Ken Liu, Betsy James, Judith Merril, Austin Grossman, Cathy Fenner, and many others. In addition to all the news, features, and regular columns, there’s also the indispensable listings of Magazines Received, Books Received, British Books Received, and Bestsellers. Plus Letters, and an editorial. See the complete contents here.

The big change I noticed with the latest issue is that the magazine has gone to glossy, full-cover interiors — and it looks great. All those books thumbnails look terrific in color.

We last covered Locus with the February 2015 issue. Locus is edited by Liza Groen Trombi, and published monthly by Locus Publications. The issue is 62 pages, priced at $7.50. Subscriptions are $63 for 12 issues in the US. Subscribe online here. The magazine’s website, run as a separate publication by Mark R. Kelly, is a superb online resource. It is here.

See our Mid-April Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, edited by Mercedes Lackey

Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, edited by Mercedes Lackey

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Nebula Awards Showcase 2016-smallThe 2015 Nebula Awards were a pretty big deal for me. They were presented here in Chicago, and I was able to attend for the first time. I was also asked to present the award for Best Novelette of the Year, an honor I won’t soon forget.

In addition I got to catch up with old friends, and meet plenty of new faces — folks like Rachel Swirsky, Liz Gorinsky, Aliette de Bodard, Lawrence M. Schoen, Cixin Liu, and many more. The Nebula Awards Weekend is relaxed, fun, and attended by the best and brightest writers and editors in the industry. It’s a great place to meet and chat with your favorite writers — not to mention get lots of free books.

They also give out some Nebula Awards, of course. And the Nebula Awards Showcase collects the winners and finalists in a handsome anthology, as it has every year since 1966. The Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 is the 50th volume in the series, and it looks like one of the strongest in recent memory.

This year editor Mercedes Lackey elected to take a rather eclectic approach — to include every short story and novelette nominee and winner, and limit herself to excerpts in the novella category (with the exception of the winner). Here’s the complete TOC.

Short Story

“Jackalope Wives,” Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14) — Winner

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Vintage Trash: Reel Wild Cinema Free Online (and Legal!)

Vintage Trash: Reel Wild Cinema Free Online (and Legal!)

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rwcinema

As many of you will remember, back in the 1980s and 90s there was a huge increase of interest in old B movies. People of my generation who had grown up watching “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster” on rainy Saturday afternoons, or snuck down to the TV room to catch Creature Features on the late late show, were now in college or work and had money to spend. Suddenly VCRs across the nation were being filled with monster films, 1930s exploitation films, Italian Mondo films, and every other kind of vintage oddity. It was a wave of ironic nostalgia that put the later hipster movement to shame.

Magazines like Psychotronic Video and Cult Movies Magazine were crammed with articles about obscure directors and their output, along with lots of great movie stills and posters. There were also ads for various film distributors, one of the most popular being Something Weird Video.

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Pirates, Weather Sorcery, and Desperate Nautical Adventure: The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster

Pirates, Weather Sorcery, and Desperate Nautical Adventure: The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster

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The Drowning Eyes Emily Foster-small The Drowning Eyes Emily Foster back-small

I started a new job two weeks ago, and for the first time in my life I’m commuting to downtown Chicago by train every day. Sixty minutes both ways, give or take. You know what’s perfect for a two-hour daily commute? Tor.com‘s new novellas, that’s what. They’re the ideal length, they’re written by the top fantasy writers in the field — and some great emerging talent — and the price is right. The first one I tried was The Drowning Eyes, and I’m glad I did.

According to Emily Foster’s bio in the back, she’s a fresh-faced graduate from the University of Northern Colorado, which likely makes her less than half my age. There are times, in this fast-paced tale of pirates, weather sorcery, and desperate nautical adventure, when her youth is apparent, especially in moments of dialog between Tazir, the grizzled Captain of the Giggling Goat, and her frequently cranky crew. But most of the time it’s not — which frankly is even more annoying. When punk kids start turning out polished gems of adventure fantasy like The Drowning Eyes, it takes all the joy out of cranky reminiscences about the good ole days of pulp fantasy. They’re even taking that away from us.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu-Manchu, Part Five – “The Green Mist”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu-Manchu, Part Five – “The Green Mist”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on April 25, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

CollMistinsidious5“The Green Mist” was the fourth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in January 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 10-12 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu [initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication]. When Rohmer incorporated the story into the novel, he added linking material intended to make the book appear timely and relevant. However, the true-life Yellow Peril news items that Rohmer has Petrie recount from actual British papers of the day strike a discordant note nearly a century on.

Freed from the exotic trappings of weird fiction, the straight journalism of the era seems dated, naïve, and offensive to modern sensibilities. This phenomenon is hardly unique to Sax Rohmer’s fiction and may also be experienced in the unenlightened views on display in the earliest of Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. Making matters worse is the current vogue for political correctness that believes in burying the past rather than learning from it. The combination of these factors stands as the most challenging obstacle facing mainstream publishers in the 21st Century marketplace.

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Making Myth in a Digital Alexandria

Making Myth in a Digital Alexandria

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Xena-cerchioDid you hear about the Xena reboot? How about the new Voltron series? Twin Peaks is re-launching this summer, and you may already have your tickets to the next comic book movie.

What is up with that? Is Hollywood completely out of ideas? Have they gotten so risk-averse that all they can do is recycle old material? Or is it simply nostalgia run amok, a nation full of millennials who don’t want to grow up?

I think it’s something different, and something pretty exciting. I don’t think our love of reboots is a lack of creativity at all. In fact, I think this is an incredibly vibrant artistic period, and is about to become even more so.

Why? Because we’ve seen this before. Bear with me, guys.

The Hellenistic period of the Ancient World begins with the death of Alexander the Great and extends until the rise of the Roman Empire. There, we got our hard facts out of the way. You may even remember that from history class.

Historians like their categories, and periods of history broken down into neat charts with clear defining events.

But in this case, we can talk about the way Ancient Mediterranean Culture shifted dramatically in a very short period of time. We became more and more able to talk about a Mediterranean culture, for one. The disparate cultures of Greece, the Near East, Northern Africa, and the Italian peninsula came into much closer contact because of Alexander’s Imperial ambitions. Trade had existed before, but the construction of travel networks and large cities allowed for an even greater exchange of information.

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