Black Gate – Page 657 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Shock Totem #10 Now Available

Thursday, May 19, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Way back in March of last year, when I announced we were expanding our magazine coverage at Black Gate — and was bold enough to list the 16 magazines we’d be covering regularly — there was an immediate outcry that we were being too limited. And the very first magazine that readers requested we add to our list was the American small press horror ‘zine Shock Totem (thanks, Wild Ape!).

After a year of sustained effort, we’ve built up our coverage to the point where we report on 41 magazines regularly, or at least semi-regularly (41! I had no idea there were 41 fantasy magazines on the market when I started this crazy project). But Shock Totem still isn’t one of them. Time to correct that! Today, I’m here to tell you about the tenth issue of the magazine of “Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted,” which shipped in March.

But first, I should share this unfortunate announcement from K. Allen Wood, posted on January 1 of last year:

The next issue of Shock Totem, number ten, will be our last issue for a while. The reasons for this are many, but the biggest reason is simple: kids… As of right now, the goal is to take a complete break from publishing the magazine in 2015 and reopen for submissions on January 1, 2016, with a new issue scheduled for July 2016…

In the next few weeks we will begin accepting novel and novella submissions… we’re not going away, not completely; we’re just scaling back for a time so I can be a father.

As the father of three, I can certainly understand that. It took over a year for issue 10 to materialize, but with regard to the novellas Allen was as good as his word. In August of last year Shock Totem Publications announced they were open for novel and novella submissions, and on January 31 they rolled out this very impressive publishing schedule for the year.

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Cast Your Spell on a Medieval Town in The Village Crone

Wednesday, May 18, 2016 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

I’m something of a collector (this may not come as a surprise). I collect vintage paperbacks, pulps, science fiction digests, comics, and lots of other paper ephemera.

But chiefly what I collect is games. Goodness, I have a lot of games. I hoard them in the basement. I drive to games auctions (like the marvelous Games Plus auction in Mount Prospect, IL), I track down obscure Amiga games on eBay, and I compulsively hunt every solitaire role playing game ever made.

I’m almost given up buying modern fantasy board games, though. Not that they’re not any good — far from it! — but even an obsessive like me has his limits. We’re living in a Golden Age of Board Games, and it’s a huge challenge keeping tabs on even a fraction of all the interesting games being released every month.

You know what I can do, though? I can try some of the games Amazon.com has deeply discounted every month. I’m not sure what the story is with these games — were they discontinued? Replaced with a newer edition? Did they flop? — but hey, I don’t actually care all that much. They’re super cheap, they look cool, and I’m ready to buy. Take my money.

I’ve been buying 1-2 every week for the past month or so, and some of them look pretty darn good. Like Fireside Games’ The Village Crone, an accessible Euro-style game with modular boards in which 1-6 players harvest spell ingredients, give their familiars secret tasks, casts spells, turn villagers into frogs, and compete for the power and authority that comes with being named Village crone.

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Sample the New Pathfinder Tales Soundclips from Macmillan Audio!

Wednesday, May 18, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Pathfinder Tales Audio Pirate's Prophecy-small

Pathfinder Tales Audio Lord of Runes-small

Pathfinder Tales Audio Liar's Island-small

Audio samples are great way to try out new authors and new series — especially when they’re free! Macmillan Audio has offered us no less than six 10-minute soundclips from their hit Pathfinder Tales line, and we’re very pleased to be able to share them with you. The first three are (links will take you to our previous coverage):

Pathfinder Tales: Pirate’s Prophecy by Chris A. Jackson
Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes by Dave Gross
Pathfinder Tales: Liar’s Island by Tim Pratt

So sit back, close your eyes, and let professional reader Steve West whisk you away to a world of magic and adventure.

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New Treasures: Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

Tuesday, May 17, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I remember when Guy Gavriel Kay’s three volume Fionavar Tapestry appeared in my native Canada in the mid-80s. It was an instant hit, and put Kay on the map as a major fantasist immediately (to understand why, see Fletcher Vredenburgh’s retrospective of the first two volumes, The Summer Tree and The Wandering Fire). He followed with Tigana (1990), A Song for Arbonne (1992), The Lions of al-Rassan (1995), and The Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors). Kay isn’t particularly prolific, producing a new fantasy volume every three years or so. In his review of Kay’s 2010 novel Under Heaven, fellow Canadian Todd Ruthman wrote:

We don’t have that many rituals in our home. One is the creeping countdown to Guy Gavriel Kay’s newest novel. I am always a little sad when it finally comes, though, because it means years before I will see his next one.

There hasn’t been a new Kay novel since River of Stars (2013). It’s been three years, and along comes his newest, like clockwork. Children of Earth and Sky, a standalone fantasy set in a world inspired by Renaissance Europe, was released in hardcover on May 10, and called “Magnificent” by Library Journal.

From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request — and possibly to do more — and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.

The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif — to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming. As these lives entwine, their fates — and those of many others — will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world…

Children of Earth and Sky was published May 10 by NAL. It is 592 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover, and $13.99 for the digital edition.

Science Fiction Stories, January 1955: A Retro-Review

Tuesday, May 17, 2016 Rich Horton Comments 0 Comment

Much has been made, justifiably, of Robert A. W. Lowndes’ habit of making bricks without straw over decades with Columbia Publications’ magazines, mostly Future and Science Fiction Stories. He fought tiny budgets and ridiculously irregular publication schedules to produce credible issues time after time.

This issue appeared during a fairly prolific time for the magazines, though. Science Fiction Stories was now bimonthly, and, shockingly enough, 6 issues did appear in 1955. For that matter, 4 more issues of Science Fiction Quarterly also appeared. Only one issue of Future, but that makes 11 issues total for Lowndes that year — almost as many as John W. Campbell!

This issue of Science Fiction Stories is light on features — only one is listed, “Voyage to Nowhere,” by Wallace West, but Lowndes notes “Twenty years ago, this would have been presented to readers as a story.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but 60 years later, I still say it’s a story, and I’m not quite sure why Lowndes wants to call it “a speculative essay.” So I’ll list it with the fiction.

The cover is by Ed Emshwiller, not too typical of his best work (and not illustrating any of the stories). Interiors are by Emsh, Freas, and Orban.

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April Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, May 17, 2016 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 3 comments

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Another of 2016’s months has come and gone, which means it’s time to round up and review a batch of new short stories.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #51 presented its usual complement of two stories in April. The first is by a newcomer to the magazine’s pages, Jason Ray Carney. “The Ink of the Slime Lord” gave me nearly everything I could want from a S&S story: a wicked sorceress, dire magics, a dashing pirate, and plenty of monsters.

A trio of evil sisters with dreams of dominion run up against powerful opponents:

The Three Sisters had established a cult centered on a book bound in human skin and inked with blood. This cult threatened the priesthood of Atok-the-Million-Eyed, and for this the sisters would be punished with impunity, the leaves of their philosophy scattered to the winds.

The youngest of the sisters, Mera, “was tenacious. She was able to put her head back on her body.” Revived, she sets off for the titular ingredient in order to bring her sisters back to life as well. Her quest builds in scope as she first faces off against a single wizard, then dives into the underworld in search of a certain pirate before making for a lost and ruined city and the temple of the demonic Slime Lord.

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Future Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1, edited by Neil Clarke

Monday, May 16, 2016 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

The Best Science Fiction of the Year 1 Neil Clarke-small

The Best Science Fiction of the Year 1 Neil Clarke-back-small

While I was at the Friday night mass autographing session at the Nebula Awards weekend, I discovered Neil Clarke had a small number of copies of his upcoming anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1 at his table — a book I’ve been looking forward to for months — and I was delighted to be able to buy one. Since we were at an autographing session, after all, I asked if he’d sign it. I also asked, as I usually do when requesting autographs, if he’d add, “To my one true love, John.” Neil, who knew of my ongoing plan to save my marriage (it’s a long story), wrote the following:

To John,

Since everyone does it… to my one true love. See Alice, we really do this all the time.

It’s good to have friends who care if I stay married.

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The 2015 Nebula Award Winners

Monday, May 16, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City
perform the brilliant “Radio SFWA” at the 2016 Nebula Awards

I attended the 2016 Nebula Awards banquet here in Chicago on Saturday night, and I thought that meant I’d be able to announce the winners in a timely fashion. Instead, I wasted my time hobnobbing with winners, nominees, and just all around cool people until very late in the evening, got home at 2:15 am, and fell asleep for roughly 24 hours. So I’ve been scooped by every website in the industry (and even some periodicals that only publish monthly).

Ah, that’s okay. For those loyal readers who steadfastly looked away when other sites reported the winners, and waited with confidence for the Black Gate report, thank you (both of you.)

The highlight of the weekend was the awards ceremony, hosted by the genuinely hilarious John Hodgman (from The Daily Show). And the surprise highlight of the ceremony was the opening number by Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City, “Radio SFWA,” which I’ve been humming non-stop for the past two days. You don’t attend an SF conference expecting to hear live pop music, much less an 80s New Wave/Space Disco anthem that doubles as a recruitment tool for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but that’s exactly what it was. I’m a 52 year-old guy who can’t dance, but at the end I was on my feet, pounding my hands together and ready to jump into the mosh pit.

Songwriter, lead singer and front man Henry Lien is some kind of genius. Listen to the whole thing here (be sure to read the hilariously brilliant lyrics by clicking “Show More”), and read the background here.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Key West Private Eye – Gideon Lowry

Monday, May 16, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

As I’ve posted here at Black Gate, John D. MacDonald, author of the Travis McGee series (and much, much more) is my favorite writer. And I believe, one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, in any genre. His is the pre-eminent name in the subcategory of ‘Florida writers.’ Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford, a marine biologist who lives in a stilt house, is McGee’s successor. I think White is a top-notch writer and I certainly recommend that series.

I’m not as up on this group as I used to be, but Carl Hiassen is probably the best-known Florida scribe these days. His biting satire and hilarious situations can be laugh-out-loud reading. In a similar vein to Hiassen are the works of Lawrence Shames. He also pokes fun at the absurdities of Florida life with a series of mostly unconnected books set in Key West. I recently read Virgin Heat and Mangrove Squeeze and got some chuckles, though his stuff is a bit raunchy for me.

There are others, of course, like Thomas McGuane (Jimmy Buffett’s brother in law), Geoffrey Norman, Lawrence Sanders, James W. Hall and John Lutz, to name a few; covering a wide range of styles. Today, I’m going to talk about John Leslie and his hard-boiled PI, Gideon Lowry.

There are only four books in the series, and it appears that no more will be forthcoming. This is a shame, because Lowry is an interesting character. Killing Me Softly was published in 1994 and Lowry is in his fifties. Except for a two-year vacation to Korea, paid by Uncle Sam, he has spent his entire life in Key West. He’s a true-blue Conch. And that matters, as the sense of tribe plays a big part of the series. Whether or not someone was one of “our people” was a major factor in how you responded to situations regarding them. But unlike his father, Lowry doesn’t simply identify with natives and locals.

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The SFWA Bulletin #208, the 2016 Nebula Awards Special Issue, is Now Available

Sunday, May 15, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

When I arrived at the Nebula Awards conference on Thursday, one of the first things I received was a complimentary copy of issue #208 of the flagship publication of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The SFWA Bulletin. It’s an oversize magazine (not a digest), an impressive 84 pages on heavy stock, which I read on my long train ride back to St. Charles later that night.

The SFWA Bulletin has changed a lot over the years, and I’ve enjoyed plenty of issues. But this is certainly the best single issue of the magazine I’ve ever read. It is devoted almost exclusively to the 2016 Nebula Award nominees, with a 50-page section that examines each and every nominee in detail — with mini-author bios, a story synopsis, a few paragraphs on the origin and story-behind-the-story from the nominees, and fascinating tidbits on each tale, such as favorite reactions from fans, thoughts on possible sequels, and lots more.

There’s also cover reproductions — book or magazine as the case may be — for each entry, which I greatly appreciated. (I don’t know why I enjoy seeing high-res cover reproductions of recent magazines, but I do!)

This also happens to be Neil Clarke’s first issue as full-time editor of the Bulletin (he’s been acting as interim editor since John Klima’s departure last year). While he’s done a stellar job, it’s clear he’s not 100% satisfied. In his editorial, he wonders whether readers might not be better served with a post-Nebula issue instead.

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