Black Gate – Page 657 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Vintage Treasures: Lincoln’s Dreams by Connie Willis

Wednesday, June 22, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

There are precious few debut novels that receive the outpouring of acclaim that greeted Connie Willis’s Lincoln Dreams when it first appeared. There are even fewer that remain in print for as long as five years. The Bantam Spectra edition of Lincoln’s Dreams has now been in print for an astounding 24 years… that’s got to be some kind of record.

Willis’ first novel, Water Witch, was co-written with Cynthia Felice, and published in 1982. Lincoln’s Dreams, which appeared in hardcover from Bantam Spectra in May 1987, was her true solo debut, and it established her immediately as a major novelist. Twilight Zone Magazine called it “A tight, solid fantasy with a stiletto-in-the-heart epiphany at the end… fascinating,” and Watership Down author Richard Adams called it “Moving and beautiful… a most original and fascinating novel.” Fantasy Review said it “clearly marks Connie Willis as one of our foremost young novelists.” And Harlan Ellison said:

Every once in a while a talent leaps up to announce itself as important. Connie Willis is such a talent: a magisterial intelligence at work… to miss Lincoln’s Dreams is to risk the loss of your immortal soul.

Lincoln’s Dreams was published by Bantam Spectra in July 1992. It is 229 pages (plus 2-page foreword by the author, and a 12-page preview of her 1992 novel Doomsday Book), priced at $4.99. The cover is by Jean-François Podevin. Click the images above for bigger versions.

Clarkesworld 117 Now Available

Wednesday, June 22, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

In his editorial this issue, Neil Clarke has some powerful words to say about how all of us can help keep short fiction alive.

If we want short fiction to thrive, we have a responsibility to spread the word and promote the works we’ve enjoyed. There are many ways to do this, but it needs to be focused, respectful, and timely. More specifically, it needs to be done in locations that are relevant to the audience you are trying to attract. Your blog is nice, but adding Twitter or Amazon might have a bigger impact.

Reviewing isn’t for everyone, mind you. I really wanted to do my part and find a way to contribute to a positive conversation about short fiction. I tried writing reviews. The blank screen tormented me and it took a while to realize that I wasn’t following the path that best utilized my skills. Instead, I changed tactics and launched Forever Magazine as a way of bringing back some of the stories I’ve enjoyed. When I go full-time this year, I hope to be able to do a bit more with that project.

Read his complete editorial here.

Clarkesworld #117 has four new stories by Margaret Ronald, Sam J. Miller, E. Catherine Tobler, and Zhang Ran, and two reprints by Michael Flynn and Nancy Kress.

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Space Stations With Secret Passages, and Snow White in Space: Rich Horton on Sanctuary in the Sky by John Brunner/The Secret Martians by John Sharkey

Tuesday, June 21, 2016 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

After a series of duds, our intrepid retro-reviewer Rich Horton turns to the always-reliable John Brunner.

I’ve read some weak Ace Doubles lately, so I tried to improve my fortunes by picking one with a John Brunner half. I can almost always count on Brunner for entertainment with a thoughtful edge. Brunner (1934-1995) of course was one of the field’s greats, a Hugo winner for Stand on Zanzibar (1968). He had a bifurcated career a bit like Robert Silverberg’s: beginning around the same time as Silverberg he was extremely prolific early in his career, publishing a lot of quickly executed and competent work; and then sometime in the early to mid ’60s seems to have consciously raised his level of ambition, beginning with novels like The Whole Man and The Squares of the City, and continuing to his famous quartet of long novels, beginning with Stand on Zanzibar, then The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider.

The book under consideration this time is the 1960 Ace Double Sanctuary in the Sky by John Brunner, paired with The Secret Martians by the far less well known John Sharkey.

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OMG They Found It! Osprey’s The Catalaunian Fields AD451

Tuesday, June 21, 2016 M Harold Page Comments 9 comments

Osprey Catalaunian Fields It’s the one thousand, five hundred and fifty sixth anniversary of the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, otherwise known as the Battle of Chalons!

Not heard of it?

AD451. Just as the Roman Empire fades into the Dark Ages. At the Catalaunian Fields near Chalons, a grudging alliance of Romans and Germannic tribes confronts Attila the Hun’s confederation of Huns and yet more Germannic tribes.

Hundreds of thousands of warriors grind through a Ragnarok-grade battle on the scale of Waterloo but fought with cold steel… a battle so murderous that, in the morning, nobody much feels like doing any more fighting.

I’m fascinated by this forgotten battle — I’m even writing a YA Historical series that will put the hero in the midst of the mayhem — so I was overjoyed to receive a review copy of Osprey’s new book, The Catalaunian Fields AD451. Imagine, then, how I felt when, I discovered the chapter called, “The Battlefield Today.”

What? OMG they found it!

The location of this battle has been hotly debated for centuries. Now here’s an Osprey book casually pinpointing the battlefield and using it as the basis for its maps and diagrams!

And it’s convincing.

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Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Tuesday, June 21, 2016 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 9 comments

Was once a captain,
the story goes,
who led me in battle,
though in death’s throes.
Oh, senores! What an apt man
was that brave captain.
— E. Marquina, The Sun Has Set in Flanders

Spain’s Golden Age ran from roughly 1492, the final year of the Reconquista, until 1659 and the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees with France. During that period seemingly endless rivers of gold and silver from the kingdom’s colonies around the world flowed into its coffers. The disciplined soldiers of her vaunted tercios (commands of about 3,000 men) were respected and feared across Europe. Great cathedrals and palaces were built and painting and literature flourished as never before.

But a rot had set in, unseen by many, by the early 17th century. Inflation, corruption, expulsions of Jews and Moors, and endless wars would render Spain a mortally wounded empire that would slowly wither away over the subsequent two centuries. In 1623, though, Madrid is a glorious city of poets and dashing swordsmen. One of the greatest of the latter is Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, the hero of Captain Alatriste (1996) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It’s been a while since I reviewed a historical adventure, so I decided to dive into the first book in this still-running series.

Disappointed with the lack of information about the Golden Age in his daughter’s textbooks, Pérez-Reverte took it upon himself to write a book exploring that dramatic period. His most obvious inspiration were the swashbuckling historical romances of Alexandre Dumas. Undoubtedly influenced by two decades as a war correspondent, his exposure to the darkness of combat also permeates Captain Alatriste.

Alatriste is a veteran of years of conflict with Spain’s recalcitrant subjects in the Netherlands and the Turks, having run away as a drummer boy at the age of 13. Now, some thirty-odd years later, the recently ended truce with the Netherlands has brought him back to Madrid. Struggling to make a living with the only skills he posseses, Alatriste sells his sword and strong arm to whomever will pay. In the past he has been hired to kill one man’s rival at court, and the lover of another’s wife. In this novel, the first of seven to date, he and the Italian swordman, Gualterio Malatesta, are hired to waylay and rob two men. Initially told not to hurt the strangers too badly, they are later given conflicting orders to, in fact, kill them. During the attack Alatriste comes to believe things are not as simple as they seem, as well as being struck by the honor of one of his two intended victims. The rest of the novel involves the fallout from Alatriste’s decision to prevent the men’s deaths, as powerful men at the center of the Empire’s complex and corrupt power structure turn their attention to the veteran sell-sword. And that’s it. That’s pretty much the plot of Captain Alatriste.

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New Treasures: A Most Improper Boxed Set by Stephanie Burgis

Monday, June 20, 2016 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Not long after I got my Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, I joined a small start-up in Champaign, IL. I kept trying to explain to my friends and family what we did, without much luck. But after Microsoft licensed our first product and renamed it Internet Explorer 1.0, everyone understood what we did.

It was thrilling to be a manager in a fast-growing internet start-up in the early days of the dot-com boom, let me tell you. But one of the things I came to realize early on was that being an early tech pioneer was no help at all when it came to predicting where the next big thing was coming from. When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, for example, I confidently predicted it would never approach the success of Borders, since there was no way to browse for books, like you could in a real bookstore. Today, Borders is bankrupt, Amazon.com is one of the most successful companies in human history, and I spend hours every week browsing and shopping for books online, discovering more new titles than I ever could in a brick-and-mortar store.

That’s how I stumbled across A Most Improper Boxed Set, a delightful trilogy of Regency fantasy novels by Stephanie Burgis (Masks and Shadows), and decided to take a chance on it. Would I have made the same impulse purchase in a bookstore? Who can say? I’m just glad I did it.

For lovers of Harry Potter and Jane Austen, this boxed set of the Kat, Incorrigible Regency-era fantasy trilogy is a delightful blend of adventure, humor, mischief, romance, and quite a bit of improper magic.

Katherine Ann Stephenson has just discovered that she’s inherited her mother’s magical talents, and despite Stepmama’s stern objections, she’s determined to learn how to use them.

But nineteenth-century England is not the easiest place to practice scandalous magic. Kat’s reckless heroism will be tested to the utmost as she learns to control her new powers — all while battling dangerous highwaymen, dodging devious scoundrels, attempting to win her sisters their true loves, avoiding malicious gossip and disgraceful accusations, managing her sister Angeline’s heedless witchcraft and her brother Charles’s carelessness… and saving her family’s lives, the magical Order of the Guardians, and ultimately, England itself. And all this while trying to maintain the dignity of a proper lady!

This paperback boxed set — which includes Kat, Incorrigible; Renegade Magic; and Stolen Magic — contains enough mischief and magic to make Stepmama faint… and to satisfy the most voracious of readers.

A Most Improper Boxed Set was published by Atheneum Books on October 7, 2014. It contains three novels in trade paperback, with a combined page count of 1072 pages, and is priced at $21.99. The marvelously whimsical cover art is by Annette Marnat. See Emily Mah’s interview with Stephanie Burgis here.

Total Pulp Victory: A Report on Windy City Pulp & Paper 2016, Part I

Monday, June 20, 2016 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

Pulp and book vendors at Windy City Pulp 2016

My favorite Chicagoland convention, by a pretty wide margin, is Windy City Pulp and Paper. It’s organized by Doug Ellis and a team of volunteers, and this year it took place from April 22-24 in Lombard, Illinois, its home for the last decade or so.

It’s a little strange that Windy City has bubbled to the top of my list. I entertain myself in numerous ways at conventions, but I especially enjoy a robust reading program, lively programming and panels, and late-night conversations at parties. Windy City has none of that. Sure, they have their Sunday New Pulp reading series, and the Friday night auction, and those are fun. But at heart, Windy City is mostly just a giant Dealer’s Room.

But what a Dealer’s Room! Dozens and dozens of dealers from all over the country packed into the ballroom of the Westin Hotel, selling pulps, vintage paperbacks, DVDs, artwork, comics, rare books, new books, small press publications, posters, and so much more. It’s the kind of Dealer’s Room you can get lost in for days, and for a lifetime pulp and book collector like me, it’s paradise.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Stephen Mangan’s Dirk Gently

Monday, June 20, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

Last week, I was writing my post for today. It was about the Houdini and Doyle miniseries, in which Stephen Mangan plays Arthur Conan Doyle, who was, of course, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. But, the principle of Zen Writing Navigation took me elsewhere.

There is a school of thought that says you should use a map when you are lost. Dirk Gently’s strategy is to find someone who looks like they know where they are going and follow them. He rarely ends up where he was intending to go, but often ends up somewhere that he needed to be. Back in 2010, Mangan played Gently in a pilot episode that was followed by three more episodes in 2012.

I followed Magnan and ended up writing this post, not one on Houdini and Doyle. And through this, once again proving the fundamental interconnectedness of everything.

Just as Sherlock Holmes was the world’s first (and greatest) private consulting detective, Gently was the world’s first, greatest and only holistic detective, created by the late Douglas Adams. I wrote about Gently here at Black Gate and if you haven’t read Adams’ two novels about him, you’re missing out on some terrific humor.

You might be familiar with the phrase, “Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.” If you’re not, as soon as you finish reading this post, you need to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not watch the movie (which is better than people give it credit for), but read the book. Fortunately, this miniseries is closer to Gently than that phrase implies.

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Future Treasures: Duskfall by Christopher Husberg

Sunday, June 19, 2016 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

I tend to like my fantasy dark and gritty. Arthurian fantasy, romantic fantasy, light-hearted comedy… I enjoy those as well, but in smaller doses. And when I’m shopping for a new series, my eye tends to gravitate towards those that promise high stakes, rich settings, complex characters, and diabolical villains.

Christopher Husberg’s debut fantasy novel Duskfall looks like it could fit the bill nicely. It’s the opening volume in The Chaos Queen Quintet (which I assume means there will be four more?) The next volume, Dark Immolation, will be released in June 2017. Duskfall is due in trade paperback from Titan this week.

There Are Daemons That Even Daemons Fear….

Pulled from the frozen waters of the Gulf of Nahl, stuck with arrows and near to death, Knot has no memory of who he was. But his dreams are dark, and he can kill a man with terrifying ease.

Winter, a tiellan woman whose people have long been oppressed by humans, is married to and abandoned by Knot on the same day, when robed assassins attack their wedding. Her nascent magical abilities will lead her to a deadly addiction — and phenomenal power.

And Cinzia, priestess and true believer, has returned to her home city to find that her own sister is leading a heretical rebellion. A rebellion that only the inquisition can crush… Their fates will intertwine, in a land where magic and demons are believed dead, but dark forces still vie for power.

Duskfall will be published by Titan Books on June 21, 2016. It is 560 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition.

See all our coverage of the best upcoming fantasy here.

Zombie Plagues, Demon Hunters, and the Cyborg Tour de France: Catching Up With Tor.com

Sunday, June 19, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I think Tor.com‘s new line of premium novellas is a terrific idea. I really enjoy keeping on top of the latest in fantasy and SF (or, at least, the illusion that I’m keeping on top of the latest in fantasy and SF), but I just don’t have enough time to read all the novels I need to do that.

But the Tor.com novellas have allowed me to sample many of the top writers in the field, as well as new and emerging talents, in a marvelously satisfying way. I’m talking about folks like Michael R. Underwood, K. J. Parker, Mary Robinette Kowal, Tim Lebbon, Seanan McGuire, Kai Ashante Wilson, Paul Cornell, Alter S. Reiss, Nnedi Okorafor, Angela Slatter, Daniel Polansky, and many others. The novellas are quick, inexpensive reads… and so far, the quality has been top-notch. It doesn’t hurt that they also look terrific, and are highly collectible, either.

This is where some of the most exciting work in the industry is being done, and the critical buzz reflects that. The fledgling line has already been showered with accolades, award nominations, and even a Nebula Award… and it’s not even a year old!

Tor.com shows no signs of slowing down, releasing 2-3 new titles per month through the spring and summer. The six books above were published over the last nine weeks, and they’re some of the most interesting of the lot. They include their first full-length novel, Malka Older ‘s Infomocracy, sequels to previous popular Tor.com novellas (Tim Lebbon’s A Whisper of Southern Lights and Andy Remic’s Return of Souls), two debuts (S. B. Divya’s Runtime, and Infomocracy), a standalone novella from a 2016 Nebula nominee (Fran Wilde’s The Jewel and Her Lapidary), and the start of an exciting new science fantasy series from a popular Warhammer 40K author (Guy Haley’s The Emperor’s Railroad.)

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